A- #BookReview: How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis

A- #BookReview: How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth RevisHow to Steal a Galaxy (Chaotic Orbits #2) by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #2
Pages: 144
Published by DAW on December 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Sparks fly when Ada and Rian just-so-happen to find themselves at the same charity gala—but there’s something rotten behind the sparkling gowns and dazzling wealth on display

This heist turned rom-com from New York Times bestselling author Beth Revis is perfect for fans of sexy, romantic science fiction and readers of Martha Wells and Becky Chambers

Ada had no intention whatsoever to continue working for the rebel group that hired her to retrieve the government’s plans for a nanobot climate cleaner if they weren’t willing to pay her for it, but then they offer a different perk: an undercover mission to a charity gala where Rian will be in attendance. Rian, meanwhile, has volunteered his services for the gala believing that the rare items up for auction will attract Ada’s eye. Hoping to catch her in the act and pin her with a punishable crime, Rian has no idea Ada’s really after.

In a high-stakes game of theft and deception, Ada plays to win...and Rian will do anything to stop her.

My Review:

In this arresting follow-up to the first book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, Full Speed to a Crash Landing, mercenary hacker/thief Ada Lamarr is on the trail of a much more interesting quarry than a mere locked data box. This time she’s not after treasure, she’s after the person who has set himself up as the guardian of a whole, entire museum full of priceless antiquities.

Agent Rian White has his eye on Ada from the moment she arrives at the Museum of Intergalactic History, absolutely certain she’s planning to steal one of the Sol-Earth artifacts no matter how many times she’s says that she’s there for him.

She’s not even lying. She’s certainly toying with the man – but she’s not lying. Not that she wouldn’t like to steal one of the artifacts – and not that she wouldn’t enjoy tweaking the ego of the rich rat bastard who’s the star of this particular charity gala – but she really, truly isn’t there for either of those things.

She really is there for Rian White – for considerably more reasons than she’s willing to admit, even to herself. So all of Rian’s operatives are busy watching her, while she has her eye on her prize all along.

And not that she doesn’t put the dominoes in motion for a couple of secondary prizes along her way.

Ada may not be fooling with White – but someone else already has. Her job – for which she is being paid very good money – – is to remove the scales from White’s eyes and get him to come in on her saving the world caper.

She may be in it for the money, but he’s a true believer. All she has to do is get him to believe – in her.

Escape Rating A-: The caper – and it absolutely is a caper every step of the way – is delightfully frothy, light and sparkling, and filled with witty banter covering plenty of wry undertones and more than a hint of forbidden romance.

Ada is, after all, a thief, and it’s Rian’s job to keep her from stealing anything. But she’s also, in this particular case, the misdirection. He – and his fellow agents – are so busy following Ada that they miss entirely too much of what’s going on around them.

Which is what underpins the whole story of the series – and it’s a doozy once all the sparkling bubbles have popped.

Because White and his fellow agents believe that they are protecting the plan to save a world. This world, in fact. Earth-Sol, the cradle of humanity. They believe that the government that they work for is more-or-less on the side of the angels. That they are doing good while Ada and her employers’ efforts are getting in the way of something both righteous and virtuous.

But that’s not the way the universe works. Especially not when doing good gets in the way of making a really huge, neverending, profit.

The way that this particular story works is that Ada’s seemingly aimless wandering through the Museum Gala is meant to misdirect Rian White, any of his agents, the reader AND the story, all at the same time.

It reads like a bit of light froth, that she’s playing with him, while he’s doing his damndest not to play with her, and that she’s then playing with the scene around her and filling in time while something happens in the background.

And that’s somewhat true and also a bit of a tease for the reader. It makes the story seem much lighter hearted than it really is and keeps White guessing as well. We know Ada is wearing a mask, she even admits as much, but we don’t really see what that mask is in service of.

When she rips it off at the end it’s an ‘aha!’ moment for the reader and an utter shock to White – and that’s when we all get the shape of things to come – or at least we think we do. Ada may have fooled us all again and we won’t learn in exactly what way until the final book in the trilogy, Last Chance to Save the World, coming April. I can’t wait to finally see Ada put all of her cards on the table – and to see if Rian picks them up.

A couple of final notes. Readers who have played Mass Effect may find Ada’s infiltration of the Museum reminiscent of Kasumi Goto’s infiltration of Donovan Hock’s party in Mass Effect 2 – complete with sexy, high-end wardrobe. However, in comparison to Strom Fetor, Hock is fairly penny-ante even if he bears a strong resemblance to a certain real world tech billionaire, amasser of tech companies that he claims to have invented but then destroys, and all around teflon coated, egotistical, arsehole.

Your reading mileage may vary on that bit, but seeing Ada obviously set him up for some comeuppance at a later date did add a bit of just desserts to the impending evil in both worlds that added just an extra fillip of deliciousness to the whole story so far. The ending in Last Chance to Save the World looks like it’s going to be a doozy!

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 12-1-24

Welcome to the final month of 2024! Or OMG the holiday season is here. Or both. DEFINITELY both.

I hope that all who celebrated had a wonderful and filling Turkey Day this week. I also hope that, unless it’s your thing, you’ve managed to escape the Black Friday shopping madness. I’m just happy that internet shopping is a thing because the Black Friday crowds are NOT!

Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up and fill out your entries in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon here at Reading Reality and at all of the other Elves’ sites and instas. If you’ve had a big holiday reading weekend, host Caffeinated Reviewer has the deets on ALL the Elves’ challenges right HERE!

Even though tomorrow is the last day of the Readathon, and you still have all day to post your bingo lines here or on Insta, Reading Reality will be posting the Holiday Giveaway Event! including an Event-Wide Amazon/PayPal Prize plus my own $10 Gift Card or Book giveaway. The first day of the Holiday Giveaway Event! is technically today, but today is Sunday and we’re still in recovery mode from yesterday’s All-Star Cat Wrestling Event!

Everybody  needed something at the vet yesterday, so EVERYBODY went. Two humans, four cats, a whole lot of growling and hissing and nobody was happy at all. Except possibly the vet. Although a tech did have to pretty much sit on George to get his part of the circus taken care of. None of them like TRIPS to the vet – although Hecate likes BEING at the vet because they tell her how pretty and well-behaved she is. George, however, is the only one who fights the process, literally tooth and nail, all the way.

But George has been featured quite a bit recently. Also, he wasn’t cooperative  AT ALL. Luna, very much on the other hand, although obviously quite peeved in this picture – she’s willing to own it and let her resting bitch face be preserved for posterity. (Not that she has any. That was fixed before she came to us.)

Seasons Greetings and Merry Meetings and Happy Holidays!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book for Participants in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon Holiday Book Bingo Challenge (ENDS TOMORROW!!!!!)
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Fall 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of Reading Reality’s Late Fall Giveaway Hop is Steph

Blog Recap:

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Grade A #BookReview: What Child is This? by Bonnie MacBird
B #BookReview: Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White
#GuestPost: Thanksgiving 2024
B #AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria
Stacking the Shelves (629)

Coming This Week:

Holiday Amazon/PayPal Giveaway Event!
A Snake in the Barley by Candace Robb (#BookReview)
How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis (#BookReview)
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (#AudioBookReview)
The Hero She Deserves by Anna Hackett (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (629)

I hope that everyone had a terrific Turkey Day and has awakened from their tryptophan coma without too much difficulty!

I’ve got a bit of an eclectic stack this time around. The two books in the Vintage Cookbook Mystery series are the result of reading Bayou Book Thief, which was a fun cozy mystery and will be reviewed later in December. Wedgetail and The Hero She Deserves are the latest entries from two authors I follow religiously. Or relentlessly, take your pick.

Orbital just won The Booker Prize, and seems to be up for just about every other year-end prize. It’s SF, which made me curious. It’s actually literary SF, which explains a lot, at least so far. (I’m in the middle of the audio right now. We’ll see this coming week when I finish.)

The prettiest covers this time around are The Gentleman and His Vowsmith, and Orbital. The two that REALLY have my curiosity bump itching are American Hippo and If Wishes Were Retail.

Did you find much to add to your stack this week?

For Review:
The Gentleman and His Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide
The Hero She Deserves (Unbroken Heroes #4) by Anna Hackett
If Wishes Were Retail by Auston Habershaw
The Last Wizards’ Ball (Gunnie Rose #6) by Charlaine Harris
The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay
Wedgetail (Miranda Chase NTSB #15) by M.L. Buchman

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
American Hippo (River of Teeth #1-2) by Sarah Gailey
French Quarter Fright Night (Vintage Cookbook Mystery #3) by Ellen Byron
Wined and Died in New Orleans (Vintage Cookbook Mystery #2) by Ellen Byron

Borrowed from the Library:
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (ebook and audio)


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#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria

#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis DariaOnly Santas in the Building (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #5) by Alexis Daria
Narrator: Ruby Corazon
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #5
Pages: 65
Length: 1 hour and 31 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, especially for a comic book illustrator whose late-night fantasies become real in a festive and flirty short story by bestselling author Alexis Daria.
All Evie Cruz wants for Christmas is a nap. And maybe some ornaments for her naked Christmas tree. And while she’s making a list, she wouldn’t mind unwrapping her sexy upstairs neighbor like a present. Luckily, the building’s Santa-themed party and a surprise sprig of mistletoe give her just the opening she needs to make all her wishes come true.
Alexis Daria’s Only Santas in the Building is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

There are going to be more than a few readers/listeners to this one who are disappointed – not by the story itself but rather because the title sets up an expectation that the story will have a bit of a resemblance to the TV series, Only Murders in the Building. It doesn’t.

But I wasn’t looking for that. Instead, I got caught up in Evie’s freelance, gig-economy, deadline-driven life. Let’s just say that her cramming and scrambling to get her work in just minutes before the deadline sounded familiar. I understood the high she got from concentrating SO HARD and squeaking in JUST under the wire a bit too well.

That she was using the concentration and the pressure and the all-consuming nature of it to keep a whole lot of emotional stuff at bay was also something it was easy for this reader to identify with.

And then the story turned utterly delicious when her really sweet and deliciously hot neighbor turned up at her apartment door. It was pretty easy to see exactly why she had a crush on this guy – and to understand why she had no time to figure out whether that crush was returned – or not. Especially with her older sister naysaying in her ear at every turn.

The story, this deliciously sweet little holiday treat, comes to a delightful climax at the building’s annual holiday party, when everyone in the building comes to the penthouse apartment dressed as some variation of Santa – and a couple of meddling neighbors maneuver these two particular Santas under some strategically placed mistletoe to make their Christmas wishes come true.

Escape Rating B: I picked this second title from the Under the Mistletoe collection for the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon because I wanted something short and sweet – or in this case steamy – for a day when most of us will still be recovering from yesterday’s turkey-induced coma.

And that’s exactly what I found.

Two stories into the collection, though, I’m starting to think that the real theme of the whole thing isn’t so much mistletoe as it is misunderstanding. Or at least mixed signals. Particularly the kind of mixed signals that occur between two people who don’t know each other well enough to know what the person they’ve been dreaming of – or at least daydreaming of – might be thinking about them.

Because their own insecurities get in their way. Both of their ways.

As compared to All By My Elf, the disconnect between Evie and Theo doesn’t even come close to a misunderstandammit. They don’t KNOW each other – and if someone doesn’t help them straighten out their crossed wires, they won’t have a chance to.

Hence that well-placed mistletoe.

Only Santas in the Building turned out to be the perfect light and frothy little story to listen to at the end of a long week. I got precisely what I was expecting and even a little bit more as Evie’s work resonated more than this reader expected. Then again, it resonated more with Theo’s work than he expected, too.

If you’re looking for little pick-me-up stories, this collection has been great so far – and I’ve already finished a third. They’re not deep, because there’s no time for that in this short format. But they’ve all been lovely for what they are and a perfect read and/or listen to help fill out my personal 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon readings.

Thanksgiving 2024

Orange tabby cat sitting on the back of a chair, looking back at the camera
George is thankful for the catio

Another year, another Thanksgiving. Hecate, George, Luna, and Tuna are with us, and for that we are thankful. No joy is unmixed, however; this year we lost Lucifer.

Some readings for today, beginning with “Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden:

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

From Lincoln’s thanksgiving proclamation in 1864:

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

Robin Flower’s translation of Pangur Bán:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He, too, plies his simple skill.

‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O! how glad is Pangur then;
O! what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning darkness into light.

#BookReview: Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White

#BookReview: Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri WhiteEight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance
Pages: 304
Published by Alcove Press on October 15, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Bask in the warm glow of the menorah in this debut Jewish rom-com featuring a hard of hearing hero and a Chanukah meet-cute.
Andie Williams is not looking forward to spending her first Chanukah alone after her father’s death. About to lose her job, with her only prospect for another work opportunity across the country, she could use some chutzpah to make it through the eight nights alone.
Leo Dentz has had a crush on the girl across the hall from his apartment for years but has never had the courage to say anything—until she drops her grocery bags and he notices her drug store Chanukah candles. Ready to take a chance outside of his comfort zone, Leo offers to join Andie on the first night, sharing his dinner with her. As Andie and Leo fall for each other one night at a time, and the clock ticks down on Andie’s move, will this season of miracles light their way forward?

My Review:

As ably demonstrated by both this book and Monday’s Love You a Latke, the eight nights of Hanukkah represent the perfect amount of time for a relatively quick but totally not insta-romance between two people who already know each other but don’t really KNOW each other.

You’ll see.

Andie and Leo have been neighbors in their apartment building for a while, more than long enough for them to have crushes on each other that they’ve each been either afraid, or too busy, or both to even attempt to figure out if there might be more.

That neither of them knows whether the other is Jewish is a part of that hesitation – and not an unreasonable part. It’s just that the list of reasons is long on both sides – Andie and her father were a tight-knit circle of two after the death of her mother and estrangement from the rest of his family, and he just passed away earlier in the year.

Leo – along with his younger brother Dean – have been locked in a terrible cycle of grudges and retribution over the future of their family business for the past twelve years. It’s even worse than it sounds, as the incident that Glen Dentz has been holding over his sons for more than a decade happened when Leo was in his mid-teens and Dean was even younger. They should NEVER have been roughhousing in the back of the family’s antiques store. BUT dumb behavior and teenagers do go hand in hand.

They’ve been making up for it ever since and there has been absolutely no budging on even the possibility of forgiveness on the part of their father. To the point where Leo and Dean are ready to buy the family business from their father – just as he got it from HIS father – and dear old dad is so caught up in his own bitterness that he’d rather sell it to a stranger than his own sons.

Who have been the ones actually running the business – and making a profit at it – for several years at this point.

Both Leo and Andie are on the horns of very different dilemmas – which is what makes for the best kind of realistic tension in romance. Andie is a preschool teacher, and the program she works for and LOVES is shutting down at the end of the year due to a lack of funds. Leo needs to decide just how much he can keep giving 110% to a business that may never be his – and more importantly – to a father who will never let his adult behavior redeem a not merely childISH but outright childHOOD mistake.

Andie has to decide whether to accept a job offer in Ohio, far away from the Boston area she loves that holds her friends and all of her memories of her beloved father. Leo has to decide whether it’s time to strike out on his own – even if that strikes any possibility of reconciliation with his father.

After a chance meeting in the hallway of their apartment building over a broken bag filled with some equally broken Hanukkah candles, Andie and Leo both decide to make this Hanukkah one to remember. With each other. Even if whatever relationship they build comes with a limited shelf life.

But Hanukkah is the season of miracles, and with the help of a magic menorah and a conniving ten-year-old, Leo and Andie might just manage to get a great one.

Escape Rating B: As part of being one of the Elves for this year’s Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon, I was looking for stories that were not the usual suspects when it comes to ‘holiday’ stories. Meaning either romances that were wrapped around holidays other than Xmas that are celebrated this time of year, like today’s book and Monday’s Love You a Latke, or are holiday stories but specifically not romances, such as yesterday’s marvelous combination of Sherlock Holmes and Christmas in What Child is This? (Still not a combo I was expecting but all the more fun because of it!)

Today’s Hanukkah romance is exactly the kind of cozy, feel good romance with just the right amount of will they/won’t they (of course they will!) tension to spice things up. that readers LOVE for the holidays. Along with just the right amount of spiciness to literally heat things up during an inconveniently convenient overnight power outage.

I adored Andie and Leo as a couple, and it was easy to feel for both of their personal dilemmas. Andie’s choice between a bird in the hand – an actual job offer – and the HOPE but uncertainty that she’ll find something in the place she wants to stay was very real. She has no one to rely on but herself. She needs a job to support that self. And she’s not wrong to worry that cuts to all kinds of social services including preschools will make her job search MUCH more difficult.

Leo’s family, on the other hand, is very much the kind of warm, nurturing, teasing and loving family she’s always secretly wished to be a part of. Her mother died when she was three, so her late father was the only parent she knew. They were close, their relationship was very tight and her loss is still so recent that the gnawing grief is fresh.

While Leo’s family – as wonderful as it is on the surface – has a canker in its heart. As much as she wishes she could be adopted by all of them, the relationship between Glen Dentz and his two sons is the kind of cancer that will destroy the family if he can’t be made to see the damage he’s already done.

And that’s the hard part of the story in more than one way. Families do go sour like this. If you haven’t ever seen it happen in real life you’ve been lucky. Very much like Abby’s toxic parents in Love You a Latke, I really wanted to see Glen have a, pardon me, come-to-Jesus epiphany one way or another. Which he did – unfortunately in exactly the way I was expecting, which blunted things a bit for this reader.

But Glen’s change of heart – or mind – or both – came way too easily. It was a bit like Scrooge in that the spirits did it all in one night. Or all in the consequences of one act of profound hubris, blind greed and utter stupidity. Consequently, the resulting forgiveness didn’t feel earned. Some miracles may be just too big for even Hanukkah to encompass.

Still, there is a LOT to love in Eight Nights to Win Her Heart. Including, but absolutely not limited to, the utterly hilarious foam sword fight between the attacking little Maccabees and the defending ‘King Leo’ at the children’s Hanukkah celebration at the Temple. And Millie. Conniving, manipulating, plotting, planning and ultimately successful little Millie. Who feels so justified after her success at matchmaking for her Uncle Leo that she’s planning to work her wiles on her Uncle Dean NEXT Hanukkah – if not sooner!

Grade A #BookReview: What Child is This? by Bonnie MacBird

Grade A #BookReview: What Child is This? by Bonnie MacBirdWhat Child is This? (Sherlock Holmes Adventure #5) by Bonnie MacBird, Frank Cho
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, holiday fiction, holiday mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #5
Pages: 228
Published by Collins Crime Club on October 13, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

It’s the season of peace and goodwill, but a Victorian Christmas is no holiday for the world’s most popular detective in this new book from Bonnie MacBird, author of the bestselling Sherlock Holmes novel Art in the Blood.
It’s Christmastime in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favourite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody . . .

My Review:

I wasn’t expecting to find a Sherlock Holmes story to include in my personal Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. Not that I wasn’t willing to, considering how much I love Sherlock Holmes stories, but rather that Holmes can be a bit of a curmudgeon at the best of times.

He may not be, in any way, a miser like Ebenezer Scrooge but he’s certainly more than capable of bah-ing and humbug-ing with the best of them. Or the worst of them as the case might be.

And then I remembered that the Holmes series I just started earlier this month with Art in the Blood, included a Holmes’ Christmas tale, and to paraphrase the Great Detective himself, the game was afoot.

What Child is This? (yes, the question mark is part of the title and it’s driving me batty) connects two stories with loosely similar themes under the banner of the holiday season and runs away with them. Or sets them on fire. Or a bit of both.

The Marquis of Blandbury, Henry Weathering, comes to Holmes because his adult son Reginald hasn’t written to his mother in weeks, and the woman is beside herself because it’s so very much not like him. Even dear-old-dad, who does not seem the worrying sort, is worried – if only second hand. He’s more concerned about his wife’s peace of mind than his son’s current whereabouts but even the rather blunt instrument that is the Marquis knows that something isn’t right and he expects Holmes to find out precisely what.

The other case, the much more serious case, is one that literally drops into Holmes’ and Watson’s laps. Or at least falls right into their hands. They witness a well-to-do woman and her attendant get attacked by a crazed assailant who knocks them both over as he plucks the woman’s little boy right out of her arms. And attempts to flee with the child through the crowded streets.

With Sherlock Holmes in hot pursuit, Watson attends to the women who have been so grievously assaulted. Holmes doesn’t manage to catch his man – but he does successfully rescue the little boy and restore him to his mother’s waiting arms.

The two cases don’t have anything in common beyond the fact that both originate with potentially missing sons. Of course, Holmes, with Watson’s able assistance, solves both cases.

But neither case goes to any of the places that the reader originally believes they will, and the solutions are far from orthodox. They are both cases where Holmes displays the heart that he would claim that he does not have – with his dear friend Watson there, as always, to record that he does.

Escape Rating A: I loved this – and I think I loved it more because it feels like the characterizations of Holmes and Watson read like they owe a lot more to the screen adaptations of the past OMG 40 years, starting with Jeremy Brett, than they do to the earlier portrayals of Basil Rathbone and even the original Holmes canon itself.

Not that the two cases aren’t every bit as confounding and convoluted as any of the Holmes’ stories penned by Conan Doyle, but rather that the characters of our two protagonists have been made just that bit more human and more sympathetic than the original ‘thinking machine’ and his idiot sidekick.

Instead, this is a portrayal where Holmes is aware that he is just a bit ‘different’ from most people, and where Watson knows and understands that part of his purpose in Holmes’ life and in their long friendship is to allow Holmes to explain his deductions – even as he stinks up their apartment with his experiments.

There is a mutual respect in that friendship – a respect that would have had to have existed for Holmes to have tolerated Watson’s inability to follow his genius and for Watson to have tolerated Holmes’ frequent high-handed treatment of him. There’s also an awareness on Watson’s part that these are NEVER fair play mysteries. Holmes always keeps secrets even when that lack of knowledge might endanger Watson’s life.

The solutions to both of these cases are extremely unorthodox – which made them that much more fascinating. Something that was made even more clear to me as I listened to The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, the canon story with which this adventure was very loosely in dialogue. THAT Holmes would never have come to either of these resolutions, but THIS Holmes is all the better for doing so.

I liked my first taste of this author’s Sherlock Holmes Adventures in Art in the Blood, but I really got into this interpretation with this Christmas story. There are three stories between Art and this one, and the events of those stories was teased just a bit in this one – more than enough to make me eager to read them.

And I’m definitely looking forward to the latest entry in the series, The Serpent Under, coming in January!

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda ElliotLove You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 11-24-24

First things first, this is the first weekend of the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. Have you signed up and started on your holiday reads, yet? I’m one of the Elves this year, and I’m hosting a Holiday Book Bingo Challenge. I also started on my own personal reads for the Readathon with a Christmas romance, but this week I have a couple of Hanukkah romances – and I’m ever so pleased to see more of those available each year. If you’re looking for books and/or audiobooks to peruse for your own participation, the Under the Mistletoe Collection of short stories and audiobooks have each been just the right size for an Xmas reading stocking and they’ve been terrific so far – I’ve finished three and am thinking about a fourth. (They’re a bit like the reading equivalent of potato chips – you can’t read or listen to just one!) They’re free with Amazon Prime, which is an even better excuse to treat yourself to a bit of light and fluffy reading!

Second, it’s the weekend before Thanksgiving. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the holidays totally snuck up on me this year. We’re going to have a pretty low-key Turkey Day – whether we get an actual turkey boob or not. Yes, I said “turkey boob”. There’s just the two of us. Galen doesn’t like the drumsticks. And there’s just the two of us. The amount of leftovers we’d have if we did a whole turkey for just us two humans doesn’t bear thinking about. Also this clowder of cats does not expect to eat ‘people food’ and we have zero desire to encourage such an expectation. So we just get a turkey breast and call that more than enough – which it generally is. Hence, ‘Turkey Boob’ – which we really need to pick up this weekend!

Then again, we might get a little Honey-Baked Ham. Those are yum, too! (And also not for cats.)

But speaking of cats, and also of this time of the year, today’s cat picture is one I’d like to call the ‘Changing of the Guard’. First, it’s utterly adorable that Tuna and George are cuddling now. But in this particular picture it seems as if Tuna has taken on George’s usual slightly suspicious expression so that he can keep watch, suspiciously of everything of course, while his buddy takes a well deserved nap from his general suspiciousness.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book for Participants in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon Holiday Book Bingo Challenge
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Late Fall Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Fall 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

A- #BookReview: Feuds edited by Mercedes Lackey
B- #BookReview: Grimm Curiosities by Sharon Lynn Fisher
B #AudioBookReview: All By My Elf by Olivia Dade
Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon 2024 Holiday Book Bingo Challenge
A- #BookReview: The December Market by RaeAnne Thayne
Stacking the Shelves (628)

Coming This Week:

Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot (#2024HOHOHORAT #BookReview)
What Child is This? by Bonnie MacBird (#2024HOHOHORAT #BookReview)
Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White (#2024HOHOHORAT #BookReview)
Thanksgiving 2024 (#GuestPost by Galen)
Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria (#2024HOHOHORAT #AudioBookReview)