It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a protagonist states that she will definitely not get involved in the investigation of the death du jour, a nice person will ask them to clear a loved ones name. It's like Murphy's Law.  Killer Kung Pao: A Noodle Shop Mystery (A Noodle Shop Mystery (6)  is an absolute banger. From the opening with Lana's confrontation with her sister until the end, I was breathless. I really loved the previous book, Egg Drop Dead, but this book took everything I enjoyed and improved it. Lana runs a noodle shop and is witness to a woman (June Yi) rear-ending Millie Mao, a dedicated Mahjong player. Lana experiences another run-in with these two when she has her hair dyed and one of the women is electrocuted! With a nail lamp! Lana is determined to stay out of it per the request of her cop boyfriend, Adam, but a sister asks her to look into things and Lana can't refuse. There's also something possibly hinky with her sisters newest relati...

This book is a dream. The writing is sensual and gorgeous and I need to write about it now! The setting is an icy and mysterious city that seems to have no past and the only memories people have are stories told by others. I was invested right away. The story centers on Kallia, an amazingly talented magician who cant get very far because she's a woman (Also, because shes been trapped in a house of illusions dancing for a mysterious man named Jack. Spooky! Right away you get Caraval and Phantom of the Opera vibes what with the masks, and the mirrors, and the games but unfortunately there's no stand in for The Persian in Phantom, which I was really hoping for but I  didn't write it, so noodles! The winner of the contest/game will be allowed to be the opening act for the Conquering Circus, which sounds amazing and is one of the many things in this book that I wish were real. The characters are vibrant and fabulous. Kallia escapes Jack's house of illusions and immediately m...

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Mums and Mayhem is the third book in Amanda Flower's Magical Garden cozy mystery series. I have not read any previous books in this series. The premise is that Fiona has moved to her uncles place to care for his magic garden after he dies and poor Fiona seems to have been stumbling into corpses ever since. Also, there's a secret involving the details of her parentage that she and her parents have to work out. Oh, and her irritating sister is irritating. Fiona is a florist dating the handsome police chief and tending her magical garden when a famous fiddler comes to their sleepy little town. Then the man is murdered and Fiona's dad may be a suspect! Fiona must battle through a cast of zany characters: septuagenarian fangirls, the fiddler's ex, and some angry band members. Plus, there's the bitter historian who really wants to know more about the garden. I lov...

The Grounding of Group 6 I will get a small comission if you clicky the link and buy. So one of my favorite books of all time is The Grounding of group 6 by Julian F. Thompson. It was one of the first books i'd read that acknowledged certain "progressive" parents could value being seen that way more than their children. It's a bitter, extremely weird satire that probably shouldn't be as funny as it is and i probably one of my favorite "found family" stories ever. BUT Somebody mention "gay panic" in reference to this book and i'll be honest! I never read it that way. And it makes me feel really weird and an uncomfortable that I never noticed that take even though the character involved, Coke, pretty blatantly uses a homophobic slur when recounting the event to his mother. Which I had somehow completely forgotten anout. YIKES! Now, was McCorker gay or "just" a child predator and there's no homophobic agenda in this book? ...

I found out information about the author of a book I was reading and I wanted to put it here for full transparency. This is a screenshot of my Netgalley review and I do appreciate Inkyard Press for sending me a copy!

This book has made me cry two times already and I'm not even a third of the way through. I highly recommend just based on this.

Hi! In case you didn't know me I'm Sarah, curator of The Kawaii Slartibartfast (podcast and youtube channel) I thought that i would have to give up book blogging but I have a Chromebook so that's gonna make things so much easier. Most of the books are ARCs from Netgalley so it may not seem like there's much content here. It's coming, I promise! Book I'm currently reading The Ninth Life by Taylor B. Barton

It's my turn on the blog tour! Thanks to Wednesday books for providing me with the ARC! Review here!

Unfortunately, due to disability my reviews will be up on my  Podcast

I adored this book so much. It shows perfectly how the gaming community can be wonderful and horrifying at the same time. I've known people very much like the VP in this book and dealt with the harassment (Not on the level that Divya does but it was still pretty awful.) I really appreciated that Aaron's savior complex was called out as not a good thing. There was so much I identified with in this book and I got the feeling that Smith really understands why we game and the lovely communities we build despite the gatekeepers. This book is greatly appreciated.

So, this is an interesting one for the Netgalley archives! I requested to read the Harper version which looks like this! Then, the Jo Fletcher version popped up as a Read Now option a bit later and I grabbed it because I am impatient and desperate to read things like Eoin Colfer's shopping lists. I was approved and I gobbled it up. The Jo Fletcher cover looks like this! Have you ever considered what it would be like to see a dragon doing burpees? If so, this is definitely the book for you! The book tells the tale of Very, the last dragon on the planet. Very is a hard-drinking curmudgeon who hates Game of Thrones  due to the way the dragons are treated and it's these character beats that really make Vern as a character for me. This is the story of Vern and a not so hapless doofus called Squib who meet when Squib is trying to get the goods on EEVIL constable Regence Hooke. Hooke wants to bed Squib's my m and he is not thrilled at th...

This was a pretty solid mystery. I had read the previous entry, "Past Due for Murder" and enjoyed it very much. When the skeleton of a struggling nusician hippie is found the secrets of an old commune are at risk of being exposed and when the members start dying in mysterious circumstances, it's up to Amy to figure out what's going on. I really like Amy's relationship with Richard. It's very sweet.

This is the fourth book in the delightful Magical Bookshop series by Amanda Flower. Violet Waverly is in a bike race for a fundraiser set up by her grandmother, the mayor. (Daisy) and a man is murdered right in the middle of the race! The man was douchey snooper Joel Redding, who Violet is convinced knows the magical secret of the bookshop. Violet's friend Jo has also been acting strangely and as more clues pop up it seems there are a lot who wanted Joel dead. And the bookstore won't stop pushing Leaves of Grass on her for some reason! Cascade Falls is always a fun place to book visit and the mystery is well-plotted.

This book was a creepy thrill ride and a half. It features a therapist name Heather who killed her best friend when they were children and now has sent her something from the night of the murder. The atmosphere of this book is so creepy and the way it's written left me unsure as to whether Heather actually did kill Becca throughout most of the book. The parts with the Dead Girls Club were so well-written. Honestly, they were my favorite parts of the book.

I really wish that somebody had told me there was an app. It makes blogging so much easier!

Fair warning, this book starts off incredibly slowly but is definitely well worth the read. The main character is Lena, the oldest daughter and next in line for leadership. Her sister, Fressa wants to marry her love Amal but can't because custom dictates that Lena must be first married. I feel I'd be doing this book a great disservice if I didn't mention that grief may well be a main character. It permeates Lena's every action and insinuates itself in her life, driving her to do things that if she weren't traumatized and grieving, cause me to label her  "too stupid too live" Why the grief? Well, Fressa dies. (Oh, I'm not spoiling anything! It's on the book blurb!) There's not a mark on her body and Lena knows something's up. So, she makes a deal with the goddess of death to switch out her sister's soulf for another of equal weight. What do we say to the goddess of death? Apparently, "Sure I'll kill people!" Well,...

Wow, this book was a doozy! Can I just say that Sara Shepard writes terrible people brilliantly? So the email hack is a really interesting concept for a mystery as someone who never deletes their email. But the scandal! The secrets! The mystery is twofold: who was responsible for the hack and who killed Greg Strasser (which for some reason I kept reading as Greg Sestero.) Welp, gotta be honest here. Ole Greggo was a wretched sack of compost and there was a point where I wished I had murdered him! I don't want to write too much because the twists are wild and wooly. This book was an amazingly enjoyable read, filled with heart and horrible human beings.

I'll be honest. I don't generally care for Christian fiction because a lot of what I read seemed really preachy and judgmental to me (although to be fair back in the day I was over the moon about Lurlene McDaniel) so a friend gave a rec for Melanie Dickerson and three days or something later, this book popped up on Netgalley. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. So Kat and Steffan both obviously have PTSD and Stef is a recovering alcoholic. They are far from perfect in terms of mental health and they join together to figure out what the deal is with the Beast, a malevolent entity that has lured the children away from Hamlin. They have to put up with Kat's dastardly (is there a word stronger than dastardly? Diabolical, maybe?) stepfather Hennek and his gross henchman. I really liked the way this one ended and am very interested in checking out the other books in this series.

This book is an absolute smorgasbord of holiday cheer. Fifteen short pieces by John Scalzi including an interview with Santaslawyer, a list of nefarious Christmas specials (if you wouldn't pay to see "A Canadian Christmas with David Cronenberg", we cannot be friends), and a great story about Christmas in July are among the goodies in this delightful book. It's a treasure!