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!

I adored this book! Sam is a great character and the secondary characters are great, too! When a man is murdered on a retirement home bus trip to Chicago, Sam and her grandmother are shocked. Sam has a few murder solves under her belt and thinks she has a shot at it, due to the ineffective police. It turns out there are some people with pretty good reasons for wanting this man dead. The mystery is solid and I appreciated the solve.

Have you ever watched Cutthroat Kitchen and wished that the show could just be a teensy bit more cutthroat? Well, have I got the book for you! Courtney Archer is a woman with a secret. She's not actually the down home country girl her legions of fans think she is. This probably wouldn't be such a big deal if she wasn't the host of a very popular cooking show. Courtney is chosen to host a baking battle with her reputation as a country girl. Unfortunately one of the contestants is fatalky beaned in the head with cast iron filled with dessert. More precisely, a dessert poor Courtney had left to cool. Everyone is a suspect, including Courtney. Trying to keep her secret and unmask the murderer keeps Courtney on her toes. I really enjoyed this one and was honestly surprised by how much I liked Courtney. (Look, she's lying for fame. Not very nice) but Ross manages to make her very relatable and sympathetic. First in the series.

This was a really fun read featuring likable characters and an engaging mystery. It has three pov's: Megan, a police officer Brigit, Megan's k9 partner The poacher, a man who commits crimes to keep his family together. This book was incredibly sympathetic to The Poacher while not letting him off the hook. For instance, he stole the toys from the toy shop to give his kids a good Christmas. Megan starts off investigating a rich woman's missing ring and then is alerted to the birdnapping of two macaws. I figured out what was happening with the rings pretty early on but the plot is written really well and it didn't interrupt the flow of the zoo abductions storyline.