From the award-winning author of Hide and Fall comes a taut tale of renegade justice and long-awaited resolution, bringing the thrilling Detective Harriet Foster series to a heart-stopping conclusion.
Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.
Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.
Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice—and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything.

My Review:

You can feel the deep cold of a Chicago winter wafting from the pages to chill your fingers to the bone as you read Echo. February is the cruelest month in the city, as it’s so cold you can see your breath, the pigeons huddle under the heat lamps at the ‘L’ stations, sunrise doesn’t happen until you get to work and sunset comes LONG before it’s time to go home. It feels like it’s been cold forever and that it’s going to be cold every bit as long – which it might, as winter holds onto the city with an icy grip that shows no signs of breaking.

Detective Harriet Foster of the Chicago Police Department has been breaking since we met her in the first book in this series, Hide. But she’s not quite broken – at least not yet – in spite of not letting herself find solace or even closure for the two hits that have left her reeling in badly suppressed agony; the senseless death of her son as he was playing in the front yard, and the staged suicide of her police partner.

Her son’s killers have been held to as much account as they ever will be, but the death of her partner is still an open case – or so Harri believes when this story opens. That hope is dashed when Internal Affairs closes the case, taking the evidence at a face value that Harri has called into question. Whoever killed Glynnis made it look like G. was a dirty cop, and IA would rather bury the case and Harri’s partner than open a can of worms that no one on the force wants to open. Justice be damned.

That G.’s killer has been calling Harri from a succession of burner phones to taunt her about the case and promise her that she’ll fall to his dirty tricks just as Glynnis did is just more black slush on top of the grey snow piled all over the city.

Just as Harri decides to pursue this very personal case very much on her own time and off the books – and her new partner, Vera Li is just as determined to join her in spite of the risks to both of their lives and careers – they get caught up in a very much on-the-books case that seems as far from Harri’s barely hanging on, hard-working, city employee life as it possible for it to get.

A young man has been found dead in a snow covered field on Chicago’s North Side, a stone’s throw away from the big house his ultra-wealthy father owns as a private ‘Animal House’ for the scions of the family as they attend the expensive private college nearby. A college where the family name is on half the buildings, and where once the father and now the son are rich and privileged legacy students – with all the power and indulgence that wealth can provide.

The only thing that hard-working CPD Detective Harriet Foster would normally have in common with a hard-partying rich boy skating through life on his father’s well-earned reputation would be that she’s the cop investigating his murder.

But it’s not.

Because it’s beginning to look a lot like Brice Collier wasn’t murdered for anything HE did – and not that he didn’t do plenty of things that no one dared to accuse him of. Just as Harri figures out that her partner’s murder – and it definitely was murder – had nothing to do with anything that G. might have EVER done.

Instead, the two cases ‘echo’ each other, as the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children by perpetrators for whom revenge is a dish best served as cold as February in Chicago.

Escape Rating A+: This series has been awesome from the very first page of the very first book, Hide. The second book, Fall, managed to be even better. The blurb claims that this book is the conclusion to the trilogy, and I was so utterly bummed about that until I noticed that in spite of the blurb the series continues this time next year with Edge.

This story does conclude the initial story from Hide. In that first book, Harri was dealing, badly, with the death of her son and dealing equally badly with the death of her police partner and friend. Over the course of the series she has managed to both solve some really thorny – and very typically Chicago – murders while at the same time being very human and broken and not dealing with her own personal shit well at all.

And yet still putting one foot in front of the other.

The case here feels ripped from the headlines. The young scion of a rich and influential family, someone whose way has been repeatedly smoothed over by family money and power, who expects to skate through life and never face the consequences of his frequently scummy actions – is murdered. He could have been killed for some of his own misdeeds, but it goes deeper and darker than that as it’s clear from early in the case that his own actions hadn’t yet caught up with him. And that his death hasn’t had the effect that his murderers hoped for.

Meanwhile, Harri’s personal case goes down a parallel path. Her partner’s death wasn’t about anything G. did. It’s not even about anything Harri ever did. It’s all to get back at someone in the past who is just as unreachable as the Collier paterfamilias. Even though that unreachability is a parallel that shouldn’t have been part of the parallel.

The Collier case is riveting in the way that great police procedurals are riveting, as Harri and her team work through the evidence in spite of pressure from both the senior Collier and City Hall. They manage to work their way to a sticky and convoluted end through layers of facts and lies and long-buried secrets.

Harri’s personal case is compelling in the way that the best thrillers are compelling. She’s being taunted and threatened by someone who knows everything about her while she knows nothing about them or their motives. That case slowly unravels, bit by bit and step by step, even as Harri does an often poor job at keeping herself from unravelling along with it.

In the end, she emerges victorious, stronger in her broken places, and with friends at her back she hadn’t been willing to let in. Justice prevails for her, as the reader hopes that it will, even if the closest that the Collier case can reach is closure. But that’s right too.

I’m glad to see the trauma of Harri’s personal case get solved and resolved, and I’m equally glad that this is not the end of her story. She’s a dynamic, flawed and fascinating character and I can’t wait to ride along with her again next December in Edge.

Welcome to the Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer!

Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Saturday, December 21, was the first official day of winter for the 2024-2025 season, and this hop did officially start then. But the hop organizers are VERY understanding, so those blogs that participate get a few days grace to post their giveaway post – a grace I am always grateful for when the first day of the season is on a weekend.

The holidays are upon us, the year is winding to a close, the weather outside may or may not be frightful, and the days have thankfully started to get longer again. There will hopefully be plenty of time to read over the chilly if not downright cold months to come. (I just finished a book set in Chicago in February. It reminded me, fondly but frostily, of just how damn cold and nasty Chicago can be in the winter. The ONLY virtue to February in Chicago is that it’s SHORT.)

Looking at  the books in the graphic for this season’s hop, I was surprised to discover that not a one of them are on my personal TBR pile for the season – not that I’m not always looking forward to more than a few books EVERY season. Here are a few that have risen to the top of my list for this winter of 2024-2025:

The Baby Dragon Cafe by A.T. Qureshi
Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan
Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood
The Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
An Excellent Thing in a Woman by Allison Montclair
Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn
The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison
Shattering Dawn by Jayne Ann Krentz
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne

What about you? What books are you most looking forward to this season? Answer in the rafflecopter for your choice of either a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in books so you can get one or two of the books on your list!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more lovely but chilly winter prizes, be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!

It’s only three more sleeps until both Christmas and Hanukkah. Are all of your presents wrapped and ready to go? This morning’s cat picture is of Hecate being oh-SO-helpful last weekend while we were wrapping presents. It took repeated applications of the Monster Vacuum to keep the cats off the dining room table long enough to get the job done. Miss Hecate kept popping back up on the table and/or getting underfoot much too quickly after each application – but it did work (mostly) and isn’t she adorable?

Last week’s readings didn’t quite go according to plan. In my head, I thought that the audiobook of Blood Jade was about 10 hours, and that I’d be ready to switch to the text on Wednesday to finish the book in time for a Friday review. My head was in error on both counts. The story is awesome, the narrator is marvelous – Natalie Naudus is one of my faves, especially for stories like this one – but the audio is more like 15 hours and I wasn’t ready at all to give up the fantastic audio in order to listen to the voice in my head who sounds much more like me than a professional narrator.

Very much OTOH, I expected – and I’ve started the book so I know I’m right at least so far – that Echo would be terrific and compelling. But it’s also set in a typical February in Chicago, and I wasn’t quite prepared to face THAT. (I lived in the Chicago area for more than 20 years and February sucks. It’s too damn cold, it’s still much too dark, and spring feels like it’s eons away even if it’s (probably, hopefully) not. Now I’m into the book and I’m sure I’ll get it done if I haven’t already by the time you read this. (I’m writing on Friday.)

One final note on scheduling. Officially, the Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop started yesterday, so if you want to get in on it immediately hop on over to Versatileer and check it out. Howsomever, I’ll be posting Reading Reality’s entry in the hop tomorrow, on Monday, December 23.

“Just one more thing,” to quote a classic TV detective of yesteryear. This is the last full week of 2024 – as difficult as THAT might be to believe. This year has gone by SO FAST. Nevertheless, 2024 is on its way out the door, which means that it’s time for Reading Reality’s Best Books of 2024 post, coming this very Friday.

There’s LOTS in store here this holiday week. I hope you’ll take a bit of time to stop by and see what’s up! Happy Holidays!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Holiday Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Dashing December Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the Fall 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop is Nancy

Blog Recap:

Dashing December Giveaway Hop
A- #BookReview: Wedgetail by M.L. Buchman
B #AudioBookReview: Merriment and Mayhem by Alexandria Bellefleur
B #BookReview: Miss Amelia’s List by Mercedes Lackey
B #BookReview: Love in Other Worlds edited by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Stacking the Shelves (632)

Coming This Week:

Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
Echo by Tracy Clark (#BookReview)
Xmas Day (#GuestPost by Galen)
Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle (#AudioBookReview)
Best Books of 2024 

I have a new category for judging book covers this week, because The cover of The Baby Dragon Café goes beyond pretty and straight into ADORABLE. I also can’t wait to read it so I’m really happy that it comes out in January – at least in ebook – so I don’t need to. To compare, Faithbreaker‘s cover is MERELY pretty, perhaps even verging on beautiful, but it is NOT adorable.

The other books I’m most looking forward to, besides that cute Baby Dragon, are The Cat Who Saved the Library and Chaos. Although, come to think of it, a cat attempting to save a library probably would result in chaos. Both books are parts of series where I loved the first books (The Cat Who Saved Books and Calamity, respectively) so I’m happy to see more of both.

The books I’m most curious about are by process of elimination but both truly so in different ways, The Final Stand and Twice as Dead. The Final Stand because I do enjoy the occasional military space opera type SF and I’ve never read either this author nor, I believe anything from this publisher, so I’m intrigued on both counts. I’m seriously curious about Twice as Dead because the cover looks SO “old school” urban fantasy, while the author is best known for his well researched alternate history, so I had to check to make sure this was a new book and not a reprint. It’s new, it’s different for this author, and I’m terribly curious. I also happen to love “old school” urban fantasy so I have hopes this will bring readers – and perhaps even publishers – back to that genre.

For Review:
The Baby Dragon Café (Baby Dragon #1) by A.T. Qureshi
The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
Chaos (Uncharted Hearts #3) by Constance Fay
Faithbreaker (Fallen Gods #3) by Hannah Kaner
The Final Stand (Nexus House #1) by Rick Campbell
Twice as Dead (City of Shadows #1) by Harry Turtledove

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

A Magic-filled collection of Christmas-themed portal fantasy romance novelettes

Slipping through a portal to another strange world, filled with magical beings and fantasy creatures, and finding true love is challenge enough for any self-respecting hero or heroine. How much more magic and mischief can Christmas deliver to transworld-travellers and their loved ones?

Here are seven delightful Christmas romances featuring fantasy worlds reached from ours via portals of all varieties, where our heroes and heroines struggle to find true love at this most magical time of the year.

"Veilbound" by Taylen Carver
"Winter Fruit" by Chelsea Mueller
"Second Christmas Solstice" by Meg Napier
"The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy" by M.L. Buchman
"Crowning the Snow Queen" by Michelle Moras
"Ornaments of Ice" by Erin M. Hartshorn
"Blackmont Bitters" by Tracy Cooper-Posey

The courage to step into another world brings risks…and sweet rewards, made sweeter by the joys of Christmas.

My Review:

I’m always on the lookout for Hanukkah romances this time of year, as there aren’t many. If you’re looking for the same, or at least curious, I highly recommend Love You a Latke and Eight Nights to Win Her Heart. I’ve also heard very good things about Magical Meet Cute and I’m thinking about squeezing that in this Hanukkah season – which lasts until January 2, 2025 this year.

The above is NOT a non sequitur, as I picked this collection up for just one story, “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman. He’s one of my favorite authors – as evidenced by my review of his latest thriller, Wedgetail, earlier this week. But I also love ‘portal fantasies’, as this collection most definitely is, so the idea of a whole book filled with stories of people who get a peek into worlds that aren’t QUITE our own, (think Narnia but for grown-ups), mixed with stories of holidays set on or around the winter solstice (December 21 this year) also sounded like a lovely thing to read this holiday season.

And so, we have seven solstice stories. One is that Hanukkah story. Some of the others are Christmas, at least sorta/kinda, and some are explicitly the solstice. I enjoyed the mix of perspectives and wish that the blurb did a better job of reflecting it. (Again, I’m not in full agreement with the blurb of a book I just read. It’s been that kind of month.)

Most of the stories are fantasy, which makes sense now that I think about it. Two of the stories are by the same author, as Taylen Carver is a pen name for Tracy Cooper-Posey, the author of the final story in the collection as well as its editor.

Because there are only seven stories here, and because I was having a good time reading them even if the individual stories didn’t always work as well as I’d hoped, I’ve given a mini-review and rating for each story individually.

For the collection as a whole, after some extremely fudgy math, I would rate the collection as a whole as Escape Rating B.

“Veilbound” by Taylen Carver (aka Tracy Cooper-Posey)
Two grumpy, anti-social guardians of portals guard openings to the veil that keep the world in balance. Guardians bound to SEPARATE and DISTANT portals, thankyouverymuch. Vera Thorn and Kellan Delacroix clearly don’t like each other much – although it seems they have history as well as a shared responsibility to keep their world in balance with the one on the other side of the veil. A balance that has been violently thrown out of whack in a way that will destroy everything if they don’t put aside whatever it is between them long enough to cross the veil and FIX IT. The fantasy parts reminded me a LOT of Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest, so the fantasy worldbuilding of this worked well for me even if the analogy didn’t completely hold true. The romance worked less well, because we just didn’t get enough of it to make this really feel like a romance. But it also felt like it got as close to a romance as these particular characters were able to get – which was not very but possibly much, much, later. Escape Rating B+

“Winter Fruit” by Chelsea Mueller
This is a much, much, MUCH more romantic version of the Greek myth about Hades and Persephone. Also a whole lot sexier and all of it blissfully consensual as well as sensual, which the original myth definitely is NOT. This story is a bit of the opposite of the first, as the worldbuilding is minimal and the romance is EVERYTHING, but then we already know this story so it doesn’t need much to get going. So to speak. Ahem. Escape Rating A-

“Second Christmas Solstice” by Meg Napier
This story is SF, and I think it needed something it just didn’t have. The SFnal aspects were VERY much handwavium, and the romance felt nebulous. Danica was a miracle to the parents who adopted her, but she’s also a refugee from an alternate, adjacent-ish world. Someone comes to retrieve her on Christmas, and she’s just not nearly skeptical enough. For SF, it’s way too much woo-woo magic and feelings and fate. TL;DR this just didn’t work for me. Escape Rating C

“The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman
This is the story I picked up this collection FOR, and it did not disappoint. It also confirms my reflections from both of the Hanukkah romances I read this season, that the eight nights of Hanukkah create the perfect length of time for a quick but not too quick romance to feel just right. This particular romance is the story of a holiday miracle of a romantic match that also makes a terrific recipe – and is one as well. Aaron has inherited his grandfather’s bakery and his grandfather’s recipe for root beer pretzels – but the recipe card is faded and the handwriting is indecipherable. Unbeknownst to Aaron as the holiday begins, one of the key ingredients for those pretzels was the small-batch root beer that Elizabeth’s Great Uncle Sam used to make – and she’s just inherited his small bottling operation. With the help of an adorable little tenth-ranked angel, and a bit of magical peering into the past through the Hanukkah lights reflected in their menorahs, Aaron and Elizabeth manage to find each other, the secret ingredients to each other’s recipes, and the keys to each other’s hearts. Escape Rating A

“Crowning the Snow Queen” by Michelle Moras
This story reads as if Cinderella and The Bachelor had a book baby – or at least a short story baby, even though the main character is named after one of the roles in The Nutcracker ballet. This story also feels like the fantasy version of that SF story in this collection, “Second Christmas Solstice”, in the way that Freya is rather abruptly presented with the fact that, just like Danni in “Solstice”, she has family on the other side of a mysterious – and in Freya’s case outright magical – barrier that give her entree into an entirely ‘other’ world. In this case the world of the fey. This one works a bit better, at least for this reader, than “Solstice”, in that the worldbuilding is able to borrow a bit more from fairy tales and stories we already know to fill in its corners. The romance also has a bit more time to work with, so it’s a bit insta but in a way that can be at least partially chalked up to the magic of the fairy kingdom. Escape Rating B

“Ornaments of Ice” by Erin M. Hartshorn
This one is my second favorite after “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy”. It’s short and sweet and self-contained. It’s also simply lovely, and a true portal fantasy as Bran literally steps through a portal imbued in a Christmas Tree ornament, finds a rather different and considerably less royal fairyland than the one in “Crowning the Snow Queen”, takes a magical walk through that fairyland with a fairy who doesn’t quite feel like she belongs, just as he feels like he doesn’t completely belong among his people. As they journey together, they discover that they have bigger magic together than they do separately, and that they can find a place where they both belong by realizing that where they belong is together, on both sides of the portal. Escape Rating A-

“Blackmont Bitters” by Tracy Cooper-Posey
I ended with mixed feelings about this one, mostly because even as I read it it felt like it was a piece of something much, much bigger, as if a serious chunk of the worldbuilding had been or would be done elsewhere and that the reader was just supposed to ‘roll with it’ in this short story. I didn’t discover until afterwards that my feeling was correct, as this story is set in the world the author created in The Branded Rose Prophecy. So this story read as if an attempt was being made to make this shorter work stand alone that doesn’t quite, well, work. It’s a bit of a tease in its way, as the world sounds fascinating, dangerous and more than a bit down the other leg of the trousers of time from our own, a world in which the Norse gods came back, or were found again, or a bit of both, and the Earth that results from their return seems fascinating and very techno-magic oriented but I needed more of the setup to make this story work as the tension and tragedy in the romance was all based in the worldbuilding I didn’t have nearly enough of. Escape Rating C+

The seventeenth novel in the magical alternate history Elemental Masters series follows Amelia Stonehold and Serena Meleva as they navigate property acquisition, marriage proposals, and other ancient horrors in Regency England, but with the help of elemental magicThe year is 1815, and an American, Miss Amelia Stonehold, has arrived in the Devon town of Axminster, accompanied by her "cousin" Serena Meleva. She’s brought with her a list to tick find a property, investigate the neighbors, bargain for and purchase the property, staff the property and...possibly...find a husband. But Amelia soon finds herself contending with some decidedly off-list trouble, including the Honorable Captain Harold Roughtower, whose eyes are fixed on her fortune. Little does Amelia know that his plans for her wealth extend far beyond refurbishing his own crumbing estate — they include the hidden Roman temple of Glykon, where something very old, very angry, and very dangerous still lurks. But Roughtower isn’t prepared to reckon with the fact that neither Amelia nor Serena are pushovers. And he certainly isn’t ready for the revelation that he has an Earth Master and a Fire Mage on his hands — or that one of them is a shapeshifter.

My Review:

Miss Amelia’s List is a lovely and charming story that will especially appeal to Jane Austen lovers who occasionally wish there was just a bit more actual magic in her stories – but do not want to go nearly as far as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I’m pretty sure the above requires a bit of explanation. Maybe even more than a bit.

Amelia Stonehold and her cousin Serena Meleva arrive in London from the former – definitely and definitively former – American colonies in 1815. To set the historical stage, the War of 1812 was settled by treaty in December of 1814 – which means that some people are still a bit salty about it on both sides of the Atlantic. Jane Austen has published her first three novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park, under the pseudonym, ‘A Lady’. The Regency period is in the fullest of its flower. Napoleon is still in his first exile on Elba and has not yet ‘met his Waterloo’ and made that phrase into a cliché.

While this entry in the Elemental Masters series is number 17 in publication order, this series of magical retellings and reinterpretations of classic myths, legends, tales and historical events has not been published in ANY chronological order. The previous book in the series, The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley, is set in the late 19th century. Annie Oakley wasn’t even born until 1860 – long after the events of Miss Amelia’s List take place.

Which, by a roundabout route, leads us back to Amelia and Serena by way of Jane Austen. I put it that way because Amelia’s and Serena’s introduction to the Regency reads very much like the ‘comedy of manners’ style of Austen. Or at least like Austen if Austen knew about magic.

While Amelia’s and Serena’s perspectives on Regency society are very much informed by their ‘colonial’ origins, the realities of life in a new world, and the existence of magic and their significant powers within it, their story, and the events in which they participate and/or are excluded from is very similar to the world Austen described in such loving detail.

Which means that a large portion of Miss Amelia’s List is, in fact and told in a much more lively fashion, about the list of things that Amelia Stonehold has come to England to accomplish, and about the progression of Amelia and Serena through the highly structured but often ridiculously stratified and stultifying ‘society’ in which they must play an exacting part in order to get things done.

It’s fun, it’s charming. It’s occasionally teeth gnashing but because of Amelia’s and Serena’s outsider perspectives that teeth gnashing is shared by the characters. They know the so-called ‘rules’ are OFTEN ridiculous while knowing they must at least appear to conform, so the reader is in charity with them when some high-stickler makes an ass of themselves in their presence – or behind their backs.

But it’s not a story of action – in spite of the blurb. (Yes, I know, I’ve not been ‘in charity’ with a lot of blurbs in the last few weeks.) Miss Amelia’s List is utterly charming, a delightfully well told Austenesque ‘comedy of manners’, but there’s not a lot of excitement. At least, not until the very end.

An ending which includes death, dismemberment, big snakes and small helpers, as well as a happy ever after that appropriately differs for each and every character.

Escape Rating B: Miss Amelia’s List is a story that I truly enjoyed while I was in it. Howsomever, right up until the very end I didn’t feel any compulsion to find out what happened next, because there’s not really a lot happening at all.

Amelia, surprisingly so for being an Earth Master in this particular magic system, is rather like a duck or better yet, a swan, seeming to float effortless on top of the water – or all the various social situations to which she of necessity must adapt – while paddling furiously under the water DOING all that adapting.

Which is where I circle back to Austen’s comedy of manners style, as a LOT of what Amelia does is observation and then tailoring her behavior to what she’s observed. She may be extremely ruffled on the inside – and in fact often is – but she must appear decidedly UNruffled at all times, which she does.

So not a lot happens because it’s her ‘job’ in effect to make sure that it seems like not a lot is happening. Even if, or especially because, the reality is that a lot is getting done. Which again, gets back to the story being charming and lovely and a delight to sink into much like a warm bath, BUT not exactly a page-turner.

You might very well be looking for something EXACTLY like this amidst, or after, the holiday bustle. I absolutely enjoyed my read of it and hope that the Elemental Masters series eventually returns to the setting and some of the characters of Miss Amelia’s List.

After all, finding a husband for Miss Amelia herself was explicitly NOT on her list. Maybe it will be if we have the chance to see her again. If you like the concept of the Elemental Masters, but want a story that’s a bit more of a page-turner, you might want to try either The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley or the Sherlock Holmes subseries – my personal favorite – that begins with A Study in Sable.

This Christmas, a hot fireman makes a holiday rescue and sparks fly in this funny, sexy holiday short story by bestselling author Alexandria Bellefleur.
When Everleigh Dangerfield’s baking disaster necessitates a call to 911, firefighter Griffin Brantley douses the flames in the kitchen, but the ones he stokes in Everleigh are an entirely different story. Unfortunately, Everleigh’s only visiting and doesn’t do casual hookups, no matter how smoldering the temptation. But Everleigh’s holiday mishaps have just begun. And Griffin is seemingly always on call. If Everleigh is game for a change of plans, he can give her the merriest Christmas of her life.
Alexandria Bellefleur’s Merriment and Mayhem 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:

In this last week before both Christmas AND Hanukkah, I found myself looking for something a bit lighter than the books I had originally planned. Which is when I remembered that I still had two short little holiday pick-me-ups left in the Under the Mistletoe collection, and thereby hangs a tale. Or at least an Xmas stocking.

And this story certainly is a pick-me-up – or perhaps I should say it’s a pick-her-up. Because that’s exactly what firefighter Griffin Brantley does to, with, and for Everleigh Dangerfield the very first time they meet.

As she’s falling off her kitchen counter after setting her kitchen on fire and failing to turn off the wailing smoke alarm now that its warning has been heeded and the damage from the fire as well as from Everleigh’s successful attempt to put it out have succeeded.

Everleigh is past the point of needing the fire department, when they arrive. But that doesn’t mean that she’s past needing a hot firefighter in her life. Pretty much the opposite, in fact. The very friendly and endlessly flirty Griffin is EXACTLY what Everleigh needs this particular holiday season.

And not just because she keeps living up to her name. She really does bring a “danger field” wherever she goes. Which is only fair, as Griffin has absolutely endangered her heart. It’s a good – and delightfully naughty – thing that she’s done the same to his.

Escape Rating B: First, foremost, and most importantly, this was the right book – in this case audiobook – at the right time. While I was enjoying both the book I was reading (Miss Amelia’s List) and the book I was listening to (Blood Jade), neither of them is exactly light in their respective ways. And the third book I was planning on this week (Echo) is set in the depths of a Chicago winter, which brings its own heaviness to the story even before the murders begin.

In other words, I was looking for something light and fluffy, and this collection has consistently delivered.

Having now read/listened to four of the five, including Cruel Winter with You, All By My Elf and Only Santas in the Building, with Merry Ever After yet to go, I have to say that all of the stories have been a lot of fun, just right for a quick listen or a very quick read in a few spare minutes in the holiday rush.

This particular entry in the series is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum from Cruel Winter, and not just because that’s the longest and this is one of the shortest. The stories take place, almost in each of their entireties, over the Xmas holidays. There’s not a lot of time for the romances to develop, and they absolutely do give off insta-love vibes but it does work.

The holiday season, after all, is supposed to be just a bit magical. Just like falling in love.

Cruel Winter is the one that is far from instant, as the protagonists have known each other ALL their lives. It’s just never been the right time for them until it finally is on this particular night. In some ways, it feels the closest to realistic among these very quick holiday rom-coms.

Merriment and Mayhem is the opposite. It’s VERY instant, to the point where the story feels a bit like a fantasy holiday rom-com. I don’t mean fantasy in the foolish wand-waving sense. I mean fantasy in the sense that the daydream of being swept off one’s feet by a hot firefighter is not exactly uncommon. We ALL already know how we want this one to go. And, for that matter, come. (Ahem!).

It’s just that Everleigh Dangerfield gets to live that particular fantasy over this particular Christmas. Everleigh’s ‘real-life’ version of this particular romantic daydream is so damn hot that it’s a good thing that it’s set in a place that doesn’t get much in the way of snow – because they’d certainly melt any accumulated snowfall for MILES around.

This romance is probably the steamiest of the whole collection. To the point of actual steam rising off the pages and possibly even embarrassment if you listen to the story out loud instead of with headphones. It’s absolutely right for this couple, but not all readers want everyone around them to know exactly what they are reading based on the heat of their blushes.

I listened to Merriment and Mayhem (with headphones) and the story absolutely flew by. The reader, Amelie Griffin, did an excellent job BEING Everleigh, and read the scenes with just the right amounts of chagrin and breathlessness as the story required.

I still have time to finish up the Under the Mistletoe collection before my holidays are over, as Hanukkah doesn’t end until sunset on January 2, 2025 this year. Plenty of time for Merry Ever After and one last sweet and romantic holiday reading treat!

Is an attack on the greatest shipping choke point in the world, the Strait of Malacca, a move for economic control…or something worse?

A Wedgetail, the most powerful surveillance airplane in the skies, goes down—hard. Miranda and her team race to investigate, unwittingly placing themselves in the crosshairs.
From the world’s greatest shipping chokepoint at the Strait of Malacca to the Malaysian wilderness, from the Australian Outback to the halls of power in Southeast Asia, survival becomes the greatest challenge.
Can Miranda and her team unravel the crisis before it destroys global shipping and kills them all?
"Miranda is utterly compelling!" - Booklist, starred review“Escape A. Five Stars! OMG just start with Drone and be prepared for a fantastic binge-read!” -Reading Reality

My Review:

I just re-read my review of the previous book in this awesome series, Gryphon, and re-discovered that this book, Wedgetail, was originally supposed to have been published over the summer. With this series, it’s definitely a case of better a bit late than never, as I’m always up to get caught up in another of Miranda Chase’s edge-of-the-seat thrilling adventures.

This one turned out to be a bit more edge-of-the-seat, at least Miranda’s literal seat, than most, as someone is taking shots at her, her team, and the plane they happen to be flying in. While they are flying over the GAFA (that’s the Great Australian Fuck-All, the Australian Outback, in a very dry indeed dry season. On what was supposed to have been a vacation.

Their previous attempt at a vacation, in Osprey, nearly started World War III and temporarily broke up the team. They’re ALL still recovering from the second part of that equation. Someone really should have known better. Actually, Holly Harper, currently an integral part of Miranda’s team but once upon a time a member of Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment absolutely did know better. Or at least knew that she had zero desire to take her teammates back to the place she left in her rear-view long ago and never intended to return to.

But it’s Holly’s skills, both from her childhood traveling in and around the Bush and the survival skills drummed into her by the SASR, that are going to keep her team alive and off the radar of whoever it is who is literally out to get them.

While it’s Holly’s job to get everyone to safety, it’s up to former teammate Jeremy Trahn back in Washington DC to help a surprisingly high-level group of Miranda’s friends, allies and frenemies – including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the CIA, and the sitting Vice President – along with a high-level Malaysian official who knows a whole lot more about what’s going on than she really ought to – figure out who’s targeting Miranda and what it might – or might not – have to do with Miranda’s last investigation.

An investigation of the crash of a VERY expensive, extremely high-tech piece of the Australian Air Force’s fleet of airborne early warning and control aircraft, the titular Wedgetail, that was shot down by another extremely high-tech infrared laser in mid-flight over the Straits of Malacca.

Miranda never answers the “why” question, but her analysis of the other “W’s”, what, when, where and above all, how, have put her in the crossfire of someone playing a high-stakes game for the basest motives of all.

Escape Rating A-: The opening of this 15th entry in the Miranda Chase series is utterly heartbreaking in a “you are there and you wish so badly you could help them” kind of way. The story of the last moments of this particular Wedgetail are absorbing and heartbreaking and they are all so heroic and they so deserve a better fate than the book demands for them and I had to stop for a bit and catch my breath as they went down.

It’s impossible not to feel for that crew – and also for Miranda’s crew as they arrive to bear witness to the devastation of the crash. A crash which Miranda figures out relatively easily thanks to the sheer, cussed determination of the Wedgetail’s last pilot as he wrestled the plane down to land ON LAND where everything could be recovered and investigated even as he died of horrific laser burns.

Miranda’s team is still exhibiting plenty of damage of their own after the events of Osprey and Gryphon, and the scar tissue is still pretty raw. Everyone is treating everyone else – but especially their neuroatypical leader Miranda, with gentle kid gloves. The investigation of the crash itself is easy for Miranda, at least, because that brave pilot did such a damn good job in his ending.

But Miranda doesn’t deal with the “why” questions of her investigations – at least not the why questions that go beyond equipment failure and pilot error to more strictly human motivations. She’s not even good at her own human motivations, dealing with those of strangers is simply outside her wheelhouse as well as her purview.

What makes this particular entry in the series interesting, even as it blunts some of its impact, is in those human motivations. On the one hand, the danger that Miranda and her team have been forced into is very real and potentially very deadly. Without Holly’s skills as well as her local knowledge, they’d all have died either because they did something obvious and got caught by their pursuers – or simply because they couldn’t reach water in time.

It’s up to others, in much safer circumstances, to figure out whodunnit and why it was done, and we don’t get as much of that part of the investigation as this reader would have liked. And what is discovered is that, for all of its cost in equipment and above all, human lives, as badly as things could have gone on the political front as fingers started pointing and blame began being apportioned – rightly or wrongly – the motivations were utterly base to the point of what could have been very costly stupidity verging on outright idiocy.

Then again, that’s humans all over. But Miranda’s investigations usually end up having higher political stakes than this one did. This particularly game was far from being worth the candle.

Very much on the other hand, Holly’s takedown of the jackass responsible was utterly righteous. Evil got its just desserts with bells on so loud it could be heard by all the interested parties even without the satellite phone she had in her pocket.

As always, I’m looking forward to the next adventure for Miranda and her team, whenever it crashes into my TBR pile. If this is your first introduction to Miranda Chase, and if you like thrillers, if you love adventures built around great teams, and if you miss Tom Clancy’s world-spanning political thrillers but wish they’d been a bit more tightly edited, start with Drone and be prepared for a wild and compelling ride!

Welcome to the Dashing December Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox!

December certainly does ‘DASH’ by, doesn’t it? Then there’s “Dashing through the snow…” And let’s not forget Dasher, one of Santa’s reindeer.

Plus there’s all that dashing around to get everything done before the holidays. More than enough dashing in that to make anyone long for a cocoa and lie down once the holidays start winding down. Then again, the countdown for Xmas 2025 starts on Boxing Day, December 26.

Back to that cocoa and lie down, possibly with a good book. Something to dream about in the midst of all the holiday bustle. Answer the question in the rafflecopter for a chance at the usual Reading Reality prize, the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or up to $10 in books. That should be enough for a book and a hot cuppa something delicious.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Dash your way to more winter prizes, by visiting the other stops on this hop!

MamatheFox and all participating blogs are not held responsible for sponsors who fail to fulfill their prize obligations.

December is officially, or at least officially-ish, half over. Not that December 31st really counts as December since everyone spends the whole day thinking about that last second when the year ends. I mean, we count down to it like its a rocket liftoff and everything!

This coming week is, more or less, the last normal-ish week until after the New Year – or at least as normal as things ever get at Chez Reading Reality.

Today’s cat picture shows a sort of normal that I’ll admit we weren’t expecting to see. The cat outside looks like he’s asking for some child in the house to come out and play with him. The cat inside is George, looking like he wants to go out and play – or at least figure out how the cat on the outside, who resembles him rather a lot, is related to him. Which he probably is. Because we got George in the neighborhood – George is our pandemic baby – we learned that George’s momcat had lots of littles roaming around the neighborhood. We were told she even had one more litter before she finally got trapped, neutered and released. Still, we know George has a LOT of siblings and niblings (collective term for nieces AND nephews just like siblings is the collective term for brothers AND sisters) running around the subdivision and probably nearby as well, so we’re thinking he’s related to George somehow. We’re pretty sure this handsome fellow is a fellow because he has the jowls of a male cat who either was never neutered or was snipped after maturity.

But no, we’re not letting George out to play. He has plenty of people and kitties and things to play with at home!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Fall 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in the Holiday Giveaway Event!

Blog Recap:

Grade A #BookReview: Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner
B #BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron
B #AudioBookReview: Cruel Winter with You by Ali Hazelwood
A- #AudioBookReview: Dead as a Dodo by Hailey Edwards
C #AudioBookReview: I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander + #Excerpt
Stacking the Shelves (631)

Coming This Week:

Dashing December Giveaway Hop
Wedgetail by M.L. Buchman (#BookReview)
Echo by Tracy Clark (#BookReview)
Miss Amelia’s List by Mercedes Lackey (#BookReview)
Blood Jade by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle (#AudioBookReview)