Review: A Box Full of Darkness

Hello Future Wendy, it's Past Wendy. For most of 2025 you suffered through a short-attention span, no-spoons reading slump that was particularly soul sucking. Around early November you decided enough was enough and since you had ARCs for upcoming releases by favorite authors, you were just going to read them instead of waiting.  Hence reading A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James in November when it has a release date of January 20, 2026. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

Violet Esmie can see ghosts, and that's not even the most screwed up thing about her. Divorced, estranged from her surly teenage daughter, she's living a solitary life working as a cleaner - someone who goes into the homes of the recently deceased and cleans them out at the family's or estate's behest. It's on her latest job that she gets a call from the landscapers taking care of the grounds of her family home in Fell, New York. Sorry lady, we're quitting. We'll refund the rest of this month's payment but we're not going back.  Why? Because they saw the ghost of a little boy. A little boy who uttered two words "Come home."

The ghost is her baby brother Ben who vanished when he was 6-years-old during a game of hide-and-seek. And when I say vanished - I mean poof! Not a single trace of him anywhere. Violet knows it's time, she needs to go home and settle the matter of Ben's disappearance once and for all. But she's not going alone. She calls her siblings, Vail, a UFO chaser (seriously) and Dodie, a model whose hair is a top commodity for shampoo commercials.

The siblings return to the family home in Fell to find that much hasn't changed. Even though they pretty much abandoned the place as-is, it's shockingly not overly decrepit. However the creepy shenanigans that they experienced as children are still there. Vail sees a bright light and someone/something standing over his bed (aliens?). Dodie dreams of filthy water sweeping over her bed and drowning her. And Violet, as has already been established, sees ghosts, and there's one ghost in particular who is a nasty piece of work.

Fell, New York was the setting of St. James' most excellent The Sun Down Motel, and there's always some hesitancy with me when an author returns to a beloved book. I shouldn't have been worried. What this book firmly cements is that Fell is one of St. James' more inspired creations. The setting is pitch-perfect Gothic creepiness. A small town where inexplicably horrible things keep happening with little to no explanation.  Ben's disappearance is just one in a long chain of events. St. James has fun returning to Fell and slips in a few Easter eggs for fans, but nothing that will confuse new readers who are starting with this entry (there's even a call back to The Broken Girls).

The story is told in alternating points-of-view between all three siblings. The worry with this style is that some voices are frankly just more interesting than others - and that's what happened to me here. I liked Violet. Violet was interesting. Sure they're all emotionally screwed in the head, but Vail isn't great with women (love 'em, then as he's leaving 'em saying hurtful things so they don't come back around again) and also UFOs. Seriously? And yes, I realize I was reading a book about ghosts but apparently UFOs is a bridge too far for me. And Dodie? Dodie is emotionally exhausting and bitchy, although she has some nice moments at the end. I read through their sections just wanting to get back to Violet.

The story is slow burn Gothic, with the tension and darkness seeping in small increments until you're drowning in it at the end. It's good stuff, until the ending. I felt like St. James painted herself into a corner on this one. She couldn't tie it all up in a nice, neat package because there was too much our characters couldn't discover and ultimately know. And this wasn't great for me.  Look, I live in a world that is messy. Where not everything gets resolved and sometimes it's "resolved" in a way where the good people get screwed and the morally bankrupt people win. The older I get, the more I live in this current hellscape timeline, I want closure. And I want the closure that genre fiction promises to readers 99.9% of the time - which is the good guys win and the bad guys get shot into the sun. The bad guys do not win in this story but there's dangling threads - namely the Ben thing is just plain weird and while we find out why the Esmie family home is haunted, there's no big red bow tying up that box. Do we get closure? Yes. Do we get all the answers? Ehh...

Still, it's an engrossing read - and seriously, Fell, New York is just fantastic. I don't know how many more times St. James can dip into this well before she starts repeating herself, but man I love that creepy little town. 

Final Grade = B

Review: Murder Road

Simone St. James is one of my favorite writers and yes, I've just now read her latest book, Murder Road. Yes, I'm aware it came out in March 2024. Yes, I'm aware I had an ARC copy of it well prior. I can't explain this, but I will sometimes let books by favorite writers just...sit. Even though I know I'm likely to enjoy them. Why do I do this? Hell if I know. I'm a reader, therefore I am a nut-job.

It's July 1995 and Eddie and April Carter are lost in the middle of nowhere, Michigan. From Ann Arbor, they're 20-something newlyweds on their way to a resort on Lake Michigan for their honeymoon when Eddie gets off the highway and makes a wrong turn. They're on a very desolate, and quite frankly, creepy road in the middle of the night. That's when they see a woman, by herself, no car in sight, walking by herself on the side of the road. Concerned for her, they decide to pick her up.  That's when the trouble begins.

After she gets in the car, they realize the woman is seriously injured and bleeding under the large jacket she's wearing. No idea where they are, they rush down the road hoping to find a town with a hospital. Hot on their tail? A big, black pick-up truck. They eventually hit the outskirts of Coldlake Falls, lose the truck, find a hospital, only for the hitchhiker to die. Two strangers in a small town, covered in blood, let's just say the cops set the land speed record for arriving on the scene. Seems that stretch of desolate road, Atticus Line, has quite a history. More than one dead hitchhiker has turned up along that road starting in the mid-1970s. Never mind that it defies logic that Eddie and April would be involved beyond innocent bystanders and witnesses, they're strangers, they're there, and they're covered in blood.

As the cops seem to zero in on Eddie and April, they're stuck in Coldlake Falls. The only way to get out of this mess is to do some snooping on their own. That's when they learn of the other victims and the legend of The Lost Girl, the first victim from the 1970s, never identified, who locals say haunts Atticus Line 👻.

This was a good book. I enjoyed it.

But...

It lacked some of the punch and oomph of some of St. James other books (I think I'm still hungover from The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel...).  It's pretty slow and methodical to start, with the author laying groundwork on our couple, Eddie, a veteran of the Iraq War with shades of PTSD, and April, a woman who has drifted, unsettled through life until she met Eddie, and wouldn't you know it? They both have secrets that they haven't been completely upfront with each other about.  Naturally those half-truths come home to roost with the cops digging into their backgrounds. 

Once Eddie and April decide to start sleuthing in earnest is when things start to pick up, and once again St. James has created some dynamite secondary characters to aid in the cause.  There's Rose, a widow with a lace doily and Princess Diana obsession who is boarding them while they're stuck in town, and the Snell sisters, two teenage girls with an obsession for true crime and conspiracy theories. Dare I say it, I would have just read the book for these three, plot be damned. Also, as someone who was a young 20-something in the 1990s, I can say the setting, tone and feel of the story were pitch perfect. The author really nailed it.

Of course it all comes careening to a supernatural, Gothic conclusion and St. James ties up all the loose threads at the end.  On that subject, the lead detective on the case is particularly terrible and I didn't really buy his scenes with Eddie and April at the end, but it does wrap up some questions, so it works on that score at least.  

It kept me engaged and I did like it, but while I'm one to recommend St. James on the regular to other readers, this one isn't at the top of my list.

Final Grade = B

Mini-Reviews: Suspense Round-Up

While my reading mojo has been pretty decent for the start of 2023, my blogging mojo is still on life support. I used to be the girl who would write up to three blog posts a week and these days getting one done feels a bit like climbing Mt. Everest. So in a bid to not let this blog stagnant, plus provide proof that I have been reading, it's time for another round of mini-reviews - the all suspense edition!

Monkey in the Middle byLoren D. Estleman is the 30th book in the author's Amos Walker series, which began back in 1980. Amos was old school back then, which means in a modern digital age he's practically a dinosaur. I've got a thing for hardboiled PI types working "the mean streets" and Amos' beat is Detroit - which is a pitch perfect setting for crime novels given that the truth is usually more bizarre and corrupt than any fiction writer could cook up.  This time out Amos is hired (sort of) by a greener than grass would-be journalist who is in way over his head with an on-the-run government whistleblower. Complicating matters for Amos are a bestselling author with connections to the case, a media savvy (and hungry) defense attorney, and an assassin who Amos has a history with. Oh, and his ex-wife just passed away. 

I read Estleman for the writing (the man can turn a phrase) and the world-building. I stay to see how many jabs he can take at the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions.  This was a really solid read that kept me guessing and, per usual, I was sucked into Amos' world.  Then I got to the ending, which just didn't work for me. Out of the all the possible whodunits, Estleman went with the one that made the least amount of sense to me. I just didn't "get" the motive - and I'm a tidy reader who likes motive.  Also, by book #30 it's expected that stand-alone might be a bridge too far, but I've hop-scotched around this series so there was some series baggage here I didn't entirely "get." I still understood what was happening and who people were, but I think that aspect will work better for folks caught up on the series.

Final Grade = B-

Ghost 19 by Simone St. James is a novella that released on audio back in October 2022, and was published in eBook this month. I'm a major St. James fangirl and couldn't believe I lost track of the audio debut, and not wanting to wait for the eBook that's the format I went with.

Meh. I was disappointed in this.  St. James employs the slightly unhinged heroine trope which I've made no bones about admitting to the entire world I REALLY DO NOT LIKE IN SUSPENSE NOVELS I WANT ALL THE COMPETENT HEROINES GIVE THEM TO ME NOW!  

Ahem.  Anyway.  It's 1959 and middling actress Ginette Cox leaves New York City on the advice of her doctor who suggests she needs less "excitement" in her life. She rents a house upstate where she takes to watching her new neighbors a la Hitchcock's Rear Window. She's not in residence at 19 Howard Avenue for long when she starts hearing unearthly noises coming from the basement.  Oh, and she's trapped - she literally cannot leave the house. Is it a ghost or is it her own madness?

Look, I'm not a complete dunderhead. I get what St. James was doing with the whole misogyny late 1950s "hysterical" woman living an unconventional life society disapproves of thing - but I just couldn't with Ginette. She annoyed me. Oh and did I mention this mess of nerves somehow bags a man at the end of the book? The ghost story was suitably creepy and the crime compelling in a heinous way - but otherwise this left me cold. 

Final Grade = C-

Death by Smoothie byLaura Levine is the 19th book in the increasingly problematic Jaine Austen cozy series. Much like Stephanie Plum, these books follow a distinct pattern: 1) wacky antics by Jaine's parents who live in a condo community in Florida 2) Jaine's "mean girl" next door neighbor and Neiman Marcus shoe salesman, Lance, will be snide to her 3) Jaine's cat, Prozac, will get up to hijinks that taxes her patience 4) a dating disaster of epic proportions and 5) Jaine's incredibly unhealthy relationship with food and various food related jokes.

This time out Jaine lands a job as a script doctor for a new play based on the cult classic TV show, I Married a Zombie. The producer is a geek obsessed with the TV show and he and his equally geeky girlfriend are calling the shots. It's a dismal script, but it's a well-paying job and as a freelancer Jaine can't be picky. She starts second-guessing her choices though when Misty arrives on the scene and is cast in the lead role despite the fact that she's a terrible actress and more so a terrible person. Everyone (justifiably) hates her guts, but it's still a shock when her like-clockwork 3PM smoothie is poisoned.  Now everyone in the production is a suspect and it's up to Jaine to find the real murderer.

Look, I start each new book in this series knowing exactly what I'm going to get - which is why I picked up this entry when I did (after a particularly gut-wrenching romance read).  I wanted mindless brain candy fluff and that's what this book delivered. Also, Levine has a knack for keeping the mystery humming along, providing plenty of suspects and motives to choose from.  Unfortunately she chose poorly in this entry.  Nearly every secondary character has a reason to want Misty dead and yet the culprit is the one with the least believable motive of all.  Like, any other choice would have been better.  A solid entry that didn't stick the landing.

Final Grade = C

Review: The Book of Cold Cases

I scored an ARC of The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James many months before it's March 2022 publication date and there. it. just. sat. on my Kindle. My eye-ball reading this year has been the pits for a number of reasons, and not even the latest book by an author who is probably now my Top Favorite was pulling me out of my general disinterest.  But finally, I knew it was time. Maybe this would be the book to jump-start me. So I read the first chapter and...didn't pick up my Kindle again for over a week. My plan, she was not going well. But last night I really decided to get serious, hunkered down in bed and proceeded to stay up until 2AM to inhale the book in nearly one gulp.  Which would indicate I loved it, right?  Well....

In 1977 Claire Lake, Oregon was rocked by two random murders. Family men, fine upstanding men, gunned down on an isolated road, strange notes left behind near the bodies. The cops soon zero in on twenty-three rich girl orphan Elizabeth "Beth" Greer. They have no actual evidence against her other than a witness who saw someone resembling her fleeing the second crime scene - oh, and the fact that Beth does not behave like an appropriate twenty-three year old girl. But it's not enough to convict, and Beth is acquitted. She returns to her isolated mansion to live the life of a recluse.

Shea Collins is a receptionist at a doctor's office, which is how she meets Beth Greer. Shea knows she looks familiar and when she realizes who it is, she practically trips over herself to talk to the woman, to try to score an interview. By day Shea is an isolated loner who works a receptionist job going nowhere. By night she runs a popular true crime blog, The Book of Cold Cases, a passionate interest born out of a Shea surviving an attempted abduction when she was a child. Maybe the time is finally right? Maybe Beth sees something in Shea? No matter, she agrees to the interview and soon Shea is visiting Beth in her Creepy AF Mansion, where her mind starts playing tricks on her and everything is not what it seems.

I'm a sucker for a damaged heroine struggling to get through life and determined to solve a mystery, so Shea was right up my alley. Her would-be abductor is in prison, but a parole hearing is coming up - a fact Shea has buried her head in the sand over. She's newly divorced, working a job that's fine but not exactly fulfilling, with a fair amount of guilt and anxiety. The other half of this story is Beth's - starting in the 1960s and building up to the trial and acquittal in the late 1970s.  And here's where we run into a common problem with time-slip novels - I don't like Beth. 

One of the great things about St. James' book is the undercurrent of feminism bubbling below the surface.  The central feminist themes in this book are guilt (good Lord we women have a thing with guilt) and "What does it matter, I'm a girl and nobody is going to listen to me anyway."  Now look, we all know the latter happens.  It happens today in 2022 and it sure as hell was happening in the 1970s - but here's my problem: Beth doesn't even try.  She's stuck. She's a coward. She can't move forward, she can't move back, she can't open her mouth even if it's to save her own skin. And I never bought her logic as to why she kept her mouth shut in 1977.  I get 2022 - because by then her story becomes pretty fantastical - but in 1977?  Yes, guilt and shame but the fact she's not screaming from the the hilltops if only to save her own butt just didn't work for me. Beth became tedious.

What kept me up until 2AM reading was everything else. I liked Shea. The secondary characters are interesting - Shea's sister and brother-in-law, the retired cop who worked the case in 1977, and former cop, now private investigator that Shea develops feelings for (yes, there's a romance but it's very light and secondary).  St. James also excels at writing settings that are frozen in time. The mansion where Beth lives hasn't changed since the 1970s. There's also a ghost (of course there is) who provides suitably creepy atmosphere.  My one solid quibble on the woo-woo is that in the end I felt like the ghost was a short-cut to resolution in place of actual sleuthing.  Should this bother me in a Gothic? Probably not. Does it kind of annoy the mystery reading side of my brain?  Yeah.

What I'm left with is a book that kept me up until 2AM, that entertained me, but that I didn't love. Which isn't really fair. Look, I flat-out loved St. James last two books - so this one had a mountain to climb.  Is it an A+ sort of read that I'll badger people about?  No.  But it's also not "bad."  It's good. And given the current state my eye-ball reading, I'm taking my victory lap.

Final Grade = B

Review: The Sun Down Motel

Hi Future Wendy, it's Past Wendy. I'm writing to you from August 25, 2019.  About a week ago your mind got blown when Berkley actually approved your NetGalley request for The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. The book isn't actually out until February 18, 2020 (um, that's tomorrow for you Future Wendy...) but Past Wendy knew that as much as she would end up regretting it later, she had to read this book Right. Now.  Why regrets?  Because it would mean just having to wait that much longer for St. James' next book.  Past Wendy, having read this book 6 months before the release date is now waiting 6 months longer than Future Wendy for the next book (got all that?).  But seriously, I had to read this book right away.  And, of course, it was all the happy book noises you can imagine.

In 1982, 20-year-old Vivian "Viv" Delaney runs away from her small Illinois town to escape an overbearing mother.  Her parting shot? I'm going to New York City to be an actress!  Where Viv ends up is in upstate Fell, New York.  The town is a bit dark, a bit odd, but something about it speaks to Viv, so she stays.  She gets a job as the night clerk at The Sun Down Motel, one of those seedy around the edges places that never realized it's full potential. However, like Fell itself, there's something not quite right about the motel.  There are unexplained events, ghosts that walk the halls, and given how small Fell is, they sure do have a problem with missing and dead girls.  Then, one night, Viv disappears...without a trace.

Fast forward to 2017 and Viv's niece, Carly Kirk, has landed in Fell.  Carly was born after her aunt's disappearance.  She's presumed dead, but a body was never found and her death left a chasm in the family.  Carly's mother, Viv's younger sister, succumbed to cancer, haunted by her older sister's disappearance.  20-year-old Carly, still grieving for her mom, not sure what she wants to do with her life, decides a break from college is in order. What she knows for sure is she wants answers.  How does a pretty 20-year-old in a small town just vanish? And her body never recovered? It's not right, and Carly decides she's going to go to Fell and get some answers.  She's not even in town for a day before she finds herself a roommate (in her aunt's old apartment no less!) and a job working the night shift at the Sun Down - still just as haunted 30 years later.

St. James' work generally skirts around the fringes of "romantic elements" and while Carly does get a "love interest" over the course of the story, it's very much a secondary element with the suspense and Gothic setting taking center stage.  As creepy as I thought St. James' last book was, this one is even creepier.  As in, it left me feeling unsettled - which having cut my teeth on Nancy Drew and reading Patricia Cornwell by the age of 16 well...unsettling Wendy takes some doing.  Fell is a fictional town, but the upstate New York setting is inspired, the town locked away in time (Carly finds herself pulling old newspapers at the library because the archives haven't been digitized yet) with spotty cell reception, and seriously, No Name Motels are right up there with vans that don't have any side windows.  Creepy.

But the genius of this story is how St. James centers it on the female gaze.  This is, by far, the most interesting female-centric suspense novel I've read in a while because ALL the female characters are interesting, multi-faceted and calling the shots. Viv, realizing nothing is being done about all the murdered women that keep turning up in Fell decides to play amateur sleuth and...solves it.  The cops cannot seem to find a connection between the victims, but she does.  Carly, grieving and determined, wants answers to what happened to Aunt Viv, which means retracing her steps and stumbling across the same mystery of the murdered women.  There's Alma, the only female cop on the Fell police force, dealing with rampant 1982 sexism on the job, and relegated to the night shift because...of course she is.  She's an unvarnished straight-shooter but also kind of sly and slick, which I tend to gravitate towards in female cop and PI characters.  And then there's Marnie, a photographer getting by, occasionally doing freelance for the cops at crime scenes, and entering Viv's orbit because she was hired to tail a married woman meeting her lover at the Sun Down.  These are also women cognizant of the road blocks they face because, men.  The 1982 story line in particular.  It's enraging, but riveting to read about the women circumventing these obstacles thrown in their way.

If I have any gripes about this story it's that I felt the beginning was a little slow to start and the ending a little too rushed - but it's creepy, it's compelling, and it's filled with dynamite female characters working to solve the mystery and find justice.  It's not my favorite of St. James' oeuvre (which is basically splitting hairs anyway) but it's so very good.  Dark, compelling, creepy, the kind of book that keeps you up at night flipping the pages.

Final Grade = A

Reading Year in Review 2018

I think we all can agree that 2018 was a dumpster fire of a year and yet, somehow, I managed to get through 95 books.  My reading goal is always 100, so while I did fall short, 95 is the most I've managed to get through since 2014 (when I read an incredible 119).  Here's how it all broke down (and yes, I count DNFs):

5 Stars (A Grade) = 7

4 Stars (B Grade) = 27

3 Stars (C Grades, includes some "low B-") = 38

2 Stars (D Grades) = 10

1 Star (F Grades) = 3

DNF (Did Not Finish) = 10

Audiobooks = 28

My A grades were up this year (although pretty consistent from previous years - I rarely assign 5-Stars in the double digits), my DNFs were up a smidge, my audiobook numbers were down (shorter work commute after I moved last year!), and my C grades outpaced my B grades (which is not great).  But, I'll take it.  This was the most productive reading year I've had in a dog's age.

Now, for what everybody cares about: the books!  A reminder that this is a recap of what I loved and read during 2018, but not necessarily books published in 2018.  I'm perpetually behind, so most of my Best Of list will be books that will, hopefully, be lurking in TBRs already or easy to score at your local library.

Note: Title links will take you to full reviews

The Romance:

Burn Down the Night (2016) and Wait For It (2017) by Molly O'Keefe - After not a single romance garnered an A grade from me in 2017, I vowed to start off 2018 on the right foot - with an author who consistently works for me.  The final two books in a quartet series, Burn Down the Night gives me the closest thing I've read to a true Bad Girl Heroine in the genre and Wait For It is an example of an Asshole Hero done right.  I didn't read these books so much as inhale them.

Breathe (2016) by L. Setterby - My contest judging this year was largely meh, but holy hell where has this book been all my life?!  A perfect example of starting a book, reading the first sentence, and just falling head over feet right into the world.  I'm so hooked that I downloaded the Wattpad app to read the next book in the series (still being released in weekly installments as I write up this post).

An Extraordinary Union (2017) by Alyssa Cole - A historical romance with legit high stakes conflict.  I loved this heroine so much I'm thinking of taking the Gone Fishin' sign off of my ovaries.

The Tycoon's Socialite Bride (2014) by Tracey Livesay - Here it is, the best category romance I read this year.  Livesay hit all her emotional beats, right on time.  I loved the heroine's family baggage and the hero bent on revenge but not needlessly cruel (although this one does rip your guts out in parts).  Don't think you like category romance?  Try this one.  It's damn near magical.

Indigo (1996) by Beverly Jenkins - Arguably the book that Jenkins is best known for, and it's easy to see why.  She puts so much into this story, addressing racism, colorism, and sexism, without preaching from the pulpit or losing sight of the romance.  Also, I've always felt that Jenkins' strength (well, besides her dynamite heroines) is her world-building.  The community she creates in this story, using the Underground Railroad as a backdrop, was so well done.

The Soldier Prince (2018) by Aarti V. Raman - This is my cracktastic read of the year, basically a category romance about a former Black Ops-style soldier, who is really a prince, who falls in love with a struggling college student waiting tables in a New York City deli.  This one is full of ALL THE TROPES and I couldn't get enough of it.  Raman needs to publish the next book in this series, like, yesterday.

Delicious Temptation (2015) by Sabrina Sol - Believable baggage (seriously, families can be the worst), and I loved the East LA family bakery backdrop.  Is it because I live in southern California and know the area?  Maybe.  Because Sol writes it so very well.  My runner up for best category read of the year.

Not Romance, Still Awesome:

The Broken Girls (2018) by Simone St. James - It's to the point now where I'm a squee'ing unreasonable fangirl for Simone St. James, but seriously, I loved this one.  A time slip novel with converging 1950 and 2014 plot treads and a nice "romantic elements" secondary thread involving the 2014 heroine and her cop boyfriend.  

Grant (2017) by Ron Chernow - A long book (47 hours on audio!), this one is worth the time investment.  Grant's life exemplifies the old "truth is stranger than fiction" adage.  That this man, basically a failure is every other aspect of his life, defeated the Confederacy, saved the Union, and became President is simply remarkable.  This is my new Read A Book Already book.  Plus, I learned stuff.  Which is always nice when reading non-fiction.

Jane Doe (2018) by Victoria Helen Stone - The revenge thriller I didn't know I needed.  A cool, methodical heroine who exacts her revenge against the worst sort of hypocritical DudeBro.  I loved every blessed minute of it.

Charlesgate Confidential (2018) by Scott Von Doviak - A crime novel set in Boston with three converging timelines. It did take a while for me to sink into this story and I did have to read about the damn Red Sox way too much for my liking, but this one is excellent.  Excellent world building.  Excellent mystery.  Interesting characters.  It kept me guessing all the way to the end.

Comfort Read/Author of 2018:

Marcia Muller - Every reader I know has what they call "comfort reading."  Either a favorite book or author, maybe a favorite genre.  For me, that's mystery.  I fell in love with reading via mysteries.  I devoured them as a teen, so there's a really high nostalgia factor at play here.  Given what a mess 2018 was, it's probably not surprising that I read 14 books in the Sharon McCone series this year.  I got through books 3 - 15 and one short story collection this year, in a mix of audio and print.  Technically these were all rereads for me, revisiting books I first read or listened to on audio as a teenager and in my early 20s.  Yes, some held up better than others, but the world building! The character arcs! I wanted to read more in the series this year, but other obligations have kept me from them.  I plan to pick up again with book 16 in 2019.

And that's my Year In Review for 2018.  I'm quite pleased with myself, but continue to hope for bigger and better in 2019.  The goal, once again, is 100 books.  Let's see if I make it.

Review: The Broken Girls

I'm a sucker for Gothics.  The suspense, the atmosphere, the woman-in-peril who doesn't realize at first she's in peril who then has to wiggle out of it.  So it seems pretty inconceivable in hindsight that it took me until 2016 to tear through Simone St. James' entire backlist on audio.  Once I was done?  I was bereft.  Because by that point the publication date for her upcoming novel, The Broken Girls had been delayed.  Well, it's finally here and I can say it was well worth the wait.

20 years ago Fiona Sheridan's sister, Deb, was found dead.  Lying in a field, near abandoned Idlewild Hall, in Vermont.  Pretty, vivacious, 20-year-old Deb had been murdered by her popular, rich, boyfriend, Tim Christopher, son of the wealthiest and most important family in town.  Tim was convicted, is still in prison, but Fiona is stuck.  Haunted by the tragedy and the wreckage it left in it's wake.  She's dating Jamie, a police officer, son of the former chief of police who worked Deb's case, and is working as a freelance journalist.  When she hears Idlewild Hall has been purchased and the new owner wants to reopen it as a girls boarding school, Fiona has the excuse she needs to start digging.  Naturally, she unearths a whole lot of secrets.

In 1950 Idlewild Hall was a boarding school for families to dump off their cast-off girls.  Girls who were trouble.  Girls who were "bad."  Four such girls are roommates, become friends, and all of them witness things they can't explain.  There's a ghost at Idlewild Hall, Mary Hand - who shows you things that you can't unsee.  Who confronts you with your greatest fears, your darkest secrets.  They all see her and one day one of the band of four disappears...without a trace.

This is a time slip novel, moving back and forth between the 1950 story and the 2014 story - St. James taking two different threads and expertly weaving them together.  I'll admit to some reluctance when I heard that St. James was leaving her 1920s English settings behind to move to 1950s Vermont, but that uneasiness was quickly replaced with the uneasy feeling this book's atmosphere evokes.  Folks, it's creepy.  Not just the ghost stuff, but the secrets.  Fiona's psyche.  The truth that's lying just below the surface that eventually bubbles up and boils over.  It's riveting and page-turning and I waffled between savoring every delicious word, prolonging my reading pleasure and guzzling it like a college student whipping out a beer bong.

Usually in time slip stories there's one story line thread the reader is drawn to over the other, which was not my case here.  I loved the 1950 girls - the girls nobody wanted, the girls everybody underestimated, the girls who ultimately end up saving themselves and finding their own brand of justice.  In the 2014 story I was drawn to Fiona's emotional turmoil, her relationship with Jamie haunted by ghosts, and her persistent digging into the secrets hidden at Idlewild.

All of St. James' books thus far feature what one would classify as "romantic elements."  That's certainly the case here, given the Fiona/Jamie relationship, but I will say of all her books this one probably is the lightest in the romance department.  This isn't a criticism from me, but a heads-up to readers who were drawn to some of her earlier books where the romantic arc played a bit more of a prominent factor.

If you're already a St. James fan, this is a great book.  I loved it.  I'm jealous of all of you who now get to read it for the first time.  If you enjoy Gothics and are looking for a creepy good mystery with a light touch on the paranormal woo-woo?  This is it.  St. James' monsters in this book feature the unknown supernatural but also the very real, flesh-and-blood terror that only living mankind seems capable of inflicting.  Don't miss it.

Final Grade = A

Mini-Reviews: Thrill-Seeking Librarian and Flapper Medium

Besides the obvious Librarian-Related reason, I have read and enjoyed shorter works by Anne Calhoun in the past - so that was enough for me to give The SEAL's Rebel Librarian a whirl.  The results were decidedly mixed.

Erin Kent is an academic librarian still recovering from a divorce.  Tired of hearing her ex-husband's disapproving voice in her head, she decides she's going to do the things she's always wanted to do. First on the list?  Buy a motorcycle.  Jack Powell is a former SEAL with PTSD and a case of bad nerves (he has tremors in his hands, doctors haven't found any physiological reason for them - hence, PTSD) and he's now at loose ends, post Navy.  He's taking a class at the college where Erin works and they meet through her work at the library.  What follows is an attraction, a Neither Of Us Is Looking For Serious "relationship," and Jack helping Erin with her adventurous bucket list, which also includes sky-diving.

I hesitate to mention it given that I read an ARC that has been languishing on my Kindle since earlier this year and I did not have access to a final copy - but this story had serious editing issues in the beginning.  A prime example?  In one scene Jack is driving a car, then riding his motorcycle, then he's back in the car but wearing a helmet and then when he gets home he finds his motorcycle in the garage.  Yeah, that's not good.  My library didn't have a copy of this and I'm too cheap to buy a final copy to check to see if the errors were corrected - so just take this as a warning.  The editing on the ARC was problematic.

I liked Erin a lot and for those of you who care about such things - the "library stuff" was good.  I got a huge kick out of seeing EBSCO mentioned in a romance novella, dork that I am.  I was less enthralled with how Jack's story wrapped up - namely that his tremors magically seem to vanish in the end, which he chalks up to helping Erin live out her thrill seeking.  Even though the tremors aren't physiological - this smacks way too much of Being Cured By The Love Of A Good Woman for my tastes.  In the end, I liked her and this is a sexy enough read but mostly....meh.

Final Grade = C+

The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James was a recent listen on audio and it's my second "read" by this author after her debut novel, The Haunting of Maddy Clare.  In just three short years between those two books, I feel like this one shows tremendous growth for her as a writer.

Ellie Winter is a spirit medium who no longer contacts the dead and instead specializes in helping people find lost items.  She's contacted by the mysterious (MI5) George Sutter after his glamorous sister, a medium, Gloria Sutter is murdered.  Brother and sister were estranged, but Gloria left him a note prior to her death instructing him to seek out Ellie - which he does.  Ellie is compelled to help George because she and Gloria used to be friends - until the day that Gloria had Ellie's own mother debunked as a psychic.  Ellie's mother died shortly thereafter and needless to say the two friends fell out.

Once again the setting is wonderfully drawn (1920s London), the world-building keen, and St. James uses the ghost of World War I to optimum effect.  Romance comes into play in the form of our hero, a former soldier who works for an outfit that investigates reports of psychic phenomenon, and naturally he was part of the tests that ruined Ellie's mother (and by some extension - Ellie).  The mystery here is also quite compelling, which I found more advanced and layered than the author's debut.  The one thing holding me back on totally loving this story was Ellie's relationship with the dead Gloria.  I...well, I just didn't see these two as friends.  I get that Ellie latched on to Gloria because finally she had met someone (who was not her mother) who was a "freak" like she was - but Gloria is just so....unpleasant.  I mean she's vain and narcissistic and just not very nice (even if she does say some pretty smart things).  Other than being Just Like Me in the psychic department I couldn't for the life of me figure out why or how these two were friends.  But everything else?  Top notch.  If you like Gothics you need to be reading St. James.

Final Grade = B

Mini-Reviews: All Things Audio

Audiobooks have been the only thing keeping my reading afloat these days, and it's a way to 1) keep me entertained on my long commute and 2) mix-up my normal reading groove beyond the usual 95% romance, 5% mystery/suspense.  Here are some quick thoughts on my most recent listens.

But Enough About Me: A Memoir by Burt Reynolds - OK, so I kind of have a thing for Burt Reynolds.  I'll admit it - I'm not completely immune to the whole "good ol' boy" Southern vibe.  This book is written vignette style, with Reynolds not focusing on a linear timeline of his life, but rather talking about people, places etc. that have meant something to him over the years.  The downside to listening to this on audio is that Reynolds narrates and his voice has not aged well.  Reynolds is in his 80s now, and his voice sounds like it.  Sometimes it was strong, and sometimes I could barely make out what he was saying.  But on the plus side?  Reynolds would get emotional at times and it helps to reinforce that he's a real person underneath the persona.  I got choked up hearing Reynolds get choked up talking about Dom DeLuise.  Final Grade = C+

Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic and Searching for Who's Next by L.A. Reid - Dating myself, but I graduated high school in the early 1990s, so my curiosity about this book stems entirely with Reid's partnership with Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in LaFace records - which gave us superstars like TLC and Toni Braxton.  The duo also worked with a number of other notable artists that were part of the whole "New Jack Swing" scene at the time (like Bobby Brown and Boyz II Men).  My favorite parts of this were learning more about Reid's life as a performer/musician and the LaFace "stuff."  My interest waned a bit the closer we got to present day (I could care less about OutKast, Kayne, Bieber or Reid's stint on The X Factor) when it kind of descends into more blatant name-dropping.  Still, it serves as a reminder of how awesome R&B was in the early 1990s and I wanted to download ALL. THE. MUSIC after I finished.  Final Grade = B

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye - If other reviews are an indication, I'm the only person who has read this book in Romancelandia who didn't love it to bits.  Part of this is because compared to the author's Supreme-O Awesome-Sauce Timothy Wilde trilogy (which made my Best Of Lists for 2014 and 2015), this is a pale shadow.  The characters aren't as well drawn, their relationships nowhere near as complex and there's a Victorian Drama-Llama Melodramatic Romance in the second half that I was bored with before it even got off the ground.  What I did like?  The "stuff" between Jane and Rebecca Clarke - her bestest friend while they are both at an odious boarding school.  There's lots of "Jane Eyre" stuff here and Jane Steele tends to murder people who deserve it - but meh.  It's entirely possible that my extreme love of the previous trilogy factored into my dissatisfaction more than a little but...I'm sorry folks, I didn't love this.  Come back and talk to me after you've read the Timothy Wilde books.  Final Grade = D+

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James - St. James is an author I've been meaning to try forever and a recent foray into Barbara Michaels on audio had me on a Gothic kick.  Set after World War I, our office temp heroine takes a job as an assistant to a ghost hunter to investigate a haunting of a barn by a local servant girl who committed suicide.  This is a Gothic very heavy on the woo-woo, it's got great atmosphere, and very good characterization.  I was a little less enamored with the ghost hunting party's lack of urgency in solving the mystery behind Maddy Clare, the girl haunting the barn.  They seem more bent on protecting people that, quite frankly, deserve everything that Maddy's ghost wants to dish out to them.  Maddy wants her revenge for very, very compelling reasons (consider that your trigger warning).  Swoon, I love Gothics! I plan to download more St. James on audio as soon as the holds lists at work allow. Final Grade = B-

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin - Tells the story of Truman Capote, the upper-crust New York society women whom he called "The Swans," and his friendship with Babe Paley (wife of William S. Paley - the founder of CBS). The story covers the timeline of Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood, The Black and White Ball, Capote running off the rails and his ultimate break from "The Swans" with the publication of the story La Cote Basque 1965 in Esquire magazine, in which he aired everybody's dirty laundry.

This would have been a DNF had I tried to read it because it's very, very tell-y.  Long stretches with little dialogue and a lot of internal musing so the author can dump back-story on the reader.  Also, these are shallow, sad people and the the job of historical fiction is for the author to "breathe life" into these characters.  That doesn't happen here until the very bitter end, when the fallout of La Cote Basque 1965 comes into play.  Shopping, clothes, affairs everybody was having (sometimes with each other...) and by the end of it I was so bloody sick of hearing about Babe Paley's cheekbones I could just scream.  The ending is interesting because that's when all the glitz and shallow dazzle goes to hell.  Capote fully hits the skids and Babe finally (finally!) gets angry.

As a historical fiction novel it just didn't work for me because the writing didn't work for me.  I felt I would have been better served to just read non-fiction accounts of the era and I would have gotten the exact same story.  Also, I listened to this on audio which means both narrators (yes, there were two) affected Capote's voice.  I did like the glimpse into the bygone, opulent era of society prior to the Atomic Hippie Bomb of the 1960s going off, but that was about it.  Final Grade = C-