The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapists in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynette's worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart, piece by piece. 

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up. 

The very first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Dawn of the Dead. My mom loved it, so when it was rereleased years later, she took me along. I saw Creepshow at the drive-in, but had to turn around and watch The Sword in the Stone on another screen during one particular scene that will remain unspoken.

I grew up on horror: Children of the Corn, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween. These weren’t just movies, they were lessons in survival, in what it means to be the one who makes it out. One of the first movies I saw on my own was Bad Dreams, and that giant fan scene has lived rent-free in my brain ever since, a moment I still haven’t quite shaken.

I’m laying all of this out so you understand exactly where I’m coming from. I loved The Final Girl Support Group.

This book reads like the twisted sequel to every slasher I’ve ever seen — not the movies themselves, but what happens after the credits roll. The five women at its center survived everything the genre throws at you: summer camp massacres, sorority house bloodbaths, a home invasion that wiped out an entire family, miles of road turned into a moving nightmare. And then there’s Lynette — the book’s version of Laurie Strode — a woman shaped by a killer who tore through her town and left her to live in the aftermath. If you’ve seen the recent Halloween trilogy, you already understand what that kind of survival does to a person.

In the wrong hands, this could have been a straightforward slasher novel, something predictable, something easy to put down. In the hands of Grady Hendrix, it becomes something sharper and more deliberate. He shifts the focus from the violence itself to what lingers after it, memory, damage, and the way the past refuses to stay buried.

Because if horror teaches you anything, it’s that the past is never really dead.

Challenges: Cloak and Dagger 

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

 

Synopsis From Dust Jacket: 

Colonel and Mrs. Bantry are shocked when they wake up one morning to find the dead body of a young platinum blonde on the floor of their library. Nobody in the village of St. Mary Mead seems to know who she is, but everyone has a theory about the crime. The ensuing investigation follows a twisted trail from the quiet village to an upscale hotel in the nearby town of Danemouth, where the victim worked as a ballroom dancer and bridge hostess. As the local inspectors sift through emerging clues to identify a suspect, Miss Jane Marple, St. Mary Meade's resident sleuth, always seems to be one step ahead of them. 

First of all, forgive the slightly askew book cover — I love this edition far too much not to use it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manage to take a perfectly lined-up photo of it, and eventually I decided close was good enough. 

If I’m remembering correctly, I haven’t reread The Body in the Library in ten or twenty years, so it’s been a while since I’ve spent time with this convoluted caper. It had been long enough that I found myself genuinely surprised by the fiendish little scheme Miss Marple exposed. While I remembered the mastermind behind the murder, I had completely forgotten how it was accomplished, so I took great delight in letting Miss Marple fill in the blanks for me all over again.

Agatha Christie had a mind like no other. She gives you every clue you need and then buries them in just enough distraction to make you doubt your own intelligence. Somehow, when the final reveal arrives, you don’t feel tricked — you feel outmatched. That balance is precisely why she has been my favorite author since I was given two of her books for Christmas in the fifth grade.

I do wish Miss Marple were a little more at the forefront in this one. Too much of the story belongs to the professional inspectors and not quite enough to her quiet deductions. But that’s a normal reaction for me — I almost always want more Miss Marple in her books and less Hercule Poirot in his. I suppose I’ve always enjoyed the old lady with a knitting basket more than a man who refers to himself in the third person.

Challenges: Cloak and Dagger, Mount TBR

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best, including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, and Ira Levin’s Death Trap. 

But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.

To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.

Malcolm is another of those characters I relish spending time with. This was my third visit to the Old Devils Bookstore, and like the first two times, I found myself wanting to settle into a comfortable chair with one of my favorite mysteries, the shop cat Nero purring away in my lap, and spend the day visiting with Mal as he works between customers. He has an aura about him that I find oddly comforting, and I can easily imagine us becoming fast friends. The fact that he’s about as unreliable as any narrator can be just makes me love him more.

I’m a sucker for unreliable narrators, and Mal does not disappoint. Spending extended time with him lets you know the man has secrets. You may not know what those secrets are — or just how painful they might be — but it’s clear that everything is not right in his world.

I’m not sure how much of my love for this book comes from my genuine fondness for Mal or from the way Peter Swanson weaves a deep love and respect for the Golden Age of classic mysteries into a tale of faulty memories, buried secrets, and a few “perfect” murders thrown in for good measure. Either way, it’s a story anchored by a character I thoroughly enjoy — one I’m sure I’ll be visiting again and again in the years to come.

Challenges: Calendar of Crime, Cloak and Dagger 

N or M? by Agatha Christie

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

It is World War II, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces an even more sinister threat from “the enemy within”—Nazis posing as ordinary citizens.

With pressure mounting, the intelligence service appoints two unlikely spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colorful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is no stroll along the promenade—N and M have just murdered Britain’s finest agent and no one can be trusted...

I fell in love with Agatha Christie in the fifth grade. By then, I had torn through every Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys book I could get my tiny—but growing—hands on. I was firmly hooked on mysteries and constantly on the lookout for something new. That Christmas, I received two of her books, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and The A.B.C. Murders, and I devoured them both in short order. She has remained my favorite author ever since, and when I first started this blog, I challenged myself to read all of her books in publishing order. It’s high time I got back to it.

This is going to be a very short review, because I don’t have a lot to say. While I will always choose an Agatha Christie novel over most modern mysteries, they don’t all work equally well for me. I thoroughly enjoy Tommy and Tuppence as characters; I’ve just never been the biggest fan of espionage stories, even when they’re written by Agatha Christie. As always, her plotting is damn near perfect, and no matter how often I read her, I’m still surprised by how she layers details—letting them build on one another and painting a picture that never fails to entertain me. I’m just not as entertained by spies as I am by good old-fashioned murders.

Still, I loved diving back into her work again. Agatha Christie remains one of my literary happy places, and I’m excited to spend the coming year working my way through her books once more. They may not all be favorites, but Christie is still Christie—and that’s more than enough for me.

Challenges: Mount TBR, Cloak and Dagger 

Red Rabbit Ghost by Jen Julian

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Eighteen years ago, an infant Jesse Calloway was found wailing on the bank of a river, his mother dead beside him. The mystery of her death has haunted him all his life, and despite every effort, he has never been able to uncover the truth. 

Now someone is promising him answers. An anonymous source claims that they'll tell him everything. But only if he returns to the hometown he swore he'd left in the rearview. 

But in Blacknot, North Carolina, nothing is as it seems. It's a town that buries its secrets deep. Jesse's relentless investigation garners attraction from intimidating locals, including his dangerous ex-boyfriend. And he'll soon discover that this backwater town hides a volatile and haunting place on its desolate edge.

I picked this up off a table at our west side Barnes & Noble, and I knew in less than a minute that it was coming home with me. The cover alone is worth the purchase, but then I read the synopsis—and really, who doesn’t love a good queer, haunted-house, Southern Gothic tale? That was all she wrote. I got suckered into buying another book when I already own far too many that are still waiting to be read. Now that I’ve read it, some of that initial luster has faded a bit, but I’m still fricking glad I experienced this one for myself.

I’m going to start off by saying that Jen Julian’s prose is a pleasure to read. It’s lush and evocative, creating characters and landscapes that have been lingering in my mind for days. With her words, she painted Blacknot, NC into vivid life. I experienced the putrid smell of the congested pig farms and felt the spongy give of rotting floorboards as Jesse explored the rooms of the Night House. I felt the desperation and rage Alice experienced as she watched her world crumble around her. The fetid smell and cloying humidity of the swamp clung to my skin and seeped into my lungs. Red Rabbit Ghost is a fever dream that unmercifully assaults the senses, and I was there for every second of it.

And yet, as much as I loved feeling like I was there with Jesse and Alice, that may be part of the reason I didn’t fully connect with the story as a whole. I need to phrase this next part as carefully as I can, so bear with me—I may ramble a bit. The landscape of this nightmarish world, full of ghosts and magic, felt so tangible that I think it may have gotten in the way of making the characters feel just as real. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the time I spent with Jesse, but the frantic pace he kept—trying to find his mom and uncover what happened to her—didn’t allow who he was as a person to come to the forefront. He felt two-dimensional for most of the book, and I hate that for him. He deserved to feel as real as the world he inhabited.

Alice, for the most part, was so full of rage and hurt that, despite the amount of page time she had, she never felt fully real to me at any point in the story. That leaves the side characters—including the ex-boyfriend I wanted dumped in the swamp for the alligators to feed on—who I can only describe as storytelling props. They were there, they did the narrative jobs they were written to do, but they felt more like NPCs in a random, generic video game.

Now, based on the length of that last section, you might think I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did—but you’d be wrong. While Blacknot, NC isn’t a place I’d ever want to experience in the real world, I loved the time I spent with Jesse as he navigated dirt roads, swampy backwoods, and the Night House in search of the truth. It’s just not a story I feel compelled to revisit anytime soon.

Challenges: Mount TBR

Murder Most Haunted by Emma Mason

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

On her last day as a Detective, Midge McGowan is given the retirement present from hell: a ticket to a haunted house tour. She’ll have to spend the weekend before Christmas ghost-hunting in an isolated mansion with a group of misfits, including a know-it-all paranormal investigator and a has-been pop star.

The guests soon realize that the house has a mind of its own... and that they might not be the only ones there. An eerie figure appears on the property, and then the unthinkable happens: someone is murdered in a room that's been locked from the inside.

When a blizzard cuts the group off from help, the house’s own dark secrets begin to surface, and Midge can’t shake the creeping sense that they are walking into a nightmare. Could a ghost really be responsible? Or is the culprit one of the guests, who have somehow, impossibly, endeared themselvesto Midge?

Because I’m still not entirely sure whether I liked this book or not, this may end up being a rather short—and possibly a little rambling—review. Reading Murder Most Haunted was an odd experience.

The first half of the book was a slog. Honestly, if I hadn’t needed this one for a couple of reading challenges, I might not have pushed myself through it. Our lead detective is, at least initially, a deeply miserable character. She reads as someone so unhappy in every aspect of her life that it robs her of any personality beyond what is imposed upon her by others in her life. It’s the kind of unhappiness that becomes such a dominant part of who a person is that Midge starts off feeling less like a fully realized human being and more like an automaton moving through the motions of life.

She has quirks, but early on they come across as just further evidence of how damaged she is. The old adage “misery loves company” pretty much sums up my first impressions of the rest of the cast as well. I didn’t like a single one of them at the beginning, and I found myself quietly hoping that more than one body might turn up.

Gradually, though, something shifted. I’m not entirely sure if the book itself started to grow on me, if the characters became more fleshed out and likable, or if I simply acclimated to its tone. Whatever the reason, as I kept reading, Midge began to make more sense. Her quirks and worldview gained context, and I stopped seeing her as a caricature and started seeing her as a woman who’d been dealt a truly shitty hand in life and did the best she could with what she had at the time.

I’m still not sure I like her, but by the end I had more respect for her—especially once the murderer was revealed.

As for the mystery itself, it was… fine. I’m a sucker for a locked-room murder, and I think the author did a reasonably solid job constructing this one. I don’t see myself rereading this book, but I would be willing to pick up a second Midge installment—provided the podcaster and the pop star come along for the ride.

Challenges: Mount TBR, Cloak and Dagger, Calendar of Crime 

Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge

 

I realized I had left off a challenge when I wrote about the first two the other day. My friend Carol over at Carol’s Notebook hosts The Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, and since the mystery genre will always be my first love, I’m signing up.

I’m going for the Sherlock Holmes level, which means I’ll need to read and review at least 56 mystery novels. You can head over to the sign-up post for all the details.

Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen

 

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Private Investigator Evander “Andy” Mills’ next case takes him out of his comfort zone in San Francisco—and much to his dismay, back home to Los Angeles. After a secretive queer rights organization called the Mattachine Society enlists Andy to find some missing members, he must dodge not only motorcycle gangs and mysterious forces, but his own mother, too. 

Avoiding her proves to be a challenge when the case leads Andy to the psychological clinic she works at. Worlds collide, buried secrets are dug up, and Andy realizes he’s going to have to burn it all down this time if he wants to pull off a rescue. With secret societies, drugs, and doctors swirling around him, time is running out for Andy to locate the missing and get them to safety. And for him to make it back to San Francisco in one piece.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but for the last four years I’ve started the new year with Andy. Lavender House was my first book of 2023, The Bell in the Fog kicked off 2024, Rough Pages started 2025, and now Mirage City is my first book of 2026. I hesitate to call it a ritual, but I’m not sure what else to call it. Habit? Tradition? Compulsion feels a little dramatic—but honestly, my reading year wouldn’t feel right without Andy, Gene, Lee, and Elise being the first characters I spend time with. It feels like coming home.

I’m not going to recap the plot, mostly because the synopsis already does a solid job. What I do want to talk about is Andy himself. I love watching him work a case. As this series has gone on, Andy has grown—not just as a detective, but as a queer man learning how to love himself and figure out where he fits in the community around him. He was always smart, always observant, but there’s a deeper sense of compassion and justice in how he approaches his work now. That growth feels earned, and it’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to this series.

I went back and forth for a while about how much I wanted to say about some of the themes Mirage City tackles. At one point, I had several long paragraphs written about conversion therapy and the ways our community has been brutalized and killed in the name of “curing” us—aversion therapy, forced commitments to asylums, chemical castration, electric shocks, lobotomies, all of it. This wasn’t ancient history. This happened to boys barely in their teens, and it’s still within living memory. In some forms, it’s still happening today.

Since this is a book review and not a queer history lesson, I’ll spare you all of that—but I think it’s important to say that the weight of that history is very much present in this story.

And honestly, that’s one of the many reasons I love this series so much. Lev AC Rosen has an incredible way of weaving queer history into his mysteries without ever making it feel like a lecture. For example, I’ve known about the Mattachine Society for years, but I didn’t know that the oldest continuously active queer organization is actually a biker gang called the Satyrs. That kind of detail matters. Our history isn’t taught in schools—if anything, it’s erased or glossed over—so I’m always grateful to authors who find ways to pass it along through fiction. So much of who we are as a community was shaped by that history, whether we realize it or not. 

I do want to be clear, though: Mirage City isn’t a heavy, joyless read. The themes are serious, but they never overwhelm the story or the characters. At its heart, this is a well-crafted mystery set in the 1950s that’s just as much about perseverance, self-acceptance, found family, and love as it is about crime. It’s another reminder of why starting my year with Andy feels so right—and why I already know I’ll be doing it again.

Challenges: Mount TBR, Cloak & Dagger 

Mount TBR and Calendar of Crime Reading Challenges

I used to love reading challenges, and at the height of my blogging days it was normal for me to participate in five to ten different ones at a time. I loved how they expanded my reading and nudged me toward books I might have otherwise missed. It was one of the facets of blogging I missed the most.

This year, since I still feel like I’m easing my way back into blogging, I think I’m going to keep it to fewer than five—at least for now.

The first two are both hosted by Bev at My Reader’s Block, one of the best bloggers or people I know. 

Mout TBR Reading Challenge

I think the name is pretty self-explanatory, and the rules are simple. You must commit to a level when you sign up; I’m going for Mt. Everest, which is a 100-book commitment. All of the books must be ones you owned prior to January 1, 2025. You can read the rest of the rules by following the link above.

Calendar of Crime Reading Challenge

I love mysteries, and at one point in my life they were pretty much all I was reading. I’ve missed them, and since one of my personal challenges is to jump back into the genre with both feet, I thought this challenge might be fun. The goal is to commit to one book per month for all of 2026; the catch is that each book must fit one of the categories set for that month. You can read all the details by following the link above.

Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

 

I’m a little late getting this posted, but for whatever reason I’ve been ridiculously tired lately. All I’ve wanted to do after work is crawl into bed and watch a few episodes of Angel. On nights when I’m feeling especially ambitious, I’ll pick up Mirage City by Lev AC Rosen—my first book of the year—which I’m about halfway through. I’m hoping to finish it today, but past experience tells me not to make any bold promises.

When I signed up for the Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge, I went all in and committed to the highest tier—the Christmas Tree level—which meant reading at least five books with a Christmas setting. It came down to the wire, but I did manage to squeak by and complete my five-book commitment.

The Geek Who Saved Christmas by Annabeth Albert

The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch

Look Up, Handsome by Jack Strange 

Hold My Hand, It's Christmas by K.C. Wells 

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson 

Since I’m a Christmas movie fanatic, I also signed up for the Fa La La La Films side challenge, which simply required watching a whole bunch of Christmas movies. I start watching Christmas movies in early November, and some of them I’ll throw on whenever the mood strikes. What that means, unfortunately, is that a few of my all-time favorites were watched before the official challenge start date. And alas, others didn’t get watched at all, mostly because I was feeling lazy and didn’t feel like messing with the Blu-ray player.

That said, I still managed to watch twenty-six Christmas movies, most of them very much in the Hallmark vein. I also watched twelve of the Rankin/Bass TV specials, during the one stretch where I actually put my Blu-ray player to work.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Ashley Smith, and American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alon, but a last-minute invitation-only fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor, festooned with pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is not only mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma's aloof and handsome brother. 

But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she'd ever imagined? 

Over thirty years later the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons later.

I had resigned myself to not completing my commitment to read five or six Christmas-themed books for the Yuletide Spirit reading challenge. I was okay with it. I read four solid Christmas romances and enjoyed them, even if I never got to the stack of mysteries I bought specifically for the season.

Then, while reorganizing one of the bookcases in my bedroom, I was struck by an epiphany sent by the Icelandic Christmas spirits.

Okay, not really—but I did find my copy of The Christmas Guest, a short novella by Peter Swanson, that I bought the year before, shelved, and promptly forgot about until I stumbled across it during my spontaneous bookcase cleaning on Sunday. This was exactly what I needed to complete the challenge. I may have even done the Snoopy dance, if only in my head. As soon as I finished my chores, I hopped onto my bed and promptly read all ninety-six pages.

I absolutely loved Eight Perfect Murders (another book I’ll now get to write a review of at some point), to the point that it was one of my favorite books of 2020. Normally, when I love a book that much, I tear through the author’s backlist and keep up with their new releases as they’re published. For whatever reason, I never really did that with Peter Swanson. I don’t know if it was because none of the synopses grabbed me, or if his books were competing with others I was more excited about at the time. Either way, I didn’t pick up another one of his books until I bought The Christmas Guest last Christmas season. After reading this, his other books may stay on the back burner a bit longer.

I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t fully connect with the story as it unfolded. It could be as simple as the length not allowing me to become fully invested in Ashley. Most of the story is told through her diary entries from her time in the house, and like most diaries (my own journals included) from the college years, those entries can be annoying, shrill, delusional, angsty, repetitive, and about a dozen other adjectives that would be just as accurate.

It could also be that the twists were a little obvious. After reading two of his stories, I can tell Swanson shares my enjoyment of unreliable narratives, though this novella puts its own spin on that trope. For me, the length worked against it here—there just wasn’t enough room to lay the groundwork in a way that allowed the twists to be more subtle and genuinely surprising. Regardless of the reason, while this was an okay read for me, it isn’t one I see myself returning to.

As I was typing this up on my tablet, I remembered that I’ve heard great things about Nine Lives, so maybe I’ll give that one a try in the coming year. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it as much as I did Eight Perfect Murders.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit 

Hold My Hand, It's Christmas by K.C. Wells

Synopsis From Goodreads:

Best. Pickup line. Ever.

Eli Winters wasn’t expecting romance to strike between aisles of lumber and LED reindeer. He’s just home for the Thanksgiving weekend, helping his sister with her bakery and trying not to drown in the town’s over-the-top Christmas cheer. Then, in Home Depot’s lighting section, a handsome stranger grabs his hand and says, “My ex just walked in—please, play along.”

Before Eli can protest, they’re strolling past garlands and wreaths like the world’s most domestic couple. It’s not until the stranger disappears that Eli realizes: there was no ex. Just the most ridiculous—and effective—pickup line ever.

Noah Carter didn’t plan to lie. He’s the town’s perpetually cheerful event coordinator, always smiling, always “fine.” But the truth is, the holidays have felt hollow for a long time. One impulsive moment in a hardware store changes everything.

When Eli’s sister ‘volunteers’ him to help Noah organize the Christmas Festival, sparks turn into something deeper. Amid tangled lights, late-night cocoa, and small-town gossip, Eli and Noah discover that sometimes the best love stories start with a little pretending.

Because when it’s Christmas—and your heart’s finally ready—you don’t just hold someone’s hand.

You hold on.

If Look Up, Handsome was a low-angst romance, Hold My Hand, It’s Christmas has about as much angst as a perfectly prepared picnic—one you didn’t have to plan—in the most idyllic location your imagination can come up with. You’re there with the man/woman of your dreams, and they are everything you ever hoped they’d be. There is absolutely no tension, miscommunication, or misunderstandings between Eli and Noah. They both experience a little self-doubt, but I don’t think there’s a single human being alive who doesn’t have a twinge or two of self-doubt when first meeting someone. I refuse to call that angst, especially since neither of them lets it keep the completely besotted looks off their faces when they glance at each other. This is the most angst-free romance book I’ve ever read, and because it’s a Christmas book, I’m absolutely here for it.

This was instalove on steroids, a trope that—when done wrong—can leave you with incredulous thoughts floating through your mind as you read the most ridiculous nonsense ever put on paper. But when done right, when written by an author who knows exactly what they’re doing, it feels like a perfect spring day, lying on the fluffiest blanket ever woven, stretched out beneath an old apple tree. The branches form a canopy that blocks just the right amount of sunshine as you stare up at puffy white clouds, picking out the ones that look like bunny rabbits and puppies. In other words, when instalove is written right, it leaves you with the happiest feeling in the world, and you buy into every single word and glance the two MCs exchange. Hold My Hand, It’s Christmas is a perfect example of this, a story that leaves you believing in love at first sight, soul mates, and the magic of Christmas.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit 

Look Up, Handsome by Jack Strange

Synopsis From Goodreads:

Quinn wants to save his bookshop, the last thing he needs is to fall in love…

Hay-on-Wye’s only queer bookshop is always a hive of activity. So when it’s threatened with closure, its owner Quinn Oxford is determined to do whatever it takes to save his beloved shop.

That is until romantic novelist Noah Sage arrives in town. Gorgeous, brooding and clearly unhappy to be there, Noah is the distraction Quinn doesn’t need. Noah has a history with Hay and it’s one he’d rather not face. But when the snow leaves him stranded, he’s left with no choice.

Hay is a small town, meaning Quinn can’t help but bump into Noah wherever he goes. And as the two grow closer together, is it possible that Noah’s feelings towards Hay will thaw? Can Quinn have a real-life romance and save his beloved bookshop? Or will he need a Christmas miracle…

When I signed up for the Yuletide Spirit reading challenge, I bought a whole stack of Christmas mysteries and a ghost story anthology, and I haven’t read a single one of them. Instead, I’ve been reading Christmas romances and binging a truly impressive number of Hallmark-ish holiday movies. Apparently my brain had one plan, but my heart (or soul) needed something else entirely this holiday season.

There’s a blurb on the cover of Look Up, Handsome that calls the book a love letter to bookstores, and it’s the most accurate blurb I’ve ever read. Kings & Queens is the type of bookstore I’ve always wanted to own myself — except mine would be full of mysteries and ghost stories, with a huge queer section. It’s the kind of place where you could spend hours wandering the shelves before settling into a chair and getting lost in an author’s world. More importantly, it’s the kind of bookstore that builds community.

It’s the place a parent struggling to understand their child’s sexuality or changing gender identity can go to find answers — and people willing to listen. It’s where someone questioning their own sexuality might find guidance and insight into what they’re feeling, hopefully leading to self-acceptance. It’s a gathering place for anyone who needs to find their people, their tribe, somewhere they can feel welcomed and protected. It’s the kind of place every LGBTQ+ person needs in their life, even in this age of social media.

After writing that last paragraph, I'm not sure where to go next with this review. I can't find a smooth transition, especially after typing and retyping a few sentences that never felt worthy — or even necessary — to what I was trying to say. I’m not ashamed to admit I feel a little lost.

So let’s do this instead: I’ll simply say that I adored this book for exactly what it is.

It’s a low-angst romance between two people who, despite living in a world of words, don’t communicate particularly well at first. Quinn, who opened his bookstore in memory of his father, has been a little lost since his dad died. He loves the world he’s built for himself, but he’s also been living his life somewhat passively. Noah, on the other hand, despite his success as a gay romance author, has allowed the past to dictate the terms of his life. So consumed by what happened to his family when he was a child, he’s chosen extreme avoidance as a coping mechanism.

I’m not saying they aren’t fully realized characters — because they absolutely are — and I loved them both, even if I liked Quinn just a tiny bit more. I enjoyed them as individuals, but I absolutely adored them as a couple.

I have one more Christmas romance review left to write for the challenge, which still leaves me one book short of my five-book goal unless I manage to squeeze one more in. Either way, I still have a respectable stack of seasonal mysteries waiting for next year. Assuming, of course, I don’t get to them before then.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit 

The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make- out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.

But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.

Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.

It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

Most of my romance reading happens on my tablet. At first, that was because I was slightly embarrassed to be seen in public reading a romance novel, and hiding a cover is infinitely easier when the book is digital. The only other solution I could think of was creating false dust jackets for physical books, and honestly, I’m just not that crafty. These days, it’s mostly practical: Kindle Unlimited makes my romance reading a hell of a lot cheaper. I do still buy physical copies occasionally, but it’s usually my favorite Mary Calmes books — the ones that, for whatever reason, feel like they belong both on my shelves and on my tablet.

The Nightmare Before Kissmas is one of the very rare exceptions I’ve made to those unspoken rules. Last December, while browsing Barnes & Noble, I wandered past the romance table — something I always do, even though it’s almost entirely straight romances. Every now and then, though, there will be one or two gay romance titles mixed in, and that December, The Nightmare Before Kissmas was one of them. Without any real conscious decision-making, my hands reached out, and before I fully processed what was happening, I was at the counter paying for it. And then it sat on my shelf for a full year, patiently waiting to be read.

I knew going in that it would be cute. I mean, it’s the Crown Prince of Christmas falling for the Crown Prince of Halloween — the cuteness is baked right into the premise. What I wasn’t expecting were the political machinations underpinning the story, particularly a Santa so consumed by grief and anger that his own children become pawns in a larger power struggle. I also wasn’t expecting to be just as invested in that surrounding story as I was in the romance itself. And the romance, for lack of a better word, was absolutely adorable.

Coal and Hex aren’t exactly champions of communication, but given their roles within their respective holidays and the immense familial expectations placed on them, that feels not just believable but inevitable. They’re clearly right for each other, and it’s impossible not to root for them as they try to carve out space for themselves beyond what duty demands. Since the story is told entirely from Coal’s perspective, we only see the relationship through his eyes, but he’s refreshingly honest about his own flaws — particularly his rebellious streak, which has caused more than a little chaos in the past. Over the course of the book, Coal does a great deal of growing up, driven partly by his relationship with Hex, but mostly by his desire to repair the damage his father has inflicted on Christmas and the other winter holidays.

I absolutely adored Coal and Hex, and while I know they’ll appear again in later books, I’m already sad to leave them behind as the main protagonists — especially Coal. Not someone I’ll admit to developing a crush on, but definitely someone for whom I gained a tremendous amount of respect.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit

The Geek Who Saved Christmas by Annabeth Albert

Synopsis From Goodreads:

Gideon Holiday is the perfect neighbor. Need a cup of sugar? Spare folding chair? Extra batteries? He’s always ready to help. And he’s waited years for his hot, grumpy, silver fox neighbor, Paul, to need him. For anything. But this December, Gideon would be happy if he could just get the Scrooge-like Paul on board with the neighborhood holiday lights fundraiser.

Paul Frost has no intention of decking his halls or blazing any Yule logs. Even if his spunky bowtie-clad neighbor does look perfect for unwrapping, Paul would prefer to hide away until December is done. But when his beloved younger brother announces an unexpected visit, Paul needs all the trimmings for a festive homecoming—and fast.

Luckily, Gideon is there with a color-coded plan to save Christmas. Soon Paul’s hanging lights, trimming trees, and rolling out cookies. And steaming up his new flannel sheets with Gideon. How did that happen?

It’ll take some winter magic to preserve their happiness and keep these rival neighbors together longer than one holiday season.

I love Christmas movies to the point that I start watching them on November 1st. I have my favorites — the ones I own and rewatch every year — like Christmas in Connecticut (1945), which I watch in bed as if the season depends on it, or The Ref (1994), which I watch every Christmas Eve while wrapping presents.

Since the point of this post is to write a clever review that entices you to read The Geek Who Saved Christmas by Annabeth Albert (and for the record, I kind of suck at reviewing romance novels), I won’t give you a full list of every Christmas movie and TV special I own, though I reserve the right to do that at a later date. The reason I brought up movies at all is to highlight my absolute addiction to Hallmark-ish Christmas movies of all stripes, and how badly I want to see this book adapted into a TV movie. If there was ever a Christmas romance begging to be told on the small screen, it’s this one.

We have one MC who’s the type to run around helping others — volunteering, pitching in, and coming to the rescue more often than not. He has plenty of friends, but he keeps himself busy because he never quite feels like he fits or fully belongs in their lives. The other MC is the grumpy, slightly standoffish neighbor who doesn’t interact much with anyone, mostly because he’s hiding some hurt of his own. Neither of them had stellar childhoods, and both are sitting on a deep well of insecurity. All of which makes them perfect for each other.

There’s a reason clichés and tropes work so damn well in romance. What Annabeth Albert achieves with them in The Geek Who Saved Christmas is pure rom-com gold, and I’m already craving more. Stories like this don’t usually change your life or alter the way you see the world, but that’s not what I want from most romance stories I pick up or choose to watch. I want to feel good the entire time I’m reading. I want to root for the couple, coo and sigh every time one of them does or says something sweet, get a little angsty when communication breaks down, and then cheer out loud when they finally end up on the same page again.

I got all of that here. I felt all of that while reading Gideon and Paul’s story. This is the perfect holiday romance.

Challenges: Yuletide Spirit

The 2025 Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge

 

Woo-hoo! I'm signing up for my first, and probably last, reading challenge of 2025. My friend Michelle at The Mystical Lantern has been hosting this challenge for what feels like forever, and now that I'm blogging again, I can finally participate once more. I’m a little late to the game since the challenge started on November 24th, but that’s okay.

I'm going for the Christmas Tree level, which is 5 or 6 books, and I’m definitely joining the Fa La La La Films side challenge as well—especially since I’ve already watched eighteen Christmas movies, eight of which have been since the 24th.

If you’d like to join in the fun, head over to the sign-up post here.

The Silence of Ghosts by Jonathan Aycliffe

Synopsis From Back Cover: 

Dominic Lancaster hoped to prove himself to his family by excelling in the Navy during World War II. Instead he is wounded while serving as a gunner and loses his leg. Still recovering from his wounds and the trauma of his amputation when the Blitz begins, Dominic finds himself shuffled off to the countrysideend by his family, along with his partially deaf sister, Octavia. The crumbling family estate on the shores of Ullswater is an old, much-neglected place that doesn't seem to promise much in the way of happiness or recovery.

Something more than a friendship begins to flourish between Dominic and his nurse, Rose, in the late autumn of that English countryside, as he struggles to come to terms with his new life as an amputee. Another thing that seems to be flourishing is Octavia's hearing. 

As winter descends, sinister forces seem to be materializing around Octavia, who is hearing voices of children. After seeing things that no one else can see and hearing things that no one else can hear, Octavia is afflicted with a sickness that cannot be explained. With Rose's help, Dominic sets out to find the truth behind the voices that have haunted his sister. In doing so, he uncovers an even older, darker evil that threatens not only Octavia but also Rose and himself. 

There is something about this time of year that has me craving a good ghost story. Halloween merchandise is lining the store shelves, the serious decorators have already started on their homes, scary movies become habitual viewing, and my reading tastes get darker. Don't get me wrong, I love a good scare anytime of the year, but this is when I want to wallow in them.

Haunted house stories are my weakness, and I can rarely pass one up. Of my favorite books of all time, at least four of them feature a house I would do anything to visit in real life. I'm not sure how I stumbled across this one, but I'm damn glad I did.

Atmosphere is the key to a well crafted ghost story, and boy did this have a suffocating aura permeating the pages. It enfolds the reader, wrapping them in dread. It crawls in through the readers eyes, burrowing its way into brain tissue. As a reader, I found myself unable to put the book down, because I did not want Dominic, Rose, and Octavia to fade away, lost amongst the depair.

Despite a postscripted ending that I could have done without, and not fully sure I truly understood, if this is typical of Mr. Aycliffe's work, I can't wait to wallow around with him some more. Now, I just need the weather man to get with the program.

FrightFall Readathon

If you know me personally, or have been following the blog for a while, you know I love Halloween. I love losing myself in a spine tingling tale. I dim the lights as low as I can deal with, turn on the electric fireplace, and with a mug of tea at hand, I burrow down and get lost in tales of ghosts, monsters, and murder.

My good friend Michelle of The True Book Addict has been sponsoring readathons for a while on a separate page, Seasons of Reading. She has been doing this one for a few years now, but this is the first time the entire month of October is in play. Once I knew that, I knew I had to jump on board this year. To learn all the details please visit the sign up page.

I've already picked out a few books I'm wanting to get through in those 31 days. The will probably change, but here is what I'm planning on as of right now.

Learning Curve By Kaje Harper

Synopsis From Back Cover:

Mac is afraid he'll never recover enough to go back to being a cop, while Tony is afraid he will.

Three months after being shot, Detective Jared MacLean is healing, but he's afraid it may not be enough to go back on the job.  He won't give up, though.  Being a cop is written deep in Mac's bones, and he'll do whatever it takes to carry his badge again.  Tony used to wish he could have Mac safely home, but watching his strong husband battle disabilities is farm from Tony's dream come true. When Mac is asked to consult on a case involving one of Tony's students, both men will have to face old demons and new fears to find a way to move forward together. 

All good things must come to an end, and unless Kaje Harper writes a fifth book, which I'm praying for, I have to say goodbye to Mac and Tony.  That doesn't mean that this won't be a series I continuously go back to, because I will, but I'll miss getting to see where their lives take them after what proved to be the most life affirming book of the series.

Mac is struggling to not only go back on the job after his near fatal shooting left him battling aphasia, but he is having to figure out who he is as a person, a husband, a father, and as a cop.  Before he met Tony, and formed their family, most of his identity was wrapped up in his career.  If he can't go back to it, which I'll relieve your fears here, he does, he isn't sure how to go about redefining himself.  He loves Tony and the kids, but he is his job, it's who he sees himself as.

Then you have poor Tony who someone has to come to terms with the man he loves, the husband he almost lost, going back to a job that almost killed him. I can't imagine being the spouse of a police officer.  I would be terrified every time he went to work that he wouldn't be coming back, it's not a situation I envy anyone, especially in today's climate.  I think the author does a wonderful job balancing Tony and Mac as individuals, as well as a couple.  They both need different things, in both of those roles, and it's not always easy to reconcile them.  Tony's fears, and Mac's need to be the man he sees himself have are two vastly conflicting issues, and the two of them handle them in a very affirming way.

We also get to see more of Mac's background in this book, and after meeting his siblings and dad, it's very easy to see how he became the man we met in the first book.  The fact he was able to overcome, and accept a life with Tony, after his childhood is amazing, and speaks to the inner strength he has. And when you compare his family to Tony's, it's even more apparent that Tony completes Mac in ways that I don't think another man would have been able to.

Challenges: Men In Uniform

The Anniversary by Amy Gutman

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

It's been five years since the execution of Steven Gage, a devious, charming psychopath who took the lives of more than a hundred women.

In those five years, three women connected with his case have moved on.  His attorney has rid herself of the stigma of defending Gage.  A true-crime writer has started a new project after her bestseller about his rampage.  And Steven's ex-girlfriend has made a new life for herself - one where she won't be reminded that she once shared her home with a monster. 

But someone hasn't moved on.  On the fifth anniversary of Gage's execution, each of the three women gets a private note... a chilling message that lets them all know they haven't been forgotten, and that in someone's dark imagination, Gage's legacy of terror lives on. 

At the time of his sentencing, Gage issued a terrifying edict that all three women hoped was meaningless.  As threats against them turn deadly, the past explodes into the present.  And one woman is in the fight of her life to uncover who is responsible - a killer who is determined to start up the string of murders right where they stopped. 

Before I go on a semi-rant, I should probably let you know that I don't dislike this book.  For what it is, a typical thriller, it's well written and I really do enjoy the characters.   There was nothing about it that surprised me, but it kept me entertained enough to finish reading it.  Who knows, I may even reread it at some point in time.

After reading this book, and comparing it to the various thrillers I've read over the years, I think I'm finally figuring out the problem I tend to have with them.  When I say "them", I'm really talking about the books that feature a female protagonist, who just happens to have a deep dark secret in her past.  They all seem to use a particular plot point, and it's getting rather old.

I'm trying to figure out why, when the female protagonist starts to have their lives fall apart, they start to suspect their boyfriend/husband.  Whether it involves people around them getting killed, harassing phone calls/letters, or odd occurrences, the suspicion ends up falling on the man in their lives. Normally the man tends to be a second husband, or the first serious boyfriend after whatever traumatic event happened in the past.  I will have to admit that the suspicion seems to come naturally to the women, normally because it was at the hands of a previous relationship that the bad thing happened to them.  But that doesn't excuse the laziness of the author, and I do think it's lazy.

I think plot points that are as predictable as rainfall during a hurricane hurt a book.  Is there really no other red herring you can throw in there?  It rarely ends up being that the new bad guy is the new man in the protagonist's life.  In these books, the new guy is really just a stooge thrown into the book to divert the woman's attention away from the real threat.  Just once, I would like to read a book where the new guys is a fully drawn character, integral to the woman's life, and never comes under suspicion.  I'm not going to be holding my breath, cause I think I would suffocate before it ever happens, but a guy can dream.

Challenges: A-Z Mystery