Review: The Winemakers by Jan Moran

Caterina Rosetta has got some big time choices to make in her life but her options are limited.

She’s had a daughter out of wedlock with a man who she thinks has abandoned her….and since it’s the 1950’s, having a child out of wedlock basically means social suicide.

She hasn’t told her mother about the baby because she knows her mother will basically disown her so she needs to give the baby up for adoption…..but she can’t bring herself to do that either.

Her mother basically raised her all on her own, so why can’t she raise her daughter by herself? Caterina is an accomplished sommelier who has grown up in a family of winemakers. She is sure she can support herself in some way.

On a fateful trip to visit her mother, she confesses that she has a child and after a row between the two, Caterina is not sure what to do about her situation. Then a man shows up at the vineyard looking for Caterina.

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Review: Waging War (The Immortal Descendants #4) by April White

For the last couple of years I’ve been a big fan of the Immortal Descendants series! It’s been really fun watching the series evolve and mature over the years!

I love the main characters and the premise for the story so when Waging War came out I naturally agreed to review it!

In the previous books, Clocker Saira Elian, time travels through multiple different periods to save friends, family, of course stop the Mongers from gaining power. This book is no different….this time we find Saira time traveling to WWII to try and stop a brutal massacre.

Saira and her friend Ringo, travel back to WWII Bletchley Park to team up with vampire (and Saira’s love interest) to try and stop said massacre. Together they work to crack the Nazi code and expose a Monger traitor intent on changing the course of history.

They also meet up with some new characters, one being a female commando from the French resistance, to hunt down an elite unit of Monger soldiers – Hitler’s Werewolves – before the terror squad can strike a fatal blow at the heart of the Allied war effort.

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Review: Lies and Other Acts of Love by Kristy Woodson Harvey

I don’t typically read a lot of ‘Southern fiction’ or women’s fiction, but there was something about this intriguing cover and description that lured me in.

After sixty years of marriage and five daughters, Lynn “Lovey” White knows that all of us, from time to time, need to use our little white lies.

Her granddaughter, Annabelle, on the other hand, is as truthful as they come. She always does the right thing—that is, until she dumps her hedge fund manager fiancé and marries a musician she has known for three days. After all, her grandparents, who fell in love at first sight, have shared a lifetime of happiness, even through her grandfather’s declining health.

But when Annabelle’s world starts to collapse around her, she discovers that nothing about her picture-perfect family is as it seems. And Lovey has to decide whether one more lie will make or break the ones she loves.

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Review: Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

This has been the year of Jane Eyre inspired literature and this latest Jane Eyre revisitation was something quite unexpected.

Any book that has the passage ‘reader I murdered him’ so eloquently stated and matter-of-factly, instantly holds a special place in my heart!

When we first meet Jane Steele she is living with her mother in a small cottage on the grande estate of Highgate House. All her life Jane is told she is to inherit Highgate House but when her mother dies unexpectedly Jane’s evil aunt purposes to send her away to a school where she will learn to be a governess.

After first hearing this news, Jane runs onto the estate to weep and is accompanied by her cousin Edwin who proceeds to try and sexually assault her……but rather than let it happen Jane fights back and suddenly Edwin is dead by Jane’s hand.

Suddenly boarding school doesn’t sound so bad so off she goes. From there we follow Jane through not only a tedious childhood but often uncertain adulthood full of little lies and of course…..a few murders!

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Review: The Last Days of Magic by Mark Tompkins

This book has only recently been on my radar. It’s being market to fans of Deborah Harkness’s All Soul’s Trilogy so of course when I saw it, I was excited to read something that promises so much!

It introduces us to unforgettable characters who grapple with quests for power, human frailty, and the longing for knowledge that has been made taboo. Mark Tompkins has crafted a remarkable tale—a feat of world-building that poses astonishing and resonant answers to epic questions.

What became of magic in the world? Who needed to do away with it, and for what reasons? Drawing on myth, legend, fairy tales, and Biblical mysteries, this book imagines answers to these questions, sweeping us back to a world where humans and magical beings co-exist as they had for centuries.

Aisling, a goddess in human form, was born to rule both domains and—with her twin, Anya—unite the Celts with the powerful faeries of the Middle Kingdom. But within medieval Ireland interests are divided, and far from its shores greater forces are mustering.

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