Cooking competition romance time! Sadie on a Plate is all about a young Seattle chef who, following a messy break-up, becomes a contestant on a nationally televised cooking program and tries to bring kosher cooking to the masses. Sadie is in a career crisis. This top-flight chef has been fired from her spot in a…
Lucy Lambert, who never drinks, walks into a pub (as people who never drink often do. And yes, I know you can get food there, too, but still). Newly unemployed, she consults her horoscope, which informs her that “Today will see you head off on a new career path. If you’re single, this could also…
Seoulmates is the conclusion to the story begun in Heart and Seoul. I strongly recommend reading the books in order, since events in this volume build upon what happened in the first novel. When Hara travelled to Seoul, it was with the sole intent of finding her birth mother. As a Korean adoptee, she had…
Caridad Piñeiro’s multigenerational saga about the Cuban experience is a lovely and well-told slice of women’s fiction that gives us the life stories of three wholly different women who each experience what it’s like to be biracial in the modern world. It struck a deep chord with me, a personal one, but had some flaws…
I’m a lifelong fan of mythology, and nowadays the greatest myths are being retold through web comics, romance and mainstream fiction. So when I realized K.C. Dyer had crafted a story where the characters are retracing Odysseus’ voyage through the Mediterranean, I was eager to read it. An Accidental Odyssey is the second book in…
The Orphan Witch is a lovely but spare novel filled with rich worldbuilding. The central heroine is worth caring about, and the book has a sweeping sense of romance to it, even if the central love story is very instalove-y. Author Persephone May is a lonely timewalker. Possessed of magical and unpredictable qualities, things go…
The Christmas Bookshop is a sweet, holiday offering about a woman finding the place she was always meant to be. It is loosely tied to Jenny Colgan’s Kirrinfief series and fans familiar with those volumes will recognize some of the characters – and plot motifs – from those books in this narrative. You don’t have…
The Passing Storm is a sensitively rendered and readable novel about found family and the importance of grieving wholeheartedly. But the problem with it is that it is merely ‘nice’; touched with ‘As you know, Bob’ style dialogue and some broad characters, it falls short of a definite recommendation. Thirtyish Rae Langdon works with her…
Warning: A Little Christmas Spirit not only tackles life post-Covid, it’s also one of those throwback novels where only The Magic of Christmas And Other People can heal extreme emotional trauma. If you want to dodge either subject, this book definitely isn’t for you. But the book’s off-kilter sense of humor got to me after…
It’s October, and you know what that means – yep, the time for Christmas books is upon us! The Holiday Swap is a cute if inessential entry into the field. It’s pretty heavy on the corn and cheese, and its sense of personality is influenced by same, but it’s a generally inoffensive offering. Charlie and…