NOTE: This review contains spoilers for the previous books in the series. Layla Reyne’s Fog City series was originally a trilogy – or perhaps more accurately, one story in three parts – that featured the three Madigan siblings, the heirs to one of the most powerful organised crime families in the Bay Area of San…
The Dating Plan is Sara Desai’s follow-up to last year’s The Marriage Game, and like its predecessor, it’s an enjoyable – if predictable – rom-com, this time a second-chance romance/fake-relationship story. But – also like its predecessor – it falls into some storytelling traps and incorporates some seriously overused tropes; and although I had fun…
I’m still happily working through my TBR pile and have across another winner! Tiny Imperfections is a delight of a book set in the cut-throat world of West Coast kindergarten admissions! Who knew?? In the quiet Midwest kids pretty much just go to the local school. But in San Francisco, where you go to kindergarten…
A comedic love story about a disputed office, a matchmaking papa and a series of disastrous blind dates, Sara Desai’s The Marriage Game is the perfect read for those who love hot mess heroines involved in zany situations. Layla Patel’s life falls apart when she catches her social media star boyfriend snorting “the last of…
There are plenty of books about teens discovering that they have supernatural powers, and even a strong subset of those involving gods and demon-slayers. What Genie Lo brings to the table to make The Epic Crush of Genie Lo stand out from the crowd is the infusion of Chinese and Chinese-American elements, stellar prose, and…
I Buried a Witch is the middle book in Josh Lanyon’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks trilogy, a series of fantasy/mystery/romance novels set in and around San Francisco and featuring witch and antiques dealer Cosmo Saville and his husband, John Joseph Galbraith, the Commissioner of Police. The books don’t really stand alone as there’s an overarching storyline,…
There’s something unexpected and unique about Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune. Magical and sublime with a core that’s a real heartbreaker, it nonetheless has a few problems that keep it from being a full-out A-grade homerun. Natalie Tan once vowed to herself that she’d never return to San Francisco’s Chinatown community. After surviving…
The View from Alameda Island is a book title dear to my heart because I used to live near Mill Valley, which, in this story, is the location of Lauren Delaney’s home during her marriage. The community is a metaphor for Lauren’s stifling existence because up-market houses like hers are closed off from the street…
Prince of Killers is the first in a new trilogy of romantic suspense novels from Layla Reyne. Set in and around San Francisco, and focuses on a family that made its name and fortune from organised crime but which, owing to a tragic incident a few years earlier, is changing direction and turning its hand…
Here and Now and Then is a literary science fiction novel which focuses on family – how we can never have too much of it and how we will do anything to protect those we love. His mind is going, his memories fading along with it. In the year 2142 Kin Stewart is a special…