Lucy Score – The Christmas Fix

Enemies-to-lovers + Reality-show-hijinks + Christmas = OMG The set-up is already in catnip territory for me, but this is very well executed. The protagonists’ burgeoning mutual attraction evolves naturally and credibly despite the friction their roles impose on them. The book has a large and likable supporting cast, very warm tone overall, but not treacly.

Andrea Beatriz Arango: A Christmas Parranda

Very sweet, brief, Latinx/FF spin on Dickens’ Christmas ghosties. My 3 years of Duolingo español was just about able to keep up (and liked being stretched). Takoma Park shout-out too, woo. Reading more Andrea Beatriz Arango for sure.

Leigh Jenkins: Catherine the Inquisitor

Interesting, if not always compelling, alternate Tudor history tale. sometimes felt like Jenkins was more ingested in showing off research than telling a story, but I still had some problems maintaining suspension of disbelief. Narrator Henry’s voice convinced me, but he’s a bit dry.

Jonathan Howard: Carter & Lovecraft

Entertaining collision of hardboiled PI and Lovecraft ‘s Mythos, with a dash of a metaphysics/ metatextualism. Already impatient for sequel.

Holly Messinger: The Curse of Jacob Tracy

Reminds me almost equally of TV’s Deadwood and Angel – impressively researched post-Civil War setting with a complex supernatural ecosystem in a series of nearly self-contained novellas that gradually advance a larger plot. Novel finds some degree of closure, but more seems indicated, and I’m eager for follow-on.

Chelsea Handler: Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

Here are some of the page-count inflating techniques on display in Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang: half-page half-tone snapshots a purported multi-page e-mail* thread between Handler and her siblings a purported multi-page letter of complaint from a tenant of her father’s rental property whining (in multiple chapters) about the need to write another “stupid book.” Otherwise

Lauren McLaughlin: Cycler

Cycler has an inventive premise: for most of every month Jill McTeague is a more-or-less normal teenage girl, but for four days she physically turns into a male. (The novel doesn’t explicitly deal with how this came about, although it drops some clues. I suspect McLaughlin will address it directly in a future volume*.) Jill

Cassandra Clare: City of Ashes

Mostly I thought City of Ashes was a vast improvement on City of Bones. It had a few nifty surprises. The plot continues to echo elements from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Harry Potter series, and Star Wars, among other sources, but generally doesn’t draw enough from any one of those wells to feel overly

Charlaine Harris: Club Dead

I’m still enjoying the Harris’ southern vampire series more than enough to keep reading, but in this third entry in the series, the genre-defying elements that appealed to me so much in the first novel are definitely on the wane. Club Dead does not equally blend waitress Sookie Stackhouse dealing with both normal and supernatural

Cassandra Clare: City of Bones

City of Bones, the first volume of Clare’s young-adult supernatural series Mortal Instruments melds tropes and themes from sources such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Meyer’s Twilight books and Rowling’s Harry Potter in a way that sometimes felt a little calculated, but still kept me flipping pages. Three little gripes: The author’s name