It seems to be the rage to love Jane Austen right now and for once, I completely agree with a fad.  I love Jane Austen's writings.  And I love them even more now having read this with my Brit Lit class.  My professor was so enthusiastic about this book that it was pure pleasure to attend class each day. 

Northanger Abbey is a satire of Gothic novels.  That's pretty clear.  Catherine is a young girl from a large, middle-class family taken to the luxuries of Bath by her rich childless neighbors.  There she meets and mingles with the society types.  In the end, she is invited to visit Northanger Abbey where her new friends live. It's a dream come true for the Gothic-novel-loving Catherine.  But of course, all is not as it seems.

The characterizations of Catherine, her friends, family and acquaintances are superb.  You know these people.  You've met them.  In real life.  While the setting of Bath society is distant from us now, we have no trouble picturing the people and their interactions.  I hope I never meet another Isabella or John Thorpe but they are out there.

Each of Jane Austen's heroines is different and special.  Catherine begins innocent and naive but is teachable and wants to learn.  Her character really grows and matures through the book.  She's a heroine to be admired by the end.

One of the things I love about Northanger Abbey is that it is a book about and for readers.  Austen was young when she wrote this but she understands exactly what makes a good story and she is constantly making the reader feel important and smart for reading it.  She defends the reading of novels when many authors of her time were critical of novels as silly and frivolous.  When Henry Tilney tells us that anyone who can't enjoy a novel must be intolerably stupid, we agree with him. 

Not only do we get a glimpse of the Gothic novel in this book, we see the novel of manners and the domestic novel played out.  Even in this early writing of Jane Austen, her genius for storytelling is clear.  This one is easier to read in some ways, than later works like Pride and Prejudice.  It isn't as heavy. It has more comic relief.  I just really love it and I am so glad I got to read it with a class and a professor that were enthusiastic about it also.

Admittedly, this is the first book in this series, which is now stands at 23, that I have read. This book is number 21 in the series. I realize that will color my view since I don’t have background with this series but I have to wonder if this book is representative of the series. If it is, I’m thrilled that I haven’t wasted my time. If it’s not, then it was a particularly bad introduction. It is a complete miss to me as a mystery lover.

If you want to know all the ills that have been visited on the Virginia Indian tribes, and I’m sure they are have indeed been mistreated in the past, then this is the book for you. If you need to know what there is to know about organic farming methods, then this is the book for you. If you want to know how evil capitalists are, then this is the book for you. If you want a good mystery, move along.

It has a promising start. The first murder victim is found hung up as a scarecrow, shortly before Halloween. Of course, our MC Harry is one of the people that find him and is determined to solve the case even though she is repeatedly warned by others to stop or be careful. The mystery just really doesn’t go anywhere and we’re certainly not given the clues to solve the case. It seems as if the mystery is just a reason for the author to state her worldviews. I don’t like being hit over the head with a hammer when I’m just looking for some entertainment.

I suspect that if I had read the other books in this series, I might be quite fond of these characters. Meeting them brand new, not so much. They come across as self-righteous and self-important.

By the way, the title has nothing to do with the story. There is no litter of anything. I assumed there might be kittens or something but there isn’t. Just 2 full grown cats and a dog.

There are obviously a lot of fans of this series or there wouldn’t be so many books. So, is it worth my time to go back and try an earlier book or should I just move along?

I received this through Netgalley and appreciated the opportunity to read and review it.

Books about the Amish seem to be one of the hot trends right now but I had never jumped on the bandwagon. I tried this one because it is a mystery. It’s a bandwagon I will probably jump off of now. While I didn’t actually dislike this book, it felt like a hot mess.

First to mention what I did like. I am a Christian and so reading Christian novels doesn’t bother me. Some writers, however, have a real problem making Christian dialogue seem realistic and not awkward or stilted. This author does a better job than most at making the conversations regarding the character’s faith seem realistic to what I would hear in my life. Kudos for that!

On to what I didn’t like. I have only a passing acquaintance with the Amish community in our area and I know each one is different but these Amish didn’t feel anything like the ones I’ve had business with. The Amish in this book mostly work in a set of shops run by non-Amish. It’s some kind of tourist place evidently. The interaction between the Amish and non-Amish felt unreal. It didn’t feel the way our interactions with the Amish have been, which is that the Amish are much more interested in keeping their problems within their own communities. They have always been kind, friendly and good workers but I never had the feeling they wanted to discuss their problems with me. I may certainly be wrong but I can only go from my experiences.

The mystery feels like a side issue to what the author wants to say about the Amish-non Amish relationships. The perpetrator really doesn’t have much to do with the story. He’s pretty obvious from the first time you meet him. You won’t be reading this one for the mystery aspect.

This book has a lot of what I assume are supposed to be red herrings. Instead, they felt like rabbit trails, something the author just wanted to talk about. There is a big difference between a rabbit trail and a red herring.

Constantly throwing in the German words in italics when everything else is in English did not help the readability of the book. It was very distracting.

This was the second book of a serious but there’s no problem following the story if you haven’t read the first one. I hadn’t. And I won’t be looking for it. This one is just wasn’t my cup of tea.

This book was provided by Netgalley and I appreciated the opportunity to read and review it.

I love to categorize my mysteries into subgenres and I guess this would be the fairytale subgenre but I don't think I'll be adding too many of this subgenre into my library.  There will be a group of people who will love this book but I don't fall into that category.  It's the story of Blue Reynolds, a human dynamo who shocks anyone he touches and is the equivalent of the fairyland's Sam Spade.  He's been hired to find a missing person who is supposed to be the next Tooth Fairy.  The last several Tooth Fairys have been murdered so it's important for him to find her and keep her safe.  Blue has to deal with all kinds of fairytale creatures and misadventures in pursuit of this goal.  Let me just say that this is not a fairy tale for kids.  The language would be too strong for that.

All the characters from fairy tales and nursery rhymes are here and most of them are not very nice.  Bo Peep is a jerk.  Again, some people will really find this entertaining and funny.  Just not me.  The mystery was ok.  I didn't really figure it out until Blue did so that part was fine.  I think it was aiming for a noir atmosphere but I didn't feel it.

I think I might have enjoyed it more if the parody of hard-boiled crime stories had been a bit more subtle.  It was very in-your-face.  Things such as New Never City and Slightly Off Central Park just feel forced rather than clever to me.  Try this one of you enjoy fairy private eyes and parody.  Don't try it if that all sounds a bit weird to you.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this little book.  It's no "War and Peace" and at this time in my life, a little book suits me just fine.  It really is a novella rather than a novel.  I enjoyed that it was small and easy to carry around so I could read it when I had a few minutes without it weighing down my purse.  Sometimes a quick, easy read is just what you need.

That story isn't very deep since the book is short but I found it enjoyable.  It centers around Leena who had walked away from her family and disappeared a few years ago.  That idea intrigues me because I think it should be hard for someone to just disappear.  As it turns out, she really didn't disappear and her sister finds her easily enough when she needs her.  Leena is "almost" a private detective, having taken classes on line to be one.  I found that interesting too.  

As Leena investigates for her sister, the story moves quickly but I found the atmosphere to be believable and the characters to be likeable which is important to me.  I'll be happy to read more in the future about Leena and I won't mind if they are short, like this one, or full length.  

I received this book through Librarything's Early Reviewer Program.

I requested this book in a Librarything giveaway because it looked like something I might read to my granddaughters some day and it is, so I was not disappointed.  This would make a fun bedtime story.  It would probably take 2 nights. I reminds me very much of the kind of thing I use to make up for my daughter when she was growing up.

It's about a Princess and her very poor parents.  It's set in Vermont so that's kind of different. It has all the elements of a fairy tale while incorporating New England ideas.  I think this is one of those books that children will be hearing different than the adults that are reading it to them.  Adults will pick up on the use of modern elements while the kids will just be hearing a fairy tale.  I think that makes it more interesting for adults who to their kids a lot as I did. 

The story itself is simplistic and easy to read and understand.  A Princess, wanting to help her parents, gets kidnapped by the bad guy with the help of his fairy.  Her parents and a wandering prince come to her rescue but in the end, she ends up saving herself.  If you object to parents being shown in a less than perfect light, you won't like this. They come across much sillier than their daughter.  But I thought it was fun and I will read it to the kids in a few years when they are a little older.

My copy was provided through the Librarything EarlyReviewers program in exchange for an honest review.

This book turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  When I started reading it I had the feeling that it was going to turn into a wacky hi-jinks caper and that's definitely not my favorite type of mystery.  But the further I went, the more better it was and the more I liked it. The wacky hi-jinks did not materialize.  Lesson to self, always give a book a fair try.

This is Dirty Harriet's fourth adventure but I wasn't lost at all by not having read the previous 3.  This can be read as a stand-alone without losing anything.

Harriet, who use to be a trophy wife and is now a PI, has been called by a friend to check out some mysterious deaths at a high-end rehab clinic. Teens have been dying and so Harriet checks herself in under an assumed name and begins investigating.  She has an unusual circle of helpful friends with various skills and she calls on them regularly.  The solution is an unusual one and one that I haven't seen before which is great, considering how many mysteries I've read. 

Harriet turns out to be a likeable character and so do all her friends.  That's important to me.  The only thing that ended up bothering me was her sarcasm toward normal things and people.  It reminded me a bit of Kinsey Millhone and that is the one thing I dislike about Kinsey also.  Harriet makes a lot of rude remarks about people who watch television and I'm guessing that the majority of her readers watch some television.  I could just do without the patronizing tone toward those who do normal things on a normal basis.  Other than that, this is an enjoyable mystery with a interesting ending. 

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think this book was written for me.  I decided in 2006 to learn French and I've been messing around with it ever since but William Alexander has really inspired me to pick it up again.

Mr. Alexander takes us through about a year where he is really determined to learn French. He talks about the various programs he uses and the classes he attends.  That could sound very dry but this book, as the title might imply, is anything but dry.  He makes his attempt at learning French amusing and so very relateable. I was feeling every struggle he had.  As he goes through his year of learning French he is also going through a lot of health issues and he's very open about how those affected his progress. I loved his description of his total immersion experience in France because I've always wondered if that would be something I would like.  

Mr. Alexander covers some of the research on second language acquisition at older ages and he does it in a very understandable way.  He meets some really interesting characters in this journey to learn French. He gives some great information on the problems of computers translating languages.  It is definitely an informative book as well as a fun one.

I found myself rooting for him every step along the way. Learning a new language at any age is difficult and he was starting at 57.  I'm not far behind him in age so this was a thoroughly enjoyable read for me.

I received this book from Netgalley and have given it an honest review.

Death Comes to London is a satisfying historical cozy with a likeable characters.  It's the second mystery in the Kurland St. Mary mysteries but the first one that I've read.  Not reading the first one didn't affect my understanding of this book.  Everything I needed to know was explained clearly without feeling like there was a lot of exposition.  I think that takes some skillful writing.  All to say, this can definitely be read as a stand alone.

Lucy and her sister Anna have come to London for a "season" to try to find Anna a husband.  Even though Lucy thinks she is too old for the debutante scene, she would also like to find a husband if possible.  Their friend and Lucy's ex-employer, Major Kirkland, ends up in London at the same time because he is being rewarded (reluctantly on his part) a baronetcy. While making the rounds of the social scene, they all become acquainted with the Broughtons, the son of the family having served with Kurland.  The Dowager Lady Broughton is a very unpleasant woman but when she drops dead at one of the most fashionable balls, the question has to be asked.  Who dislikes her enough to kill her?

The band of amateur detectives are intelligent and pleasant to read about.  They manage to run their investigation with no TSTL moments and the police aren't investigating the case so we don't have the really annoying interference with police that plagues so many mysteries. There is some good information about the state of scientific investigation at the time. I always find that intriguing. The killer becomes apparent before the end but not early enough to ruin my enjoyment of the book.  My overall summation of this book is good plot, likeable characters, interesting setting. I'll be looking for the first book in the series and I'll be waiting for the 3rd one.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of the most fun books I've seen in a long time. It's bright, it's colorful, it's imaginative and it's clever. The pictures get your imagination soaring. You could imagine that in an alternative world where steam ruled, this is exactly how the soldiers would have developed. I love that there are soldiers from all over the world with all kinds of weird and unusual weapons. I could just pour over the pictures taking in all the details and the pictures are very detailed. The combination of real uniforms with the steampunk additions just had me laughing out loud. These will be the basis for some Halloween costumes next year, I'm sure.

I love the descriptions of each soldier. They bring the pictures to life and give the history of the war and of each soldier type. The entire book is beautiful. Steampunk afficionados are going to have a field day with this one. Fun is the absolute best word for this book.

I received this book from Netgalley and appreciated the opportunity to give it an honest review.

So you have this neighbor who likes to borrow things.  And doesn't like to return them. Would you kill her for that? That seems to be the motive behind the death of Gloria French.  When the whole village gets up in arms and starts accusing each other, Agatha Raisin is called in to find out who the killer is so that peace can return to the village.  The problem is, no one really wants her to solve the case.

M.C. Beaton excels at writing the small village atmosphere.  Whether it's this series or Hamish MacBeth, I always feel the slightly claustrophobic atmosphere of the insulated country village where outsiders are outsiders and if you weren't born there, you'll never be a local.  That atmosphere is thick in this book.  As Agatha and her quirky group of friends and associates try to find the murderer, everyone tries to shut them down.  Why would a whole village protect a murderer? 

I love Agatha Raisin and her circle of friends.  They are immature, petty, smart, kind, and troublesome.  They do things people would never do in real life but this isn't real life.  It's fun escapism.  It's comfort reading.  Agatha Raisin immerses me in British village life and I enjoy every minute of it.

I received this from Netgalley and appreciated the opportunity to read and review it.

Our third visit to South Cove is as fun as the first two. Jill and her fun cast of friends and family are back and it's time for the holidays. South Cove is set to begin its holiday festivities when two things intervene. The mayor and a murder.

The mayor has made two decisions that don't sit well with everyone. He's given his wife the job of coordinating the festivities, which Darla from the winery has always done, and he's agreed for the town to participate in a program of giving work experience to clients of a social service agency. Neither of these sit well with the business owners, including Jill. When murder is the result of this second decision, of course Jill gets pulled right into the middle of it.

I love holiday settings. This one covers both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love a romance that isn't filled with angst. Jill and Greg provide this. I like a good mystery that isn't immediately apparent but does have clues. The location is fun and the cast of characters are interesting and fairly realistic. This is just fun escapist reading and I think this one reads a little quicker than the other two have. I have to say I do love the covers for this series.  I'm a sucker for a good cover.

I do hope the resident psychic stays extremely minor (which she has so far) or goes away and I do think Greg, who is the police detective, needs to quit sharing quite so much with Jill. Those two issues are minor and don't affect my enjoyment of the story. I'll be very excited when a fourth book in this series comes out.

I received this book from Netgalley and appreciated the opportunity to read and review it.

This is the good kind of American cozy mysterye. The kind that's light but not fluffy. The kind that has romance but it doesn't overwhelm the story.  The kind that gives you clues but doesn't give up all its secrets right away. It has fun and friendship and family and bad guys and unexpected good guys. 

I met this cast of characters in Guidebook to Murder, the first in this series.  They've come along nicely in this second book.  Jill, the owner of Coffee, Books and More is has started dating Greg, the chief detective of South Cover, a tourist town on the California coast.  Her kooky aunt, her best friend Amy, and Toby, the part-time cop, part-time barrista are all back in good form.

As Jill is attempting to verify that the old wall found in her back yard is the original Spanish mission to the area, she runs into opposition from Craig who is the manager of The Castle, the biggest historical attraction in town.  He doesn't want business or tourism dollars diverted away from his site.  When he's found dead, Jill looks like a pretty good suspect. As with all good cozy heroines, she must set out to prove her innocence.

The only nit-pick I have with this book is that I do think the cop-boyfriend lets her into the case a bit too much.  Just didn't ring true sometimes.  And as with most cozy heroines, she gets warned by said cop-boyfriend to stay out of the case but just can't do it.  If she didn't pursue it, there wouldn't be a book I guess so there's probably no way around that one. These are my only complaints with a book that gave me much enjoyment to read and I'm ready to start book number 3.

I received this book from Netgalley and appreciate opportunity to give it an honest review.

     This book is different than what I normally read but I requested it in a LibraryThing giveaway because of it's setting in the Czech Republic. My family is Czech and we recently visited Prague and the small town my family came from so this interested me. The story itself takes some getting use to. I felt that I had come into the middle of the story with little explanation and was supposed to figure out quite a bit of it for myself. It involves the main character traveling to the Czech Republic to look for his half sister whom he had just recently found out about. He's in need of a kidney transplant and is hoping she will be willing to help him.
      There is a lot of convoluted family history that you have to figure out without many clues, there is a lot of history of the Nazi and Soviet occupations that is not clearly explained so you need to be fairly secure in your knowledge of these time periods of history. It kept me reading and the story lines intrigued me but I think a little more clarity would have made this a much better book.

I'm a huge fan of cozy mysteries but wow, this was just a complete miss for me. I'm still not sure if it was meant to be making fun of the genre or it really was just a really bad story.

Rory, a manager in a mega-petstore, comes to the town of Destiny to find out whether the superstition about bad luck from walking under ladders is true. Her boyfriend had walked under one and died shortly after. Yes, that is the premise. These type of mysteries are known for not having the deepest plots in literature but really? Whether or not you get bad luck from walking under a ladder is the premise? The town of Destiny makes it's living off being the superstition capital of the world. The tourist trade in people interested in superstitions is how all the town makes it's money. Every business in town centers around one superstition or another and it you are sick of the word "superstition" by now, you'll be pulling your hair out by the end of the book because it's used in almost every other sentence.

When Rory gets there she takes her dog Pluckie (the word "Pluckie" is another word that will have driven you out of your gourd by the end of the book)to a pet store which is full of, not surprisingly, superstition-based pet items. I bet you didn't know those existed. I sure didn't but I do now. But I digress. Rory and Pluckie find the owner of the store on the floor in the back room in some type of health emergency so they call an ambulance to get her to the hospital. From this point on, having done what any normal human would do, Rory and Pluckie are announced to be the luckiest things that ever walked the earth.

So now the owner of this pet store is in the hospital and asks Rory, an person she doesn't know from Adam, to manage her store for her while she's incapacitated. The next day there's a murder, Rory and Pluckie discover it, she does everything the police tell her not to, spends a lot of time mad at people when they've done nothing wrong, and discovers that pets are welcome everywhere in Destiny, even restaurants. Nothing about the plot makes sense to me. Why would you ask someone you've known 12 hours to take over your business, your sole livelihood? Why does everyone allow this absolute stranger to come into their town and act so arrogantly to them? Why does the public school system of Destiny teach superstition in their curriculum? These are the bigger mysteries to me than who killed whom. I seriously considered throwing my Kindle across the room several times and I love my Kindle. This story did not require suspension of disbelief. It required taking your brain out and leaving it on the table.

I received this book through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Charlotte MacLeod, writing here as Alisa Craig, is one of my take-to-a-desert island authors so you can expect a gushing review from me for this book and you'll get it. It's warm, it's witty, it's fun, it extremely well-written, it's cozy but my favorite word to describe her writing is gentle. This is a gentle mystery.

Dittany Henbit is a member of the Lobelia Falls Grub-and-Stakers as is everyone else in town. Archery is the main interest of the club but they do all kinds of civic duties when called up. Dittany, a professional typist, is up on a mountain which has been donated to the city as a preserve when she encounters a new employee of the water department, very strange since there is no water run up onto the mountain, and then the manager of the water department, very dead.

As the mystery develops, we meet a lot of the town folk and they are of the wacky yet lovable variety. I appreciate that even when presented as slightly weird, they are still treated with respect. We all have odd-ball friends and that's who some of these people feel like. Alisa Craig loves to use an interesting vocabulary. It comes across as almost Victorian at times but in a way that's fun, not old-fashioned. And very easy to read. I particularly love the Scottish police chief and his phraseology.

For me, this book and anything by Alisa Craig or Charlotte MacLeod is like getting home after a hard day and putting on your warm fuzzy pajamas to watch your favorite old movie. Just comfort and relaxation. Everything's going to be all right in the end and you're going to have a good time getting there.