Recommendsday: December Quick Reviews

A month very much dominated by the mad dash to complete my self-imposed Read Across the USA challenge for another year and listening to Phryne Fisher audiobooks on the commute. I’ve written plenty about Phryne before, and I didn’t like a lot of the desperation picks for the reading challenge and I still had Books of the Week to pick, but I’ve still managed three for you. Check me. I wasn’t sure that I would for a while, but the last week and a bit of the month really helped.

Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N Holmberg

It’s 1846 and Merrit has just inherited a remote estate in the Narrangasett Bay. It comes a a good time for the struggling writer – somewhere free to live would ease his money woes. He’s pretty handy so he’s confident that even if no one has lived there for a century he can turn it into home. Except the house has other ideas – locking him in when he arrives and refusing to let him out. Enter Hulda Larkin from the Boston Institute of Keeping Enchanted Rooms who is trained in taming magical structures. As the two of them work together to discover the house’s secrets, what they don’t realise is that there is a threat to the house – and them – from the outside too. This was actually the book that ticked off my very last state (Rhode Island) and I was really glad that it was one I enjoyed. This is more historical fantasy than anything else, although it does have romantic elements. It’s the first in a series – with four books already published and a fifth coming this year and I would happily read more of them. And I have several other books by Holmberg (in one of her other series) on the Kindle waiting to be read – and maybe this was the push I needed to finally get around to reading them.

Picture Perfect Frame by Lynn Cahoon

This is a rare book in the month in that it was not a missing state – it’s set in Calfornia. But this is a cozy crime series that I read when they cross my path. The detective is Jill, former lawyer and current book store owner. She’s supported by a fairly typical cozy crime miscellany of supporting characters – an aunt, a friend, her employees at the shop, a neighbour who says she’s a psychic and her boyfriend who is a local police officer. This instalment sees her supporting another local small business by going to a paint and sip event (which is something I had never heard of but is apparently a thing) at a local art studio. When one of the other participants is found dead in the studio the next morning, Jill can’t help but investigate as the dead woman’s spouse is claiming her neighbour (the fortune teller) is responsible. Not a difficult read, but a fun one.

Open Season by C J Box

I started with a 50 states book and I’m ending with one too. Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. He’s underpaid, under-resourced and unpopular in his new community – not just because he’s not local but because he won’t take bribes. When a local hunting outfitter is found dead on his property, he takes it personally and when more bodies are found he continues to investigate despite the police closing the case. Soon he’s caught up in a dangerous situation involving the murders, an endangered species and a company that wants to build a gas pipeline. This is a bit darker than the mysteries that I usually read – but I could cope with it because I was so interested in the mystery. It’s the first in a 25 (!) book series and the teaser for the next one had me intrigued so it looks like I might be covered for Wyoming in future challenges!

That’s it for the December bonus reviews – it was a bumper month in reading all in and I have written about a lot of the others too, although there was a lot of Christmas content in there which you may be over by that point. But here are the links anyway. The books of the week were Christmas is All Around, Cure for the Common Break-up and The Divorce Colony; and there were posts about Christmas novellas, the Under the Mistletoe and Busybodies collections, as well as the Best Books of the year posts for non-fiction and new fiction.

Happy Humpday!