Angieville

I think this is (shamefully) the first Tessa Dare book I've reviewed on the site. I believe I initially read a couple of her Spindle Cove books awhile back and didn't really land upon the "right" one for me. Then I gave Romancing the Duke a try and found it to be ridiculously charming. The rest of the books in that series weren't quite my cuppa, but that first one was so fun that I went back and found the right Spindle Cove novel for me ( Any Duchess Will D o , in case you're interested; ugh, I love that book). Which brings me to  The Governess Game , which   is a delight from start to finish. That's the wonderful thing about books by talented and prolific authors. They're not all necessarily going to work for you, but it is so lovely reading your way through as time and whims allow and finding the ones that are yours. Alexandra Mountbatten tells time. That is to say, she sets clocks. For a living. Carting her instruments from aristocratic hous...

I am almost always up for a sequel. You know this about me. But you also know how there are just some books that are so right a sequel doesn't even enter your head? And it's not necessarily even that things are tied up neatly at the end, it's that the book as a singular entity is . . . whole. On a fundamental level. That is how I felt about The Cafe by the Sea . I finished it completely happy with the world and completely unaware that a sequel was not only in the works, but had already been published just a few short weeks prior. And it's not that I didn't immediately hightail it to the bookstore the moment I found out (because I did), it's that every footstep was laced with fear. Because a sequel meant the potential for a great deal of pain. A sequel meant . . . things could go horribly wrong and, because I loved these characters so very much, I would have to sit by and witness it. But enough about my neuroses. On to the tale! A word of warning: Beyond thi...

I've had a good feeling about Spinning Silver ever since I first heard it would be a thing. That might sound a touch ubiquitous, because basically everyone I know has been on absolute tenterhooks waiting for its release from the moment they finished Uprooted . The thing is, I read Uprooted back when it came out and the hype was huge. And the writing was truly beautiful, beautiful in a timeless way.  Naomi Novik is a consummate world builder and a frightfully skilled storyteller. That combined with her homage to Robin McKinley 's Luthe (and Damar in general ) guaranteed I would be picking up her next volume. But it's worth stating that I was comparatively underwhelmed by the characterization in Uprooted . A persistent, somewhat chilly chasm separated me from them emotionally. And so a measure of apprehension did color my anticipation for her next standalone fairy tale retelling. However . That good feeling I mentioned earlier? It lingered invitingly. Somehow, I just knew...