Book 9: White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Hey, I finally read a good book in 2024! I've been meaning to read some of this author's short stories for years, and then my book club chose this collection for our first read of 2024 and I had a great reason to. These stories are all inspired by or in conversation with folk stories or fairy tales, but I enjoyed even the ones paired with stories I didn't previously know. It is such a pleasure to read short stories written by someone who knows exactly what they want to do with the form, and how to craft a complete story in that length that never feels like it's a prologue to a novel that may or may not be written in the future. The stories float along and her character voices are distinct and lovely. Some of the stories left me with a strong feeling of narrative resolution, while others were more of a vibe, and I enjoyed them all. Link has just released her first novel, and I'm looking forward to picking that up soon as well. 

Grade: A

Book 8: Murder on Mistletoe Lane by Clara McKenna

So, this is a sequel! Something I did not realize when I started reading it. It's a Christmas-season set murder mystery at the English manor of newlyweds in the early 20th century. This is apparently the fifth murder mystery that Stella and Lyndy have found themselves in the middle of, and because it's a sequel, the character setup is both perfunctory and spends a lot of time referencing events from previous books, and I found it more tedious than intriguing. I kept reading because I did actually want to find out the big reveals, and while they weren't disappointing exactly, they couldn't overcome the overall experience I had reading it. 

Grade: C 

Book 7: The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict

A Christmas manor house murder mystery! The twist with this one is that it's a contemporary setting, and also that it's a game within a game, essentially - the now deceased matriarch of the Armitage family has required that her whole family gather at the family estate in order to play a series of games to determine who would inherit the house. The whole setup is contrived even for this genre, and the main failing of this book is that there are twelve poems of clues to decipher and solve, but they're not actually clues the reader can hope to solve. The whole mystery development ends up feeling inert as a result. 

Grade: C

Book 6: Hercule Poirot's Silent Night by Sophie Hannah

A classic kind of Poirot mystery, this time for Christmas! He and his trusty friend Catchpool are convinced by Catchpool's fairly unpleasant mother to come to a crumbling manor by the sea a few days before Christmas to help the family solve a murder to prevent a murder. Of course there are many secrets and revelations and red herrings along the way. I would have preferred slightly more Christmas in this story, but it's twisty in the Christie style, and I enjoyed reading it. 

Grade: B

Book 5: Catered All the Way by Annabeth Albert

I liked this one better than the other romance I read by this author this month! I can't say that I completely recommend it, but this is a pretty charming romance between a twenty-something gamer and his older brother's high school best friend who he's always had a crush on. The crush comes back home and helps out the siblings with their family business over the holidays (a subplot I truly could have done without), and sparks fly, etc. It was fine!

Grade: B

Book 4: The Christmas Veto by Keira Andrews

Sigh, another Christmas romance that's...fine, I guess? This is somehow the third fake dating storyline within the same series, where one of the guys in the fake romance is the son/stepson of the fake romance guys of the first novel. At a certain point, you'd think that people would catch on! It's inoffensive but doesn't offer a lot more than that, unfortunately. 

Grade: C

Book 3: Bring Me Home by Annabeth Albert

I keep trying gay romances by this author, because they wrote a couple of romances I read a while ago that I remember liking a lot, and then I end up disappointed. This one is about a retired naval investigator in his early 40s who meets a really hot 23 year old at a gay bar, only to discover that he's the son of one of his high school friends, oh no! And also the 23 year old is going to be living with him in his old victorian house that he inherited from his aunt, and also there's a...mystery to be solved? And it's a whole forbidden romance thing that both wants to be a massive problem and something that's easily overcome, and I don't know! It didn't really work for me, even though I like a lot of age gap romances and I'm not opposed to a fantasy narrative about restoring a house together and finding love. So far I haven't found a book this year that really hits. 

Grade: C