The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Christmas at the Women's Hotel Daniel M. Lavery, 2025 New Release! I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.  This is a holiday-themed spin-off from a longer novel (titled simply Women's Hotel) imagining the lives, loves, tragedies, and triumphs of a group of women living in a fictional women's hotel.  The real-life women-only residential hotels were a phenomenon created by a specific time in history, from about the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Young, single women wanted to move to a city to get work, but they didn't have family to stay with. Enter the women's hotel, seen as a safe, respectable place for unchaperoned middle-class secretaries and assistants to live (until they marry and move to the suburbs). I read half of a nonfiction book about one of the most famous women's hotels years ago and found the concept fascinating. I hadn't heard of the original Women's Hotel novel, but...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year Ally Carter, 2024 Premise: Maggie writes mysteries, and she's really good at it. But it's been a year since her husband destroyed their marriage and her life fell apart, so she's not looking forward to Christmas. When her publisher sends her to spend the holidays with her literary idol, she thinks perhaps things are looking up... until she sees who else is invited. This is a holiday-mystery-themed romance novel with a good amount of humor, action, and heart. It does a good job establishing our lead and her current world, while slowly revealing her past situation.  I liked that Maggie's flaws and struggles seemed realistic. She's not perfect, but neither is she dumb or dealing with problems that have easy solutions.  The male lead is a bit more complicated. By the end, he's a lovable, strong romantic hero, but you don't start getting his perspective until around halfway through. Until ...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas The Holiday Honeymoon Switch Julia McKay, 2024 I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I got this title too late in the season to cover it last year, but better late than never? Premise: Besties Holly and Ivy decide to swap their planned holiday getaways after Holly's fiancé breaks off their relationship just before their Christmas wedding. They both find new friends and possible love by taking the road they didn't plan on. This book is two romances in one, and that fact leads to both the story's flaws and its joys. The good: two stories means that they switch off, meaning neither one is likely to get boring or overstay its premise. Holly's fiancé (who Ivy has doubted but tried to be cool with for a long time) jilts her for another woman, causing her to be numb and sad for a lot of the beginning of the story. It's good to break this up with Ivy's concern for her friend. Meanwhile, Ivy is...

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins, 2025 Premise: Another Hunger Games prequel, this one following Haymitch when he was a kid sent to the games. Largely about propaganda, power, and the difference between appearances and the truth. Oh ouch. This was a hard read.  If you read/watched The Hunger Games, you knew this couldn't end well for Haymitch in order for him to be a bitter, broken drunk by the time he meets Katniss 25 years later. But still... ouch.  The book, of course, introduced characters who did appear/will appear in other books, but not in a way that felt too much like fanservice. More like: look, here are the forces that make this character who they will be in the future.  From the start, when Haymitch isn't initially called for the games but forced to sub in after the name ceremony is disrupted, there's a strong theme about appearances. The Capitol spends a lot of energy appearing faultless - in video, dress, coordination, everything. And that pays off for...

The Incandescent Emily Tesh, 2025 Premise: In an alternate present where some schools teach magic, Doctor Walden is teaching teenagers how not to get eaten by demons while dealing with constant bureaucracy and her own nonexistent love life.  I really, really liked this book. I'm not sure I loved it as much as the author's first novel , but that one was a truly unique experience. The two stories are different beasts, although there are commonalities, like occasionally unreliable narration and sapphic relationships. I liked the characters a lot, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the kind of nonsense that any elite school deals with - teenage drama spilling into the classroom, teacher infighting, the tension between kids from rich families and the handful of kids on scholarships, etc. - and potentially life-and-death magical incursions by extradimensional forces. As a stupid American, I did sometimes have trouble following the British school terminology (how old is a what number...

Persuasion and Once Persuaded, Twice Shy Jane Austen, 1817 and Melodie Edwards, 2024 Premise: Anne Elliot was once in love. But someone convinced her that her beau wasn't right for her, and she broke it off. Eight years later, she hasn't found anyone who lives up to her first love, and now he's back in town and she's going to have to see him again. I've seen several lists claim that Persuasion is the best of Jane Austen's novels. It's been so long since I've read any others that I can't speak to that either way. Being in the habit of more modern writing, it took a bit of adjustment when I started this book, but I liked it fine.  It was an interesting portrait of a family with more pretensions to nobility than cash to support said pretensions. Anne's foolish father and sister insist on their own importance in a very obnoxious way, while pragmatic Anne is sad about renting out their family home, but ready to get on with what's necessary. It...