By Sophie Sullivan
** Publication Date 23 September 2025 **
​4 stars


I am a confessed hockey-aholic. Why have I not read a hockey romance before this one? Good question, but better late than never.


Maisie is a photographer. Not just any photographer, but a very well respected one, who is booked out a year in advance for events. She has an older brother, Jacob, and an older sister, Natalie. Both are married. Jacob is a lawyer. Natalie a veterinarian. And Natalie is pregnant with their first child. 


This year the whole family is headed to a Christmas tree farm for the holidays. The farm belongs to Jacob’s husband’s close friend Ellie. Ellie was recently divorced and moved to the farm to both live and work. She has a 4 year old named Asher.


Maisie is looking forward to the holidays with her family, but is also dreading that she will be with her parents, who feel she’s never achieved her full potential. Little does she know that Ellie has an older brother, Nick, who Maisie has met before. In fact, not only met before, but someone Maisie felt was possibly her future. 


With all of this going on, Maisie doesn’t know how she’s going to handle this holiday with her family, her extended family, and now these new friends, one of whom ghosted her. Just a tad bit of tension for the holidays! 


I’ve been reading a bunch of dark, mystery or horror novels, and this was like a breath of fresh air. I absolutely loved Maisie. Loved Nick. Loved their backstory. Each one of them definitely has baggage, but then, who doesn’t. Each one of these characters feels like a real person. Everything about this novel just charmed me to the core. I am not a crier, but I definitely teared up at sections of this. The mom with her passive-aggressive attitude towards Maisie’s life choices. Maisie’s worry over Nick. It was a romance novel, but with a lot of reality tossed in. There is just so much to love about it. 


Look, romance novels are what they are. You either love them or hate them. Personally, I think that this novel was the perfect amount of spice, romance, and real life. It was fun. It was endearing. I would definitely recommend it.

By Michelle Chouinard
** Publication Date 23 September 2025 **
​4 stars


A Serial Killer’s Guide to San Francisco was such a fun novel. I mean, there was murder and mayhem, but presented in Capri’s snarky demeanor, it was a bit dark with a bit of humor. This book is no different.


Capri is still giving her murder tours of the San Francisco area, but now she’s expanded into a podcast about the Overkill Bill serial killings that she resolved in the last novel. Of course, she has a vested interest in Overkill Bill. He was her grandfather. People who take her tours are sometimes still obsessed with the Overkill Bill story. 


On her Barbary Coast tour is a woman named Lorraine. Lorraine keeps asking about the Overkill Bill story, and Capri is trying to keep the tour on track. When Lorraine suddenly shrieks that their is someone being strangled in a nearby building, Capri jumps to calling the police. And now Capri has involved herself in yet another murder mystery.


These are such fun books. I liken them to Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan novels. A great protagonist, lots of mayhem, a little bit of romance. Chouinard has that uncanny ability to present murder in a way that while a little bit gruesome, isn’t graphic. Capri finds herself in unbelievable situations, somehow, you know she will find a way out of. 


So well written, with loose ends tied together. While it can be read as a standalone, knowing the history of Capri, her business partners, her ex-husband, and family members can make the going a bit easier. Capri is written as the perfect fallible detective. Her banter with Petito, her love interest, is so much fun to read. Her business partner Heather, is an awesome counter-character. Best friends, but they are definitely different people, and Heather tells it like it is. 


I will continue to read these books for as long as Chouinard keeps putting them out!

By Janice Hallett
** Publication Date 23 September 2025 **
​4 stars


Pub quizzes are popular everywhere. Whether it’s trivia night in your hometown, or Jeopardy every evening on TV, people love to test their knowledge. 


Off the beaten path is a rural pub called The Case is Altered. Sue and Mal Eastwood took over and began their second careers when the pub was closed. Mal was an avid quizzer, and his goal was to make the pub a success once again. 


The pub seems to be doing splendidly, with a Monday quiz that has gathered five regular teams. There is one team that wins regularly, but not by much. After a night when a new team has been expelled by Mal for being known cheaters on the pub circuit, a body is found drowned in the nearby river. 


Shortly thereafter a new team starts showing up weekly. This new team can beat the pants off all the regular teams. It appears that they must be cheating, but both Mal and Sue have watched, and if they are, no one can tell. The team visits all the other pubs on the circuit, winning those as well. 


Mal and Sue have a secret related to their first careers, and they hope that this quiz team has nothing to do with that. After all, this was supposed to be their retirement. 


When their nephew Dominic reaches out to an agency to ask them if they’d be interested in doing a documentary about the pub, the agency wonders why they’d want to do such a thing. But Dominic is determined and begins passing along information about the pub and the mystery surrounding Sue and Mal Eastwood, and that final quiz night. 


Written in a semi-epistolary style, this novel was actually quite fun. It did seem to go on and on, but a lot of the story was necessary to piece together the mystery. When we realize that Dominic is writing to another person to inform them of the story, and that it is to be a multi-episode documentary, it does make sense that there would be a lot of backstory. 


There is a lot of character development, and a lot of characters when you take the pub owners plus their previous coworkers, plus the quiz teams. There is a lot of text and email dialogue for each of the characters and the quiz teams. Then there are the actual scenes with people conversing. It is a lot. With that said, it is really well written. It is very enjoyable, even though I would consider it a slow read. 


Consider this one a Sunday drive. Nothing to rush through. Take it slow and enjoy the ride.

By Rachel Louise Adams
** Publication Date 16 Sept 2025 **
​4 stars


The ending of this novel is worth every slow breath through the beginning. 


Dolores, Doll, Hawthorne/Diaz is a force to be reckoned with. One of the top forensic doctors in the country. Happily ensconced in her world in Los Angeles. A world that is about to be shaken up when she is called home to Little Horton, Wisconsin. Why? Her father is missing.


Little Horton, also knows as Little Halloween, is on the map for all the wrong reasons. Halloween is an eventful day in the town’s history. Mass shootings. Fires. Murder. Most towns would shy away from the drama, but Little Horton leaned in. Now it has an amazing annual festival on Halloween.


Just before this Halloween, however, Dolores is called home. Her father is missing. Once the pride of his life, Dolores has no choice but to head home. A home she hasn’t seen in years. A home that she never expected to revisit. So she goes. Reluctantly, but it’s her duty to be there. While she gets a chilly welcome from her stepmother and half-siblings, it’s her father that she came home for.


Something isn’t right. Her father, former town mayor and Senator, left her a note, asking her to remember him as she loved him. There are secrets and surprises in store. Her ex-boyfriend is now mayor. Her skills as a forensic doctor are in need by the FBI. There’s a lot to digest here. Dolores is trying. Trying to fit in with her estranged step-mother, half-brother and half-sister. Trying not to stand out, even though the whole town is chattering about her return. Trying to help the FBI figure out this mess. 


It’s a tangled web that needs untangling. Dolores is the key, but will she be able to survive the murder spree and figure out who is after both her family and her ex-boyfriend’s? Or will she run again, back to Los Angeles, where she can pretend that Little Horton never existed?


Such a twisty, tangly mess of lies and deception. I’m not sure how Rachel Adams kept it straight to even write this novel. There are so many characters and back stories for these people. Was Dolores’s last Halloween in Little Horton really what she thinks it was? Is her father missing or gone forever? Who is committing these horrible crimes? And why does Kate Butcher hate her so severely? 


It’s a wonderful mess of a story that comes together at the end. And if you’re like me and struggle through the beginning, trust me, it’s worth it in the end. I’m sure you’ll never see what’s coming.


Definitely recommend. 

By Stephanie DeCarolis
** Publication Date 16 Sept 2025 **
​4.5 stars


Hawthorne Lane is one of those culs-de-sac that most women dream of. The perfect houses. The families all friends. The big events like Halloween where everyone meets up together and puts on a festival for the neighborhood. Those beautiful facades are hiding some very dark secrets.


Georgina, beautiful and married to a very successful lawyer. She’s the type A behind the festival. Never a hair out of place and a fabulous cook to boot.


Libby, newly single due to her husband asking for a separation. Owns a floral shop in town.


Audrey, ravishing beauty and editor of an entertainment magazine, married to a best-selling author.


Hannah, new to the neighborhood. Recently married to a man twelve years older but together they are so happy. Until reminders of her past start appearing in her mailbox.


Four women whose lives appear just perfect on the outside, but behind closed doors, their lives are sometimes anything but. When a body is found dead in the woods behind their homes after the Halloween festival, it shines a light on the neighborhood and these women more than ever before. But who had the motive?


Great novel. So well pieced together with the police interviews interspersed throughout the novel. A lot of bombshells dropped here and there also. As with her novel The Perfect Sister, DeCarolis is a master at weaving together interesting, dysfunctional people to form fantastic mysteries. These four women are all extremely different and while not necessarily likable, at least in some ways, admirable. Their lives are not perfect. And of course there is one busybody in the mix for humor. 


Really fun novel for the fall. Definitely recommend.