By Iva-Marie Palmer
** Publication Date 30 September 2025 **
4 stars



Some of us love the cheesy tropes of Hallmark movies. I mean, what is better than watching a movie that you know is going to turn out to be the perfect romance?


In Christmas People, Jill Jacobs doesn’t consider herself a Christmas person. After all, she broke up with her ‘perfect’ man right before Christmas, moved herself out to Los Angeles, and has staunchly avoided her hometown since. When Jill finds herself alone for Christmas, her mom only has to apply a little pressure to get Jill to come home. 


But things don’t go as planned for Jill. She runs into her ex. She runs into her high school crush. And she basically finds herself immersed in a “Heartfelt” movie. She has to figure out how to escape and get back to her real life before things get more topsy turvy.


Super cute novel that is ideal for holiday reading. It’s not perfect - like a Hallmark movie - Jill is anything but perfect. But the concept of Hallmark movies and how they portray the perfect romance, usually with some humor, is the cornerstone of this great holiday novel. 


Jill is a mess. Her layers run deep with self-loathing, but she is 100% redeemable. Her parents are adorable. This is not a picture-perfect family at all. They have serious flaws, but they are real. The story covers both reality and rom-com, and blends them into a wonderful novel.


I greatly enjoyed this one and suggest you pick it up for reading with a cup of hot cocoa and a homemade “messy Santa."

By Lydia Gregovic
** Publication Date 30 September 2025 **
​5 stars


In the land of Balmoore live silkwitches. Their hair is magical. Silkwitches have until the age of 21 to be wed to Weavers, a line of sorcerer men, who will use their hair to weave Magesilk. Should the silkwitches not find a Weaver husband before their 21st birthdays, they are sent to the Cloisters, to spin magesilk. But then they are never seen of again.


Lovett Tamerlane is a silkwitch. Born into a life that deemed her unacceptable, she escaped to the city where she now uses her Wit, opening doors, to steal from wealthier families. Until she meets a handsome stranger, Eliot Lear. Eliot proposes that she be entered into the Vainglory, a competition to find a silkwitch wife for the most eligible bachelor, the son of the Weaver King. 


Lear’s motives are simple. His sister Ophelia died during the Vainglory the previous year, and he wants to know who is responsible. If Lovett can solve the mystery of Ophelia’s death, Lear will find Lovett a suitable Weaver to marry. But if she fails, so many things can happen that might find Lovett in the Cloisters, or worse. 


This novel was enchanting. Lovett is a fierce woman who thinks she always has the upper hand. Until she meets Eliot. Their companionship will bring both to their knees, but in the end, Lovett truly has one goal, win the Vainglory and become the bride of Noé Alaire. While Eliot does wish to know his sister’s murderer, he will find working with Lovett maddening. They are two extraordinarily stubborn people. 


So many characters with dominant personalities. Men who have had pretty much everything handed to them on silver platters. Silkwitches who have grown up on the right side of the tracks and know that the Cloisters will likely never be their fates. I loved this novel. I loved the intrigue of the Vainglory. Not so much the actual competition, but how the challenges were handled. I loved how fearless Lovett could be, even at the risk of her own life. 


What I didn’t love? Knowing I will have to wait for the next book to know how this one is going to play out. 


If you love fantasy with a lot of intrigue, this novel should be something you’d enjoy. It has all the elements. Mystery, catty women, beautiful aloof men, romance, crime. Very long, but worth every page.

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.