Quinn Reaper by Jesi Kellis (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

 

Title: Quinn Reaper

Author: Jesi Kellis

Publication: 30 August 2020/11 February 2022

Format: Kindle ebook

Amazon Description

Armed with caustic wit and Resting Doll Face, 24-year-old Quinn grapples through life, selling used underwear online to keep a dilapidated roof over her head. She escaped her past once before, but when an intruder arrives to escort her spirit to the hereafter, running isn’t an option.

Scheduled for a fatal brain aneurysm in eleven minutes, she strikes a desperate deal with Milo, her assigned reaper. If he’ll postpone her death by taking an impromptu vacation among the living, Quinn will be his travel guide. And she’ll replace his retired partner when her extension ends.

Counting down to her extinction through a nine-day road trip—complete with haunted hotels, a ghost-hunting ex-boyfriend, an obsessive-compulsive vegan, and a geriatric cat—Quinn has one goal for the dwindling remainder of her life: To torment the man who’s stolen her future.

 

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I can count my living "insta-buy" authors on one hand .... and Jesi Kellis has just occupied the middle finger and all thanks to the fact that I'm pretty sure Amazon has my brain bugged.

The day after I debated flipping around my Alphabet Soup list (again) and making my Q title my N author (and, hence, needing a new Q title), this beauty appeared as a freebie in my email.

I grabbed it, then I bothered to read the description, then I started to pick out blips for "is it a Friday book or a Tuesday book?" Thankfully, the Kindle gives page numbers AND percentages so Friday it is .... obviously. 

I've decided that I'm definitely okay with being bugged because this book is freaking amazeballs. It could easily have been a Sunday book with how many highlights I've made and quotes I have copied into thee ol' blog notebook ... but the Sunday posts don't get nearly the traffic as Friday, and y'all need to know about this book and the author who now calls my middle finger home, so ...                                               

         

Quinn is gloriously snarky and (seemingly) doesn't give two shits about much and I love her. She is, unapologetically, a bit of a bitch but you wouldn't know by looking at her : 

Fortunately for me, I have a condition called Resting Doll Face. It's the polar opposite of Resting Bitch Face. I look like a much more pleasant human being than I actually am. 

Life is all well and good ... well, it's acceptable ... ish ... until she comes home to her deadbolted shoebox apartment and there's a man sitting at her kitchen table in a Christmas sweater ... in June ... and no one can see or hear him but her.

He's probably an escaped mental patient. While his red-carpet hair says No Autographs Please, his tacky Christmas sweater basically screams, 'Give me another eggnog or I'll stab Aunt Mildred.'

Yep. That's Milo. 

Who's Milo? 

Go back and read the description. I've already given you more than I should have with the added blips.  

Better yet, just go get the book. 

[Word of warning : once you reach the last third or so you will probably also need to get a box of kleenex. I did say, after all, that she seemingly doesn't give two shits about much, didn't I?]

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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

The Boy With The Bookstore by Sarah Echavarre Smith (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

 

Title: The Boy With The Bookstore

Author: Sarah Echavarre Smith

Publication: 6 September 2022

Format: Kindle eArc via NetGalley & Berkley

Amazon Description

When a baker meets the bookshop owner of her dreams, and he turns into her nemesis, they’ll both have to read between the lines to avoid a career-ending recipe for disaster.

Max Boyson looks good...from a distance. But up close and personal, the tattooed hottie Joelle Prima has been crushing on for the past year and half has turned into the prime example of why you shouldn’t judge a book by his delectable cover.
 
When she first learned about the massive renovation to the building they share, Joelle imagined that temporarily combining her Filipino bakery with Max’s neighboring bookstore would be the perfect opening chapter to their happily ever after. In her fantasies they fed each other bibingka and pandesal while discussing Jane Austen and cooing over her pet hamster, Pumpkin. Reality, however...is quite different. Her gallant prince turned out to be a stubborn toad who snaps at her in front of customers, dries his wet clothes in her oven, and helps himself to the yummy pastries in her display case without asking.
 
But beneath Max’s grumpy glares, Joelle senses a rising heat—and a softening heart. And when they discover the real reason for the renovation, they’ll have to put both their business senses and their feelings for each other to the test.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

"It’s raw. It’s real. And it’s gut-wrenching."

This pretty much sums up what I thought was going to be a light and fluffy rom-com.

It's not.

I really didn't much care for the main characters and their "romance" was horribly dysfunctional throughout the vast majority of the book. There was a bit too much anvil carrying and not enough swoon.

I get it, though.

Dysfunctional is real. 

It's also not at all what I was hoping for when I got the book from Berkley on NetGalley.  I liked her friends and family, though, and kept hoping ... but as it turned out, the best part of the book was probably that it didn't even take me a full day or keep me up too late to fly through it.

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"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. 

"Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

I'll Sleep When I've Read... This Book Is Full Of Spiders by Jason Pargin

 

Title: This Book Is Full Of Spiders

Author: Jason Pargin (originally as David Wong)

Publication: 5 October 2021 (originally 12 October 2012)

Format: paperback

Amazon Description

Warning: You may have a huge, invisible spider living in your skull. THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR.

You will dismiss this as ridiculous fear-mongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fear-mongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection--the creature stimulates skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That's just as well, since the "cure" involves learning what a chainsaw tastes like. You can't feel the spider, because it controls your nerve endings. You won't even feel it when it breeds. And it will breed.

Just stay calm, and remember that telling you about the spider situation is not the same as having caused it. I'm just the messenger. Even if I did sort of cause it. Either way, I won't hold it against you if you're upset. I know that's just the spider talking.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I love it when someone asks me what I'm reading and all I can do it stare at them and turn the book so they can more clearly see the cover. I had several very confused people (and one who totally understood) Thursday morning before I left work.

"I honestly have no idea... 

...but I love it."

I actually had to leave the book at work that morning because I knew that if I took it home I wouldn't sleep and sleep is a much needed thing. Sometimes. Instead I brought it home with me Friday morning and then didn't sleep much Friday night. Or Saturday. 

It's a big book.

A lot happens.

And then a lot doesn't.

Or does it?

And then more almost does. 

And ....

Don't ever ask me to explain it to you.

If you want to share whatever has kept you up past your bedtime because you just needed one more chapter ... or the entire book ... please comment! My TBR pile is already toppling, but I can always add more.

The Irish Boarding House by Sandy Taylor (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

 

Title: The Irish Boarding House

Author: Sandy Taylor

Publication: 1 September 2022

Format: Kindle eArc via Bookouture & NetGalley

Amazon Description

24 Merrion Square. The house stands empty, the old stone steps overgrown with thorny rose bushes. But Mary Kate feels a deep connection to the neglected, silent rooms. Could this be the place to help her heal?

Dublin 1952. When Mary Kate Ryan receives a surprise inheritance from the woman who abandoned her as a tiny baby, she’s stunned. All her life, she has longed to know why her mother disappeared, and now she’s devastated to realise that every lonely night she spent without a home or family of her own, her mother knew exactly where she was.

Mary Kate is about to refuse the money when she sees a beautiful, deserted house for sale and something sparks in her heart. She will reawaken it, as the Dublin Boarding House for Single Ladies, and provide a shelter for others as lost and alone as her. Can she help the two young girls left at the local orphanage, desperate for a home of their own? Or the pregnant teenager on the run, who only wants to keep her baby safe?

The boarding house brings Mary Kate love and friendships she never dreamed of, but just as her heart is about to burst with joy, a new guest arrives. The stern older woman won’t speak about her past, but when Mary Kate uncovers her story, it reveals a devastating secret about her mother. With her life in turmoil once more, can Mary Kate draw on the strength of the women in the house to help her face her past, or will the tragedy she uncovers spell disaster for them all…?

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

4.5 stars rounded up to 5. Half a star was lost probably because it didn't hit me nearly as hard as Taylor's When We Danced at the End of the Pier ... but, then again, very few books have. That one still makes my heart flip and I get "warm-fuzzies" even when I just read my own review of it over five years later. The Irish Boarding House is lovely in its own right and I enjoyed watching Mary Kate and her new family, but I think I was just expecting that little bit of extra ... Pierness? Still, reading this was a most excellent way to spend an afternoon.

 

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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

A Scandalous Deception by Lynn Messina (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

 

 Title: A Scandalous Deception

Author: Lynn Messina

Publication: 9 August 2018

Format: Kindle ebook

Amazon Description

As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator.

So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of a London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities. She has her own problems to deal with anyway—such as extricating herself from a seemingly harmless little fib that has somehow grown in into a ridiculously large fiction.

Truly, she has no interest at all.

Except the dagger that killed the poor earl seemed disconcertingly familiar… And so Bea is off to the British Museum because she cannot rest until she confirms her suspicion, while trying to allay her family’s concerns and comprehend the Duke of Kesgrave’s compulsion.

For the handsome lord has no reason to waste his time solving a mystery alongside a shy spinster. And yet he turns up everywhere she goes.

 Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I am horribly ashamed of myself sometimes.

I find a series; I read the first book (or the first few); I fall in love with the story and the characters; I get all excited about seeing what's next ... and then before I know it, it's a few years later and I'm many many books behind because ... well, I mostly blame NetGalley. And Amazon. And ThriftBooks. And my already overflowing bookshelves. And squirrels.

I rambled and teased the first Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mystery, A Brazen Curiosity, on January 28th ... of 2020. I started to read the second one on August 18th ... of 2022. I kept meaning to continue before now. Really. There are ten books in the series now and a new series is having its first book released September 2nd and that's currently glaring at me from my NetGalley shelf along with so many others. I had actually started to read that one and then my bookmark made skidmarks when I realized that it's pretty much a spin-off to this series.

So now I'm back to Bea ... and the Duke ... and I'm so very glad. I'm not sure if I will be able to catch up by the 2nd and, even if I do, I'm not sure each book will get its own post. I have three posts already set to autopublish between now and then so I could just read them back-to-back-to-back-to ..... you get the idea. They're short enough and enjoyable enough that it probably wouldn't even be a hardship. 

I adore Bea (and the Duke). It's rom-com, it's regency, it's mystery. What is there not to adore?

Perhaps one giant teaser post with a few favorite lines from each title .... 

Book # 3 -- An Infamous Betrayal -- finished 22 August 2022

Book #4 -- A Nefarious Engagement -- probably finished 23 August 2022 -- currently at 47%

Hmmmmmmm ...

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"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. 

"Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.