When the gods make the rules, the players must choose: Sacrifice their love to save the world, or choose love and let it burn?
Six months after saving their island from destruction and almost losing Dante, Alessa is ready to live happily ever after with her former bodyguard. But Dante can’t rest, haunted by a conviction that the gods aren’t finished with them yet. And without his powers, the next kiss from Alessa could kill him.
Desperate for answers, Dante enlists Alessa and their friends to find the exiled ghiotte in hopes of restoring his powers and combining forces with them to create the only army powerful enough to save them all. But Alessa is hiding a deadly consequence of their last fight–a growing darkness that’s consuming her mind–and their destination holds more dangers than anyone bargained for. In the mysterious city of the banished, Dante will uncover secrets, lies, and ghosts from his past that force him to ask himself: Which side is he on?
When the gods reveal their final test, Dante and Alessa will be the world’s last defense. But if they are the keys to saving the world, will their love be the price of victory?
In This Cursed Light, Dante and Alessa face their most daunting challenge yet when the Gods demand they prove their worth by choosing the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity, once and for all.
When an acclaimed author dies at the Regency Grand Hotel, it’s up to a fastidious maid to uncover the truth, no matter how dirty—in a standalone novel featuring Molly Gray, from the #1 New York Timesbestselling author of The Maid, a Good Morning America Book Club Pick.
Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J.D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tea room floor.
When Detective Stark, Molly’s old foe, investigates the author’s unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul. Suspects abound, and everyone wants to who killed J.D. Grimthorpe? Was it Lily, the new Maid-in-Training? Or was it Serena, the author’s secretary? Could Mr. Preston, the hotel’s beloved doorman, be hiding something? And is Molly really as innocent as she seems?
As the case threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer’s identity. But that key is buried deep in her past—because long ago, she knew J.D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues, revisiting her childhood and the mysterious Grimthorpe mansion where she and her dearly departed Gran once worked side by side. With the entire hotel under investigation, Molly must solve the mystery post-haste. If there’s one thing Molly knows for sure, it’s that dirty secrets don’t stay buried forever…
Overall Recommendation:
Having thought the sensational novel, The Maid, was a stand-alone, I was delighted to be checking back into the Regency Grand Hotel and following the delightful Molly on another unfortunate incident resulting in a dead man at their fine establishment. This time around, we learn more about Molly’s history alongside her Gran’s, and the cozy mystery factor makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, akin to being wrapped up in the best blanket. This is the perfect fall read and has earned another top spot in my books!
**The Mystery Guest comes out November 28, 2023**
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review
Molly the maid is back at it again as we are warmly re-embraced into the staff and charm of the Regency Grand Hotel. Four years have passed since the events of The Maid so while references are made about what had occurred then, this can be read as a stand-alone.
For a five star hotel, yet another unfortunate murder has occurred on the premises of this fine establishment, right after they were fixing their reputation again from the last gnarly incident. This time, it’s a reclusive mystery novelist who was about to make a big announcement if not for his untimely demise.
I loved being back in Molly’s perspective as she’s hurled back into another murder investigation. While I know people’s frustrations from book 1 sometimes stemmed from the lack of explicit acknowledgment where Molly stood on the spectrum, personally it doesn’t take away from the story if she was officially diagnosed or not. For her character and the additional backstory we see in this book, if she was on the spectrum, i don’t think they had the means to get a proper diagnosis so Molly herself may not have a word to describe how she’s different from others. She knows she is but she works hard to read other people to live and function among them. And perhaps her ability to remember details the rest of us find irrelevant makes her the perfect amateur sleuth out there, albeit begrudgingly.
The cast of characters brings old friends I loved from book 1 (I love you, Mr. Preston!) and new ones alike. There was less Juan Miguel in this books, to the point he wasn’t even a secondary character, but I liked that the romance subplot wasn’t huge at all. There was no second book misunderstanding breakup or anything. This was purely a solid cozy mystery and I was all for that. I’m not normally a cozy mystery reader – I need that intense thrill of suspense to drive me forward – but Nita Prose continues to surprise me with her ability to make me love this world she’s created that’s more hopeful than most mysteries I read.
The story moves along at a fairly fast pace. There are two almost equally split timelines, present day with the mystery and Molly’s past when she was around ten years old. Her history and present surprisingly intermingle and I loved slowly learning what pieces were hidden in Molly’s mind that gave greater context to the present mystery. Seeing more of her Gran and their interactions was heartwarming, but I felt there was more insight into who Molly is as a person as we see more of her thoughts as a child in addition to her grown up self. I absolutely adore her as a protagonist which makes this book and series everything. There are not many characters I feel such a connection to even though we’re nothing alike. Leaving the book felt like losing a friend, because Molly was so well described it felt like I knew her by the end. (There’re also so many sayings she and her Gran have that they can fill a book for cheesy lines to remember.)
If you loved The Maid, this one is a beautiful story that is as good as the first, which is always hard to do when the first was already so well written. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in but I can honestly say I never want to leave the Regency Grand and Molly for long. If that means 30 more books featuring this cast and place, I will happily dive into every single one.
When Chloe Chang gets dumped via USPS after moving across the county from NYC to LA, her first instinct is to throw her box of memories in the garbage. Instead, she starts buying other teenagers’ break-up boxes to create an art exhibit, Heartifacts. Opening night is going great, until she spots Daniel Kwak illicitly filming his best friend’s reaction to his ex’s box. When she tries to stop him, an intense discussion ends up launching a creative partnership and friendship… and a major crush for Chloe.
There’s just one problem: Daniel is dead set on not being another rebound.
Five times he’s been the guy who makes the girls he’s dating realize they want to get back with their ex. And he refuses for there to be a sixth. She insists she’s over her ex, but when he shows up unexpectedly with his new girlfriend, it turns out Daniel was right. She isn’t ready for a new relationship.
She throws herself into making Heartifacts successful, but flashy influencers threaten her original vision of the exhibit. To create the exhibit she’s always wanted, Chloe needs to go back to basics, learn to work with artists in a more collaborative way, and discover what love can be. Only then will she convince Daniel she’s truly ready for everything they could be to one another.
In the tradition of Jenny Han and Emma Lord, Jennifer Chen’s Artifacts of an Ex is a story of love, art, and finding your way when everything you know has changed completely.
Overall Recommendation:
Artifacts of an Ex touches on key themes of loving yourself and learning to let go before falling in love again. While I agree with these things, the execution was not as strong as I had hoped and it was hard to believe in Chloe’s newfound love for Daniel while her breakup was still so fresh. I had also wished for more about her family as they felt like filler rather than important side themes to explore in the book. Overall it was an okay read but it did take me a while to finish it.
**Artifacts of an Ex comes out November 14, 2023**
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review
There were plenty of things I wanted to love about this book: themes of heartbreak, new love, and the feelings they invoke in us universally. Perhaps some of it was too much to explore altogether in this one novel, or my expectations were too high, but it felt like it bit off more than it could chew.
Chloe quickly gets dumped early on in the book. Her idea to form an art exhibit from people’s shared experiences of heartbreak from an ex was unique and refreshing.
But too much focus was perhaps on the actual planning and replanning of the exhibit. She is apparently a big enough YouTuber who is known for, well, planning. As PlanItGirl, she utilizes a number of, what I guess to be, sponsored items from stationery brands for her planning journals and writing utensils. I never understood all of it as it’s not explicitly explained, so either this is a popular real brand I have absolutely no idea of or it wasn’t meant to be analyzed beyond its mention in the book.
Then we have her Asian family. There are a few side plots with them, namely the fact they moved to LA to be with her ill grandmother. Their search for the recipe ingredients in her grandma’s famous pineapple cakes was fun and I loved the dynamic with her Ahma when she could remember who Chloe was. However, nothing more substantial really takes place beyond this and it leaves me wondering if they were just plot filler to pad out the story. They all feel a little too two-dimensional for characters that did take up a certain amount of space in the book.
My biggest problem, though, was how hard it was to believe Chloe could just fall in love with Daniel so fast after such a breakup with her ex. She barely had time to process her feelings, and when her ex, Jake, popped back in her life post-breakup, she clearly had hoped to still give it another try with him if he also wanted that. This was after she had met Daniel and thought he could be someone of interest to date. With Daniel’s history and his concern as the “rebound” guy, her reassurances to him that she wouldn’t do that seems super hypocritical.
For a book about love, whether new love or loving yourself with your flaws and all, I didn’t really feel either of these things from Chloe’s journey. That, perhaps, is why it was so hard to love this as much as I had hoped from the synopsis. With more focus on this main theme, I may have learned to love it more but it just wasn’t for me.
Down the Rabbit Hole 