Match Making for Beginners - review

Match Making for Beginners,

by Maddie Dawson

Lake Union

Marnie McGraw, an ordinary young woman from Florida, is all at sea when she encounters her fiance Noah’s Old Money Virginian family for the first time. An innocent faux-pas immediately sets her at odds with Noah’s mom – but earns her a firm ally in the formidable shape of his great-aunt Blix Holliday. Blix sees much of herself in the younger woman and is elated by the discovery, because she’s dying and needs to find someone to replace her as magical matchmaker extraordinaire.

Marnie’s wedding to rich, feckless fly-by-night Noah is a disaster. Divorced within weeks, a shell-shocked Marnie is rescued by her family and renews her teenage love affair with Jeremy, now a doctor of physical therapy. Maybe this time she’ll settle with a nice, stable, boring guy and live the suburban life she thinks she wants. But Fate has a surprise in store when Blix passes away, leaving Marnie an eccentric brownstone house in Brooklyn, two lodgers – and a whole host of problems to solve. 

There’s Jessica, still in love with her ex-husband, although she won’t admit it. There’s Lola, Blix’s old friend and neighbor, reluctant to show her attraction to her late husband’s best friend. There’s Patrick, a physically scarred man with a shining soul who’s reluctant to show his face outside the brownstone’s basement apartment. And then there’s Noah, crashing back into Marnie’s life with his own agenda. Torn between Florida and Brooklyn and a growing attraction to Patrick, can Marnie negotiate the perils, pitfalls and magical chaos of Blix’s world and find the life and love she needs?

Match Making forBeginners is a lovely, lyrical, funny and moving story about lost souls and those who find, love and guide them. Marnie and Blix are great characters with true personalities you’ll love to read more adventures of. 

Her Beautiful Monster - review

Her BeautifulMonster

by Adi Tantimedh

Leopoldo & Co./Atria/Simon & Schuster.

Ravi Chandra Singh, investigator with Golden Sentinels of London, thinks he’s a holy fool. To him the gods of Hindu mythology are far from mythical: he sees them everywhere (except when he’s making love to gorgeous girlfriend Julia – the gods do have some discretion). His colleagues know about his oddity, yet they’re fine with it. His Machiavellian boss Roger Golden even sees Ravi’s budding shamanism as an asset to the firm. As for Golden Sentinels’ own implanted CIA spook Marcie, who knows what she really thinks?

The case of a Russian oligarch’s missing will leads Ravi and Co to a murderous family of blue-bloods. The case is wrapped up with the firm’s usual skill, but the result has disturbing geopolitical implications. To give them a break, Roger sends Ravi and Julia on an easy fact-finding assignment to observe the firm’s LA office at work. 

La-La Land lives up to expectations, with wannabe movie stars, beautiful people, and celebrities causing scandals. No scandal has the potential to be bigger than the case of Hollywood mogul Gossamer Rand Ross. Ross’ enthusiastic amateur efforts to assist the CIA in a little matter of gun running comes off the rails when brush fires encircle the city. Ravi and Julia are dragged into the middle of it all, and things turn especially hairy when old faces from Ravi’s past show up – including Ravi and Julia’s former lover Ariel, mercenary and sociopath extraordinaire. When Ravi sees the goddess Kali licking her lips, he knows the smelly stuff is going to hit the fan. Are the gods here to help, or are Ravi and Julia heading for a fatal fall?

Her BeautifulMonster is a rollicking journey through the dystopian world of modern mores, where East meets West in a fusion of laughter and wince-inducing pathos. 

Babylon Berlin - review

Babylon Berlin

by Volker Kutscher

Sandstone Press

Germany, Spring, 1929. Inspector Gereon Rath was a homicide detective in his home town of Cologne, but a shooting in the line of duty led to a newspaper scandal his career couldn’t survive. Thanks to his father’s heavy political and police connections, Rath transferred to Berlin and took up a position in E Section – the Vice squad in the city police HQ on Alexanderplatz. Under the avuncular guidance of Chief Inspector Wolter, Rath begins to find his feet in the vibrant and dangerous city. He also falls in love with ambitious police stenographer Charlotte Ritter.

When a dead Russian dissident somehow crashes a stolen car into the Landwehr Canal, the troubled Rath spies a chance to resume a career in homicide as a member of the crack A Section – but this is Berlin and nothing’s as it appears. Somewhere there’s a hidden fortune in Russian gold. A radical group of Russian exiles, a Berlin crime king, and corrupt cops at the heart of Alexanderplatz all conspire to be the first to find it. Rath must pursue a dangerous course through the illegal nightclubs and Communist neighborhoods of the city if he’s to win the case and get the girl – but a shocking encounter on the streets of Berlin throws everything into doubt.

In Babylon Berlin, Noir detective fiction merges seamlessly into the complex and hedonistic world of pre-Nazi Berlin. Kutscher’s period research, descriptions and realistic, sympathetic characters drive a narrative that’s hard to put down. 

Incarnate - review

Incarnate

by Josh Stolberg

Emily Bestler Books/Atria

Based in the small Alaskan town of Jarvis, Dr. Kim Patterson is a brilliant psychiatrist with a maverick approach to her profession, but her flouting of hospital rules isn’t appreciated by her superiors. Kim is walking a fine line between residency and dismissal when she encounters nineteen-year-old Scarlett Hascall in the psychiatric ward. Immediately Kim sees Scarlett’s condition isn’t being correctly diagnosed: She has multiple personalities fighting to control her, and Kim can’t resist doing her best to help the girl.

Across town Detective Zack Trainor is dealing with a missing person case. Isabel ‘Izzi’ Wilcox went missing some days ago. Her lowlife boyfriend looks a likely candidate for Izzi’s disappearance, but as Zack investigates things don’t seem so clear cut. When Zack discovers a link to Kim’s patient, he and she clash over the right way to proceed with Scarlett’s case – but Scarlett is full of surprises. Other dead and missing people from the town begin to emerge through Scarlett’s person, and Kim and Zack realize something seriously strange is going on. Is Scarlett the world’s most cunning psychopath, or is she really channeling the dead? Kim and Zack find they have to rely on each other as they pursue the case all the way to its shocking conclusion.

Incarnate has a great character partnership between off-beat but likable Kim Patterson and the more straight-laced Zack Trainor. The small world of Jarvis comes to life under Stolberg’s touch in a story that grips all the way to the end.