My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fatal Affair, a Carina Press release by Marie Force, promises to be the first of a series involving the same romantic couple. I must give Ms. Force points for this, as I quite like to see a series develop the relationship between an established pair–J.D. Robb of course comes to mind for this. I must also give the book points for a nice juicy murder mystery, featuring the slaying of a young Senator. The investigating detective must give this case everything she’s got, since she’s under harshly critical eyes for the death of a child on her last case. And if that wasn’t stressful enough, she discovers to her shock and dismay that the Senator’s assistant is none other than her old flame.

All of which make up a nice little story. I had some quibbles with it from a stylistic perspective; there were a few too many coincidental things that seemed to have been put in for the convenience for the plot, such as our heroine’s chief of police also happening to be her uncle. On the other hand, the murder mystery was genuinely engaging, and I certainly won’t turn down a look at Book 2 with these characters. Three stars.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I won On Her Trail by Marcelle Dubé as part of Carina Press’ launch promotion, which rather tickled me since it was one of their initial releases I’d scoped out and put onto my buy list. Woo, free book!

If you look at the blurb for this thing, you can see the basic core concept that made me think this might be fun: “Laura Thorsen returns to Canada only to run afoul of the mob”. “Canada” and “mob” are not two concepts I expect to encounter in the same book. Nor are “ghosts” and “mob”, since Laura’s mother turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of her husband and a former lover. So yeah, this sounded fun and I was happy to get a chance to read it.

Overall I found the characters engaging, although the story felt a bit more weighted than I’d have liked towards the paranormal side of things. The backstory on Laura’s mother and the ghosts is excellent, as is the uneasy relationship between Laura and her mother. On the other hand, the suspense side of things, involving the newspaper expose that puts Laura on the run in the first place, doesn’t quite come together for me and I’m not sure why. I can’t say in fairness that it didn’t get as much development as the haunting plot, because it did–it’s just that it seemed like the book was weighted more towards the haunting and the mother/daughter tension than it was towards the mobster/story plot. I think I’d have liked a bit more balance between the two, or perhaps a bit more buildup to the presence of the ghosts in the plot.

Laura and her love interest Mack had some nice lightly played chemistry, and my only regret here is that Mack struck me as almost too laid-back a character. Writing this review several weeks after I actually read the book, I couldn’t remember the poor guy’s name. I couldn’t help it; this is what the book gets for one of the ghosts being named Sawyer, which promptly trumped Mack in my head. (Thank you, Lost!) Three stars.

Bernita Harris’ Dark and Disorderly did not at first impress me by its title. But as I thought the concept sounded fun, I made sure to pick it up when Carina Press went live earlier this year. Turns out, I was very glad I did. Dark and Disorderly turned out to be a lively book indeed.

Coming out of an imprint of Harlequin, you’d expect this book to lean more towards the “paranormal romance” end of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance spectrum. And while you could make a good case for that, for me as a reader it read more like pure urban fantasy, for two reasons: 1) good worldbuilding, and 2) way less emphasis on the romance between the leads, although of course there was one.

Let’s talk worldbuilding first. This is a universe where ghosts and the other expected batch of supernaturals exist, and our heroine, Lillie St. Claire, is essentially a city-employed ghostbuster. I quite liked the scenario Harris lays down, that supernatural incidents have been on the rise only in the last couple of decades, and that Lillie is one of a generation of children known as Talents–and in her particular case, maybe even something above and beyond. It was just the right blend of supernatural and real-world for me, with a city trying to work out its infestation of ghosts as a municipal problem; this felt very real and believable.

Props as well for the story starting off with a serious bang, when what Lillie thinks is the corpse of her recently deceased husband assaults her in her own bathroom. That seized my attention nicely, and once that initial punch was delivered, the arrival in the plot of police sergeant John Thresher made a great followup. And when Harris described her hero as “not ugly, exactly, just… rugged” and with “a face like a box of hammers and jaws like angle irons”, I was instantly charmed. I’ve had a surfeit of super-sexy heroes, not to mention overly florid description of heroine’s reactions to them, so this won me right out of the gate. So did the chemistry between Lillie and John, which was quite strong and yet never over the top. Major, major points for that.

This is Book 1 in a series, not terribly surprisingly, but I’ll definitely look forward to coming back for more. Intriguing questions are raised about Lillie’s background that hopefully will be answered in forthcoming books–not to mention the bigger picture of supernatural happenings in the world at large, and I’m quite interested in seeing how Lillie and John will play into that. My only quibbles with the story were minor ones indeed, and overall I found this highly enjoyable. Four stars.

If you’re anything at all like me, you probably can’t hear the words “the Little Mermaid” without immediately having a cartoon crab start singing “Under the Sea” in your head. But then again, if you’re anything at all like me, you’ll also probably find Jim Hines’ The Mermaid’s Madness a strong cure for that particular earworm.

Book 2 of his Princess series does indeed adapt that particular fairy tale, and to particularly good effect. This time around we’ve got our three heroines, Danielle, Snow, and Talia, having to delve into why the local undine are attacking human ships and sailors–and why their leader, the mad young queen Lirea, has nearly murdered Queen Beatrice. Lirea’s backstory, which tells how she gained the power to transform into human shape out of love of a human prince but then lost him, is darkly tragic and an easy match for the original Hans Christian Andersen version of the tale.

I appreciated that the main male characters weren’t quite figureheads here, either, even as the primary focus remained on the women. King Theodore and Danielle’s husband Armand remained primarily off-camera, but on the other hand, they were also doing things, which is all I ask. Better still, we got some delightful developments about Talia and Snow, about which I shall not expound because oh my yes spoilers. Points as well for Danielle succeeding in being both a mother and an effective warrior and heroine; that’s a pretty rare thing in fantasy novels, still.

Definitely worth checking out if you like your heroines of the mold of Wicked Girls Saving Themselves (h/t to seanan_mcguire), and keep an eye out for the dryad ship captain who will, if you’re a filk fan, very likely remind you of Tricky Pixie’s “Dryad’s Promise”. Four stars.