Well Versed

Well Versed- Jen DeLuca

Berkley

Release Date: September 22, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Caitlin Parker was a teenager when she fell out of love with the magic of the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire—the site of her first real heartbreak. But now, twenty-four and unemployed, she finds herself in her childhood bedroom and her childhood lady-in-waiting costume, assisting a rotating cast of substitute queens for the season. The very last person she wants to see is Alexander Wright—the sword-fighting, Shakespeare-spouting young man who won and broke her teenage heart. Yet there he is, older, annoyingly hotter, and back on stage at her Faire.

When Alex broke things off with Caitlin five years ago, he thought he was just ending a summer fling. He didn't realize how much he’d fallen for her until he let her go, and he certainly didn't know he’d tarnished her memories of her cherished Faire and worse, shattered her view on love and relationships. His need to right that wrong this summer brings them together again and again, and the four-year age difference that kept them apart years ago isn’t a big deal now. This time, it won’t be so easy to let go of this summer fling.

But as summer winds down, real life is catching up to both of them. Caitlin’s always thought that being an adult with adult responsibilities means leaving whimsy behind. Alex, with a life full of stage combat, songs, and sonnets, doesn’t know how to live any other way. Can they go after their dreams and find a future together where they can still say “huzzah”?

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I've been in love with Jen DeLuca's Ren Faire romance series since the first page of Well Met, so course I enjoyed returning to the world of the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire in the final book of the series, Well Versed. This time, it's Caitlin's turn to need the magic and romance of the Ren Faire. 

We first met Caitlin as a teen in Well Met, dragging her aunt Emily into the world of the Faire. Now Caitlin has had her young heart broken and lost her love for the Faire. She's back in Willow Creek after being laid off at a job and agreed to help with the Faire for the summer- but is sure she won't enjoy it. Her memories are now connected to her first love breaking up with her by text at the end of a Faire summer. But Alex is there too and goes from clueless that he's broken her heart and taken away her love of all things Faire to determined to help her get that back. And Caitlin doesn't really stand a chance.

Caitlin likes plans. Goals. Destinations. Without those things she isn't sure who she is or what she's doing. So being part of a massive layoff and having to move home throws her for a loop. She spends the summer trying to figure out what it is she wants-starting off sure of one thing and slowly coming around to seeing something else. It's a journey that all of DeLuca's characters have had to take: yes, you can work crazy hours in competitive, soulless jobs or you can find smaller jobs that are not what your career counselor taught you to think of and be happy. What is it you want out of life? What makes you happy, not what are you supposed to want?

There are times Caitlin seems very young, trying to find paths and decide on love that maybe she isn't ready for. Then as the book progresses you see that she is ready, she just has to believe in herself. The back and forth with Alex was a little slow at times, but sweet. Alex was so careful on not messing up with his second chance that it seems like he really learned his lesson.  Which makes it all the more emotional when he does mess it up. 

You don't need to have read the rest of the series to enjoy Well Versed, but honestly, you should. The books are great. We get lots of cameos from other characters here and they are fun, checking in on how everyone is doing. A lovely mix of light humor and emotion, heat and the magic of the Renaissance Faire, this was a solid ending to a series that is going to remain a favorite of mine. 

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel

 Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel - Lucy Foley

HarperCollins

Release Date: September 22, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚 (2.5)

Some spoilers below

Synopsis: High in the Swiss Alps, accessible only by a single, winding railway, stands the luxurious Grand Alpine Hotel. With glorious mountain views and exclusive access to powdery slopes, it draws guests from far and wide.

The notorious actress.
The high-flying politician.
The society wife.
The reckless friend.
The shrewd doctor.

But not everyone is here for a winter holiday.

Beneath the champagne and furs, dark histories simmer; old grudges emerge like cracks in the ice.

And someone is watching from the shadows. A polite, unassuming woman with an extraordinary mind: Miss Marple.

When a body is found and a blizzard cuts off all escape, only Miss Marple can connect the clues before the killer strikes again. Because it isn’t a question of who has a motive, but who’s next…

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Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel  is being touted as a "new Agatha Christie" book, written by Lucy Foley and starring Miss Marple. 

It isn't. It's a historcal mystery, set in 1950, with a cast of set characters that will be familiar to most readers, with a nominal Miss Marple and Dolly Bantry thrown in there to lure in Agatha Christie fans and a few Marple Easter eggs randomly tossed in.

The plot is basic: an obnoxious politician and his wife go to a luxurious Swiss hotel, his out of place war friend is there, his glamorous Hollywood mistress is there. He's clearly up to no good. No one is sorry when he winds up dead, but it does get in the way of everyone's holiday. Miss Marple, Dolly Bantry and her companion Diana Glass are there on holiday and chip in to help the investigation. More deaths happen. No one is who they say they are.

The story is told from multiple first person POVs that (with the overblown exception of the actress) largely sounded the same to me. None of the characters were especially likable and I kept reading mostly to see if I was right about the guesses I had about everyone's secrets than because I was invested in the book. Miss Marple and Dolly both sounded more like they were just repeating lines from the different movies or tv shows than anything else. The author seemed to spend more time describing the scenery than getting into the characters or developing a good plot. There's a lot of scenery description.

As a historical mystery, it was so-so. As a new Miss Marple story, it doesn't add anything to the character, or the series, and I'm not sure why anyone needs this book. If you're an Agatha Christie fan and are really curious, I'd recommend getting it from the library instead of paying for it outright. Personally, I was disappointed.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Fury in Death

 Fury in Death- J.D. Robb 

St. Martin's Press

Release Date: September 8, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: NYSPD homicide detective Eve Dallas never knows what to expect when she gets word of a body. It could be an elderly man who made the mistake of climbing a ladder in slippery footwear. And the next call could be a wealthy biotech executive beaten to death in his home office—but what was Larry Chu’s mistake?

The victim’s corpse is so mangled and damaged it’s hard to believe a lone, unarmed assailant could have managed it. The killer was clearly unnaturally strong—and smart enough to find a way into Chu’s highly secure building. Most of all, whoever did this was very, very angry.

The excessive violence leads Dallas to conclude that this was a deeply personal act, born of a rage that she can’t excuse but can understand thanks to her own traumatic past. And though the motive seems rooted in heated emotion rather than cold hard cash, she can’t ignore the suspicious bank account in the Cayman Islands, or the shadowy, profit-hungry company Chu worked for. The mystery only grows when it turns out Chu isn’t the only victim—and Dallas will need to tear through one layer of secrecy after another to reveal what lies behind this explosion of fury...

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I'm always a fan of J.D. Robb's "In Death" series, but this one was really excellent. So fast-paced I didn't want to put it down, despite knowing who the killer was and why he was killing people. Once Eve and Peabody figure out the why behind these attacks, everyone feels sorry for the killer- he's as much a victim as anything else. 

But most victims don't make a list and start battering the people they feel wronged them to death. Eve may feel sorry for the killer, and VERY angry at those who wronged him, but she's going to work within the system to bring everyone to justice. The rich and powerful think they can get away with anything because of their money and power (and having other people in their pockets). Eve and her team are going to prove that justice is bigger than all of them.

If you haven't read other books in the series before you'll enjoy the crime solving, but there is also a really good mix of domestic and personal that you may have to just go with. Mavis and Peabody finally have their big house party and lots of friends and relatives show up, some of whom we've met in other books. Plenty of delightful cameos from secondary characters across the book, especially in the final party. 

If you have a violence trigger, be warned the descriptions of what happens to the victims are particularly gruesome in this book and you may want to skim them. The book as a whole isn't any more violent than the rest of the series, and it's balanced with the friends and family domestic scenes. I really liked the ending, very poignant. No spoilers here, but the sense of family, and duty, runs strong throughout the book and the characters right through to the end. 

Another excellent addition to the series.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Queens and Kings

Queens and Kings: An Unusually Personal History-Lucy Worsley

Pegasus Books

Release Date: September 3, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: No one has lived and breathed the monarchy quite like Lucy Worsley. For over twenty years, she worked as Chief Curator in some of Britain's most splendid palaces—and now she is ready to throw open the doors and welcome us in.

In Queens and Kings, Lucy takes us on a journey through some of our most turbulent and significant moments in history. From the Council Chamber in which Henry VIII decided to break from the pope to lunch with the late Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, from encounters with the Tower of London's Ravenmaster to the depths of Queen Victoria's wardrobe, Lucy shares how she grew to know the queens and kings, courtiers and servants who lived in these buildings over the centuries. 

She traces their footsteps through the corridors and cloisters, the courtyards and kitchens and breathes new life into moments of great joy and consequence‚ as well as tales of intrigue which lurked in the shadows of regal splendor. Packed with new stories told from unexplored places, this is a fresh history of the monarchy.

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The delightful Lucy Worsley does it again! Her latest book, Queens and Kings: An Unusually Personal History,  offers history lovers a high-level history of British monarchs from the Tudor period to modern day with a certain focus. As the former Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, Worsley is intimately familiar with the palaces so many moarchs lived in and offers us specific stories of their lives in connection to the physical locations we migh still know today: Kennsinton Palace, the Tower of London, Kew Gardens, and my personal favorite Hampton Court Palace.

She also shares stories from her own time as curator and filming numerous documentaries connected to the palaces she knows and loves with her trademark sense of humor. From living and working at Hapton Court Palace to army crawling across lawns to preserve the view for important visitors; finding and interpreting blueprints of pre-renovation rooms to see what might actually have happened; reinterpreting the story of George III and more. 

Queens and Kings is an excellent addition to any history lover's collection-fun to read, and definitely a book that will encourage those who don't know Lucy Worsley and Britich history to take a deeper dive!

I received an ARC of this book from Eidelweiss in exchange for an honest review

Think Like a Dog

Think Like A Dog: Canine Adventures into the Science of Positive Psychology- Dr. Jen Golbeck, PhD

Atria Books

Release Date: September 1, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: A engaging exploration of dogs and positive pyschology, this book reveals the surprising science that explains how your dog thinks and acts from Jen Golbeck, the “internet’s dog mom” behind the massive social media platform The Golden Ratio and the author of The Purest Bond.

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I got the advance of this book just as my family and I were adopting a new dog and I thought the timing would be perfect- I'd learn about the latest in dog psychology and how to make sure our new dog could thrive in her new environment. 

Golbeck combines her personal obervations (she rescues and fosters Goldens), social media observations, and scientific studies to look at 7 aspects of Positive Psychology for dogs, including empathy, kindness, persistence, and humor. The scientific studies I found interesting- dogs have been taught to lie down in functioning MRIs so we can actually see what is going on in their brains while they are thinking (proving they aren't actually, for example, feeling guilty when we catch them doing things they know they shouldn't do). I very much appreciated the relaxed, conversational style of writing throughout the book- I didn't need to be a scientist to understand what Golbeck was talking about!

Sometimes a few of the anecdotes seemed to wander off the subject than other times, and I was hoping for more ideas in practical solutions to coming up with engagement and problem solving puzzles (we adopted a Malinois, I'm always looking for those ideas), but there were interesting facts, and it was a fast and fun read. 

Everyone who lives with dogs should definitely read Think Like A Dog!

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

House of Boleyn

The House of Bolyen- Tracy Borman

Hodder & Stoddard

Release Date: August 4, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚(3.5)

Synopsis: When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to the newly-anointed eighteen-year-old king, Henry VIII, Thomas's young daughter, Anne, implores him not to leave. "Well, make sure the prize you bring me is worth it, Father," Anne demands of him. "I will try," he responds. "But I'll wager even a crown wouldn't satisfy you." Such premonitions resonate convincingly throughout Tracy Borman's rich and compelling novel. Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Borman brings the Boleyn family's three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life.

Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colourful tableau in which servants play key roles, familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten, and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne's ever-loyal attendant Agnes Frideswide, and Thomas Boleyn's perfidious steward Robert Cranwell, are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of Henry VIII's court, as he pursues Anne relentlessly, only to abandon her when she can't give him the son and heir he desperately seeks.

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I'm a huge fan of Tudor historian Tracy Borman (The Stolen Crown, Henry VIII & The Men Who Made Him) so I was interested to see what she would do with a historical fiction of the Boleyn family. And I wasn't disappointed. 

The first interesting choice is that, while most historical fictions will focus on the royal court and what is happening in it, Borman's book always takes place at Hever Castle, the home of Thomas Boleyn and where Anne, Mary, and George Boleyn grow up. Through letters and gossip to family members and beloved servants the reader gets to know the family, including the often historically ignored grandmother Lady Margaret. And we learn that scheming for money and power aren't only happening at royal courts, but even among families like the Boleyns and their extended family—which helps us to understand (and may foreshadow) some of what happens to Anne later on.

There are some people out for only themselves in this dangerous world. But Borman asks the intriguing question: what if some of those people weren't who we thought they were? Historically we've always believed Thomas, Anne's father, wanted power and pushed his daughters at the king. What if he wasn't eager to have Anne (his favorite) marry Henry? What if George's wife Jane wasn't the villain she has historically been imagined to be?

If you know about the historical Boleyn family you'll still find surprises along the way in The House of Boleyn. And if you don't know much about history and are just reading this for fun (or picked it up because of the absolutely gorgeous cover) you'll enjoy a unique view into the Boleyn family. Either way, make sure to read the Author's Note where Borman explains where she tweaked a few things, which characters are completely fictional, and what you might think is fiction but was in fact totally true.

Tracy Borman puts you right in the world of Tudor homes and danger, where family can't always be counted on, and the biggest prize isn't what you think.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGally in exchange for an honest review

Not Built in a Day

 Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire-Emma Southon

Simon & Schuster

Release Date: June 30, 2026

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy. Without the millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment, or born into it as “home bred slaves”, the Roman empire’s great aqueducts and temples could never have been built. There would be no coins or tiles to find in fields, no limitless manpower for the army and navy that conquered the Mediterranean, no marble palaces or underfloor heating, and certainly no life of unimaginable luxury for the one percent who didn’t even tie their own shoes. For the first time, Not Built in a Day tells their stories.

Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses; from the guards who kept the streets of Rome safe and the mines which kept Rome a city of gold and marble, to the builders who placed every brick in the Colosseum. It traces how people entered, experienced, and left slavery, covering the little known story of slave revolts and the complex realities of enslaved people who themselves owned enslaved people. Not Built in a Dayalso explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies.

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I'm a huge fan of historian Emma Southon. She's on my short list of must-buy historians when she has a new book coming out. She questions sources, she gets into the cracks of what archaeology and literature and laws have left us and works out what life would have been like for those who have been left out of so many re-tellings of history with a big H: women (A Rome of One's Own), and in Not Build in a Day, the enslaved population of the Roman Empire. And she does it all with a delightful snarky, irreverent sense of humor. 

As horrifying as Roman slavery was, the layers of complexity thanks to frankly weird laws that meant the empire literally could not survive without a massive enslaved population were fascinting. I had no idea about some of the financial and legal hoops Romans built for themselves. While I knew this was a civilization that was focused on status, I'm not sure I had absorbed just what that meant about daily life: your status had status and could change depending on so many things. This included people in slavery. Enslaved people, freed people and citizens, all had so many levels of status depending on who was involved with what that it must have been exhausting. 

The book breaks down into where people are enslaved (the imperial house, the city, the country, etc.) and the kind of work they are required to do, because that has massive impacts on the experience of the individual.

I can't tell you how much I think this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Roman history. Read it along side all the other histories that look at the big pictures and the big names and forget to tell you about what a Roman's daily life was like. Because this, this was daily life in Rome. You were on one side of the whip or the other, but every single person experienced this in some form every day. 

Wonderfully researched, well written, another triumph for Emma Southon. I can't wait to see where she takes us next.