Sleep No More

 Sleep No More (Lost Night Files 1)- Jayne Ann Krentz

Berkley Publishing

Release Date: January 3, 2023

Warning: Some Spoilers Ahead!

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Seven months ago, Pallas Llewellyn, Talia March, and Amelia Rivers were strangers, until their fateful stay at the Lucent Springs Hotel. An earthquake and a fire partially destroyed the hotel, but the women have no memory of their time there. Now close friends, the three women co-host a podcast called the Lost Night Files, where they investigate cold cases and hope to connect with others who may have had a similar experience to theirs—an experience that has somehow enhanced the psychic abilities already present in each woman.

After receiving a tip for their podcast, Pallas travels to the small college town of Carnelian, California, to explore an abandoned asylum. Shaken by the dark energy she feels in the building, she is rushing out when she’s stopped by a dark figure—who turns out to be the women's mysterious tipster.

Ambrose Drake is certain he’s a witness to a murder, but without a body, everyone thinks he’s having delusions caused by extreme sleep deprivation. But Ambrose is positive something terrible happened at the Carnelian Sleep Institute the night he was there. Unable to find proof on his own, he approaches Pallas for help, only for her to realize that Ambrose, too, has a lost night that he can’t remember—one that may be connected to Pallas. Pallas and Ambrose conduct their investigation using the podcast as a cover, and while the townsfolk are eager to share what they know, it turns out there are others who are not so happy about their questions—and someone is willing to kill to keep the truth from coming out

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A new Jayne Ann Krentz series gives us mysteries on top of mysteries, friendship, and romance. Sleep No More starts things off by introducing us to three friends: Pallas Llewellyn, Talia March, and Amelia Rivers- none of whom had met before going to a job at the Lucent Springs Hotel. They left the hotel not only best friends, but without remembering what happened to them overnight- and all three now possessing enhanced psychic powers. Pallas can enter a waking trance state and draw what she sees in the energy, although it isn't always easy to translate what that means. The three friends now run a podcast to reach others who have lost nights with possible paranormal connections and Amrose Drake is sure he has a case for them: his own.

Ambrose has actually lost two nights, but on one of them he's pretty sure he saw a woman murdered. Or at least her body being carried off. No one will believe him without a body, but Pallas does and the two start investigating the town of Carnelian. Using the podcast as a cover they look into the Carnelian Sleep Institute, and plenty of locals are willing to share gossip on the odd doctor who runs it. The Institute may or may not be a legitimate sleep study clinic, but it certainly has somethings going on and may connect to not only Ambrose's lost nights but his own enhanced psychic powers. 

I really enjoyed Pallas (loved her name!) and Ambrose, partly for how completely out of their depth they were. They weren't like Krentz's other psychic characters who have been psychic all their lives and are used to using their gifts as just part of their normal range of talents. They may have had 'sensitivities' all their lives but only turned into psychics with full blown powers after their 'lost nights'. Having to adjust to a "new normal" has been difficult and they've been handling it as well as possible. Pallas had it a little easier because she had two friends with similar experiences she could talk to, Ambrose had to deal with everything alone and ended up questioning his sanity a lot along the way. That "psychic mystery" will be the overarching one to tie the three books together and I think Krentz set things up really well here. We got enough breadcrumbs to want more but no where near enough to figure out what was going on. The "individual mystery" felt personal since Ambrose needed to know the murders had happened as much for his sanity as anything else, so he had a really stake in it from the beginning. Otherwise it will feel familiar to Krentz fans: the small town, quirky characters, and slow burn romance over the developing partnership of Pallas and Ambrose. Krentz's trademark humor help the characters get through some harrowing situations and I enjoyed the book very much.

 I can't wait for the next one in the series!

Spotlights for December 2022

 

 Here are a few of the new releases from December of 2022 that I didn't write a blog post on, but a spotlight through Goodreads reviews:

Empire of Ice and Snow: The Disastrous & Heroic Voyage of the Karluk -Buddy Levy    

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Release Date: December 6, 2022

Nonfiction/Polar Exploration

Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy's Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery.

 Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America- Leila Philip

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: December 6, 2022

Nonfiction/Science/Environmental

Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. BEAVERLAND tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver trade shaped American history and culture and our environment. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires.

 

Into the West: Mercedes Lackey 

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: December 13, 2022

Fantasy

Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as empty as it seems. There are potential friends and rapacious foes....

....and someone is watching them.

 Tudors in Love: Passion and Politics in the Age of England's Most Famous Dynasty- Sarah Gristwood

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Release Date: December 13, 2022

Nonfiction/Medieval History

In this ground-breaking history, Sarah Gristwood reveals the way courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty. From Henry VIII declaring himself as the ‘loyal and most assured servant' of Anne Boleyn to the poems lavished on Elizabeth I by her suitors, the Tudors re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature. The Tudors in Love dissects the codes of love, desire and power, unveiling romantic obsessions that have shaped the history of the world

Into the West

 Into the West (Founding of Valdemar #2) - Mercedes Lackey

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: December 13, 2022

Synopsis: Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as empty as it seems. There are potential friends and rapacious foes....

....and someone is watching them.

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In the sequel to BEYOND, Mercedes Lackey picks up pretty much where Book 1 left off. Baron Kordas and his people have fled the Empire and are now looking for a new home where they aren't going to dispossess anyone already living there. Most of the book felt very much like a 'bridge' book, that awkward book between where things start and how things end that doesn't quite know how to keep up the pace. It is character driven, alternating between Kordas and Delia as each of them becomes used to their new lives on the move, how best to do what needs to be done in order to survive, and what their new role really is in everything. I liked seeing behind Kordas' facade: seeing his concerns and flaws and how very human he is, how unsure he is of what he's doing and how much trouble he has delegating things to others because of how much responsibility he feels. If you've read other trilogies in the Valdermar cannon you know that the myth of the first King is him being pretty much perfect, so it's good to see the human truth behind that myth. Delia was a bit more annoying for me. Her crush on Kordas felt forced, especially since he's married to her sister. But I liked seeing her growing up and coming into her own with her Gift.

The pace was really slow for about 3/4s of the book, with little side quests and plenty of repetitious speeches about who they should strive to be as a people along the way. Then, right when I didn't think I could handle anymore, BANG!, everything changed and I couldn't put the book down.

*Warning: Mild spoilers ahead*

A touch of 'deus ex machina' suddenly makes anyone familiar with the cannon reevaluate everything they've been reading when the HawkBrothers arrive with the perfect place for our refugees to live. If you haven't read the others, that's ok, you're mostly just missing 'Easter eggs'. Now things go from plodding to the more interesting how-to-turn-a-Vale-into-a-city, meeting people who use amazing amounts of magic, different sentient species, and you see how Valdemar is going to start coming together. 

I admit, I am still not a fan of Lackey's 'newer' style of writing, which uses a more relaxed writing style, more rambling and tangents, plenty of 'now's and 'well's, as if we are listening to someone talking or thinking out loud even when we aren't. But it has been her style for long enough now that I've learned to deal with it, even though I prefer her older writing style better. The basic plot is still interesting enough that I want to find out what happens and how it will happen.

I definitely recommend reading BEYOND first, as Book 1 in the series will help you get invested in the characters and their journey beforehand.

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

Well Traveled

 Well Traveled- Jen DeLuca

Berkley

Release Date: December 6, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: A high-powered attorney from a success-oriented family, Louisa "Lulu" Malone lives to work, and everything seems to be going right, until the day she realizes it’s all wrong. Lulu’s cousin Mitch introduced her to the world of Renaissance Faires, and when she spies one at a time just when she needs an escape, she leaps into the welcoming environment of turkey legs, taverns, and tarot readers. The only drawback? Dex MacLean: a guitarist with a killer smile, the Casanova of the Faire… and her traveling companion for the summer.

Dex has never had to work for much in his life, and why should he? Touring with his brothers as The Dueling Kilts is going great, and he always finds a woman at every Faire. But when Lulu proves indifferent to his many plaid charms and a shake-up threatens the fate of the band, Dex must confront something he never has before: his future.
 
Forced to spend days and nights together on the road, Lulu’s interest in the kilted bad boy grows as he shows her a side of himself no one else has seen. The stresses of her old lifestyle fade away as she learns to trust her intuition and follow her heart instead of her head. But when her time on the road is over, will Lulu go with her gut, or are she and Dex destined for separate paths?

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Louisa "Lulu" Malone comes from a family of overachievers and has been working so hard to get ahead in her high powered law firm that she longer remembers what its like to enjoy, let alone have, a life. One Saturday the boss pushes too far and she realizes just how ridiculous it all is. Her phone winds up a tub of water and she's having a minor meltdown in the middle of a Renaissance Faire. Fortunately, Stacey (Well Played) and the Dueling Kilts are there and offer her a ride since they're headed to Willow Creek, where Lulu's cousin Mitch (Well Matched) lives. With no job and no electronics, Lulu is forced to unplug and take stock of her life. Which includes not only admitting she hasn't relaxed in five or six years, but includes noticing her traveling companions- like hot guitar player Dex MacLean.

Everyone says Dex is only out for a good time, the Lothario with a girl at every Faire. And at first he flirts outrageously with Lulu, exactly like his reputation. But as she ignores his ridiculous flirting, Dex becomes more like the rest of the band, a casual friend. Eventually, she sees something in him that his family seems to have overlooked. That maybe there's more to Dex than just a good time. 

At first I wasn't sure about this pairing. How was Dex going to become someone we could properly swoon over when readers of the series knew him as a good time guy who is pretty much allergic to relationships? But the answer is to never doubt Jen DeLuca. By bringing in Lulu she gives Dex someone who doesn't know him or his reputation ahead of time, someone both willing to accept what she sees and to see behind the front to the person he's becoming. Dex is adorable as he confusedly discovers he might want a relationship after all and I had to hand it to him- he made far fewer mistakes than many guys make. I loved Lulu as the strong, take-charge-take-names person she is who can also be vulnerable, and discover a softer, mystic side to herself. This was a lovely people-can-change book; not necessarily because of love, but because of opening themselves up to new things, new opportunities, new people, and discovering what does make them happy instead of what they think should make them happy (or make others happy).  

Jen DeLuca is back and she brought the whole Faire with her! What's not to like about a strong woman doubting herself, finding herself (and love), thanks to the magic that is the Renaissance Faire? Nothing, that's what. Huzzah and rejoice and the latest Jen DeLuca romance-Well Traveled is not just a beautiful cover!

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

Spotlights for November 2022

 Here are a few of the new releases from November of 2022 that I didn't write a blog post on, but a spotlight through Goodreads reviews:

Better Than Fiction- Alexa Martin

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Release Date: November 8

Romance-Comedy

An adorable romcom about a bookstore owner who doesn't like to read and a romance author. Opposites attract in the best ways possible as Drew and Jasper explore a surprise relationship, supported by her friends and a book club of meddling readers determined to have a happy ending.

The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd-Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos

Rating:📚📚📚

Release Date: November 8

Biography

Discovering the true story of the untold family life behind privateer/pirate Captain Kidd, this is the life of Sarah Kidd. A woman who sailed to New York when it was a new colony of England, married four times for very different reasons over the course of her life, saw the best of times and the worst of times, and was probably the last living person to know the hiding place of Kidd's treasure.

Raven Unveiled- Grace Draven

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: November 8

Fantasy

Book Three in the Fallen Empire fantasy series follows shade speaker Siora and former cat's paw Gharek as they go from enemies to uneasy allies in a quest to save Gharek's daughter and the ghosts Siora sees. Generals are fighting for the newly empty thrown and an evil supernatural entity is stalking the land, eating both the dead and possibly the living- and Siora may be the only one who can save them.

Some Dukes Have All The Luck- Christina Britton

Rating:📚📚📚

Release Date: November 8

Historical Romance

Ash Hawkins, Duke of Buckley, needs a woman interested in a marriage of convenience to take over the raising of his three wards. Bronwyn Pickering needs a husband, preferably titled, to free her from her overbearing and domineering parents. She'll be free to continue her etymological studies on the Isle of Synne and he'll be free to stay in London running his gambling hell. As long as inconvenient emotions don't enter into the equation.

The Queen: Her Life- Andrew Morton

Rating: 📚📚

Release Date: November 15

Biography

A new biography on Queen Elizabeth II by Andrew Morton, best know for his biographies of Princess Diana. 

The Final Year of Anne Boleyn- Natalie Gruenineger

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Release Date: November 30

Biography

An in-depth look at the final year of Anne Boleyn's life, Natalie Gruenineger explores how relationships between Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII changed as politics, Thomas Cromwell, and Jane Seymour altered the landscape and offers a compelling argument for why she believes Henry VIII knew Anne was innocent of the crimes she was charged with, but had to die anyway.

Egypt's Golden Couple

Egypt's Golden Couple: How Akhenaten and Nefertiti Became Gods on Earth- John Darnell & Colleen Darnell

MacMillan

Release Date: November 1, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: Akhenaten has been the subject of radically different, even contradictory, biographies. The king has achieved fame as the world's first individual and the first monotheist, but others have seen him as an incestuous tyrant who nearly ruined the kingdom he ruled. The gold funerary mask of his son Tutankhamun and the painted bust of his wife Nefertiti are the most recognizable artifacts from all of ancient Egypt. But who are Akhenaten and Nefertiti? And what can we actually say about rulers who lived more than three thousand years ago?

November 2022 marks the centennial of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and although "King Tut" is a household name, his nine-year rule pales in comparison to the revolutionary reign of his parents. Akhenaten and Nefertiti became gods on earth by transforming Egyptian solar worship, innovating in art and urban design, and merging religion and politics in ways never attempted before. 

Combining fascinating scholarship, detective suspense, and adventurous thrills, Egypt's Golden Couple is a journey through excavations, museums, hieroglyphic texts, and stunning artifacts. From clue to clue, renowned Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell reconstruct an otherwise untold story of the magnificent reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

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While I love history, I don't consider myself particularly knowledgeable about ancient Egypt. So I was looking forward to learning a little more in Egypt's Golden Couple about Akhenaten and Nefertiti- probably best known (if known at all) as the parents of King Tutankhamun. I knew vaguely that Akhenaten had tried to change Egypt's religion into a more monotheistic focus towards the sun god Aten, but that was all I knew beforehand.

I definitely appreciated that, as Egyptologists themselves, John and Colleen Darnell stuck to physical and written evidence in their interpretation of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. What does the archaeology tell us about their reign? What do writings show about how that might have changed? And, interestingly, what could be put in the context of other pharaohs like Hatshepsut to give us a feel for what would be considered 'normal' versus 'unique'? With rulers as controversial as Akhenaten and Nefertiti, this seemed like a good way to get as much of a feel for them and their world as we are likely to get over 3,000 years later.

The book is written with three styles to it, which took some getting used to. Each chapter starts with a fictionalized imagining of a scene, then moves on to a nonfiction research explanation, archaeological interpretation, or most often a hieroglyph interpretation of another aspect of their rule. I was not a fan of the fictional scenes. I guess the idea was to make things more "real" or "relatable" for the reader, but they really put me off. Much of the rest of the writing was dense, more written for scholars than a layperson like me. The detailed explanations of how the authors interpreted the hieroglyphs as they did was very interesting and certainly made me feel like they knew what they were doing, but went way too much "into the weeds" for my understanding. It was like a lot of the time the book couldn't decide if it was written for scholars and fellow Egyptologists, or for the lay reader to introduce them to Egyptology in general and Akhenaten and Nefertiti in particular, and so tried to do both. The result was often repetitive, frequently interesting, but just as often a dense read.

A book I'd recommend more for people already well versed in Egyptology than the general reader

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

 

Spotlights for October 2022

 October was a busy month for new releases and I didn't write a blog for all the new books I read. But here are some spotlights for a few of the books that released in October 2022 and didn't get the full book blog treatment: 

Station Eternity- Mur Lafferty

Release Date: October 4

Rating: 📚📚📚

A science fiction spoof on the murder mysteries where there's that one person who always happens across dead bodies no matter where they go. Mallory Viridian runs away from the human race to Station Eternity to keep humans safe, only to have humans, murder, and chaos follow her to space.

The Women of Rothschild- Natalie Livingstone

Release Date: October 24

Rating:📚📚📚📚

A well-written and well-researched book on the English branch of the Rothschild family, following the women of the family (by blood and by marriage) across the 19th and 20th centuries. If you are looking for a book that covers social, political, and religious experiences of a Jewish family in England  over centuries and how change slowly happens, as well as watching how women could wield power in the shadows of a male dominated society, this is definitely a book to check out.

Murder at Balmoral- Chris McGeorge

Release: October 25

Rating: 📚📚📚

When King Eric of England dies under suspicious circumstances on Christmas, only one of the Royal family could have poisoned him. Friend and Royal Chef Jonathan is tasked with figuring out who did it before the authorities arrive in this closed room mystery whose dark side some may like, others will definitely not, and the timing of which must be under review by the publishers.

Revolutionary Samuel Adams- Stacy Schiff

Release: October 25

Rating:📚📚📚📚

A well written, well researched biography of a little known American Founding Father, Samuel Adams may be hard to pull from the shadows because he left little written work behind, but others certainly left plenty of their opinions written about him! Whether the truth behind what others believed Adams the mastermind of will probably never be fully known, this is certainly a biography every American interested in history should read.   

Brave Hearted- Katie Hickman

Release: October 25

Rating:📚📚📚📚📚

Well written and well researched, this new book explores the American West and the women who lived there. It wasn't all cowboys, miners, and outlaws- from early missionaries and pioneers in wagons to women following their mining and military husbands to the first hand accounts of Native American women who saw their lands and cultures taken away from them- this book covers the entire range of women of the early American West. Letters and diaries make it personal and touching while Hickman places people and events in historical and social context.

The Woodville Women-Sarah Hodder

Release: October 30

Rating:📚📚📚

A look at three generations of women during a century of medieval England's turbulent history. Elizabeth Woodville, her daughter Elizabeth of York, and her granddaughter Elizabeth Grey moved among the highest circles in England: queens of England and cousins to kings of England, they balanced the political storm of the Wars of the Roses and Henry VIII's court.