The Collection
Book Reviews
Explore our full library of honest reviews and literary recommendations.
The Listeners
JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the…
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Left of Forever
Do you feel you’ve missed out in life by not being a marriage counselor? Do you long to spend hours of time in the company of two 30 somethings with…
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Tell Me What You Did
Poe Webb built her podcast, Tell Me What You Did, on the premise that people want to confess. Every week, anonymous callers admit to crimes—some petty, some monstrous—and Poe listens….
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Just This Once
This book should have been a novella. The premise is fine for 150 pages: a San Francisco marketing executive, burnt out and in need of a break, books a solo…
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Broken Souls and Bones
Broken Souls and Bones, the first book in L.J. Andrews’ Stonegate series, promises magic, mystery, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance set in a Viking-inspired fantasy world. Unfortunately, the execution is…
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Hardly a Gentleman
Desperate after her season comes to a spectacularly disastrous end, the Honorable Miss Clara Vetry jumps into a carriage hired to take a housekeeper to Scotland. The laird of Castle…
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Never Love a Lawman
Jo Goodman is reissuing her Reidsville (Colorado) series, starting with Never Love a Lawman. It’s about time. These books have been too hard to find for too long. Goodman’s Westerns…
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Promise Me Sunshine
I wasn’t in the mood for a grief novel. Lately, real life has been more than generous on that front. A story about a woman paralyzed by the loss of…
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The Gods Time Forgot
Mythology is a long-time love of mine, especially when it collides with history. Add in a Gilded Age backdrop, and I’m already halfway to devotion. So when I read the…
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Addicted
Charlotte Stein doesn’t write predictable love stories, and Addicted is no exception. It resists easy classification. The book is erotic and introspective, crude in places but surprisingly gentle, and uninterested…
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Count My Lies
Count My Lies is the kind of psychological thriller that reminds you why compulsive books are a gift. There’s nothing quite like tearing through pages, utterly engrossed, as tension builds…
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Broken Country
At first, Broken Country sets the stage for a familiar kind of novel—a love triangle stretched across decades, a quiet life disrupted by the return of an old flame, an…
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