Reading Reality, LLC

03/06/2025

Grade A : Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne .bsky.social .bsky.social

My Review: The Tomes & Tea Quartet has turned out to be an epitome of cozy fantasy romance - something I don’t think anyone expected when Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea came out pretty much directly in the wake of Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and we were all very much there for it becaus...

03/06/2025

The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

The idea that one might rent a cat for three days - essentially a long weekend - actually isn't a bad one. Although the cat in this picture looks like it's seriously rethinking the whole plan - and it probably should have. The idea is that renting a cat - or honestly anything that shakes up one's life - brings with it the possibility that the same old, same old will be viewed from a different and hopefully better perspective at the end.

In this particular series of slice of life stories, while the idea has merit the lives in question need a lot more intervention than one cat can provide. I was hoping for a book much like We'll Prescribe You a Cat or The Full Moon Coffee Shop, where the feline intervention is enough to set things on a new course and where the stories overall were just the right amount of bittersweet with perhaps a touch more emphasis on the sweet.

The stories here are of people and families in crises much bigger than that, and as a consequence, the stories are more in the nature of sad fluff with the emphasis on the sad instead of the fluff and I finished the book even sadder than I started. Your reading mileage may vary - and in fact I hope it does.

03/05/2025

: The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu, translated by Jesse Kirkwood .bsky.social

My Review: The idea seems a bit, well, absurd - but in a good way. That a person would ‘rent’ a cat for three days and then return the cat. Actually, that’s not the absurd part. There are lots of reasons why someone would want a cat as a short term rental, and quite a [...]

03/05/2025

An Excellent Thing in a Woman by Allison Montclair

Seven books in, I'm still loving the Sparks & Bainbridge series pretty damn hard, and this entry is part of the reason why.

First, it's the portrait of a ride-or-die friendship between two women who began by having nothing in common but who turn out to be sisters-under-the-skin at every turn. Second, it's a 'you are there' portrayal of life at a time that gets glossed over at the end of WW2. The Allies won. YAY! What happens next and how does society undo all the changes it made to get through the war? To which the answer is fits and starts and often very badly.

Third it's a time when the world was changing because it had to change, and we get to see that change from two very different but well articulated and extremely intelligent perspectives. This entry in the series hits that theme hard as it takes place AT BBC TV studios as the curtain is going up on the post-war era while things are still being invented on the fly and all the damn time because none of it had been done before.

And last, but not least, it's about the lingering effects of the late war, the nightmares that never end, and the secrets that had to be buried - and the ones that didn't. This entry in the series is a GREAT story and it points at Cold War spy and murder adventures yet to come. I can't wait!

03/04/2025

A- : An Excellent Thing in a Woman by Allison Montclair .bsky.social

My Review: The Right Sort Marriage Bureau began by making one long-lasting partnership - and solving a murder into the bargain - in their very first outing, The Right Sort of Man. The business partnership and ride-or-die sisterhood of Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge has held true through thick and t...

03/04/2025

Idolfire by Grace Curtis

Empires fall. They do. They rise, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but they fall with a resounding boom that echoes through the centuries and spreads chaos everywhere. Then, just as new growth follows in the aftermath of a fire, something rises from the ashes of the old empire - more like an awkward chick than a great phoenix.

Idolfire is two great quests combined into one epic, successful and ultimately heartbreaking journey. The Empire of Nivela is dead, to begin with. Very much and still, centuries after its fall. The old capital is a place where there truly be monsters, but at the fringes, there's life. In the old Kingdom of Ash, that life is choking its people to death. In remote Wall's End, it's withering away to nothing.

The cure to both places lies in the journey to Nivela, from opposite ends of the old empire. A quest carried out by two women who begin as far apart as its possible for them to be - and ends with them just as distant. But the middle - oh the middle is something glorious, and life-changing, and above all, TRUE.

A story that begs to be remembered as answering the dilemma of not knowing whether to smile because it happened or cry because it's over by doing both.

03/03/2025

: Idolfire by Grace Curtis .bsky.social

My Review: In the world left behind centuries after the fall of a world-spanning empire, history has fallen into myth and legend on its far-flung fringes. Kirby of Wall’s End and Aleya Ana-Ulai might as well be from entirely separate worlds - because they are. When the Empire of Nivela fell, or di...

03/03/2025

The Sunday Post/Virtual Nightstand for March 2, 2025

This was another banner reading week here at Chez Reading Reality with two books to start out the week! Having really good stuff to read made up for this DAMN COLD which is still hanging on and driving me crazy. (The cats aren't thrilled either as I'm making way too much noise to suit their sensitive little ears!)

Here are this week's highlights:
Featured Giveaway: Winter 2024-2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
BookS of the Week: Swordheart by T. Kingfisher AND Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill
Feature for the Coming Week: Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn

03/02/2025

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-2-25

This was an excellent reading week. Having TWO A+ books certainly helped! If you haven't had a chance to get into Kingfisher, I can't recommend her work highly enough. She's just plain awesome, and she's fun! And Molly O'Neill's Greenteeth was just lovely and magical and lyrical and OMG it's her deb...

03/02/2025

Stacking the Shelves for March 1, 2025

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.



This meme is hosted every Saturday by yours truly, - The covers shown here are merely a TEASER! Link to full post in bio to see the pretty covers of ALL the books in this week's stack!

03/01/2025

Stacking the Shelves (642)

"Another month ends. All targets met. All systems working. All customers satisfied. All staff eager and enthusiastic. All pigs fed and ready to fly." YUP! Still true, sarcasm and all. Also YUP I have too many books, a condition that is likely to continue for a while yet. My favorite title out of thi...

03/01/2025

The Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren Willig

This was the book I pretty much shoved at anyone who asked me if I'd read anything interesting this week. Because it absolutely was fascinating and I couldn't resist sharing that fascination.

It's the kind of story that lives up to all the cliches about fiction having to actually be plausible, where history just has to be TRUE, because the truth isn't always plausible - in the moment or after. But since it really happened, well, it must have been true anyway.

Because we've all at least heard the story of Hamilton - not to mention that rather infamous duel - we're pretty aware that Hamilton and Burr couldn't stand each other. So the idea that they'd be co-counsel in a murder trial feels like a bit of a stretch, to say the least. But they were. Not that they were a TEAM, because clearly they were WAY beyond that, but they both argued for the defense and generally speaking, against each other.

The case itself is a train wreck - or it would be if there were trains yet. There's a dead body, but that's the only solid piece of evidence in the whole thing. No one seems to have truly known the victim - not even her family - there were no witnesses to the crime and entirely too many suspects with suspect alibis. The prosecutor doesn't seem to know what he's doing and the defense counsels are too busy offending each other to have a coherent strategy.

In the face of not very much circumstantial evidence and not much else AT ALL, this first sensational murder trial in the new United States was more of a farce than a landmark of justice. It turned out to be both, but not on in any of the ways that any of the participants would necessarily want to own up to afterwards.

But it's utterly compelling every single step of its mess of a meandering way!

02/28/2025

A- : The Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren Willig .bsky.social

My Review: This fascinating combination of historical fiction, true crime AND mystery tells the story of the first sensational murder trial in what was then, in 1800, these new United States. We don’t know much about the victim, Elma Sands. They didn’t then, either, which is kind of the point. S...

02/28/2025

A Scandalous Affair by Leonard Goldberg

If you're as much of a sucker for Sherlock Holmes stories - and even Holmes-adjacent stories - as I am, than you'll find it easy to get swept away by the adventures of Sherlock Holmes' daughter Joanna, particularly as she has the able assistance of her own Watson, Dr. John H. Watson, Jr., as both chronicler and husband, as well as more than a few reminders of her illustrious father's cases in reminiscences by Watson, Sr.

Joanna's London is that of 'The Great War' in this particular case, as she's caught up in the investigation of blackmail of the lowest kind conducted at the highest levels. Someone is blackmailing the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the pictorial peccadillos of his rebellious granddaughter at a time when London is being bombed every night as Germany attempts to kill the morale of the Allies before the U.S. can bring their might to bear on the end of the conflict.

The government does not need distrust and instability, the Chancellor does not want to resign in ignominy, and his granddaughter seems like an unwitting dupe in the whole sad and sordid affair.

It's up to Joanne Blalock Watson and her Doctors Watson to discover who is the spider at the heart of this very tangled web - and bring them to justice - one way or another - to keep a deadly crime spree from spreading havoc in ever widening, and ever higher, circles while entrapping more innocents in its well-planned and extremely sticky web.

02/27/2025

: A Scandalous Affair by Leonard Goldberg .bsky.social

My Review: The affair, in fact, was considerably more scandalous than first presented - and that situation was plenty salacious enough. All the more so as this eighth entry in The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series takes place during the winter of 1918, as German bombs are dropping all over London.....

02/27/2025

Stone Certainty by Simon R. Green

I've had the cold from hell for the past week, so I've been looking for distracting reads. I can't seem to get over this thing, but a good book, or a fun book, or a silly book CAN take me away from it for a bit. Which is what I was expecting with Stone Certainty, although I certainly wasn't certain about it after the first book in the series, .

Then again, I'm not fond of "Reality TV" which was the point of the story in the first book - because neither were those Holy Terrors, but I do find stone circles creepy. Not that I expect anything supernatural to come out of one - and neither did the Bishop or the Actress - but they're just creepy in their own right as they are, just standing there.

So the story this time around, while it was still a bit of a joke, it was one I felt like I was in on instead of one attempting to be pulled on me. The murders had understandable human motives and were committed with understandable human trickery, which is exactly what I expected.

And it took me away from this cold to somewhere that may have been just as gloomy but wasn't my own personal gloom and that was good enough!

02/26/2025

: Stone Certainty by Simon R. Green .bsky.social

My Review: As the Bishop said to the Actress, this time was better than the last time. Or perhaps he should have said. Or I’d have said to him (as the reader and not the actress) because this second outing in the Holy Terrors Mystery series was better than the first entry, The Holy Terrors. [...]

02/26/2025

Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill

Greenteeth is the author's DEBUT novel. Her first book. And it's amazeballs and even more BECAUSE it's her first!

There's so much to love here. It's kind of cozy fantasy and kind of not. There's all the lovely found family vibes of a cozy, but the reasons they find each other combine the best things from fairy tale retellings and historical fantasy.

It's about a jenny, a witch and a goblin setting out to save magic - before science and religion drive the magic away. It's a dangerous quest conducted by a mismatched fellowship doing their best to keep it all together - even if they don't have precisely the same kind of together to keep. And there's a truly evil villain who gets his comeuppance in the best way possible. Even if this whole mad quest began because a jenny didn't want witch corpses messing up her beautiful, clean lake.

It's just lovely from beginning to end and it will give readers plenty of lovely vibes from T. Kingfisher () and her fairy tale fantasies like Nettle and Bone and especially Thornhedge. And who doesn't want more of those in the world!