Source: purchased

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The Faraway Inn, by Sarah Beth Durst

The Faraway Inn, by Sarah Beth Durst

A wonderful, heartwarming, comforting read. The Faraway Inn offers a cozy, magical escape from the cares and troubles of ordinary life—for the reader as much as for the novel’s teenage heroine. (And there’s cake!)

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Apt to Be Suspicious, by Celia Lake

Apt to Be Suspicious, by Celia Lake

Set in Oxford’s magical community a year or so after the end of World War II, this gentle, slowly-unfolding romance features intelligent, good-hearted, skilled and competent people treating others with kindness and respect—a hallmark of Celia Lake’s Albion novels, and the reason I (and her other fans) love them so much.

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The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains, by Stephanie Laurens

The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains, by Stephanie Laurens

Slow, plodding, and flat

What on earth has happened to Stephanie Laurens? She seems to have largely abandoned writing romances and turned to mystery. The problem is, she’s not always good at it, especially when she omits the passion, emotion, and spirited characters that epitomized her best romances. The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains is a case in point.

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Ivory Vikings, by Nancy Marie Brown (audiobook review)

Ivory Vikings, by Nancy Marie Brown (audiobook review)

I love history, especially British and European history, but the Vikings and their era have never been one of my main areas of interest. I knew comparatively little of the history of Viking Norway, Denmark, Greenland, and (most importantly for this book) Iceland. But Nancy Marie Brown’s Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them held my interest from start to finish.

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Dusk, Night, Dawn, by Anne Lamott

Dusk, Night, Dawn, by Anne Lamott

In Dusk, Night, Dawn, Lamott writes of giving and finding love, hope, courage, and forgiveness, even when we ourselves, like those we want to love and forgive, are messy, imperfect human beings. Written in 2020, during the pandemic, and published in 2021, the book touches on Lamott’s response to the many terrible things occurring in the world: climate change, wildfires, the pandemic, and the rising tide of authoritarianism

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