Well, April came in like it was March and March went out like it was May, so spring is the usual weather potluck in the northern states where we can 4 seasons in 24 hours. We had a rare April snow and my brother got over 5 inches – and was displeased because the 70-degree weather had him putting away his snow blower and plough the week before. (My laughing at him did not improve his mood.)
There is a major bout of angst among cozy readers as the latest ‘consolidation’ of publishers is causing contracts to be canceled and series abruptly ended as authors are notified their sales are too low to justify keeping them. For anyone who has followed the glut of cozies on the market, it comes as no shock that the buyer pool has been diluted and the publisher’s rationale that they ‘overbought books in that genre’ is probably fair. Still, a few of the authors have been around a long time, so they were shocked at having the rug yanked out. The list of about to be deleted authors is growing, so if you’re on FaceBook, check out the Save Our Cozies section. I’m not on that site, but those who are say many authors are venting their frustration at the short notice.
The whole mmpb market is not considered ‘profitable’ to publishers. They want trade-size books to be the new paradigm for softcovers as that format’s higher price also had better margins. That’s why many paranormal series are in that format already. Romance and cozy mystery still use the mmpb size as their default and a few paperback versions of HC books. I am more and more often seeing popular hardcovers going to paperback getting released as trade size books, so buying used HC books is actually more economical! Aside from improving the used book market, I’m uncertain if the publisher’s bottom line see substantial change. Authors don’t have a whole lot of choice – unless control stays with them and their estates. Harper Lee required To Kill a Mockingbird mmpb books be removed from sale – and publishers and sellers did so very promptly – but not before I got a cheap new copy!
Books-a-Million is continuing to stumble in online sales. I dropped my membership in their Millionaires Club because of failure to ship pre-order books, despite multiple phone calls to customer service. That happened while I was still a member last year and I never did get my book. And it happened again in March and April, much to my lasting annoyance. Three days after the new releases SHOULD have been here, I sent Customer Service an email with the details of all the missing books. They claimed they were ‘out of inventory’. HUH? They were released Tuesday I wrote on Thursday and you don’t even have a delivery date????? I wrote back and told them to cancel every remaining pre-ordered book. I have a very low tolerance for such incompetence and poorly run business in an age where inventory control is entirely computerized and pre-orders tell you in advance what your demand is. AVOID BAM! Their sale discounts are not what they were and their service has fallen off badly and only released books in the store where you shop get the MC discount of 10% for in-person purchases, nothing online or for pre-orders. Their pricing on HC and trade size books was never a match for Amazon, even with additional % off promotions.
Amazon is once again offering random discounts on mmpb books, particularly cozies and si-fi/paranormal/UF series. Some are as much as 26% off list. And numerous HC’s have sale points BELOW the ebook cost, including several bestsellers, like Off The Grid by C.J. Box below. Get them while you can and if you’re Prime, remember, pre-order adjusts prices to reflect the lowest price between your order date and release.
If you’re a cozy fan, be prepared to have your authors migrate to self-published ebooks like so many others have. They are cheaper, but much harder to pass on as you do print.
On to reviews!!!!! (I started this post nearly 3 weeks ago and forgot I never finished it. OOPS!)
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Vanilla Beaned is the latest entry in Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series takes place in Vegas where Tate has kind of bullied Mel into licensing a franchise. The story starts with a bag as the woman who wants the bakery is a stunning showgirl and Mel, thanks to her overweight HS years, has kind of a deep prejudice over that, but her mean girl stunt kind of backfires and she ends up agreeing to take a look at the place. The realtor who hung back from the girl drama for a smoke opens the door and the place explodes. The showgirl and hopeful bakery owner, Holly, works with Mel to try and help the two men while waiting on EMTs and the fire department. Tate and Angie get there just in time to see the end. and Angie convinces Mel to do a tasting at Holly’s house the next day. Turns out Holly’s glamor was just as much artifice as she said and her baking skills were extraordinary. With Mel finally on board, the search for a store continues – and so do the awful ‘accidents’. But who are they trying to hurt, Mel or Holly?
Ms McKinlay does a good job here, much better than her last Library Lovers book. In fact, this is pretty much her best series for characters and plots both. I liked Holly and the change of scene to Vegas was refreshing and the Elvis convention amusing and also gives some of the plot a unique twist.
Vanilla Beaned gets a B (3.9*) rating from and a suggested read for cozy lovers. It’s a reliable series so far. I paid $7.99+ tax but you can get lots of discounts at any big box or club store with books.
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It seems to me there have been an awful lot of disappointments lately, including Fortune Hunter, Jana DeLeon’s latest entry into the Miss Fortune series. I don’t think I was 30 pages in when I realized she had allowed the darker side of her writing used for romantic suspense to creep into what is normally a very light and entertaining series. The change in tone made all the usual humor seem forced and contrived, rather than flowing naturally from the characters. That was especially true with Ida Belle, Gertie, and Fortune.
The other bad part – no one even died yet and I knew who did it and why. When a plot is that transparent and trite, it signals a complete lack of caring by the author – or a loss of focus that had her doing reruns of old TV series plots. I was bored and what few chuckles I had were not really entertaining. The real kicker? I bought the ebook and wouldn’t bother with the print because I could bearly slog through it once. Her previous book, Hurricane Force, was on the bubble but I still liked it enough to have a hard copy. Not this one.
I might not be a writer, but I know how hard it is to slip from serious and dramatic, to light, clever, and briskly witty. The carry over made with out of character for the series. She’ll get one more shot, then I’m done.
Fortune Hunter gets a C- (2.7*) for a dreadful transparent plot and a total change in tenor for the characters and feeling of the book. Read it if you’re a fan, but try and get the ebook from the library. Not worth the $6.00 I paid for the ebook.
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And another favorite author bites it with Leslie Langtry’s Marshmallow S’More Murder. Where is a good editor when you desperately need one. I don’t what to hammer first. OK – let’s start with in impossible timeline. When we left Merry, boyfriend Rex, best friend and co-scout leader Kelly, and Riley, her boss, Merry’s cat Philby just had kittens, Kelly just announced she was preggers, and Riley took off after the dubious vet who cut the SD card out of Philby’s neck because it something to do with Midori Ito’s death back in book 1.
Fast forward about 6 weeks. Philby is still nursing the kittens but they’ll be weaned soon. Kelly, who learned she was preggers 6 weeks ago is due to pop so not in DC with Merry and the scout troop as a prize from the Girl Scout Council for selling the most cookies ……. ever. (Is it me, or do you see a space-time continuum issue here?) There she is, at the White House with the whole troop and a missing mom, Evelyn Trout, who stepped in to cover for Kelly and promptly stepped out to the hotel spa leaving Merry to deal with her troop alone. Good thing the First Lady can manage because the Secret Service guys are close to panic. But wait! There’s more! Riley is missing and she gets a call suggesting he’s in great danger there in town. So what’s a former spy to do? Take the troop to the CIA HQ and get some unofficial help from her buddy (and cookie junkie) Maria Gomez.
But wait! There’s more! Riley is missing and she gets a call suggesting he’s in great danger there in town. So what’s a former spy to do? Take the troop to the CIA HQ and get some unofficial help from her buddy (and cookie junkie) Maria Gomez. Maria goes above and beyond when she takes time off, moves into the hotel with the troop and helps ride herd on the girls while Merry tries to figure out where Riley is before he dies.
Just to make sure there are lots of loose threads, something is wrong between Merry’s mom and dad and neither is talking. She goes undercover at the Japanese Embassy while her dad, a respected Senator from Iowa, works his charm on his friend the Japanese Ambassador, and the daughter of Midori is working at the Embassy. And is mom was ruthless, daughter is certifiable nuts, and the troop is in danger.
While parts of this book are very entertaining and works, the author left so many loose ends it felt like half a story and the obvious issue of Evelyn Trout is not even touched till everyone is safely back in Iowa and the Ito’s are no more. Time wise, nothing makes a bit of sense. Story lines are left hanging in space, and the ending is better suited to a 3-hanky tear-jerker. And why in heaven’s name would a cop who got a restraining order against an old girlfriend give her a key to his house and have her care for the cat and kittens of her arch enemy, Merry? I had to assume everyone lost the minds.
Marshmallow S’More Murder gets another C- (2.8*). Honestly, authors cannot make that many basic timeline errors and not get hammered or that many impossible plot line leaps and not annoy readers. Humor and an entertaining group of girl scouts can only cover so many errors and these were just too glaring. The ebook was $5.oo and at a slender 218 pages, not worth that much. Get it as a loaner. This is another I won’t be buying in print.
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Off the Grid picks up the story of Nate Romanowski where Endangered left off with Nate escaping the hospital and a sleazy FBI agent who almost got him and his girlfriend killed. In hiding and healing for months, the illness of his girlfriend Sheridan’s mother leaves just enough trail for a NGO to find him. They want to find the sun of an Arab leader they think has turned rogue -and he and that young man have something in common – falconry.
Once again coerced into helping, in the national interest, of course, Nate ends up back near his friend Joe and does find the man in the video – and as is often the case in Nate’s world, nothing is as it seems – but Nate sort of knew that going in. The ending alone with the canny and shrewd soon to be ex-governor is worth the read.
I should note this is far less of a mystery than the early Joe Pickett books, it’s more of an action thriller. If you don’t like how this series has been trending toward a slightly different genre, then you won’t like this book. Pickett himself stays more true to his earlier character but gets drawn deeper into the gray life that Nate lives and is less than comfortable there. That is the one part of this evolution I have yet to fully embrace – Joe the family man moving to Joe the reluctant action character. I have mixed feelings about it, but even Robert Crais evolved Joe Pike and Elvis Cole, so it’s not uncommon for an author to shift to a different style and have characters change over time. This is book 16 in the series and the move has been gradual, but I think the departure here to put terrorists Wyoming is the whole NGO is a bit of a stretch, but not unbelievable. Pacing is fast and not every good guy wins.
Off the Grid gets a B (4*) rating from me, but I love action thrillers so I might be more tolerant than some with Box’s segue in style and his inherently suspicious view of NGO’s and other ‘black ops’ security groups. This is the second time he’s a similar thread in his plot, so if you’re a regular reader, you know . It is a recommended read with the above caveats. At around $17 new, wait for a good used copy or borrow from the library unless you’re a collector of Box’s books.
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Double Mint and Double Knot are two latest entries in the humorous mystery series featuring Davis Way. In Double Mint, Davis and new hubby Bradley, now the General Manager of the sprawling Bellissimo Casino are trying to come to grips with living in a 10,000 square foot voodoo Mardi Gras from Hell palace that was the former GM’s residence – now their’s – and home sweet home it ain’t. Davis is going crazy with the demanding Bianca Sanders, for whom she works as a body double, just one floor up. (Her going to the gynaecologist for Bianca is just hysterical.) Not to mention she is utterly convinced As one of the casino’s undercover security people, it’s like having 2 jobs and no life. And Bradley is trying desperately to undo the damage of the old GM – including locating the platinum coins that they help as part of the casino reserve that were replaced with fakes. There’s the whole locked room that curious Davis shoots her way into only to find a press and rag paper for a counterfeiting operation that the old GM and now largely senile Casimiro family boss (Bianca’s father) apparently ran.
Ms Archer writes a fast, funny plot with some great twists involving undercover security partner Fantasy, the security muscle, Baylor, and chief, No Hair (Jeremy) and missing events manager Holder Darby, and her ‘not cat’ found in Holder’s empty house that hated Davis but took up residence in the huge GM suite. Oh, and the handsome guy down the hall in the Jay Leno suite doing the advance work for Dionne Warwick. He fainted when Davis shot her chandelier.
If you feel a little lost at all the plot lines, that’s just Archer’s style. Her writing takes getting used to, as she writes in the first person and Davis’s thoughts are often confusing integrated. Nonetheless, Double Mint was a good read and it gets a B (3.9*) rating from me with the caveat about her writing style. I read the ebook at $6.99 – which is overpriced.
Double Knot picks up the plot several months later with Davis being pregnant with twins and Bianca panicked by her weight gain due to inactivity and too much delivery pizza. But the new joint venture casino boat was about to take its maiden voyage and there was a fashion shoot scheduled for the trip, so Davis was off with her ……. mother ….. and Fantasy in an owner’s suite with a butler, maid, and …… Jessica DeLuna, wife of Max DeLuna, the banker Richard Sanders hired to filled the ship’s 50 suites with very high rollers – without doing proper background checks. Bradley is stuck doing a casino security seminar in Macau, so Davis has no real buffer between her and her mother except Fantasy. Everyone is issued the latest high-tech handheld to operate everything from elevators to stateroom doors to TV sets and ship communications. Jessica, who Davis is convinced is after Bradley because she and her hubby Max do not even touch each other, shows up in Davis suite and suddenly all the doors lock, all communications are cut and they have no way in or out because every single device is dead. They are just close enough to shore that Davis tries to call her sheriff dad in her mom’s antique cell phone, but the connect is so bad, he won’t be riding to her aid. And No Hair is trapped and tied up deep in the bowels of the ship and can’t help. What the hell is Max DeLuna doing?
It’s a good read and the way they get out is clever and relies on Davis’ computer skills and a working device. All the usual ways of escaping are out. Thankfully, the kitchen is stocked so her mom can do the cooking but can Jessica be trusted and what about the main and butler?
Two plot elements stand out her, one is Davis’s relationship with her mom and an event in her teen years, and Fantasy’s decision to get a divorce because she can’t forgive herself for cheating on her husband. (It’s all a part of Double Mint, so that’s all I can say.) The other part is Mom is not exactly what Davis always saw her as ……. and the part where her mother gives ‘marital advice’ to Fantasy is laugh out loud funny. So is the part where Fantasy uses a priceless metal sculpture to knock a hole in the wall.
Double Knot, like Double Mint and all her other Davis way books has plenty of twists, turns, and unexpected plot developments. You have a good core story, character growth without too much drama to drag down the general tone, but enough to give it heart, and good ending. Double Knot also gets a B (4*) rating. Like Double Mint, it’s $7 in ebook so unless you plan to re-read it, borrow it from your library.
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