Audiobook: Assistant to the Villain

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by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Read by Em Eldridge
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are descriptions of murder and mayhem, as well as a depiction of sexual assault. There are swear words, including a few f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Evie Sage is on the run after quitting her less-than-desirable job at the town blacksmith when she encounters none other than The Villain. He’s the guy who’s been terrorizing the kingdom for years, the guy whom everyone is supposed to be afraid of. And he offers her a job? As his assistant?

Which she’s actually enjoying? (That’s not even bringing up the fact that her boss is actually hot. And a decent human being.)

So, when it looks like there’s a traitor in their midst, it’s up to Evie and The Villain to figure out what’s going on and stop them before they put too many (more) lives at stake.

I felt about this one much like I felt about Fourth Wing: was it good? Probably not. Was it a lot of fun? Yes.
Yes, it is. I like the magic system that Maehrer created, and it was highly amusing the way she superimposed a modern office space on this fantasy world. (There’s an HR Director!) I liked the push and pull between Evie and The Villain (though awkward power dynamic much there?). I really liked the narrator; I think she’s what made it really fun for me. I did have quibbles with the way the ending twists happened (the fake-out was the one that really bothered me), but in the end (even though it ended on a cliffhanger), I immediately picked up the second one.

You can’t get a higher recommendation than that, can you?

The Night War

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by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
First sentence: “I could hear sirens.”
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Content: There are intense moments, including a round-up of Jews to go to concentration camps. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Miri and her parents are living in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1942, after fleeing Germany after the kristalnacht. They’re making do in a small apartment, but they have Jewish neighbors and it’s working. That is, until the French police raid the neighborhood and round all the Jews in France up. Miri escapes with her neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter, Nora, and after finding refuge in a nunnery (the nun saved her from an interaction with a Nazi soldier), she is separated from Nora and sent to a Catholic school in the French countryside. She has to pretend to be a Catholic, which is hard. The only bright side is that she’s close to the Vichy border, and escape. Can she find Nora and get across before she is found out?

On the one hand: this is a well-written book. (I have issues with the ghost, but aside from that.) Bradley knows how to pace a story and knows how to make a historical story relatable (in this one: all religions are valid, we shouldn’t be afraid of those who are not like us, we shouldn’t believe the propaganda we hear). However, I am just so tired of World War II books. I just am. I know these stories need to be told, but I am so so very tired of them. And, I don’t think that the ghost in this one was necessary. Bradley used the ghost as a narrative cop-out – Miri was the only one who could see the ghost and it helped her get out of sticky situations.

I just wanted more (or something entirely different) from this one.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

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by Ally Carter
First sentence: “Ms. Chase: Well, of course I have his blood on my hands.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some swearing (I don’t remember f-bombs, but if there were any, there weren’t a lot), kissing, and off-screen sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt are rival mystery writers. They don’t like each other. And even though Maggie’s successful, Ethan is a different level of success, which is just annoying, since he has only a few books to his name. So, when she ends up in a private plane headed to England for Christmas and Ethan is there, she’s sure it will be a lousy holiday. Except: they end up at Eleanor Ashley’s house with a number of her relatives, and then she goes missing. It’s up to Maggie and Ethan to figure out where Elenaor has gone, and – more importantly – why.

This was a fun, light romance. It leans more heavily into the mystery – or at the very least I was more interested by the mystery – than the romance, though it’s there. More importantly, it’s about Maggie’s journey to trusting herself. She’s been told her whole life that she doesn’t matter and that her opinions don’t count, and she doesn’t really trust herself. Over the course of the book – and with Ethan’s help – she learns how to trust her instincts and her decisions again.

I don’t know if I was expecting something spicier (it’s not spicy at all), but I wasn’t expecting so much of a mystery. And I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable and fun it was.

Audiobook: The Bookshop

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by Evan Friss
Read by Jay Myers
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There were a few swear words, including a couple f-bombs. It’s in the Literary Reference section of the bookstore.

The subtitle of the book is “A History of the American Bookstore”, and that really sums it up. Friss looks at the role the bookstore has played in America from the time of Ben Franklin through to Amazon and Barnes & Noble today. He looks at small bookshops, publisher-run bookstores, the corporate giants, and used bookstores (as well as street vendors in New York City) and the role that they all play in the book publishing business.

Perhaps it’s because I am a bookseller and just a bookish person in general, but I found this fascinating. I did think it was a bit New York-centric for my tastes, but that probably can’t be helped: New York is the center of the publishing world, after all. I do think I learned things about the way bookstores have survived through the ups and downs over the years and the introduction of new technologies. I don’t think bookstores are on the way out; I think there is still value in buying and owning books, and I think Friss demonstrates that bookstores are still valued parts of society (at least in many places). It’s very much a self-congratulatory book (his wife works at an independent bookstore) but it’s a good one.

The Cookie Crumbles

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by Tracy Badua and Alechia Dow
First sentence: “Generally speaking, cookies don’t kill people.”
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Content: There is talk of almost-murder, and there are some intense situations. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Laila loves to bake. Lucy is a budding reporter. They both want to get into the prestigious Sunderland boarding school, and the cookie competition hosted by the school, with the grand prize of a scholarship, is the only way they can make it work. The plan was for Laila to bake and be brilliant and for Lucy to write and be brilliant. What they didn’t anticipate was one of the judges – Chef Remy – almost dying after eating one of Laila’s cookies. Now, they need to figure out who tried to kill Chef Remy (it wasn’t Laila!) – especially since there was a storm that wiped out all the ways to get into and out of Sunderland.

This was a fun little mystery. The stakes were high – a lot of the other kids had motives to hurt Chef Remy – but it wasn’t so high that it would scare younger kids. The clues were there to figure it out if you were paying attention (I did), but it was clever enough to keep me entertained. I liked that the authors conceived of a clever way to get parents out of the picture – it was kind of like a sleep-away camp for the competition – so that it wasn’t weird that the kids were running around the school by themselves. I liked the alternating chapters between Laila and Lucy, and I thought it was all done very well.

A really solid Middle Grade mystery.

Audiobook: The Truth According to Ember

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by Danica Nava
Read by Siena East
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is blatant racism towards Native people, as well as some swearing including a few f-bombs. There is on the page, pretty spicy sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ember Lee Cardinal hasn’t been able to catch a break. She had to drop out of college because she used her college money to bail out her younger brother from jail, but he skipped bail so she lost the money. She’s working a dead-end job at a bowling alley in a less-than-desirable part of Oklahoma City. And all her applications for better jobs come back as rejected. So she decides to be creative: she exaggerates her qualifications and checks the white box instead of the Native American one. (Her dad is white, so it’s not a super big stretch on that one.) She lands a job as an accounting assistant at a tech firm where she meets Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native. He even seems to be interested in her as well. Things are looking up. But when she gets an unexpected (and unwanted) promotion to the Executive Assistant to the CEO and when a coworker finds Ember and Danuwoa in a bit of a compromising position (they were kissing on an elevator at an offsite conference), her lies begin to build and get out of control. With everything – her job, her life, the relationship with Danuwoa – at stake, will Ember be able to come clean?

This one was a ton of fun. There was a bit of second-hand embarrassment as Ember’s lies kept piling up, but I got why she kept doing it. The motivations were always there. Nava was great at making the spice pop as well as weaving in elements of what Native people have to deal with in the corporate workplace (it was SUPER cringe). I loved Ember’s best friend Joanna (not sure of the spelling of that, since I listened) and the way it was incredibly centered in Oklahoma. Additionally, East did an excellent job narrating, making all the characters come to life.

It ended up being one of those books where I kept driving just so I could keep listening, and there really isn’t any higher praise than that.

Four Weekends and a Funeral

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by Ellie Palmer
First sentence: “When I learn I’m still dating Sam Lewis, I’m at his funeral.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at the bookstore.
Content: There is some mild swearing, as well as kissing and off-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Alison had a brief relationship with Sam. She was coming off a double mastectomy (as a cancer prevention measure), and she wanted a bit of adventure in her life. Sam – who lived life large – was it. It didn’t work out, but he never told his family that they broke up, and Alison found out at Sam’s funeral after a tragic accident. She is compelled to play along with the fiction that she was actually dating-dating Sam, and she and his best friend, Adam, get roped into cleaning out and fixing up Sam’s condo. The project gets off to a rough start: Adam is notoriously recalcitrant towards activities, and even though Alison tries to be cheerful around him, he’s just not warming up.

But, she still feels a pull toward him, and even though she’s still feeling all sorts of ways about her mastectomy, her and Adam’s relationship buds from friendship into something more.

It’s a sweet and light romance, with undercurrents of both grief and survivor’s guilt. While I really liked the relationship between Alison and Adam – there were some genuinely laugh out lout moments in the book – it was the side characters that really kept me reading. I liked Alison’s friends Chelsea and Mara, and the trivia night competitions, and just their friendship. And I feel like that while this is a romance, at its heart, it’s following the trend I’m seeing in romances: the real story is women figuring out how to be their best selves. Alison works through her survivor’s guilt, she embraces her true self, and only then can she and Adam have a deep, real relationship. And while it lacks spice, it is sweet, and there are bonus points for old (well 80s) romcom references.

I found it to be sweet, charming, and quite funny, which is a win in my book.

Audiobook: Buffalo Dreamer

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by Violet Duncan
Read by Ashley Callingbull
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some tough subjects, including the residential schools, but they are handled in an age-appropriate way. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Summer is looking forward to a relaxing summer at the rez in Alberta where her mom grew up. But this year, there is a change: they have discovered a mass grave at a closed-down residential school where Summer’s grandfather was forced to attend. Additionally, Summer is having vivid dreams about a girl who ran away from a residential school and walked through a blizzard to escape.

It’s not a long book or even a harrowing one. But it is a sweet story about respecting and learning history, even (or maybe especially) hard history. Summer’s mom and aunties doesn’t think she’s ready to learn the history, and her grandfather is hesitant to speak about it, but when Summer shares the dreams, they are more willing to admit that talking about the hard and painful history can be a healing thing. I also appreciated learning about Summer’s heritage and family traditions as we went along; Duncan was excellent at weaving the small details in with the larger story.

The narrator was excellent as well; I really love listening to books by Native authors in audio because I know I would have no idea how to pronounce some of the words. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Audiobook: Done and Dusted

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by Lyla Sage
Read by Aaron Shedlock & Stella Hunter
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is on-page, quite graphic sex. There is also swearing, including several f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

All Emmy Rider – the youngest of the three Rider kids – wanted to do was get out of her small Wyoming town and make something of herself. Which she did by going to college and making a name for herself on the barrel racing circuit. But, after a bad accident, she’s aimless back home at Rebel Blue, the family ranch, trying to figure out the next step. Enter in Luke Books, Meadowlark’s most eligible bachelor, and Emmy’s oldest brother’s best friend. He’s always been just annoying, but now – maybe he’s something more. Except for Emmy’s off-limits, because her brother wouldn’t take kindly to their being together.

Will that stop them? (We all know the answer to that question.)

We had Lyla Sage at the store over Bookstore Romance day, and I had the pleasure of working the event. It was a lot of fun, she’s smart and funny, and I found myself wondering if these were any good (especially since all the other romance readers at the store were raving about the books). And yes, yes they are. Well, it depends on what you mean by “good”. Are they high literature? No. Are they entertaining and sexy? Yes. And really, that’s all anyone really wants out of a romance book, after all. I did like the characters, and Sage is good at writing witty banter (almost a must for me in a romance book). It’s got a little bit of push and pull and some sexy scenes and it all came together quite nicely.

It was good on audio as well. Thankfully, the narrators realized that people from Wyoming don’t have an accent (we were worried about that), and they embodied the characters beautifully. It was entertaining and fun, and you really can’t want anything more than that in a romance.

Pony Confidential

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by Christina Lynch
First sentence: “Penny Marcus opens her front door to find Ed, the local sheriff’s deputy, on the doorstep.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!”
Release date: November 5, 2025
Content: There is some swearing, including several f-bombs, and some violence to animals. It will be in the Fiction section.

This one is going to be hard to sum up. It’s a dual narrative: Penny is arrested for a murder that happened in her presence 25 years ago, but that she says she didn’t commit. However, there aren’t any witnesses, so she’s in a hopeless place as her court-appointed lawyer tries to convince her to take a plea.

The other narrative is that of Pony, Penny’s, well, pony, from her childhood. Pony is bitter towards humans because Penny left him suddenly. But, over the course of Pony’s travels after being sold, he learned to forgive, and then decided to go find Penny. This part of the book is very loosely based on the Odyssey, and it’s sweeping and wild as Pony crisscrosses the country over years looking for Penny.

It sounds weird – and it’s nothing like what I was expecting when I started it. I think I was expecting something more like The Hollow Kingdom, or even perhaps the mystery that the jacket copy described. But, instead, I got a love letter to human-animal connection, as both Penny and Pony’s lives were changed by each other. It was sweet, it was funny at times, and it was just completely full of heart.

I absolutely loved it.