Comfort Reads: The Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick

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Content Notes: a list of content notes can be found at The StoryGraph

Back in the summer of 2007, I was pregnant, off for the summer, and decided to take things very easy. After losing our first pregnancy just a few months previously, I wasn’t willing to take any risks and spent that summer reading as many books as I possibly could. I finally went to our closest library only to discover that wasn’t where I was supposed to get my library card and after successfully acquiring said library card from the correct library, discovered Amanda Quick. Quick, the historical romance pen name of Jayne Ann Krentz, became my obsession that summer. I read them all. Every single title the library, and the surrounding libraries, had. I read through the trilogies that spanned time and pen names. Books set in the 1800’s written by Amanda Quick. Contemporaries written by Jayne Ann Krentz. Futuristic paranormals written by Jayne Castle. These books all contain her core story: an independent and ambitious woman saves herself from danger with the help of a handsome and grumpy man who has a complicated and tragic past. Some are incredibly dated, pretty sexist, and, with a lot of love, formulaic. But, I still love them and will continue to read them.

I have shelves of signed books and preorder swag. Whenever I find a hardcover in one of those bargain bins at Menards, seriously the best part of the store, I always buy them. Sometimes you just need a book that is going to go exactly as you know it will. No surprises, no new and exciting ideas. Just a book that brings a smile when you realize that you hit that point in the book, just like you knew you would. The books where they always say the whole name of a town or hotel every single time it’s brought up. The books where the villain always spills their guts as they’re about to harm the main characters. The books where everyone is so concerned about High Society and it’s Expectations. The books that make you chuckle every time you realize you could play a bingo card off the tropes. I love it all.

When I was prepping everything for my hysterectomy last week, I knew I would need an audiobook that I would enjoy but also not really need to pay attention to. Something that would keep me entertained but also not one that required 100% of my focus because hello, pain and pain meds are kind of known to be distracting.

So what did I pick? Wow, it’s in the title folks.

Book 7 of the Burning Cover series, The Bride Wore White, brings us the story of Prudence Ryland, aka Madame Ariadne, a psychic dream consultant who is obsessed with tea. (They all are. Every single heroine.) When a client mysteriously dies after a consultation, Prudence packs her bags and heads to Burning Cove to start a new life away from the suspicions of the tightly knit psychic community and the high society clientele they serve. There, mysterious circumstances cause her to enlist the help of Luther Pell and his investigator Jack Wingate. Together, Prudence and Jack race against time to uncover the threat against her and of course, fall madly in love with each other.

It was everything I could have hoped for! It truly was. Prudence does have real psychic powers and once in Burning Cove, goes on to get a job as a Librarian in an academic library where she quickly discovers she has a great talent in working with psychic research and materials. So of course she becomes obsessed with Jack’s manuscript on criminal profiling. Jack had a disastrous ending to his previous case which left him scarred and with horrible nightmares. With so much love, of course the psychic dream consultant falls hard for the grumpy handsome guy with nightmares! Truly, this book was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. The perfect comfort read.

If you’re interested in checking out this series, know that people from previous books show up, but you can definitely read all of them as stand-alone novels. If you haven’t read her Arcane Society novels, I highly, highly recommend them. The way the characters are woven together across time always makes for fun cameos and were an absolute nightmare to shelve at the Library.

I hope this book brings you as many smiles as it did me.

If you’d like to add this book to your shelf, you can click on the cover above or here for ordering information. I listened to my copy through Libby from my library.

This post may contain links, including Amazon Associate Links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Available now

Hey all! This week is the #TransRightsReadathon and I’m rounding up some of my favorite books by, or featuring, trans people. If you’d like more information about the origins and goals of this movement, you can find it here.

As the anniversary of her sister’s death approaches, Mackenzie finds herself plagued with strange and disturbing dreams. After a nightmare where she has to battle a murder of crows, she awakens to find the severed head of a crow in her hands. As the nights go on, her dreams become more vivid and she finds herself bringing objects from the dream world into the waking world. Her dreams keep sending her to her family’s favorite camp site, and to a memory that has disturbed Mackenzie for years. When her dreams become too disturbing to handle alone, she finds herself back home for the first time in years.

Her family, still grieving the loss of Sabrina, Mackenzie’s sister, and the recent loss of her kokum, comes together to discover what is behind her disturbing dreams and how to keep her safe.

This is a fascinating story. Mackenzie is a compelling character who is burdened by the grief of her sister’s death and her guilt over not going home for the funeral. Growing up, Mackenzie was always surrounded by family. From camping trips to late night card games and cousin sleepovers, Mackenzie has always been surrounded by her family. But Sabrina’s sudden death and Mackenzie’s behavior created a rift that’s she’s unsure of how to heal. Johns does an incredible job of expressing the different ways that we grieve and how that impacts our relationships with others.

When she returns home, Mackenzie discovers that her mother, aunts, and cousins have more experience with the mysteries of dreams and the supernatural than she realized. I really loved learning more about Cree culture and the myths that were shared in the story. Many of the women all had some type of special gift and it was a bit sad to hear how they felt the need to keep it secret, especially when it became clear that they needed everyone’s knowledge to solve the mystery and keep everyone safe.

I was a bit surprised to find a horror novel that was more of a slow burn and character driven. I found it very well written, the story very compelling, and the characters very interesting and realistic.

If you would like to add this amazing book to your shelf, you can find ordering information by clicking here or on the book cover above.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own. This post may contain links, including Amazon Associate Links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Available now

As the anniversary of her sister’s death approaches, Mackenzie finds herself plagued with strange and disturbing dreams. After a nightmare where she has to battle a murder of crows, she awakens to find the severed head of a crow in her hands. As the nights go on, her dreams become more vivid and she finds herself bringing objects from the dream world into the waking world. Her dreams keep sending her to her family’s favorite camp site, and to a memory that has disturbed Mackenzie for years. When her dreams become too disturbing to handle alone, she finds herself back home for the first time in years.

Her family, still grieving the loss of Sabrina, Mackenzie’s sister, and the recent loss of her kokum, comes together to discover what is behind her disturbing dreams and how to keep her safe.

This is a fascinating story. Mackenzie is a compelling character who is burdened by the grief of her sister’s death and her guilt over not going home for the funeral. Growing up, Mackenzie was always surrounded by family. From camping trips to late night card games and cousin sleepovers, Mackenzie has always been surrounded by her family. But Sabrina’s sudden death and Mackenzie’s behavior created a rift that’s she’s unsure of how to heal. Johns does an incredible job of expressing the different ways that we grieve and how that impacts our relationships with others.

When she returns home, Mackenzie discovers that her mother, aunts, and cousins have more experience with the mysteries of dreams and the supernatural than she realized. I really loved learning more about Cree culture and the myths that were shared in the story. Many of the women all had some type of special gift and it was a bit sad to hear how they felt the need to keep it secret, especially when it became clear that they needed everyone’s knowledge to solve the mystery and keep everyone safe.

I was a bit surprised to find a horror novel that was more of a slow burn and character driven. I found it very well written, the story very compelling, and the characters very interesting and realistic.

If you would like to add this amazing book to your shelf, you can find ordering information by clicking here or on the book cover above.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own. This post may contain links, including Amazon Associate Links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

The Shadows by Alex North

Available Now

Content warning for child death and child abuse.

This is another brilliant dark and disturbing thriller from Whisper Man author, Alex North. After learning his mother has been placed in hospice, Paul Adams is forced to return to the town he left twenty-five years ago. His mother seems deeply disturbed and is convinced that something is in her house. What Alex finds convinces him that she knew more about the horrific murder of a child decades ago, a murder Alex has tried to forget. When a copycat killer strikes in a nearby town, Alex is forced to face his past in order to prevent the needless murders of more children. 

I made the mistake of taking this book with me while on vacation with my boys. We rented a cabin on a lake, surrounded by a beautiful forest. Nothing like reading a book where children are murdered in a forest commonly known as The Shadows, while in a literal forest.  In The Shadows, a group of teenage boys become obsessed with the idea of lucid dreaming. They are convinced that they can enter each other’s dreams and that a being known as Red Hands can help them get revenge against their enemies. This lucid dreaming creates this almost supernatural feeling to the book where it’s easy to question every fact about the suspects and the killings. There are discussions on the dark web questioning whether the original killer, Charlie Crabtree is still alive, or he is a dark spirit lurking around The Shadows waiting to be called upon. North is very skilled at keeping the tension between those two theories and you are always left questioning what is really going on. The lore surrounding The Shadows adds to the constant menacing feel of the book. They’re always described as dark and dangerous and Paul has a visceral reaction every time he looks out at them. Very spooky.

The characters are really well done and I loved how complex they were. Paul leaves town for college and never looks back. He even goes so far as to not see his mother for twenty-five years, that is how traumatizing his friend’s murder is. He never makes it as a writer and is living an ok life, but nothing he was really hoping for. His guilt over not taking better care of his mother is pretty intense but it leaves you wondering if he had come home earlier, could he handle taking care of his mother?  Would he have the emotional and mental strength to do so? 

I really like the character of Detective Amanda Beck. She is living in the shadow of her recently deceased father, a lifelong police officer. Struggling to find peace with the horrors she faces everyday, she is convinced that she is nothing more than a disappointment. But she is incredibly intuitive and driven. She knows how to best use her connections and is really good at reading people. North is really good at giving us characters who feel incredibly real and relatable. 

If you liked Whisper Man, I highly recommend picking this one up. It has the same tense, dark feel and the way that lucid dreaming was woven in was really interesting. 

This was my July Book of the Month pick and once again, BOTM did not disappoint. 

You can get a copy of this for yourself here:

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