Chanticleer Book Reviews

Category: Reviews

PAUSE by Sara Stamey – Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Family Fiction, Literary Fiction
Sara Stamey’s Pause features a hero who defies gravity, a scintillating setting, and a lovely backdrop for this riveting story.

This story is about women: strong, weak, abused, cherished, divorced, cancer survivors, mothers, sisters, friends, frenemies. It is a book about survival and hope, about getting back to self to reemerge into a life worth living.

Meet Lindsey, a fifty-two-year-old divorced woman going through menopause, living alone with her two cats, and worrying about her 1 and ¾ breasts. Readers will be hooked from the very beginning with the first of many poignant and funny journal entries. Here is Lindsey’s reality: a middle-aged woman suffering hot flashes that sear her skin and cause spells of nausea, who suffers PTSD from an abusive spouse.

Lindsey never thought of herself as a victim, though.

The fact that she walked on eggshells around Nick becomes a reflection of Lindsey’s parents’ relationship. Her father’s abuse of the mother and the mother’s frailty combined with her refusal to accept help and get out of the situation leave Lindsey feeling helpless and trigger her PTSD.

A certifiable mess, Lindsey seeks out an old flame, Newman. And at least for her, the flame ignites, and Lindsey finds herself falling in love. Newman, however, never opens up to her or becomes more available than a part-time lover. When she meets Damon, she is torn between being treated like a queen by a man ten years younger than her or as a booty-call by Newman.

Stamey weaves these issues and more into her novel, giving her protagonist a chance to try on life again after surviving cancer and divorce.

Lindsey’s spiritual awakening occurs as she works as a medical transcriber at a local hospital. While typing up a rush job on an emergency case, she discovers that a friend’s son was admitted with head trauma. The doctor who did the neurosurgery regularly botches the surgery, either killing his patients or leaving them vegetables. She informs the parents of her fears about this doctor while launching a full-scale lawsuit against the hospital that knowingly kept this doctor on staff and destroyed their son’s chances for recovery.

She gets fired for breach of confidentiality and finds herself unemployed, but her original plan to pursue environmental writing, essays, articles, and books after graduating from college beckons. She finds her first topic while riding through a park slated to become a hospital parking lot. She submits her essay about endangered owls living in the trees there; the piece is published and becomes instrumental in saving the space. The paper’s editor recognizes her talent and approaches her with another project with an environmental theme, and Lindsey agrees. A new career blossoms for her, which builds her up instead of tearing her apart.

Stamey develops Lindsey as a woman who won’t succeed until she takes charge and stands up for herself and her dreams.

Lindsey must learn to heal and move beyond cancer, the divorce, and the PTSD of the abuse. Readers will adore Lindsey for all of it. Powerfully written with melodic imagery, Stamey draws her readers in. Be prepared to cry, laugh, and cheer for Linsey as she finally takes the leap of faith necessary to begin believing in herself.

Stamey’s Pacific Northwest backdrop is captured in her skillfully crafted narrative. Readers are with Lindsey on the rapids, riding bikes through a maple forest, or walking beside a salmon-filled stream. We sit with her looking out over the Pacific Ocean at sunset and watching eagles as they hunt along the shore. Stamey’s brush strokes are deft, and her palette is rich as she creates this story’s world.

Stamey’s Pause is a riveting tale of one woman’s exploration to discover herself in a world where she has been dominated and controlled. She learns to take back control and finds herself whole and healed.

Pause is beautiful and thought-provoking and comes highly recommended. This title won 1st Place in the 2020 CIBA Somerset Book Awards for Contemporary and Literary Fiction.
March 4, 2022
MYSTERY in HARARE: Priscilla’s Journey into Southern Africa by M.J. Simms-Maddox – Terrorism Thriller, Historical African Fiction, Travel Adventure Thriller

In M.J. Simms-Maddox’s atmospheric thriller, Mystery in Harare: Priscilla’s Journey into Southern Africa, a former legislative aide’s wedding day turns deadly.

As the second installment of The Priscilla Trilogy opens, Priscilla J. readies to walk down the aisle in an American church to marry Jonathan. Not the man of her dreams, but the man she believes may be right for her. Love isn’t exactly on the table, but Priscilla hopes it will be in the future.

Before she can even take her vows, her soon-to-be husband is murdered in cold blood in front of her and those in attendance. Priscilla catches a glimpse of the murderer before succumbing to unconsciousness. She’s been drugged, and the kidnappers will confound and surprise readers.

When Priscilla gains consciousness, she is no longer in the United States but in the hinterland of Zimbabwe, Africa.

Priscilla is plunged into the murky and precarious world of the oppressive Apartheid regime in South Africa. How and why are the questions readers must discover for themselves. Suffice it to say, her endurance is tested repeatedly, she must learn how to look out for herself even as she struggles to find out the reasons behind the bloodshed in the church.

M.J. Simms-Maddox presents a thoughtful and compulsively readable story complete with a beguiling beginning. The tale spins into several twists and turns that readers will not see coming. The author aptly displays the toughness of the Southern part of Africa and its vibrancy and fluidity. Capturing this duality and melding it with the political atmosphere in America during the 1980s is the summit of this novel. Further, the book has obvious relevance to actual historical events.

Mystery in Harare comes with exceptionally well-drawn characters and a creatively imagined plot that gives it a resonant and all-embracing echo.

The beautifully evoked African settings and accompanying descriptions make this a real stand-out in cerebral mysteries. Simms-Maddox brings the reader along, making us feel a part of the story, careening down the path with Priscilla in all her experiences. Indeed, the author creates in Priscilla an individual with a formidable spirit and charisma that will appeal to many readers. The book concludes with a satisfying ending, but this is not the end of the series. One more title will complete the Priscilla trilogy.

Mystery In Harare is undoubtedly a successful terrorism thriller novel and a good place to start understanding the underbelly of the period of Apartheid in South Africa and its implications on all of its citizenry.

Mystery in Harare: Priscilla’s Journey into Southern Africa by M.J. Simms-Maddox won First Place in the CIBAs 2019 Mystery and Mayhem Book Awards and comes highly recommended.

March 2, 2022
The PRICE For GLORY by M.N. Snitz – 20th Century Wartime Historical Fiction, Family Saga, Wartime Fiction

In The Price for Glory, author M.N. Snitz delivers a compelling multi-generational epic tale of warfare and passion with roots in ancient lore.

Abraham Steinnermann grows up in a family dwelling in the same German Black Forest where the great Teutonic warrior, Arminius, held off the incursion of Roman soldiers in the first century. This legacy of war and triumph infuse his destiny, sending him down paths that even he, a somewhat narcissistic young man, could never imagine – until forced to live it.

Bright and handsome, Steinnermann makes up only a few Jews who are accepted at the notably antisemitic Heidelberg University.

As he studies high finance, his talent for numbers becomes evident, landing him a job in Germany’s banking community as Hitler rises to power. Steinnermann admires Hitler’s determination to recoup his nation’s esteem. For several years, even as the war heats up and Jews become the obvious target, the intelligent young banker continues to excel without harm.

Steinnermann’s luck, however, cannot hold in Hitler’s Germany.

One day, two Nazi soldiers come for him. Soon, he struggles to stay alive in the hell of a concentration camp. But Fortune or Fate smiles once again on the young man when a camp guard notices his talent. Steinnermann is offered a job that will lead to his being one of the few survivors.

As the Allies move in, so does the Red Cross.

Steinnermann meets the beautiful Merriam, a Red Cross volunteer, and falls in love. The attraction is mutual. The two maintain a long-distance correspondence when Steinnermann relocates to America. Once there, his perspicacity in finance will land him in a selected, fated role. He sends for and marries the woman he adores. His memories of the war and the many times he dodged death are transmuted to the next generation, within the mind of his son Jack, who must serve in Vietnam.

Snitz, who served in the US Military in Vietnam and was an observer of the Israeli Yom Kippur War, draws together many threads to create his vast tapestry of a multi-generational tale in The Price for Glory.

He successfully creates in his central character a man the reader may “love to hate” – someone whose skills and intelligence are admirable but whose arrogance and boastfulness seem a colossal deficit. As the story progresses though, Snitz’s protagonist wins the reader over by surviving the deep sorrows and immense perils he faces along the way.

Wordsmith Snitz seems at home within his story.

A student of classical literature, who avows writing his first novel in fifth grade, Snitz aptly portrays the feelings of women like Merriam embroiled in a long-distance romance. He depicts the emotions of men like Steinnermann, who are tortured by an insane enemy, and showcases the young Jack who is enmeshed in the terrible duties of warfare.

The Price for Glory is a lengthy saga taking place on three continents and within the minds of those – young and brash, and old and wise – who carry the understanding of that price all too heavily. This novel is highly recommended.

February 25, 2022
ACROSS the DISTANCE: Reflections on Loving and Where We Did & Did Not Find Each Other by Christina A. Kemp – Memoirs, Biographies of Women, Dysfunctional Families

In her nonfiction debut Across the Distance, Christina Kemp showcases a collection of eight personal stories that delve into the most poignant relationships throughout her life.

The well-crafted narratives encompass relationships with her parents, brother, childhood friends, boyfriends, and mentors as they moved in and out of her life. Themes of love, loss, distance, self-preservation, and healing rise to the surface.

Within the book, Kemp ponders the course of a romantic relationship as she realizes that love cannot make underlying differences disappear. At thirteen years old, her father died, and Kemp analyzes how she was able to come to terms with his death, reflecting on his kindness and heroic deeds. Several years later, she is diagnosed with the same condition that took her father; she feels as if she carries her father’s memory in the cells of her own body.

There is a clear distance between herself and her mother. Harmful and passive-aggressive tendencies placed the two at odds. While Kemp appreciated the Saturday morning conversations they often shared, her mother seemed more concerned with criticism than connection. The woman could shove her daughter across the room without reason. Regarding her rage, the author aptly describes it as “hot explosive sandbags that otherwise leaked at the seams.” Eventually, Kemp learned to accept the child/parent schisms.

With a background in counseling psychology, Christina A. Kemp delivers an in-depth assessment of her personal connections that will resonate with readers.

Examining these relationships brings clarity to familial ties and how they affect every other relationship in life. Indeed, Kemp better understands how to love on her own terms and realizes when to leave a relationship. One could spend a lifetime attempting to understand the landscape of relationships that make us who we are.

Each of the stories opens with a simple black & white photo.

The magpie cat, Lucy, stretches on hind legs, looking for an escape beyond the confines of her new island home. The model beauty of Kemp’s mother shows with full wavy hair and makeup, a scarf tied jauntily around her neck. A lone sailboat on distant waters captures the lingering loss of her father. Each image renders a stark, yet ethereal quality connected to Kemp’s life.

Kemp’s styling renders the beauty and harshness of significant moments in artful detail.

One day, the author overhears a lively conversation between a father and daughter about college plans; it is with shame and sorrow that Kemp realizes she’ll never share that experience. And then, amidst the rural surroundings of a northwest island, she considers the natural beauty of the changing seasons. The colorful descriptions and intimate detail throughout the text prove refreshing. Consider, “the island winds playing like a symphony.”

Across the Distance is most definitely a personal journal. However, even as the author finds catharsis in her stories, readers, too, will find meaning in the telling.

Readers are invited to take the book as a sequential whole or read one story portrait at a time. Either way, they will gain insight and understanding as they journey through this book and explore the intimate workings of relationships.

Across the Distance will appeal to those who seek to understand the connections and divisions we so often encounter in our lives.

February 21, 2022
RUNNING WITH CANNIBALS by Robert W. Smith – Philippine-American War, Historical Fiction, Military History

Robert W. Smith tells the story of a forgotten war and the fractured peace that follows in his powerful historical fiction novel, Running with Cannibals.

It has been said that “War is hell.” It has also been opined that “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” Running with Cannibals is a no-holds-barred, candid portrayal of a war that is glossed over in U.S. history, the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. It was the first war fought overseas by the U.S.

Running with Cannibals begins with an unnamed man on the run from an unjust accusation bought with blood and money.

At first, the reader may wonder how this man ends up halfway around the world to the Philippines, a soldier hiding among other soldiers.

Through the eyes of Sergeant Ethan Cooper, the reader has an intimate view of the self-fulfilling shibboleths that empower and provoke the U.S. Army into stupidity, atrocity, and self-aggrandizement. They squander the genuine possibility of cooperation and partnership with the Filipinos who were colonized by Spain.

Running with Cannibals is a story where the truth sets one man, Ethan Cooper, free of the past that dogs his every step. He keeps his head down, desperately trying not to draw attention to himself. So afraid of being seen, Cooper participates in committing monstrous acts against the Filipino people with his fellow soldiers – even against his better judgment.

When Cooper and his unit leave the capital for the remote villages on a mission that is doomed to fail because of the ignorance and racism of its commanding officer, Cooper’s eyes and the reader’s are fully opened to the U.S. true intent to subdue and subjugate the Filipinos into starvation and death. The more brutality Cooper sees, the more he questions what he’s been told. Not just about the supposed enemy, but about his own side.

Running with Cannibals is both an adventure and a philosophical and sometimes even angst-ridden journey told through a very close third-person point of view.

Smith crafts his story with exceptional skill, enabling readers an up-close look at Cooper’s ultimate metamorphosis. Ethan Cooper’s desperate desire to not see what is going on all around him does change over the course of his adventures into a soul-searching journey of purpose and fulfillment.

Running with Cannibals is an epic tale of war, hell, and redemption that will stick with readers long after reading the last page. Highly recommended.

February 16, 2022
SOULMATED (Joining of Souls Book) by Shaila Patel – Paranormal Romance, YA Paranormal, Coming of Age

Eighteen-year-old Liam Whelan must balance the pressure and danger of his new role leading his entire empath clan while searching for a fabled ‘soulmate’ in Shaila Patel’s paranormal romance novel, Soulmated.

Since the age of six, guided by his father’s visions, Liam and his family have traveled across the United States, moving from town to town searching for the girl destined to “join” with Liam. However, no empath in centuries has found a soulmated union. No one knows what joining actually means. Liam tires of his parents’ search for what he considers a fantasy girl, but he agrees to give up one more year of his life. The family moves to North Carolina for Liam’s senior year.

Laxshmi Kapadia will graduate a year early. Her mother, an overprotective and overbearing widow, plans Laxshmi’s entire life. Either her daughter attends med school or marries a proper Indian boy. Neither prospect appeals to Laxshmi, who wants to major in dance and doesn’t even want to start dating, let alone get married. So, when she meets the handsome new boy two doors down from her house, she doesn’t understand why he’s so drawn to her, unaware of her latent empathic abilities.

Liam marvels at Laxshmi’s power, smitten with her mesmerizing eyes. But as the two become closer, a strange power begins to emerge, a force that threatens their lives and draws the attention of the enemies that Liam must face as a leader.

Liam and Laxshmi bear the weight of responsibility, both to the family and themselves.

At barely eighteen, Liam has to prove himself worthy to lead his clan. He embraces the great honor but fears the added burdens of becoming the “prince.” In addition to his rigorous schooling, he constantly reviews the financial documents of his people to be sure of their success. His heightened empathic abilities make him an asset to the entire empath world and a dangerous wildcard. Liam doesn’t want to control the Group of Elders, but his father pushes him toward that future. This responsibility combines with his remarkable potential, and Liam becomes lost in his abilities.

Laxshmi struggles under no less responsibility.

Her father died five years ago, and since then, Laxshmi’s mother has focused entirely on her. Mrs. Kapadia struggles financially and determines that her daughter must do better by becoming a doctor or marrying a wealthy man. Though she balks at her mother’s control, Laxshmi can’t help but feel she must be the dutiful daughter to keep a promise made to her father. Can Laxshmi give up on her dreams for the sake of her mother? Laxshmi honors her mother’s wishes to stay away from all boys, especially those who are non-Indian, though it means she may be missing out on a genuine love with Liam.

Ironically, both Liam and Laxshmi find a certain freedom in the responsibility of a relationship with each other. Though they must invest great emotion, they make that trade for the chance to choose their paths. Rather than being burdened by another’s emotions, they make each other stronger.

Shaila Patel’s Soulmated won 1^st Place in the 2015 CIBA Paranormal Book Awards for Supernatural Fiction.

February 11, 2022
SURRENDERED II: PRIDE by Peggy Patrick – Romance, Western Romance, Christian Romance

Laura Parker struggles to take responsibility over her life after the death of her husband in Peggy Patrick’s romance novel, Surrendered II: Pride.

Since her husband Matt died last year, Laura Parker can’t move on. He made every important decision for her and their five-year-old son, Andy. When Laura finds a brochure for Wyoming’s High Point Dude Ranch among her husband’s things, she takes a chance. Laura books a trip for her and Andy in the hopes that some time in the wild will begin restoring her son’s joy.

Andy quickly takes a shine to the ranch ramrod, Jesse Brandon, who doesn’t seem to mind letting the boy tag along. But he surprises Laura with his rude, confrontational attitude. When he kisses her, Laura’s pain turns to utter confusion. She begins to question everything she thought she knew about her marriage and herself, and she has to choose whether to draw closer to Jesse or to escape.

Jesse has more than one secret, and little does Laura know, he’s about to turn her world upside-down.

Laura searches for her own identity. Having married at eighteen, she has experienced very little of the world on her own. She saw Matt as the savior who rescued her from extreme poverty and emotional abuse, and gave her the middle-class life she always wanted. However, over the course of the book, Laura realizes that Matt wasn’t “taking good care of her,” but keeping her trapped in a much darker relationship. Laura comes to terms with this reality in a journey that, unfortunately, many women will find all too real.

Simply driving to the ranch opens Laura’s eyes to how much her sheltered life has taken away her freedom. But Jesse has a much bigger impact on her, forcing Laura to face the hard truths beneath the surface. She had stopped really living even before Matt’s death. Jesse helps her wake up, and though his manner is sometimes harsh, Laura starts to to understand how much she has missed, and how much more her life–and Andy’s life–can be.

Laura and Jesse develop a complicated and dynamic relationship.

Jesse’s early hostility shocks her to the point of crying more than once, but he dances between harsh and distant to gentle and attentive in the span of minutes. He even accuses her of being a bad mother, and trying to seduce his younger brother as a replacement father for Andy. Will Jesse’s harsh treatment push Laura to see that she’s hurting Andy and herself by allowing fear and grief to consume her? His dedication to showing Laura a life beyond survival makes their eventual love story even more endearing.

Faith plays a major role in Laura’s journey.

Jesse has spent the past three years forming a strong bond with God, but his ranch’s financial struggles test that faith. With Laura’s arrival, his long-suppressed physical needs are fighting what little control he has left. They clash on the idea of faith; Jesse sees God in every facet of his life, but Laura is a self-proclaimed atheist. She refuses his beliefs from the outset, and Jesse cannot understand why God would bring Laura into his life and give him such strong feelings for her. However, when Laura witnesses a true miracle, she must come to terms with this new idea that God might, in fact, be real.

Surrendered II: Pride by Peggy Patrick won 1st Place in the CIBA 2014 Chatelaine Book Awards for Romance.

February 9, 2022
Montana Mustangs: Book 2 of the Nymph Series (Nymph’s Curse) by Danica Winters – Paranormal Romance, Mystery, Family Relationships

Aura Montgarten needs to find her sister, Natalie, in Danica Winters’ paranormal romance, Montana Mustangs.

At first, Aura hopes that Natalie just went off with friends and didn’t bother to call. But the silence continues for more than a week. Aura jumps in her truck to search the last place Natalie’s cell phone had been used, a mountain near Somers, Montana, behind a place called the Diamond Ranch. Before she can get onto the mountain to search, Aura becomes embroiled in a darker mystery when she finds a mutilated hand near where Natalie had been staying. With the gruesome discovery, she fears that Natalie ran into more serious trouble than she had first suspected.

When a handsome sheriff’s deputy questions her, Aura feels a stirring she hasn’t ever experienced.

Dane Burke, a no-nonsense lawman, has a case to solve. He shouldn’t be thinking about the mysterious, beautiful drifter in any way except as a possible suspect. With one failed marriage and a non-existent relationship with his estranged brother, he can’t allow himself to feel anything, not even lust. Little does he know, Aura feels much the same, but for very different reasons. Aura keeps her true identity hidden: a shape-shifting nymph. As part of her supernatural nature, any man who loves her or that she loves will die. The two delve deeper into the mystery and the search for Natalie, and their feelings become impossible to deny.

Dane and Aura have juxtaposing relationships with their respective siblings.

Aura and Natalie couldn’t be closer. As demigods, the two nymphs have lived for over five hundred years. They share the same curse, connecting them by something else–the need, but inability, to love. Because they cannot allow themselves to find love in a mate, they only have each other. Though Natalie has often “gone wild” and let her Mustang side free for days or weeks at a time, she always returns to her sister who hasn’t shifted in many years. In fact, the two have never gone seven days without speaking before. Aura will do anything to find her sister, even if it means using her nymph powers of seduction to force Dane to help her.

Dane and his brother, Zeb, couldn’t be further apart. For over twenty years, Dane has stayed away from the Diamond Ranch, once his childhood home and owned now by Zeb. Dane vowed to never return to the ranch when he caught his wife in the arms of his brother. Absence has not made their hearts grow fonder. When Dane shows up at the ranch to question his brother, Zeb meets him with a shotgun, and when Dane releases Zeb from custody, the two brawl in a parking lot. Aura can’t understand their interactions because of her closeness with Natalie.

Aura and Dane must both face their fear of love.

Dane was hurt before, however Aura knows that for her, life and death hang in the balance of her love. She wants to protect Dane from her curse. This presents an ironic twist considering Dane, the consummate protector, has sworn to save lives even at the cost of his own. Aura seems fearless, but in truth her fear of love controls her to the point she has never shared her secrets with any man. She uses her hundreds of years of watching humans cruelly hurt animals as part of her excuse—how could she possibly love them?

Despite her fear, Aura can’t deny she actually enjoys Dane’s controlling nature, the predator and prey feelings that excite her nymph nature. Her feelings go beyond lust, though, coming from “somewhere hidden,” a place no man has ever touched. These new feelings make her consider allowing herself to love and be loved. Though she has always prided herself on being free, she knows she has never truly been so because of her fear of love. Dane’s love becomes the very thing to break her from the bonds of that fear.

Danica Winters’ Montana Mustangs won 1st Place in the 2014 CIBA Chatelaine Book Awards for Romance Fiction.

February 7, 2022
HOT HOUSE: Book 1 of the E & A Investigation Series by Lisa Towles – Psychological Thriller, Mystery, Crime Thriller

Two private investigators find themselves reluctant but effective partners in Lisa Towles’ fast-paced psychological thriller, Hot House, Book 1 of the new E & A Thriller Series.

Two separate cases start to merge in a very murky middle. Mari Ellwyn unravels an attempt to blackmail a federal appellate court judge. Derek Abernathy looks into the mysterious death of a college student. He also investigates the death and disappearance of two of the reporters covering her case.

The reporters pursued the trail of a story involving the judge with whom Mari works. It seems the judge had a connection to the dead college student in Derek’s case. As they dig deeper into the joined cases, threats against Mari start to come from all sides, even from her former handlers at the CIA.

But the secret buried, literally, at the heart of this case comes with a shock. Because the victim was not who she seemed. At least not all of the time.

Hot House delivers a dark, edge-of-the-seat thriller. It begins as a relatively straightforward investigation into seemingly unrelated mysteries. But as the story follows the investigation, especially Mari Ellwyn, two levels of mystery open up.

On the surface, Ellwyn and Abernathy are dogged and determined investigators who mostly follow the rules, if only because they want to make sure that the case will hold up for their mutual frenemy, Ellwyn’s ex-lover and Abernathy’s former boss, Ivan Dent, Chief of Detectives for the LAPD.

Not that they don’t play a bit fast and loose at the edges of those rules. After all, sometimes in the pursuit of truth, the investigators have to step outside the lines.

Everyone involved in this mystery seems to have deep, dark and often deadly secrets. It’s clear from this new investigation that Dent’s detectives missed way too much in that initial search. Abernathy won’t talk about his firing from the LAPD. Ellwyn keeps her real motive for pursuing this investigation under wraps.

But Sascha Sophie Michaud had the most secrets of all – some of which she kept even from herself. And Michaud’s secrets provide the threat to the investigators – along with making the case so difficult to solve.

Readers will easily put themselves in Mari Ellwyn’s shoes.

She loves her dog, she’s not so sure about relationships – she even has a strained one with her family. But her few friends will ride or die with her. As capable as she is – and she is very capable – readers will shake in their shoes as this mystery threatens Mari’s life.

The resolution of the case is marvelously done, managing to be both expected and unexpected at the same time. Not that the reader will see any of it coming.

In the final pages, while the disparate cases that Ellwyn and Abernathy began with have wrapped up very satisfactorily, it’s clear that Mari Ellwyn has just pulled another thread on a case she’s been following for over a year. Hot House ends with the sense that there’s more for Mari to uncover in her own personal quest.

Readers will be left hoping and looking forward to Mari Ellwyn’s future investigations.

February 5, 2022
FIND ME in FLORENCE by Jule Selbo – Women’s Divorce Fiction, Romantic Fiction, Literary

Thirty-five-year-old Lyn Bennett explores the life of her late mother before she was married, in Jule Selbo’s romance novel, Find Me in Florence.

In 1966, Jenny, a Mud Angel, dropped everything to fly to Florence, Italy, in search of treasures buried in mud and water after the Arno flooded. She worked tirelessly alongside her fellow Mud Angels to rescue these priceless works of art and ancient books.

For all of Lyn’s life, she heard her mother’s stories until they became mundane and commonplace. But before Jenny passed away, she gave Lyn instructions on where to find her precious journal from her time in Italy. She left the cryptic message “Find me in Florence,” so when Lyn, an up-and-coming writer, has a chance to teach at a writer’s retreat in the city her mother loved, she jumps at the opportunity. Three years later, she still journeys there yearly for one month to explore Florence. With her latest book under her belt, Lyn decides to tell her mother’s story.

Lyn’s life shifts dramatically, and she soon searches for more than her mother’s history.

When she arrives in Florence, Lyn’s life seems on the upward swing. She put her writing back on track after the death of both of her parents, married a successful lawyer, and hopes to begin a family soon. However, all of that vanishes when Stan, her husband, surprises her not long after her seminar in Florence begins. Stan and Susie, Lyn’s best friend since junior high school, had an affair. The two followed Lyn to Florence to deliver the news in person, thinking her love of the city might lessen the blow of utter betrayal. Lyn’s true journey begins with this revelation. Suddenly, Lyn loses her hope as the people of Florence must have lost when her mother volunteered fifty years ago. But like the city, Lyn must endure.

Soon following the bombshell announcement, Lyn struggles between what she “should” do and what she “wants” to do.

She should accept this betrayal like an adult, negotiate reasonably with her cheating husband, forgive her BFF, and move past all of her pain. But surrounded by Florence, a city that called to her mother to leave her normal life, Lyn learns not to follow “the should” but to chase after “the want.” The vitality and passion of the Florentines give Lyn the strength she needs to “shed [her] skin.” Lyn rids herself of a life lived in fear of taking chances. Her mother’s own rash decision to become a Mud Angel and experience the adventure of a lifetime propels Lyn to stop accepting the expectations of everyone else. Perhaps Jenny meant for her daughter to learn this very lesson. As Lyn explores her fledgling confidence, she begins to realize all her mother gave up by returning to the US to fulfill her promise to marry Lyn’s father. She feels the life her mother could’ve lived if she had followed the “want” rather than the “should.”

This clash of responsibility and desire extends beyond Lyn’s story. Matteo, a man Lyn grows to care for over the course of the novel, wrestles with his wants as well. His responsibilities weigh on him, coming from a proud Italian family with a lineage and family home dating back four hundred years. They hope–expect–him to marry a woman closely connected to the family business. But after a chance meeting, he draws closer to the American with the broken heart. He should stay away, give her time to mourn the loss of her marriage and best friend, but he wants more from her. Though Matteo should pursue the woman his family has chosen, he wants the woman he shouldn’t, and like Lyn, he will have to decide whether to follow his heart or his head.

This novel celebrates Florence, its people, and its customs.

Any lover of Italy will enjoy the history included in Lyn’s story. With the detailed descriptions, readers come along on the journey to this beautiful city, eating at its most celebrated restaurants, and walking its ancient streets. Florence shows Lyn her innermost feelings and surrounds her with passion and acceptance. Embracing and appreciating Florence makes Jenny’s story alive, rather than just a dusty story from half a century ago.

Jule Selbo’s Find Me in Florence won 1st Place in the 2019 CIBA Chatelaine Book Awards for Romance and Romantic Fiction Novels.

February 4, 2022