Category: Mystery

Amber Affairs by Patricia Rice

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, MysteryLeave a comment

Amber Affairs (Crystal Magic Book 6)Barbara’s rating: 5 of 5 stars

Series: Crystal Magic #6
Publication Date: 5/14/19
Number of Pages: 358

What an enticingly lovely second-chance romance! This exhilarating addition to the Crystal Magic series has it all – romance, murder, mayhem, angry ghosts, possessions, and perverted Hollywood moguls. What more could you ask for in the small town of Hillvale, California? I am thinking this might be my favorite book in the series – but, I think I say that with each new release. What can I say – I love the series.

As we’ve read each new addition to the series, we’ve seen Amber. She was always there, but sort of in the background and to me, she seemed to be the most ineffectual of the Hillvale Lucy’s. As if she didn’t have a lot to contribute at all. Well, not anymore. Amber Abercrombie has come into her own – and what a formidable person she turns out to be!

Amber keeps many, many secrets and she is terrified that someone from the outside will discover her real identity and she’ll be exposed. She has spent years putting herself back together from her traumatic childhood and she is still not in a good place mentally to deal with the exposure. She’s found a measure of peace in Hillvale – she’s eating better, she’s sleeping better, she’s come to terms with her large body (well, sort of). Yes, she’s poor as a church mouse, but she’s calm.

Well, she’s calm until Josh Gabriel strolls into town. Josh was her co-star in a long-running adolescent TV series (Jack and Ginger) – and the love of her life. Here he is – on the eve of his wedding – and he’s just walked into her shop. Maybe he won’t recognize her. But he does. He’s shocked to find her here because he has spent years and years and all the money he could muster to find her. She had just run off – leaving him no word, no explanation, nothing – and now by gosh – he’d have one – because she was the love of his life too.

Josh invites Amber to the lodge to have dinner with him and his bride-to-be (Willa), but Willa had to go back to Hollywood on urgent business. Amber has dinner with Josh and they swim in the pool together and begin to rekindle their friendship. The next morning, Willa is found murdered – near Hillvale – and all eyes begin to turn to Josh and Amber.

If seeing Josh and a murder isn’t stressful enough, Amber gets a call from her nephew Zeke who is living with his grandmother since his mother died. This is the same woman who abused and let others abuse Amber – and now, she’s putting Zeke in the same situation. Zeke runs away and takes a bus as close as he can to Hillvale and calls Amber, who doesn’t drive, to come to get him. She panics but finds a way to get him to Hillvale, now she has to spend resources she doesn’t have to get custody away from her treacherous mother.

Add another murder, an angry spirit possessing the town’s medium, and Hillvale is in an uproar. Josh is the main murder suspect with the sheriff, but Amber and her friends know he isn’t guilty – they just have to prove it by catching the real murderer(s).

This is a wonderful, fast-paced, exciting read with two lead characters who deserve their HEA more than any I’ve read in a very long time.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A Question of Numbers by Andrea Penrose

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Historical Mystery, Mystery, Regency Era (1811-1820)Leave a comment

A Question of Numbers: A Lady Arianna Regency Mystery (Lady Arianna Hadley Mystery Book 5)Barbara’s rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Series: Lady Arianna Hadley Mystery #5
Publication Date: 4/8/19
Number of Pages: 375

Things are very, very tense in England. Napoleon has escaped from Elba and is marshaling his troops in order to, once again, take the throne of France and the rest of Europe. The various countries and factions on the continent are vacillating between standing alone, joining Napoleon or joining with England. If Lord Charles Mellon can’t ferret out the spies within each camp and wrestle the various factions into an alliance, then all of Europe will be engulfed in war – again. England can’t fight the battle alone because all of her seasoned troops have been sent to America for the War of 1812. Even though that conflict has ended, there is no way to get those troops from America to England in time to stop Napoleon. That means that the Duke of Wellington is left with a rag-tag group of raw recruits and whatever coalition the diplomats can throw together. Can they defeat Napoleon? Luck will have to be with them at every turn for that to happen.

Lord Charles received a secret communication from someone in the Prussian delegation claiming there was a group of conspirators within the coalition of European allies that are in league with Napoleon. They are to foment distrust and dissension in order to cause the coalition to crumble. That would throw the balance of power to Napoleon. The next step depends on Arianna, Countess of Saybrook because the information had met her in Vienna the year before and trusted her. A meeting between Arianna and the informant is set in the garden of the ball they are to attend. Except – when Arianna arrives at the appointed place, she hears a gate slam and finds her contact dying. He mutters a few words and has written a ‘V’ in his own blood.

The victim was indeed someone Arianna knew – and liked. The clues lead in multiple directions, there are plots within plots and all are designed to throw any investigators off the track. Arianna and her husband along with Constantina, Dowager Countess of Sterling, Miss Sophia Kirtland, and Lord Grentham are lead from England to Brussels pursuing multiple mysteries whose solutions can save England as well as Europe from the clutches of Napoleon – not to mention saving a young girl from kidnapping and her father from torture and death.

This is a fast-paced, excellently written story of intrigue and a bit of romance. The characters are memorable and the scene-setting is exceptional. This author manages to seamlessly weave together fact and fiction in a way that will keep you reading from the first page to last.

It was interesting to find – from the Author’s Notes – how much of the book was actually fact. I love it when an author includes the author’s notes and explains their research and what they found.

I can definitely recommend both this book and this series!