Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 4

Last fall, I had a library patron ask aloud and disparagingly, “Who reads these books?” The books in question were these types: Christian/inspirational fiction. He was, specifically, poking fun at Amish fiction. I, confidently, because why wouldn’t I be confident in my own reading choices?, and forcefully replied, “I do.” “Really?” he asked. He was actually astonished.

            That’s a long-winded way for me to introduce my first Christian/inspirational fiction post of 2025. Do you read Christian/inspirational fiction? Why or why not?

Double Take (Jan. 9, 2024) by Lynette Eason.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

It’s been 18 months since Physician Assistant Lainie Jackson survived her would-be murder at the hands of her ex. She killed him in self-defense, she knows she did, but a man who looks like him (from a distance) is stalking her. Someone has gone to great lengths to make it look as though he was never deceased, and his parents and brother believe him to be in witness protection. Detective James Cross has worked with the Lake City Police Department for the past couple months, but he hasn’t told his family (parents, two brothers, Keegan and Dixon, and one sister, Steph). He was honorably discharged from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division due to wounds sustained on active duty. When James rescues two young girls and takes a bullet, his family finds out he’s around when the story’s splashed on the local news. He’s been staying with his good friend and work partner, Cole Garrison, while he figures out his family dynamics. James has always known Lainie, she’s best friends with his sister, but it’s only recently that he’s recognized her as someone other than his little sister’s best friend. Lainie wants to look to the future, one with James in it. Unfortunately, Lainie believes she’s a quitter, but if she quits, she fails, and she’ll die.

            The first in the Lake City Heroes series hits the ground running from the first paragraph and only slows down enough to round a sharp bend on a mountain when your life is in danger. In other words, this high-octane, Christian romantic suspense novel never really slows down. Eason’s skill is such that she seamlessly balances suspense with care, laughter and faith. It’s faith that sustains, not faith that is preachy. The tale is gripping and swift-paced with protagonists you wish were your neighbors and friends.

Love on a Whim (May 7, 2024) by Suzanne Woods Fisher.

<This is the third and final novel in a series.>

Steady, level-headed Brynn Haywood is reeling after an impulsive marriage to a man named T.D. DeLima that she’d known less than 24 hours. She sneaks out while he’s still sleeping and flees to Chatham, Massachusetts, a Cape Cod seaside town. Her loyal best friend, Dawn Dixon Collins, thinks she needs to “fix” Brynn’s problem and find her a lawyer through her mom’s (Marnie Dixon) very good friend, Lincoln Hayes. Lincoln is preoccupied with his daughter’s lavish, over-the-top wedding that comes complete with repeat last-minute decisions from Lincoln’s ex-wife. To put it mildly, he wasn’t an involved parent. The arrival of Lincoln’s estranged son, Bear Hayes, further agitates the challenge-filled days leading up to the wedding. His automatic animosity toward the Dixons and his father’s generosity toward them generates friction. Then the wedding day arrives and Lincoln’s whereabouts are unknown.

            A matrimonial misadventure, a wedding with no spending threshold, individual wedding cakes and Dawn’s Double-Fold Vanilla Ice Cream mix together in this sweet, Christian contemporary romance novel and final in the Cape Cod Creamery series. It features friendship, faith and forgiveness with good humor folded in. Brynn may discover that her impulsive decision shows more resolve than she realizes she possesses, but it won’t be without upheaval. There’s a character that’s in the “dark corner of unforgiveness,” though, as another character states, “Apologies don’t have expiration dates.” This book is charming and is the right amount of sweet to fill the reader up. It’s a delightful ending to an ice-cream-filled series.

            Book One: The Sweet Life

            Book Two: The Secret to Happiness

One Wrong Move (Feb. 6, 2024) by Dani Pettrey.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

Two people forging different paths. A chain of heists that’s turned deadly. Taunting riddles. Andi (Miranda) Forester was once a brilliant FBI forensic analyst until she was set up, and her career was destroyed. She now channels her brilliance as an insurance investigator and encounters Christian O’Brady. He was immersed in a life of crime at a young age by his parents. He gained faith and walked away from his corrupt past to become a private investigator and security expert. The company Andi works for insures Tad’s galleries, and Christian’s the one who installed the security systems in each of the galleries. As the two work together to discover who’s behind the break-ins, they are targeted early on. But why would someone go to the trouble of leaving them riddles as they also try to kill them? Is there more than one entity at play, and they’re not on the same page? The notes are usually left in Andi’s name, save for one with Christian’s, so they also wonder which of them is the prime target. Meanwhile, Christian has convinced his brother, Deckard MacLeod, to take on Andi’s case and prove her innocence. Trouble is, Deckard is the one who ruined her career.

The first in the Jeopardy Falls series is a thrilling plunge at breakneck speeds featuring wholesome protagonists, murderous antagonists, intrigue, ever-present danger and faith with a dash of budding romances against a contemporary Southwest backdrop (Jeopardy Falls is a fictional town in New Mexico). The romance can be cringe (“He arched a sexy brow.”), but it passes quickly enough. I’d recommend any of Pettrey’s stories to readers familiar with Lynette Eason and to anyone who enjoys suspense novels that one knows will have a good outcome at the end.

Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 3

It has arrived, my first YA compilation of 2025. If you read YA, what’s already caught your interest this year? What new releases are you anticipating?

Beastly Beauty (May 7, 2024) by Jennifer Donnelly.

<This is a standalone novel.>

What makes a girl “beastly?” Is it being too stubborn? Being fiery and strong instead of sweet and compliant? Wanting to study architecture instead of attending balls? Is it simply wanting too much?

            In the band of thieves, Beau is the handsome one and is always tasked with being the charming seducer, stealing hearts along with jewels, gold and silver. When the bridge crumbles behind his thieving comrades, Beau is left to face the monster that roams the castle at night. He knows the monster is real, but no one seems to believe him. Certainly not Valmont, who doesn’t hide his utter disdain for the thief. And who are the children who claim they aren’t children? There’s a strange, sizable clockwork, and then there’s the beautiful and cold Lady Arabella with her contingent of vicious ladies-in-waiting with names like Lady Espidra, Lady Rega, Lady Hesma and Lady Iglut. Once bold and independent, much to the chagrin and disapproval of her titled parents (she’s the only child of a duke and duchess), she’s turned inward, crumbling like a ruin once full of hope, faith and love, now weighed down by despair, rage, shame, guilt and more. Arabella’s understanding is that, to break the curse, a boy must love her for her true self, which is a cruel assignment for someone who appears “beastly” on the inside and out. After all, who could ever love ... a beast?

            While I can understand Beau’s desperation to reunite with his brother, I did not like him for most of the story. It’s not only the thieving that turned me off from the character, but his greasy charm and cocksure personality. He is redeemable in the last chapters, but it’s too little too late, and I couldn’t fully appreciate the story. Fortunately, Donnelly is a skilled storyteller and invites readers into a gender-swapped retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” that manages complicated characters in daunting circumstances surrounded by a historically rich backdrop and emotional turbulence. There are glimmers of humor amidst the hopelessness and the mucky, macabre moat monsters. It’s a story of family dynamics and their complications, personal truths and battling to accept oneself, “beastly” aspects and all.

The Encanto’s Daughter (Mar. 5, 2024) by Melissa de la Cruz.

<This is the first novel in a duology.>

Command attention. Project authority. That is what Maria Josephina “MJ” Robertson-Rodriguez must do to stand her ground against the courts that oppose her ascension to the throne. MJ is a princess of the Sirena Court, which is the most powerful and thus is the overall ruler of Biringan, but she’s spent much of her life hiding in the human world, switching towns and schools at the earliest sign of danger. MJ is hapcanto: half-human, half-encanto. (Encantos or engkantos in her father’s language, but they’re also called fairies.) With her father’s sudden death, MJ must go to Biringan to claim her place as the rightful heir. She must win over a council who disapproves of her hapcanto status and that she’s a she, and don’t even get her started on those of the other courts who disapprove of her half-human side. Yep, bigotry is alive and well in Biringan, too. She doesn’t know what her magic is, which she’ll need to showcase at her coronation in less than a month, and she won’t even admit it to her first real friend Phoenix “Nix” Xing, a runaway from Jade Mountain. When she hears that her father’s death was from unnatural causes, she adds investigating his death to her already busy agenda. Nix is there to help, and MJ forges an unlikely alliance with the irritatingly handsome Sir Lucas Invierno. Where his dad once worked for the Court of Sirena, Sir Lucas now resides in the Court of Sigbin and is the realm’s highest-ranking knight. Don Elias, MJ’s godfather and the late King Vivencio Basilio Rodriguez’s most trusted advisor, suspects Sigbin Court of harboring a mambabarang, witches that practice black magic. So. Find the nasty sorceress, discover her father’s murderer, figure out her magical ability and learn all there is to know about Biringan and being royal. If MJ can do all that in less than a month’s time, she can bear the weight of the crown. Right?

            This fantasy duology opener steeped in Filipino mythology makes for a culturally rich tale of magic, family betrayal, court politics and investigation. The downside is that I usually didn’t like MJ’s character. Yes, her life has been upended, and I know she’s trying to assert herself, but she oftentimes comes across as petulant, downright annoying and, well, entitled. She redeems herself with her release of an innocent person, someone she knew had to be innocent from the get-go. Being accepted as the one true heir in only a month’s time – when she’s been gone since toddlerhood – seems far-fetched, but the stakes are high, the plot is action-driven and there’s adventure to be had. Although so-so for me, it may just be what a YA fantasy lover is looking for.

            P.S. Surprise! Maria Josephina isn’t actually her given name. What is it?

Icon and Inferno (June 11, 2024) by Marie Lu.

<This is the second novel in a duology.>

The world’s favorite pop superstar and one of the world’s elite spies are back. Winter Young has thought of Sydney Cossette every day, hoping she’ll randomly show up. She never does, until the day she shows up in his private practice room. Sydney is there to convince him to take another mission with Panacea Group, the secret operation located within Claremont Hotel, a [fictional] luxury resort hotel in St. Paul, MN, featuring a Michelin-starred restaurant called Food for the Gods. They need to make contact with an agent who’s gone dark. It’s the Arsonist, code name for Tems Bourton, and he’s, loosely, Sydney’s ex. Panacea is tracking a plot to assassinate U.S. President Rosen, and Tems is supposed to be their eyes-on-the-ground. Winter and Sydney head to Singapore for the Warcross Championships, Winter getting in with his celebrity status and Sydney joining in once again as his bodyguard. On Winter’s arm is Gavi Ginsburg, his on-again-off-again, no-strings-attached, globe-trotting socialite girlfriend/fling. The intense chemistry between Winter and Sydney remains, but it is tempered with the exes in the mix. Not that they have time to hash out feelings. They have a suspect responsible for plotting the president’s assassination, but there are definitely more people involved. Who are the rogue operatives?

            Sydney doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s struggling. It’s her last mission with Niall O’Sullivan and Sauda Nazari as the head agents/operatives, because it’s Niall’s last mission. He’s retiring! He plans to visit his daughter, Quinn, for the first time in a decade. Niall is the closest to a father figure that she’s ever had. She’s already missing him and is a little jealous of his actual daughter (not that she’ll admit it).

            The Stars and Smoke duology closer is a dramatic, YA spy fiction sequel to its predecessor. It’s action-packed and sometimes violent, occasionally spitting and a little steamy (the scene does leave much of it up to the reader’s imagination). The sexy, romantic tone that Lu incorporated didn’t impress me, but the emotive characters with their abusive, psychologically pain-filled pasts and Lu’s enigmatic writing make this caper dynamic and propulsive. Undoubtedly, there is beauty and ferocity where there is international intrigue surrounding attractive people. But don’t forget that these characters are handy with weapons while playing with fire. Beware getting in the crosshairs.

            Favorite line: “How strange an emotion love was, how powerful it must be to fuel kindness and hatred and empathy and revenge and grief, all at once.” --Sydney, p. 282

            Book One: Stars and Smoke

Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 2

Hello, dear visitor! Welcome to my first middle-grade (MG) compilation post of 2025. I firmly believe that MG stories can be easily enjoyed by adults as well as youth. Don’t knock it because it’s MG. Open your minds and your imaginations. You never know what doors will open for you!

The House at the Edge of Magic (Jan. 7, 2021/UK edition) by Amy Sparkes.

<This is the first book in a series.>

An orphan pickpocket knocks on a tiny door that grows into a sizable higgledy-piggledy house. Nine knows nothing of her origin, and the only possession her baby self came with was a treasured music box, which is in the literal clutches of Pockets, the grimy man who took her in and who, apparently, never gets strawberries. Life’s circumstances have made Nine cynical from a young age, and she has not an altruistic bone in her body. To say the word “sorry” is almost painful for her. The house, cursed by a witch, houses an eccentric group. There’s Flabberghast, a young wizard and champion hopscotch-er, Eric, a troll housekeeper whose most beloved possession is his feather duster, and Dr. Spoon, an alchemist who really is a sword-wielding wooden spoon. Nine will be the one to help end the curse, because she’s the one who knocked. There’s a life-changing reward in it for her, but is she ready for a zapping cabinet, acid dung, a burping sugar bowl and a clever witch? A room with a dark purple door has chosen her, because “the House at the Edge of Magic has manners” (unlike Nine), but the toilet is never in the same spot and has reportedly grown teeth (so “Sit down very carefully”), and there’s a skeleton in the closet. For real. He’d like his ribs dusted.

            An eccentric group, a house that can’t move because it’s missing its toad tongue and magic mix together to craft a delightful, middle-grade adventure. It’s filled with wonder and mayhem, ferocity and hidden vulnerability, with clever world-building and characters that you want to root for, no matter how ridiculous or rough-around-the-edges. It’s an adventure story, but the main character may find herself learning the significance of friendship, teamwork and compassion. If you found the House at the Edge of Magic, would you knock on its door?

The Lost Library (Aug. 29, 2023) by Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass.

<This is a standalone novel.>

A mysterious little free library has popped up overnight in the small town of Martinville. It’s guarded by a large orange cat called dear cat/Goldie/Sunshine, but his name is Mortimer. Seeing it on his way to school, 11-year-old Evan McClelland plucks two books from its shelves and later realizes they’re books from the former Martinville Library, which burned down 20 years ago. As Evan looks through the books, he discusses with his best friend, Rafe, that one book was checked out multiple times by his father. The other had one checkout to H.G. Higgins, a famous mystery writer. Evan thinks this writer had something to do with the mystery fire, a cause for which was never determined. There is an unknown past in his town, and Evan seeks to find the answers as he also navigates his anxiety about entering middle school. At one point, visiting the History House, he’s able to talk to Al (short for Assistant Librarian), a ghost woman, who resides in the House with ghost residents Ms. Scoggin and Mr. Brock. All three perished in the library fire. Al has struggled to remain invisible to others, and Ms. Scoggin reminds her to, “Take your place, my dear!” Ms. Scoggin’s Reminders and Criticisms have been a constant since Al first started at the library as a 17-year-old. It’s a constant that’s about to change. Is Al ready? Is Evan?

            A contemporary, middle-grade novel with light supernatural elements, “The Lost Library” is a timeless ode to libraries, books that take readers to an infinite number of places, making “rooms and rooms up here” in readers’ minds, and the amazing librarians who know the power of reading. The fast pacing, well-rounded characters (even though physical character descriptions are mostly absent) and courage of this crafty, softly mysterious tale make for a dynamic, wholesome, engaging page-turner that’s full of heart and quiet magic. I adored it!

Tristan Strong Keeps Punching (Oct. 5, 2021) by Kwame Mbalia.

<This is the final novel in a trilogy.>

<Possible spoilers ahead.>

Hm, should Tristan Strong be on fire like that? Tristan is angry, and that uncontrolled anger “is chaotic at best.” He’s searching for his Alkean friends, now in this world, including Anansi’s son Junior. Anansi remains trapped in the SBP (Story Box Phone), though he continues to plead for his release. Or he will, once he sees Nyame again. Tristan’s also been pulled into a mystery involving missing children. The haintiest haint of them all, his foe King Cotton, must be behind it, but he has help, and not only from his monsters, but other troublesome haints. They’re snatching children as well as spirits, but for what nefarious purpose? Tristan reunites with Ayanna and manages to find Gum Baby. Old Familiar is around, too, but look sharp, because he isn’t only in his giant shadow crow form. Tristan must learn to overcome his impetuousness and harness his anger to use it as a tool to rid the world of his archenemy once and for all. “STRONGS ON THE MOVE,” and this Strong keeps punching.

            This book, along with the entire trilogy, is a triumphant adventure with superb world-building, standout characters and antagonists to make one’s skin crawl, featuring West African and African American mythology. Tristan’s recklessness is grating, especially when his choices tend to affect others outside of him, like children, but he’s still a hero to root for, because readers trust that he’ll remember his strength as an Anansesem (storyteller) and his family, blood-related and not. The story is compelling; its fantasy and action is fast-paced. There isn’t humor without heartbreak, the playful scenes balancing the serious climate and weight of the world. It’s a satisfying conclusion, and I would happily read a spin-off series.

            Book 1: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

            Book 2: Tristan Strong Destroys the World