I love books about sisters. Bring on the sibling rivalry, the family drama, the very complex bonds that connect them through life no matter what circumstances throw at them! As a thriller, and as a book about sisters, Sisters brings all the expected elements to the fore, and provides us with a fast-paced, entertaining read.

First, we have the pair of sisters who are polar opposites. Older sister Abby is super ambitious and Type A. She lives on a much more frugal budget than necessary, eschews her vacation days for extra pay, and works a high-power corporate job that allows her to retire at age 36. Younger sister Ellie has never done well at school, and has always felt the weight of her sister’s academic and athletic achievements. Having missed out on various activities due to being a sickly child, Ellie lives for the moment, using up all her vacation days as a teaching assistant to explore the world. Her credit cards are maxed out, and she doubts she’ll ever have enough money to retire as Abby has.

We also have the sibling rivalry. Due in large part of Ellie’s childhood illnesses, their mom Susanna has always favoured Ellie. Susanna often ignored Abby’s achievements to care for her younger daughter, and even when both sisters are adults, Susanna and Ellie share a bond that Abby can’t hope to penetrate.

Then Abby invites Ellie and Susanna over to her home in the beautiful Italian island of Elba. She shares a devastating secret about their childhood, a horrific accident occurs, and soon the sisters are on the run across Europe. And while on the run, Ellie learns something that makes her doubt Abby’s account, and raises the question of what the truth actually is.

Sisters is a fun novel. There are twists and turns throughout, and I wasn’t sure who or what to believe until maybe about halfway into the book. I loved the tension between the sisters — the little judgey comments from Ellie whenever Abby counted costs to the penny, the judgeyness on Abby’s part at Ellie’s flirting with a cyclist. The novel slowly reveals to us the sources of tension throughout their childhood, so that we gradually understand better why they have such a hard time getting along.

Despite the basic premise of them not getting along, there isn’t a lot of outright fighting between them. Rather, the tension often simmered below the surface, and came out in facial expressions and passive aggressive asides. I appreciated this, because I thought it felt true to the reality of their situation, which required them to work together, and also because I feel like many family tensions do manifest in these subtler ways. I also like how moments of tenderness came through at unexpected moments, such as one involving a blue dress, as these demonstrated how the sisters cared for each other, despite everything.

The only snag for me was that at some points, the twists, turns, and red herrings just tipped over the edge to silly. For example, around the halfway point, the grandmother shows up and makes a startling, super dramatic revelation. I’m not sure what that revelation was meant to do, as I don’t think it really added anything to an already dramatic storyline. But circumstances related to that revelation made me roll my eyes. It required too much a suspension of disbelief, and so removed quite a bit of the uncertainty I’d been feeling around plot elements.

There was also a running plot thread about a friend whom Abby kept trying to call, that seemed to serve no function other than adding a bit of tension. That plot thread never went anywhere, which I found disappointing considering how often this friend was mentioned in the first half of the book.

And finally, I’m not sure how I felt about the ending. On one hand, it was satisfying in the sense that justice was served. But on the other hand, I felt like it still left a lot of questions in the air, about character motivations and emotions. Those topics were touched upon in detached, clinical terms at other points in the novel, but we never actually hear the characters themselves process them. Given the complexity of these motivations, having the ending not even having the characters delve into these themselves felt like truncated catharsis, and left me needing more.

Beyond that, Sisters was a fun read, and a great book for an entertaining weekend.

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Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When it comes to comfort reads, I find that Amish romances often hit the spot. They tend to be sweet and somewhat old-fashioned in courtship practices, which gives them the feel of a year-round, quieter take on Hallmark holiday romances. Her Amish Wedding Quilt is no exception — it has a bit more angst than other Amish romances I’ve read, and some moments that made me side-eye the hero for his actions. But ultimately, the novel provides the kind of sweet, feel-good love story I want in my Amish romances, and made for several heartwarming evenings.

Greta Eicher knows that her outspoken and impulsive personality will make it difficult for her to find a match. She dreams of someday marrying her childhood best friend Calvin Stoll, who has always loved her for who she was. When Calvin breaks the news that he’s in love with another woman, Greta channels her energy into helping his older brother, Noah, find a new wife and mother for his children.

Having had his heart broken in the past, Noah is determined his second marriage will be a business arrangement rather than a love match. His sole motivation to marry is to find someone to care for his children, not someone to care for him. Yet as Greta’s matchmaking attempts continue to fall short, Noah begins to realize he’s developing the very tender feelings he’s determined to avoid.

I absolutely loved Greta. She’s confident and independent, and she knows very clearly what she wants and needs out of life. She’s also a wonderfully realistic mix of romantic and pragmatic — she recognizes her own growing feelings for Noah, understands that he will not reciprocate, and makes some very level-headed decisions about how to deal with that. She’s also very capable with Noah’s children, a superstar in the face of medical emergencies (none involving the kids), and brings an adorable kitten named Lemon Drop into her family’s life.

Noah took me a bit longer to warm up to, only because he had a lot more emotional baggage to work through. He had to take on the paternal head-of-the-family role at a young age, which meant he had to make difficult decisions even when he was just a teenager. As an example from the Prologue, when Noah and his brother Calvin were kids, they’d nursed an injured fox back to health. Noah released the fox back into the wild when it was healed, which was the right, and practical, thing to do, but the decision broke Calvin’s heart. And Calvin’s accusation that Noah didn’t care about the fox or about Calvin’s feelings stuck in Noah’s heart all the way into adulthood.

It takes Greta a lot of love and nurturing to help break Noah out of his shell, and at times, it was downright frustrating to watch. It was hard at times for me to understand why Greta loved Noah no matter how many times he pushed her away, and there were moments when I thought she’d be much happier as a single woman working on her quilts. One major example is Noah’s jealousy of Greta’s crush on Calvin. For about the first half of the book, whenever Greta tried to do or say something nice, Noah would accuse her of only trying to get closer to his brother, which honestly I don’t believe she deserved.

I was also somewhat unhappy with how the novel treated Noah’s first wife. Their last few months together before her death were strained, because of a decision Noah made that his she didn’t agree with. She felt that Noah’s decision was unfeeling, which triggered all of Noah’s insecurities from his relationship with his brother, and I felt like Greta, the narrative itself, and some of the other characters all hinted that the first wife was wrong for her actions, and that she simply didn’t love Noah enough. The problem for me is that while I think Noah made the right decision, I can also understand why it would have hurt his first wife enough to pull away from him. And the book didn’t really tell us how Noah tried to rebuild his relationship with her.

All that being said, Noah is still very much a sweetheart for most of the book. He clearly cares for his children, and despite all his protestations, he also very clearly respects and cares deeply for Greta throughout the book. He has developed a hard shell around his heart, and as frustrating as it sometimes was, it was also really heartwarming to see Greta chip her way through it. I also love that despite her great love for him, Greta was never a pushover, and she often called Noah out on his behaviour whenever he did wrong.

Overall, Her Amish Wedding Quilt is a lovely, heartwarming story. Greta and Noah are wonderful together, and the author kept enough of Noah’s inner mushiness revealed throughout to keep us cheering for him and Greta to find their way to their happy future together.

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Thanks to Forever Romance for an egalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

With a title like Cat’s Got Your Heart, I admit that I expected a romance that was pure fluff and joy. The novel does deliver on the fluff — Harinder and Jericho’s romance is really sweet, and made me go “awww” at several places. But it’s the kind of fluff that’s covered with spikes, and requires quite a bit of hard work and emotional maturing on the characters’ parts to achieve.

The enemies to lovers trope is often touch and go for me, and Harinder begins as the type of jerk hero I usually can’t stand. He’s abrasive, grouchy, and outright unpleasant to all the pet store customers for no discernible reason. This kind of hero usually takes me a while to warm up to, and usually only when they reveal their secret soft side.

Instead, Harinder wins me over almost immediately. His abrasiveness stems from a deep, at times obsessive, concern for animals, and his utmost revulsion to the possibility of adopting out one of his animals to a home that won’t give it proper care. His insta-hate with Jericho isn’t the usual aimless snark that usually turns me off this trope, but rather a hilarious, at times absurd, power struggle over the fate of a cat named Dumpling.

The story in a nutshell: Jericho wants to adopt Dumpling; Harinder doubts Jericho’s ability to care for her, and so devises a series of requirements to discourage the other man. It turns out Jericho is lonely, and actually enjoys Harinder’s company, so he keeps coming back to the pet store. And when Harinder is kicked out of his apartment, Jericho offers him a place to stay, and they start to move past each other’s barriers. The thing is, Jericho still hasn’t told Harinder that his desire for Dumpling isn’t to have a pet of his own, but rather to gift the cat to his sister (he lost his sister’s cat, so Dumpling is an apology / replacement). And like any animal lover with experience in adoptions, Harinder is leery of people who give animals as gifts. (Providing an animal with a forever home is too much of a long-term commitment to treat lightly. Many animals who are given as gifts, without first discussing it with the recipient, end up being returned, which sucks for the animal.) So while Dumpling herself isn’t as prominent in the story as I’d hoped, her presence drives much of the action, which I loved.

I love how the author subverts the usual grouchy/sunshine trope. Harinder’s a grouch, but for the most sunshiney of reasons. And Jericho is really sweet and cheerful, but he’s actually really guarded, and struggles to deal with intense feelings. The author manages to reveal fluff and joy in the prickliest of encounters, and I love seeing the characters slowly come to terms with their feelings.

I also love that Jericho is an albino Black gay man, and that Harinder’s an Indian trans man. I’ve never seen those kinds of heroes in romance before, so I hope that any romance readers who may find themselves represented in these characters find this book, and see these characters as romantic leads. I can’t speak for the representation in this book, except for one scene where Harinder is bullied by racists who speak fake Spanish (they mistakenly assume Harinder is Mexican) — that was well-done, and felt true-to-life.

Some things in the novel did fall flat for me, though I admit these are mostly personal views that may not bother other readers. First, Harinder and Jericho are really messy (Jericho gets ferret pee on his Ninja Turtles hoodie and leaves it in the laundry basket for three weeks and counting; Harinder keeps animal cages clean but otherwise leaves the store grimy). The author includes a lot of details that make the characters and their environments feel real, and I can imagine men in their early 20s being that messy, but it left too much of a gritty feel for me to enjoy the sexytimes. The characters also “wail” and “keen” during sex, and while I’m all for noisy sex, those particular sounds did take me out of the mood, especially when we also hear Dumpling “wail” in a later scene. Jericho’s reunion with his sister at the end felt stilted — she just sounds really formal, which made me feel the distance between them more than the closeness. And finally, the location of Harinder’s final piercing is meant to be sexy, but just sounds really painful to me.

Overall, Cat’s Got Your Heart is a sweet and sour kind of book, fluff wrapped up in spikes. Harinder and Jericho’s happy endings are hard-won, and well worth the ride. Above all, their romance begins with a battle of wills over a fluffy kitty named Dumpling — how adorable is that?

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Thanks to the author for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.