Tag Archives: Mystery

Favourite Books of 2024

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Romance

  • Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin – second-chance romance; Persuasion re-telling set in Toronto’s Muslim community. I’m a huge fan of Uzma Jalaluddin’s work, and books like this are exactly why. It’s evocative and heartfelt, with main characters who make huge mistakes but actually have understandable reasons for doing so.
  • Jane and Edward by Melodie Edwards – contemporary Jane Eyre re-telling set in Toronto. As much as I love Jane Eyre, I was skeptical that it could be adapted to the present-day, but Melodie Edwards achieves this, and in spades! I love how she handled the complex power imbalances between Jane and Edward, and I especially love how she updated the Mrs. Rochester / “mad woman in attic” subplot.
  • Miss Rose and the Vexing Viscount and Miss Isobel and the Prince by Catherine Tilney – fun and flirty Regency romances, two in a trilogy about beautiful blonde triplets who travel to London to learn more about their birth family and experience their first (and only, due to their guardian’s budget constraints) season. Book 1 is about shy triplet Rose, Book 2 is about outspoken triplet Isobel, and I for one can’t wait for Book 3, about practical eldest triplet Anna!
  • The Witch is Back and De-Witched by Sophie H. Morgan – contemporary romances with witchy main characters. Lots of fun, sparky banter, lots and lots of angsty reasons why the leads can’t be together, and some beautifully hard-won happily-ever-afters. Oh and cute dogs! Books 1 and 2 of the Toil and Trouble series (named after the bar the heroines of the first three books co-own) feature a second-chance romance between a shy witch and the charming warlock who left her years ago, and a grumpy-sunshine forbidden romance between a bubbly, animal-loving human and a super-serious warlock with trust issues.

Mystery/Romance

  • The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter – both homage to, and pastiche of, Agatha Christie’s finest, this is a locked-room mystery starring two rival crime writers who are spending the holidays at a famous author’s mansion when the author suddenly goes missing. With a larger-than-life author character clearly modelled after Christie herself, and a pair of leads trading sparky enemies-to-lovers banter, this story is sheer delight from start to finish.

Mystery

  • It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant – Funny and fantastic series characters lead a strong kick-off to this cozy mystery series about a PTA mom who gets sucked into a mystery at her child’s school.
  • Those Opulent Days by Jacquie Pham – Historical mystery set in French-colonial era Vietnam, this story stands out not only because of the strength of its core mystery, but also because of its incisive and fascinating commentary of the complex race- and class-based social hierarchies of the period.

Contemporary Fiction

  • Hate Follow by Erin Quinn-Kong – a timely and heartfelt exploration of the complexities of using one’s children for social media content. I love how the author showed not just the daughter’s right to privacy over her own life, but also the mother’s need for her income as an influencer to continue paying for her children’s basic needs. It’s hard to see a resolution that would meet both their needs, but the author somehow manages to do it, and show both characters’ growth at the same time.

Graphic Novels

  • Age 16 by Rosena Fung – a heartwarming, heartwrenching, heart-EXPANDING story about three generations of women and their experiences at age 16. The specifics and locales may differ, but many elements also remain the same, reflecting how trauma can get passed down, despite each generation’s best efforts. A must-read for daughters of mothers and grandmothers, especially those of us who know the struggles of being big girls in a society that equates beauty with thinness.
  • Pillow Talk by Stephanie Cooke and Mel Valentine Vargas – this fun riff on Whip It features a pillow fighting league (!), lots of awesome body diversity, and powerful messages about the strength we draw from community. I especially love that the main character’s journey to success in her new life as a pillow fighter (again – !!!) doesn’t involve completely shedding elements of her old life; rather, her pre-pillow fighting BFF ends up staying just as integral to her life all the way through the end.

Lady Kidlat Meets Her Match is a plus-size, nerdy romance set in Toronto, about a museum educator/comics creator and a psychologist who fall in love while working together on art therapy workshops. Features yummy Filipino food, Star Trek conversations and sexy role-playing, and cute kitties. If this sounds like your kind of thing, check out my book at:

Review | Drop Dead Sisters, by Amelia Diane Coombs

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In Drop Dead Sisters, a trio of estranged sisters get embroiled in a murder while on a camping trip for their parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. The story is part murder mystery, and part comedy of errors, as attempts to cover up the crime are foiled by the fact that the body somehow keeps ending up missing. It’s a quick and entertaining read, and it reminded me a bit of Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties, but more sedate, and, dare I say, more realistic.

Overall, it’s an entertaining book. The dynamic between the sisters feels real, and Coombs lays plenty of groundwork for further development of their relationship in future storylines. Despite the rather over-the-top premise (who moved the body this time?!), the story remains grounded in youngest sister Remi’s journey of personal growth. As the narrator, Remi takes us through her dissatisfaction with her job, her frustration over how often she’s felt dismissed by her older sisters while growing up, and eventually, her realization about her own responsibility to shape her own future, both at work and with her sisters. There’s also a fun romance with a hot park security guy, and an adorable dog sidekick named after Buffy the vampire slayer.

A minor snag is that the book for me suffered from comparison to Dial A for Aunties. Sutanto’s book is hilarious! She takes the madcap premise, dials it up to the max, and gives us a crew of larger than life characters who defy caricature with their equally larger than life hearts and fierce love for each other. In contrast, while Drop Dead Sisters does feel a bit more rooted in reality, its relative sedateness also makes it feel rather bland.

Reading Dial A for Aunties felt like indulging in a buffet with a ridiculous array of dishes that shouldn’t go together, but somehow is so delicious that it works, while Drop Dead Sisters is peppery steak and potatoes–serviceable and a bit spicier than usual, but not quite as vibrant or memorable. Still, as Sutanto fans likely know, her Aunties series has recently ended, so for readers looking for their next misadventuring mystery fix, Drop Dead Sisters fits the bill just fine.

However, a much bigger snag for me is how the mystery here is resolved. The detective’s actions make sense–or at least, are adequately explained by Coombs–but also feel anticlimactic. While Coombs keeps the zaniness fairly low-key, she does do a good job at amping up the tension and the stakes, and the resolution just didn’t at all live up to the build-up.

Still, Drop Dead Sisters does introduce us to a family of characters that we grow to care about. The ending sets Remi up for some rather big changes in her personal life, and plants the seeds for her, Eliana and Maeve to have more misadventures together, possibly and hopefully with their hippie parents, misogynistic grandmother, eccentric aunt, and the rest of their eccentric family.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Another Girl Lost, by Mary Burton

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Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Scarlett Crosby was held captive and tortured for almost three months by a man named Tanner. Trapped with her was another young woman named Della, who was also the person who’d lured Scarlett into Tanner’s van in an effort to save herself.

When Scarlett was given a similar task to lure another girl into their prison, she instead warned Tiffany away. On the drive back to Tanner’s home, Scarlett managed to escape, Tanner was killed by a cop, and the cops came to his home to find it burned down and Della vanished without a trace.

Ten years later, Scarlett is a successful artist who’s tried, and failed, multiple times to get her memory of Della onto canvas. She’s had so many false sightings of Della over the years that the police now firmly believe Della never actually existed. And yet this time, Scarlett is certain that a woman who keeps showing up actually is the real Della. Why is she back? What does she want? And can Scarlett actually trust her own instincts this time around?

Another Girl Lost is a gripping and page-turning psychological thriller. From the very first chapter, we see Scarlett through the perspective of Detective Kevin Dawson, the cop who’d killed Tanner and rescued Scarlett a decade ago. Except this time, he’s come to arrest her. Because Scarlett has “likely killed one woman and been caught trying to kill another.” She’s also “viciously attacked the arresting officer,” [page 2] a detective named Margo whom Scarlett keeps insisting is actually Della.

Lawson’s decision to begin the book from Dawson’s perspective is really smart. Because it sets up the possibility that Scarlett’s an unreliable narrator, no matter how sympathetic we find her character and perspective later on. And true enough, even when we do get into Scarlett’s mind, beginning from two weeks before her arrest, we see how uncertain she herself is about her sightings of Della, and how much trauma she’s still working through from her days of captivity.

Scarlett’s chapters also give us a glimpse of the horrors she endured as Tanner’s prisoner (though thankfully without a lot of detail), and the complex hate/need relationship she has with Della. We see how Della suffers with Scarlett, but we also see how much more freedom Della enjoys than Scarlett, and how active a role she takes in shaping Scarlett’s perception of reality. So when Scarlett tells us that detectives think she may have made Della up as a coping mechanism, it’s hard to discount that possibility completely. And if Della is potentially a figment of Scarlett’s imagination, then perhaps her fears of seeing her being a sign of a mental break isn’t too far off the mark.

On the flip side, we also see the complexities of Detective Dawson’s character in his chapters. His life kinda sucks, and he’s immediately flattered by Margo’s obvious interest in him, and devil-may-care attitude that HR may frown on co-workers sleeping together. As his chapters intertwine with Scarlett’s, it’s eerie to see how similar Margo’s skill at getting under Detective Dawson’s skin is to Della’s skill at getting under Scarlett’s skin. Or so it seems. Could it just be that Scarlett’s paranoia is rubbing off on us?

There’s no easy answer, and Burton does a masterful job at keeping us off-balance and second-guessing ourselves right up till fairly late in the novel. And even when the actual truth starts becoming clear, the very final chapter shows a character doing something that forces us to consider, is justice being done? And once again, as is the mark of Burton’s mastery of this form, there’s no easy answer.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.