Happy December! With the year almost at an end, and since I don't have a book review for today, I thought I'd let you all know how I've been doing with the reading and blogging challenges I set for myself. They include: 2025 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2025 New Release Reading Challenge 2025 What's In a Name Challenge 2025 Cloak & Dagger Challenge (NEW)

Book Review for “The Italian Secret” (Billie Walker #3) by Tara Moss. Summary: "Naples, 1943. Deep within a secret network of underground tunnels, a woman takes shelter from a wartime air raid and prays her husband will return home safe. Pacific Ocean, 1907. A girl embarks on a lonely journey to begin a new life far from home. Sydney, 1948.

Book Review for “The Silver Ladies Seize the Day” by Judy Leigh. Summary: "Cecily Hamilton is months away from her ninety-second birthday. She’s lived life to the full, choosing work over romance, friendship over love. And now she has a host of silver-haired friends living nearby, ready to fill her time with picnic lunches, prosecco and cheer! Cecily thought she was content.

What is New Release Reading Challenge? The New Release Reading Challenge was developed and run by (un)Conventional Bookworms, a book blog run by the talented and beautiful Bookworm Brandee and Linda Tiliagren. They've been hosting this year-long reading challenge for several years, but life has gotten in the way of their continuing. After consulting with them, I have decided to take over running this for them (but they're welcome to take it back at any time)!

What is New Release Reading Challenge? The New Release Reading Challenge was developed and run by (un)Conventional Bookworms, a book blog run by the talented and beautiful Bookworm Brandee and Linda Tiliagren. They've been hosting this year-long reading challenge for several years, but life has gotten in the way of their continuing. After consulting with them, I have decided to take over running this for them (but they're welcome to take it back at any time)!

Book Review for “The Other March Sisters” by Liz Parker, Ally Malinenko, and Linda Epstein. Summary: "Four sisters, each as different as can be. Through the eyes and words of Jo, their characters and destinies became known to millions. Meg, pretty and conventional. Jo, stubborn, tomboyish, and ambitious. Beth, shy and good-natured, a mortal angel readily accepting her fate.

Book Review for “The Portrait” by Antoine Laurain (Translated by Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce). Summary: "Pierre-François Chaumont has promised his wife that he won't spend another centime at the auction house. His collecting habit is out of hand and she refuses to let another antique through the door. With his marriage at stake, he fully intends to keep his word - until he sees an eighteenth-century portrait that looks exactly like him.

Book Review for “Happy New Years” by Maya Arad (translated by Jessica Cohen). Summary: "After emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, Leah maintains her connection to Israel by writing an annual letter on the Jewish new year to her old friends from a women's teaching college. Comprising five decades of correspondence, the novel skillfully weaves together Leah's high hopes and deep disappointments as she navigates relationships, marriage, divorce, single motherhood, financial struggles, and professional ups and downs.

Book Review for “May Contain Murder” (AKA "Murder Below Deck") by Orlando Murrin (Chef Paul Delamare Mystery #2). Summary: "Worse things happen at sea. Paul Delamare has been roped into accompanying his old friend on a luxury cruise aboard the magnificent superyacht Mal de Mer. It’s all plain sailing until his friend’s priceless necklace is stolen, and everyone falls under suspicion. 

Book Review for “The Cream Tea Killer” (Morwenna Mutton #3) by Judy Leigh. Summary: “After the excitement of her last investigation, amateur sleuth Morwenna is looking forward to things getti…

Book Review for “The Stolen Queen” by Fiona Davis. Summary: “Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the…

Book Review for “All The Words We Know” by Bruce Nash. Summary: "Rose may be in her eighties and suffering from dementia, but she’s not done with life just yet. Alternately sharp as a tack and spectacularly forgetful, she spends her days roaming the corridors of her assisted living facility, musing on the staff and residents, and enduring visits form her emotionally distant children and granddaughters.

Book Review for “Seascraper” by Benjamin Wood. Summary: "Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar.

Book Review for “Kills Well with Others” (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn. Summary: "After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally.

Book Review for “A Carol for Mrs. Dickens” by Rebecca Connolly. Summary: "By 1851, all of London has fallen in love with A Christmas Carol, heralding Charles Dickens as “the man who invented Christmas.” But for his wife, Catherine, Christmas is less of a reason for celebration and more of a burden. Between hosting lavish parties, decorating her home, and caring for her eight children—with one more on the way—she feels more like Scrooge than herself this year.

Book Review for “The First Line (The French List)” by Jean-Marie Laclavetine, (Teresa Lavender Fagan - translator). Summary: "Cyril Cordouan is the beleaguered editor at Fulmen, a distinguished publishing house known for its solid but not particularly popular literary titles. Every day, Cyril faces an avalanche of subpar manuscripts, struggling to find a glimmer of quality amid the piles of drivel.

Book Review for “Come Fly With Me” by Camille Di Maio. Summary: "Welcome to a glamorous gateway to the jet age. Judy Goodman and Beverly Caldwell have different reasons for putting continents and oceans between themselves and their disparate pasts, but they have the same desire—to earn a coveted position on an elite team of stewardesses for Pan American Airlines.

Book Review for “Three Days in June” by Anne Tyler. Summary: "Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

Book Review for “The Runaway Wives” by Karen King. Summary: "When the surprise holiday Dee thinks her husband has booked for her sixtieth birthday weekend turns out to be yet another solo golfing break – it’s the last straw. Meanwhile her best friend Babs’s other half has decided to move to Spain and is acting like he doesn’t need to consult anyone.

Book Review for “Dear Miss Lake” (The Emmy Lake Chronicles #4) by A.J. Pearce. Summary: "London, July 1944. After nearly five years of war, the readers of Woman’s Friendmagazine are relying on the support of Emmy Lake and her team more than ever. With the city under attack, the magazine staff decamps to the countryside for the summer. Determined to help the women of Britain carry on, Emmy and friends are hard at work finding new ways to inspire resilience.

Book Review for “The Names” by Florence Knapp. Summary: “In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son’s birth. Her husba…

Book Review for “Atmosphere: A Love Story” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Summary: "Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program.

Book Review for “Roll the Sun Across the Sky” by Barbara Linn Probst. Summary: "From the ruins of Egypt to the privileged life of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the story of a woman’s odyssey through the maze of love, loyalty, recklessness, and remorse, as the consequences of her acts ripple through the generations. Approaching a milestone birthday, Arden Rice has seen it all: three marriages, hardship and wealth, choices she both regrets and defends, all fueled by the same fierce desire—to give her daughter the best possible life.

Book Review for “Soyangri Book Kitchen” by Kim Jee-hye, (Shanna Tan - Translator). Summary: "With good books, good food and companionship, the Book Kitchen fills people's tired souls. Yoojin, who grew up in Seoul, opened the Book Kitchen by chance in Soyangri, a village two hours from Seoul by car. The Book Kitchen functions as a bookshop and cafe. The second function of the Book Kitchen is a Book Stay, where one can stay overnight in one of the building’s four complexes.

Book Review for “The Queens of Crime” by Marie Benedict. Summary: "London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L.