The Ex Hex

The Ex Hex
by Erin Sterling
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780063027473
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
Pages: 320
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Romance
Publisher: HarperCollins

A departure for me, as this book is all about the romance, not a mystery plot that masks a little romance on the side. But Whiskey in the Jar’s review made it sound cute and a lot of fun, so I grabbed it from my library.

It was fun, and it was cute. I liked the N. Georgia setting and the brand of witchiness the story relied upon (think more Bewitched, less later-seasons-Charmed). It was a nice change to read about a romantic hero that was Welsh instead of the tried and true Scottish or Irish male.

I mostly liked the relationships; the dynamic between Vivienne and her aunt and cousin, and especially the relationship between Rhys and his brothers. The dynamic between Rhys and Simon, the father, felt forced and, the way it’s written here, kind of useless, as it really goes nowhere.

The narrative banter was the most enjoyable part of the book for me (that and the fact that the cat got a voice). The banter kept me reading, even though I skimmed the romance and the angst, but that’s not the book, that’s just me.

Overall exactly what I was hoping for.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021, and I read it at night, with my little book light for ambiance, making it work for Read by Candlelight or Flashlight; I was all ready to do the candle light, but I remember Easter-cats first confrontation with a candle flame, and her singed whiskers. Pikachu has insanely long whiskers and an insatiable curiosity that didn’t bode well for the candlelit reading.

Halloween Bingo Update, October 1

Since my last update, I’ve read: bupkis. Well, that’s not true, I have been on a re-reading binge of the urban fantasy series The Others, but none of those count for Halloween Bingo. I do have a book lined up for Read by Candlelight or Flashlight, but I have to stay awake long enough to read it, and that’s been a problem lately.

Squares on my card that have been called:
Black Cat;
Tropical Terror;
Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses;
Plagues and Diseases
Vintage Mystery
Noir
Gallows Humor
Locked Room Mystery
Creepy Carnivals
Truly Terrifying

Accumulative reading table with links to reviews below the card.

The spreadsheet:

	Bingo Square	Date Called	Book Title	Date Read
Row #1
X	Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses	Sep. 7	Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
X	Stone Cold Horror/Creepy Carnival	Sep. 29	Wild Ride	Sep. 1
X	Vintage Mystery	Sep. 23	The Filigree Ball	Sep. 16
	Dem Bones		Independent Bones	Sep. 14
	Read by Candlelight/Flashlight
Row #2
	Murder Most Foul		Charleston Green	Sep. 18
	Lethal Games		No Nest for the Wicket	Sep. 1
	Spellbound		The Once and Future Witches	Aug. 31
X	Black Cat	Sep. 15	Thornyhold	Sep. 13
	Relics and Curiosities		On the Edge	Sep. 8
Row #3
	Shifters		Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
	Terror in a Small Town		Agnes and the Hitman	Sep. 3
X	FREE SPACE		Like a Charm	Sep. 7
	Psych / Highway to Hell		Archive of the Forgotten	Sep. 3
X	Truly Terrifying	Oct. 1	The Cannonball Tree Mystery	Sep. 5
Row #4
X	Noir	Sep. 24	The Big Over Easy	Sep. 22
	Genre: Mystery		The Alchemist’s Illusion	Sep. 2
	Country House Mystery		Murder Most Fair	Sep. 16
X	Tropical Terror	Sep. 4	The Mimosa Tree Mystery	Sep. 4
	Locked Room Mystery	Sep. 28
Row #5
	Splatter		Carpe Jugulum	Sep. 9
	Cryptozoologist		Bayou Moon	Sep. 11
X	Plague and Disease		Scourged	Sep. 3
	In the Dark, Dark Woods		Paper & Blood	Sep. 12
X	Gallows Humor	Sep. 25	Murder Most Fowl	Sep. 10

	Wild Card Spell
	Amplification Spell
	Bingo Flip Spell
	Cell Conversion Spell
	Transfiguration Spell
	Double Trouble Spell

Halloween Bingo Update, September 24

Since my last update, I’ve read:
Anna Lee Huber’s Murder Most Fair for Country House Mystery;
The Filigree Ball by Anna Katherine Green and it was excellent – best book I’ve read all year. I’m using it for Vintage Mystery;
Charleston Green by Stephanie Alexander for my Murder Most Foul Square;
A re-read of The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde for my Noir square;

Squares on my card that have been called:
Black Cat;
Tropical Terror;
Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses;
Plagues and Diseases
Vintage Mystery
Noir

Accumulative reading table with links to reviews below the card.

The spreadsheet:

	Bingo Square	Date Called	Book Title	Date Read
Row #1
X	Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses	Sep. 7	Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
	Stone Cold Horror/Creepy Carnival		Wild Ride	Sep. 1
X	Vintage Mystery	Sep. 23	The Filigree Ball	Sep. 16
	Dem Bones		Independent Bones	Sep. 14
	Read by Candlelight/Flashlight
Row #2
	Murder Most Foul		Charleston Green	Sep. 18
	Lethal Games		No Nest for the Wicket	Sep. 1
	Spellbound		The Once and Future Witches	Aug. 31
X	Black Cat	Sep. 15	Thornyhold	Sep. 13
	Relics and Curiosities		On the Edge	Sep. 8
Row #3
	Shifters		Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
	Terror in a Small Town		Agnes and the Hitman	Sep. 3
X	FREE SPACE		Like a Charm	Sep. 7
	Psych / Highway to Hell		Archive of the Forgotten	Sep. 3
	Truly Terrifying		The Cannonball Tree Mystery	Sep. 5
Row #4
X	Noir	Sep. 24	The Big Over Easy	Sep. 22
	Genre: Mystery		The Alchemist’s Illusion	Sep. 2
	Country House Mystery		Murder Most Fair	Sep. 16
X	Tropical Terror	Sep. 4	The Mimosa Tree Mystery	Sep. 4
	Locked Room Mystery
Row #5
	Splatter		Carpe Jugulum	Sep. 9
	Cryptozoologist		Bayou Moon	Sep. 11
X	Plague and Disease		Scourged	Sep. 3
	In the Dark, Dark Woods		Paper & Blood	Sep. 12
	Gallows Humor		Murder Most Fowl	Sep. 10

	Wild Card Spell
	Amplification Spell
	Bingo Flip Spell
	Cell Conversion Spell
	Transfiguration Spell
	Double Trouble Spell

The Big Over Easy Re-read (Nursery Crimes, #1)

The Big Over Easy
by Jasper Fforde
Rating: ★★★★★
Series: Nursery Crimes #1
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
Pages: 398
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

My original review pretty much sums up my general feelings about this book. I still think it’s the most highly quotable book I’ve read, I still think the satire is spot-on, both of the media and murder mysteries and I still think Prometheus adds just that little something of surprise depth to the narrative, if only briefly.

Re-reading it, it’s held up perfectly. Fforde’s amazing at writing these intricate plots and clever dialog, but it’s all the small details that continue to leave me gobsmacked. The excepts at the opening of each chapter, the small jokes and wordplays scattered in the text, and the “ads” at the back of the book all are unnecessary to the plot, but make the book all the richer for their inclusion.

Though I gave it, and stand by doing so, 5 stars, the heinous plot revealed in the mystery is gross in that way that British humor excels at. Gross and sublimely silly. Which makes the story better, in spite of the “UGH, yuck!” moments towards the end.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021’s Noir square. It’s not a traditional fit, but there’s a clear argument that along with satirising mysteries and the press, there’s a very noir-satire vibe in the story,

Charleston Green (Tipsy Collins, #1)

Charleston Green
by Stephanie Alexander
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781647040505
Series: Tipy Collins #1
Publication Date: April 14, 2020
Pages: 352
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Bublish

I BookLikes friend read and rated this highly recently, and I’m always onboard for a ghost story-mystery set in Charleston. Her standards are far more exacting than mine, so I felt confident buying it and its sequel the other day

Unfortunately, I can’t say I loved it. I’m conflicted about even saying I liked it, although it was a good, well-written story, with the exception of a few formatting errors and at least a couple of grammatical ones, though still fewer of both than I normally find in most traditionally published books.

At first I thought the problem for me was the third person present POV. In my opinion it’s the least forgiving POV available to authors and as such very hard to get right. Done wrong, characters are flat and lifeless.

But the characters weren’t flat and lifeless. Except for the main one, Tipsy herself, and ultimately this was what held me back from completely enjoying this book. She was a dishrag, and not just because she’d just gone through a difficult divorce, but because she’d been something of a dishrag her whole life. Not a victim, not even a doormat, but just a non-entity. A time or two she caught fire and those moments were ones I enjoyed thoroughly, but they happened way too rarely to make up for all the rest of the book, where she just drifted through.

On the plus side, the ghosts were great, and I enjoyed the parts where Tipsy painted, likely because they were the only times she wasn’t passive. But I truly enjoyed the story behind the ghosts and the mystery of how they died.

I was prepared to jump directly into the second book, Haint Blue, but I flipped through it this morning, and caught a passage that’s completely turned me off. It’s obvious that the author’s need to write as true to life as possible means taking the reader on the same emotional roller coaster of relationships that most people would give a kidney to avoid experiencing in real life, but are bound to go through anyway. Bound to or not in real life, I’m not obligated to experience it again in my books, and the passage that caught my eye has Tipsy acting like a melodramatic teen. No, thank you. Maybe someday, but for now I’m stopping with Charleston Green and calling it good.

I read this because it looked good, but I’m also using it for Halloween Bingo 2021 on my Murder Most Foul square.

The Filigree Ball

The Filigree Ball
by Anna Katherine Green
Rating: ★★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1903
Pages: 418
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

I just finished this book and I have to forgo sleep to get this review down so I don’t forget any details overnight.

5 star read. My first this year, I think. Absolutely amazing story from start to finish, but oh man! The finish!

I’ve been enjoying Anna Katherine Green’s books since first discovering her The Mayor’s Wife; I was entranced by how such an old story could rivet me, the reader, with what would have had to have been the birth of many tropes we get jaded about it today’s mysteries.

I admit to buying this one with some hesitancy though. I assumed, by the title, that the mystery would involve a grand ball, someone being killed during a waltz, or over dinner, or perhaps just after an illicit assignation in the garden behind the ballroom.

HA! I could not have been more wrong! From start to finish, I had a creepy house with a history of death in the library, always by the same mysterious means; a house considered haunted by its history if not its actual ghosts. Dark, abandoned mid-wedding, when the last body was found, right down to leaving the food on the tables and the cake on the floor where it was dropped during the stampede to escape the house’s curse. It’s all very gothic.

Then there’s the bride, dead by seemingly her own hand, just a fortnight after her marriage, but surrounded by inconsistencies that make murder a possibility. Her heartbroken husband and her distraught sister, both of whom have shaky alibis and strange reactions to the events as they unfold, making them look more suspicious than bereaved.

Then there’s the narrator, who at times I swear foreshadows the Noir genre, with his quiet investigations on the side, to try to prove his theory that more was going on than met the eye. His dedication to doing so to save the woman, who is, throughout the book, put upon a pedestal of all that is perfect in woman: beautiful, proud, self-sacrificing, suffering with utmost dignity. Alas, we were missing just a bottle of whiskey and possibly the use of “Dame” in the narrative and we could have credited AKG with the first noir mystery.

The puzzle pieces come together, disjointedly, as our nameless narrator plod through, putting clues together, ferreting out further information and even chasing one witness to Tampa, Florida.

And the ending, omg the ending was so good. So well crafted, and such a sucker punch.

The books perfection might have been heightened, in my opinion, by the exclusion of the final chapter, chapter 27. It’s truly extraneous to the book in all ways except for those readers who want their loose ends tied up in a HEA bow. I did not mind it, I would not have missed its absence either.

Truly, one of the best mysteries I’ve read in ages, vintage or otherwise. I’d happily recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good vintage mystery (with the caveat to expect a few offhand and cheerful references to the casual racism that was part of the times in which this book was written.)

I read this because I’ve been meaning to for the last few weeks anyway, but also because the new Halloween Bingo 2021 square Vintage Mysteries is one of the re-vamped squares that has lifted its restrictions on what constitutes a qualifying mystery. As AKG predates the Golden Age, it wouldn’t have necessarily qualified before. I’ll be using it for Vintage Mysteries but if anyone else is interested, it would also qualify for Gothic, and I think, given the questions concerning all the murders that take place in the book, it would also work for Locked Room

Murder Most Fair (Verity Kent, #5)

Murder Most Fair
by Anna Lee Huber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781496728494
Series: Verity Kent #5
Publication Date: August 31, 2021
Pages: 384
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

I think this book ended up with a 4 star rating because I liked the ending. Looking back as I write this there were several things that probably put this more at 3.5 stars.

There were some editing issues; I’m pretty sure the German Aunt central to this plot started out being on Verity’s mother’s side (references to her mother’s German family) and then suddenly, she’s Verity’s father’s Aunt.

But mostly the story was just so melancholy. It fits with the time period – post WWI – and all the books have been tinged with an appropriate air of pain, confusion and recovery, but Huber just piled on in this book. We have the veterans trying to adjust to life after the trenches, we have Lord Ryder wallowing, passed-out drunk in the uncertainty that his father might not have been a loyal peer of the realm before his death, we have the culmination of a 5 year breach between Verity and her family, and Verity’s inability to confront her grief over the loss of one of her brothers during the war. It’s all very heavy.

Buried underneath all this depressiveness is, actually, a really good mystery, albeit a very slow moving one under the weight of all the above, about the murder of her German Aunt’s personal maid, during a holiday gathering at the family estate in the Yorkshire Dales. Huber touches on the bigotry in the aftermath of war, and the inability for some to differentiate between a person and a government. It was a well-crafted plot, too, in that I should have seen the killer before I did, but missed it.

So, really probably a 3.5 star read, but laziness will keep it at 4. A good story bogged down by what would be normally be compelling side lines on their own, but taken together felt altogether too depressing for a cozy mystery.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021 and it fits the Country House Mystery square, as it’s set at the family estate in the Yorkshire Dales.

Halloween Bingo Update, September 15

Since my last update, I’ve read:
Donna Andrews’ Murder Most Fowl for Gallows Humor;
Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews for my Cryptozoologist square;
Kevin Hearne’s newest, Paper & Blood; it takes place in the Dandenong Ranges here outside Melbourne (AU), and it definitely fits In the Dark, Dark Wood;
Carolyn Haines’ Independent Bones, which I’m using for the Dem Bones square.

Squares on my card that have been called: Black Cat, Tropical Terror and Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses

Accumulative reading table with links to reviews below the card.

The spreadsheet:

	Bingo Square	Date Called	Book Title	Date Read
Row #1
X	Mad Scientists and Evil Geniuses	Sep. 7	Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
	Stone Cold Horror/Creepy Carnival		Wild Ride	Sep. 1
	Vintage Mystery
	Dem Bones		Independent Bones	Sep. 14
	Read by Candlelight/Flashlight
Row #2
	Murder Most Foul
	Lethal Games		No Nest for the Wicket	Sep. 1
	Spellbound		The Once and Future Witches	Aug. 31
X	Black Cat	Sep. 15	Thornyhold	Sep. 13
	Relics and Curiosities		On the Edge	Sep. 8
Row #3
	Shifters		Naked Brunch	Aug. 30
	Terror in a Small Town		Agnes and the Hitman	Sep. 3
X	FREE SPACE		Like a Charm	Sep. 7
	Psych / Highway to Hell		Archive of the Forgotten	Sep. 3
	Truly Terrifying		The Cannonball Tree Mystery	Sep. 5
Row #4
	Noir
	Genre: Mystery		The Alchemist’s Illusion	Sep. 2
	Country House Mystery
X	Tropical Terror	Sep. 4	The Mimosa Tree Mystery	Sep. 4
	Locked Room Mystery
Row #5
	Splatter		Carpe Jugulum	Sep. 9
	Cryptozoologist		Bayou Moon	Sep. 11
	Plague and Disease		Scourged	Sep. 3
	In the Dark, Dark Woods		Paper & Blood	Sep. 12
	Gallows Humor		Murder Most Fowl	Sep. 10

	Wild Card Spell
	Amplification Spell
	Bingo Flip Spell
	Cell Conversion Spell
	Transfiguration Spell
	Double Trouble Spell

Independent Bones (Sarah Booth Delaney, #23)

Independent Bones
by Carolyn Haines
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250257871
Series: Sarah Booth Delaney #23
Publication Date: May 18, 2021
Pages: 357
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Whew – I had concerns after the last book, Garland of Bones, was such a poor entry to what is normally a reliable series.

This one starts right off with a bang – a rather graphic display of domestic violence at the grand opening of Zinnia’s new public park, during a speech by a professor passionate about women’s rights. The next day, the abuser is found dead, and the police find two other murders with the exact same MO in two other cities, and the professor is a suspect in all of them.

The fight-the-patriarchy rhetoric was strong, and at times, way too thickly laid on. Given Sarah Booth and Tinkie’s apathy for their client, the professor, I think it was done on purpose with the idea of illustrating that too much of anything – good or bad – can have disastrous consequences. This made the rhetoric, which was mostly in the first half of the book, at least useful to the plot. It still detracted from my enjoyment overall though.

What I did appreciate an awful lot, along with the faster pace and the lighter tone, was that the author also took the time to point out that the characters series readers know and love already have quietly, and in their own unique way, ‘fought the patriarchy’ and carved out their own independence and power. Balance.

Sarah’s resident haint, Jitty, also played a far less annoying part that usual; Sarah Booth has finally, after 22 books, stopped being taken in like an idiot, by her frequent appearances as historical figures. This time around, the figures she appears as are all powerful women throughout American history, who fought the constraints of their times to achieve agency over their own lives. And all of them outlaws. One of the messages being, that before our current generations, the only way women had their own agency was to be outlaws, in one way or another. These interludes were interesting and I found myself far less impatient with them than I’ve been in the past. They felt less silly and more relevant.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that for the last few years the writing has been on the wall for American women, as the feeble, power-hungry men we helped elect have been systematically making noise about taking away a woman’s agency, but the timing of this plot feels especially prescient, as the publication of this book came almost at the exact same time as events in Texas unfolded. Because behind the scenes of this story is a new, secret, well-funded, political movement unfolding across the US, with the goal of unwinding the rights of women back to pre 1900’s, where women couldn’t work any meaningful jobs, or have control of their finances, never mind their bodies, and their husbands were legally free to ‘correct’ their behaviour as they saw fit. That bit of the story doesn’t end with a tied-up bow and a justice-wins-the-day at the end, which is fitting. The pendulum of humanity swings wide, but slow.

I read this book for Halloween Bingo 2021’s Dem Bones square. Every book in the series has “Bones” in the title, and a skeleton, or part of one, on the cover.

Thornyhold re-read

Thornyhold
by Mary Stewart
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781444715064
Publication Date: May 26, 2011
Pages: 220
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Hachette Books

I originally read this back in 2016, and my review from back then pretty much stands up after the second read with one small caveat. I said, in essence, that while a very enjoyable and atmospheric read, nothing really happened, that it lacked any discernible plot.

That’s not true; there is a plot, but it’s so … mild? half-hearted? And there is a climatic showdown, but until the very last bit I still couldn’t discern whether or not Agnes was trying to be friendly, or not.

The instant love is still there and geez, Gilly goes from meeting the guy once to planning her life based on being married with children. To him. She tries to remind herself this is silly and presumptuous, but really, it’s just for form.

Still it’s a very readable book somehow. It sucks you in and draws you into this gently told tale and makes you (me) wish to move to a cottage and be an herbalist.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021 for the Black Cat square. Gilly has a black cat that could be called her familiar with very little effort, and he plays a part as protector and alarm bearer throughout the story.