The first and most important thing you need to know about “Head over Feet in Love” is that Rebecca, the MC, is manic for a great deal of the book. But that’s what I liked about it, too. You see, Rebecca has anxiety and depression and passive suicidal tendencies, and when things get stressful, her mind shuts down. She doesn’t know how to deal with traumatic situations, so she runs away. That’s her coping mechanism, and in the case of our story, leads her to a friendship with a hermit named Mike. Their friendship is unexpected, but exactly what the other needs in order to get back on their feet again, and as the title implies, find true love.

“The Best Possible Angle” is a book full of suspense and classic “who done it” mystery vibes right from the start. Kendrick, the main character, is on the cusp of achieving his dreams, but then tragedy hits and keeps hitting, and the people around the burgeoning movie star quickly show their true colors. Everyone in Kendrick’s immediate circle has something to hide and gain, and as one secret leads to another, everyone starts threatening betrayal, and things, well, escalate. And come the end of the story, you wish more characters had been punished. The story starts with a gruesome murder that becomes clear as to whom died at around the 60% mark of the story, but that’s far from the only murder cover up going on in the book, and those get teased out well before that point.

Confession time: I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. A period piece novel set just after the Great War with some Downton Abbey society vibes, a murder mystery, oh and magic. Yes! Magic! “Magic Most Deadly” follows Maia and Lennox as they bump into each other at a roaring house party, only to stumble across a murder, a plot to bring Britain to its knees once more, and that not only is magic real, but it’s been working in the shadows to keep society from going off the rails for decades, if not more. Now Lennox, who was undercover to try and discover the plot Maia witnessed, finds himself partnered with the fledgling magician—who is also a fiercely independent woman who constantly keeps Lennox on his toes. The tone of the characters fits so flawlessly with the time period and setting that I was immediately swept away and ended up adoring these characters and the rather cozy mystery they embarked on, while also trying to teach Maia about magic—oh, and keep it a secret from everyone else, naturally.

I’m not sure how to write this review mainly because I wasn’t expecting to be this conflicted about so many things. “Shadow and Bone” is an engaging read, so let me throw that out there first, how about that? We follow Alina, the painfully stereotypical rags-to-riches redemption story of a girl everyone overlooks, who is unimportant and unremarkable and ugly, until she suddenly becomes one of the most powerful and important people in her war torn country. In a land with serious Russian vibes, and a well-defined magic system for everyone but Alina and the Darkling, Alina holds the key for bringing her country out of the dark (ha) and into the light (ha). Those aren’t exactly metaphors, either. So, yeah, I really liked the book, but you can kind of see where I’m going with my qualms, right?

I find myself reading a lot of fantasy lately that feel like they were taken directly from a dungeon master’s manifest for a Dungeons&Dragons game between friends. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just not really sure how I ended up reading so many books with that same feel over the course of a relatively short time. But I digress. “Road of the Lost”, you guessed it, is a fantasy sword and sorcery book that follows three characters as they battle against dark elves and their Ogre warriors in an attempt to recover the fabled crystals that will save the forest. You’ve got Templars and Sylvan Elves, and Dark Elves, the Seelie Court, and a bunch of gods all invested in this trio and moving them about like chess pieces from one battle to the next all while the author builds a world for a long standing series. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the primary focus of this first book: build the world and they will come.