The Last Thing He Told Me

Finished January 4

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

This standalone suspense novel was recommended to me at the library when I asked about a book to meet a challenge. The challenge was a book published in the last five years that had been adapted into a movie or television show, and this was adapted into a television series.

The main character is Hannah Hall, a wood turner, and furniture maker. Hannah had lived in New York City until recently, when she married Owen Michaels, a coder that she met through one of her clients. After their marriage she moved onto the houseboat in Sausalito, where Owen lives with his sixteen-year-old daughter Bailey.  She made some missteps with Bailey at the beginning, but is trying to come to a better relationship. 

One day a kid from the sports team Owen coaches shows up at Hannah's door with a note that just says 'Protect Her.' Hannah knows that he means Bailey, but isn't sure what is going on until she finds that Owen's workplace was raided by the FBI for fraud. She can't believe that Owen would have anything to do with that, but why else would he disappear? When she picks up Bailey from school, she finds that he's left something for Bailey as well. 

As Hannah tries to make sense of things, she is visited by a Texas Ranger who offers help, and she begins to dig into Owen's past, finding that he isn't who he said he was. This is a mystery with some suspenseful moments, and Hannah ends up faced with a decision that is difficult on the surface. 

First Date: Divorce

Finished January 2

First Date: Divorce by Patricia McLinn

This book is the first book in the series The Wyoming Marriage Association. 

I've read books in three other series by this author and enjoyed them. I chose the book to meet a reading challenge left over from 2025. This book lets us see a variety of viewpoints. The main female character is K.D. Hamilton, a sheriff's deputy from Montana who has been trying to get her boss to let her do investigative work. K.D. was raised by a single mother after her father abandoned the family, and her mother remarried after K.D. left home. She is wary of relationships. She has been lent to the sheriff's office in Bardville, Wyoming and has just arrived at the ranch she was told to come to as the book begins. 

The main male character is Eric Larkin, a lawyer who has been living in Bardville for a short time, having moved there from Chicago after his divorce to be close to a couple of friends and have a fresh start. Along with him has come his assistant, a widowed friend of his mother's. The assistant is on the ball and trying to get Eric to be more social. Eric has kept to himself for the most part, except for his friends, the sheriff and a private investigator who is ex-FBI. 

The situation is a local business just outside of town, who is leasing a county-owned building and operating as a luxury retreat specializing in marriage counselling. A number of couple who stayed there left even more determined to split up, and they've all had one person who engaged a local lawyer for a divorce. Before renewing the lease, the county wants to ensure there isn't anything shady going on. 

K.D. and Eric will pose as a married couple who've been separated a while, but are attempting a reconciliation. Since Eric has kept to himself, no one in town outside of his friends is aware that he's divorced. There is a tight timeline, and they have to create a backstory complete with photographic evidence, so a few ranching women come together to stage wedding and other couple photographs. As K.D. gets involved, she learns more about Eric's ex and why they split. 

The mystery is pretty tame, but the romance has some sizzle. A fun read.

Roundup of Reading for 2025

 

Here are the numbers.

Total books read was 180.

Total pages read was 56,266.

Audience

Adult            169

Teen                  3

Children's         8

Genre/Subject (Note that some books have more than one genre

Fiction                164     of which 69 were part of a series

Mystery                  55

Romance                56

Literary                  21

Historical                26

Fantasy                   16

Science Fiction        2

Horror                      5

Western                    1

Nonfiction                    14

Biography/Memoir        9

Essays                            2

Travel                             1

History                           3

Social History                2

True Crime                     1

Science/Social Science   2

Arts and Crafts                1

Translated from another language to English: 12

From French        3

From Arabic         1

From Japanese     1

From Dutch          1

From German       2

From Italian          1

From Chinese       1

From Hindi           1

From Spanish        1

Setting (some books will have multiple settings)

Other world                    5

Other real world             4

Canada                         20 

United States                93

Europe                          61

Asia                              13

Latin America                9

Africa                             6

Australia / Pacific          6

Where I got the books

Library                        75

Owned                        94    of which 44 of the print ones got gifted elsewhere

Borrowed                      3

Temporary (Netgalley) 8 

Author Gender

Male                            35

Female                       140

Unclear                          1

Both                               2

Format

Graphic Novel                1

Large Print                     2

Regular Print

ebook                            58

License to Bite

Finished December 30

License to Bite by Carrie Pulkinen

This novel is the start of a series set in New Orleans. Ethan Deveraux has been a vampire for about 30 years, but he's mostly just holed up in his house occasionally venturing out to work a little for money to live on or as a sidekick to the vampire who converted him.

Jane Anderson is in town with her best friend. She works as a social influencer, a bit of a disappointment to her father, the governor of Texas, and to her brothers who all have college degrees and professional jobs. But they do all love her, and are worried about her in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

And rightly so, as the girls get pretty drunk their first night and are escorted home by Ethan and his sire. Ethan is struck by something about her and thinks she might be his lost love reincarnated and he finds himself possessive of her.

When her preoccupation with social media puts her in a deadly accident, Ethan finds himself making her a vampire to keep her from dying. As her sire, he must take responsibility for her learning the rules and the process she must follow to stay alive. That means registering her the next night and preparing her to get her license to bite. 

Jane is a rebel and a feminist. She's also a charmer, having watched her father in politics for years. She certainly doesn't like the term 'sire' and she doesn't like that the council consists only of old men. But she can work with that. 

The big threat is her fear of blood, making her pass out whenever she sees it. How in the world is she going to bite under testing? Especially with a representative of the world vampire council in town looking for infractions, eager to stake whoever slips up. 

This novel is humorous, fun, and a total enjoyment to read. Jane is smart, sexy, and ambitious. She has ideas for new revenue streams and is willing to use her clout to get things moving. And Ethan is ready to move on with his death, finding Jane both annoying and attractive. 

A December to Remember

Finished December 29

A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss

Augustus Balthazar North, owner of North's Novelties and Curios in the village of Rowan Thorp has set off on his last adventure, dying in his van on an European mountain. He never really settled down, although he had charm enough to attract ladies and he never pretended to be anything he wasn't. Through his many liaisons he had three daughters, and they all spent a month every summer with him together.  

Maggie, the oldest lived in Rowan Thorp, her mother moving there to see if there was any long term relationship possible, and she ran a greengrocer that Maggie has now taken over. Simone's mother is very business-oriented and Simone is now a physiotherapist married to a therapist and the two are going through a rough patch after having several unsuccessful IVF tries. Star is a free spirit, similar to her mother, never settling down, growing up in a series of communes and in other group settings. She's just been evicted due to the actions of an ex-boyfriend. 

Augustus has set some strange conditions in his will, asking that his daughters work together to bring back the Winter Festival that the town used to have on the solstice. The other is that they find the 32 altered monopoly houses that Augustus has hidden in the shop. The shop has been around since the 1740s, with North's passing it down to the next generation, collecting interesting objects from all over.

The women hire Sotheby's to catalogue the items in the shop and possibly sell some of them at auction, and Sotheby's has sent a lovely young man who is very interested in Augustus' reputation as a collector, eager to see what treasures the shop holds. 

As the women look for the houses, research the festival which was held until several decades earlier, and get to know each other again, they also find community in Rowan Thorp, and find other reasons that the town is the place they want to call home. 

I really enjoyed all three sisters, who all have interesting lives that differ widely from each other, but are also good women. Each finds skills that contribute to their situation and that affect their personal lives in other long-term ways. There is humour, good will, and lots of good food as well.

A seasonal read that brings the feeling of joy and friendship out in a big way.

A delightful novel. 

A Dream of Death

Finished December 26

Dream of Death by Connie Berry

This is the first book in the Kate Hamilton Mysteries series. Kate is an antique dealer who lives in Ohio. She met her late husband at university there where he taught. He was from the Scottish island of Glenroth and Kate has visited a couple of times, but hasn't been back since his death three years ago. Their children are at university and she leads a busy life. 

When her sister-in-law Elenor calls her begging to her come she does, but it doesn't mean that she's comfortable about it. Her visitor coincides with the Tartan Ball, a late fall annual event. She's staying at the hotel that Elenor owned and ran, and where the ball takes place. 

Elenor doesn't fill her in completely about why she's asked her to come, but she has shown Kate a lovely historical casket, and given her a novel about a famous event on the island that a local historian has written, asking her to read it. 

At the ball a couple of announcements that Elenor makes don't go over very well with the locals, and Elenor ends up going back to her apartment in the hotel early. Kate is disturbed the next morning to find that Elenor is dead, and that her death was a copycat murder of one more than two centuries earlier, the woman the novel is about. 

With the local police dismissive of her ideas, Kate follows the clues that she sees through the eyes of someone who is aware of some history, but not a local herself. As she works out who she can trust, she finds herself confiding in the hotel's only other guest, a police investigator from England. 

I liked the historical aspect of the plot, as well as the information around antiques. This is in some ways a woman's story, both now and in the past, and Kate is a good observer. I'd definitely be interested in reading more in the series.

Live Fast

Finished December 24

Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud, translated by Cory Stockwell

This is an interesting novel as the author looks back on the accidental death of her partner, Claude, decades before. She recounts the chain of events that led up to the accident, and for each of them wonders what if something different had happened. It is something that I think anyone who has lost someone due to something that was preventable wonders, but seeing it all spelled out takes this to another level.

One can sense the loss that the death was, and how the present day event of leaving the house that the couple had just bought, but not yet moved to, would trigger this reflection. 

I was touched by the everyday events that she described and the way that small choices bring us to a different reality. 

An amazing read.