Review: Bodies and Battlements by Elizabeth Penney

Bodies and Battlements (A Ravensea Castle Mystery, #1)

by Elizabeth Penney

Release Date: March 27, 2025

2025 Minotaur Books

Ebook Version; 288 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250270051

ASIN:  ‎ B0DCTNBQ59

Genre: Fiction / Cozy Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

Herbalist Nora Asquith is delighted to welcome Ravensea Castle’s first guests to the picturesque village of Monkwell, Yorkshire. After a thousand years of ownership, her family has decided to convert the castle into a bed and breakfast. But when Hilda Dibble, a self-appointed local luminary, is found dead in the knot garden the next morning, Nora’s business is not only at risk—she’s a prime suspect.

Hilda had opposed the hotel plan every step of the way, and although she didn’t succeed in stopping the venture, her disagreements with Nora seem to only further her motive.

 

 Nora and her actress sister Tamsyn decide to investigate for themselves. They look into the entangled dealings of their newly arrived guests, while also getting hints from Sir Percival, one of the castle ghosts. As they learn, Sir Percival’s tragic death centuries ago sheds light on present-day crimes. Surely they can get to the bottom of this mystery while keeping their new business afloat . . .

 

My Thoughts

Bodies and Battlements is the first entry in a new cozy mystery series for this author, and while I did find the plot to be somewhat straight-forward and predictable, I really enjoyed the characters, the setting, and the relationships that were being built and this is definitely what defines a cozy mystery for me.

 

It is always difficult to develop characters in the first book of a series as you have to ensure you don't give too much away about them, but at the same time you don't want them to seem one-dimensional. I thought the author did a great job with the characters in this book as I felt connected to them and enjoyed their different viewpoints with regards to the bed and breakfast being created  and its connection to the long history of the building and the lands. Nora was hard-working, loyal to her family and her family history, but when push came to shove, she knew exactly when to stick up for what she believed and when it was necessary to give a little.  I liked that she was also an apothecary, grew her own herbs on the land, and sold her items around the neighbourhood as well. There seems to be a lot of possibility with that avenue to exploit in the future.

 

Nora's sister Tamsyn, and their father were also fun characters to round out the main characters. Tamsyn is quite different from her sister and I really liked her spirit. I liked how steadfast Nora's father was and how he liked to research his family history when things started to happen. But then, I would have been all over those papers if I had access to a thousand years of my own family's history.  Just think of it!!  

 

The plot moved along rather quickly, and I did find it to be somewhat predictable, but I liked the added 'pararnormal' twist of the resident ghosts. A place as old as this has to have at least one or two ghosts!!  There is a bit of an actual police investigation, but this is a cozy mystery so most of the action comes from Nora and Tamsyn as they investigate. I did appreciate that they didn't do anything silly and told the police whatever they knew though, as I dislike it intensely when characters keep things to themselves just to move a plot point forward.  This didn't reduce the tension when things did happen however, so it was fun to see how they got out scrapes and what they would discover in such an old place.  

 

Verdict

Bodies and Battlements was an enjoyable read, and the fact that I figured out the ending didn't lesson my enjoyment at all. I really needed a cozy read at the moment as I have been reading some heavy hitters and this one fit the bill perfectly.  Both the characters and the plot were fun and I enjoyed the historical aspect to the story as much as learning about the local area that will probably feature in future books. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cozy mysteries, and I am now off to read the second book in this series.  

 

Review: True Crime by Patricia Cornwell

True Crime: A Memoir

by Patricia Cornwell

Release Date: May 5, 2026

2026 Grand Central Publishing

Hard Cover ARC; 464 Pages

ISBN: 978-1538778449

ASIN: B0FTWDWQ47

Audiobook: B0FY85VMQ5

Genre: Non-Fiction / Memoir

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

3 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalised twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham's wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalisation and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner's office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon.

 

My Thoughts

True Crime is one of those memoirs to which I was looking forward because I had a vested interest in the Kay Scarpetta series when they were first published.  My interest has since waned for a variety of reasons, but I still remember those early days and having a female Chief Medical Examiner as a lead in a murder mystery series was exciting and interesting. Patricia Cornwell has definitely had a very interesting life, one that has been fairly unstable, full of abuse and trauma, and I am not really here to rate that aspect of the book, but the overall way in which she shares her story was somewhat rambling and a bit annoying and this is what I am reviewing.

 

By the first half of the book, the author is barely out of high school with a full memory of things that have happened to her.  I am not questioning the trauma, the abuse, the neglect, etc..., and she certainly shares a lot of traumatic episodes with us, but I do sort of question the level of detail, although her journals may have helped with that.  What I can't recall is when she actually started keeping journals as I don't remember her mentioning them when she was younger, only as she grew older and developed bulimia. 

 

For a writer with as many awards for her books as she has, I would have expected this memoir to be more concise and less rambling than it was, but it was all over the place, jumping from topic to topic constantly. She also seemed to jump quite quickly past topics where she should have taken more responsibility for her actions, but seemed to gloss right over those as if they just happened, she got lucky she wasn't charged, and just moved on to the next thing which sort of a left a bad taste in my mouth.  It made it seem like she felt more lucky and didn't really seem to acknowledge the risks and danger she put others in.  Comments like 'Everyone used to to this' just don't really fly when you should be responsible for your actions.   

 

I did think the work she did for in a medical examiner's office was interesting and I did find it fascinating to learn about some of the things she did as research for her books.  But even some of that comes off as bragging as she has this tendency to gloss over some of the more interesting things to name drop, discuss her house or car purchases, etc..., and because this happens repeatedly, it got old, fast.  There were some really amazing things that happened, some important ones, but those were just mentioned in passing; however, we did get to read two pages about the great car she purchased and was grateful she wasn't driving the night she crashed because she was drunk. And even then she blamed her actions on the medication she was taking. Um, when you drink, what do you think could happen?  

 

Verdict

True Crime definitely had some very interesting aspects to it and I appreciated how much research she did while writing her novels. She worked in a morgue, volunteered with the local police force and ambulance, spent time at the Body Farm, learned how to fly helicopters, and a lot of other interesting things. But I really felt like she was being very guarded with regards to this memoir and didn't really share much about what she has been doing these last years as most of it was spent on her childhood.  By the end of the book, while I can empathize with the trauma and abuse she suffered as a child, I still am not sure how that fueled her writing.  She did say that authors are very jealous of each other so maybe she didn't want to share that aspect for this reason, but in the end, I don't feel like I really got to know her, what she really likes to do other than play tennis, and all of it is superficial. Again, authors can reveal as much as they want, but I would have expected something a bit tighter in its writing and this one rambled too much, glossing over things that seemed important.   

 

Review: Pretty Dead Things by Kelsey Cox

Pretty Dead Things

by Kelsey Cox

Release Date: July 7, 2026

2026 Minotaur Books

Ebook ARC; 336 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250378842

ASIN: B0FLYPRSWV

Audiobook: B0FP48M1Q9

Genre: Fiction / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

3 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

2000: Isabelle Whitmore vanishes at Sherman Ranch in Anhalt, Texas, without a trace.

2025: The annual Lone Star Princess Pageant looms, bringing long-standing grudges to the surface. Ingrid fled Anhalt in the wake of her sister Isabelle’s disappearance and has now returned, just in time for a construction crew to start digging up Sherman Ranch; the pageant brings up past traumas that Melanie can't forget; Cat, newly sober, starts to feel threatened in ways that bring back old demons; and Sarah Lynn, who comes from a long line of pageant winners, knows that losing is not an option.

When old resentments and new confrontations reach their boiling point, temperatures drop to deadly degrees as a record-setting storm brings down the state’s power grid. With everyone trapped under one roof, scores will be settled, and more than one person will end up dead.

 

My Thoughts

Pretty Dead Things had an interesting description and I liked the idea of former beauty pageants preparing their daughters for the same pageant in which they competed twenty-five years earlier. I thought there would be a lot more intrigue and a lot more of the toxicity that the book earlier implied, but it seemed a bit meh to me as far as that went. While the writing style had a way of drawing me into the story and definitely had its moments, I did find it predictable and thought the characters were pretty one-dimensional.

 

The story was told through multiple POV and I didn't feel like I really got to know any of them except on a superficial level.  In hindsight, I think I connected with Cat the most because I empathized with her situation and how it must feel to always have people second-guessing your sobriety and relating your current situation to anything you did in the past. I didn't empathize as much with Sarah Lynn and Melanie although I think I was supposed to feel more sympathy for Melanie and be annoyed by Sarah Lynn. Melanie just annoyed the crap out of me and I wanted to know more about Sarah Lynn as I found her interesting. Yes, she was toxic as hell, but she seemed to have the most personality out of all of them.  In any case, none of them were developed above a superficial level and I didn't really care about most of them. 

 

The book takes place in a small Texas town where the Princess Pageant is the highlight of these young girls lives and can change their lives. I did find the dialogue surrounding the pageant to be quite interesting and I would have liked more discussion around the actual pageant and its toxicity, especially when they were discussing the prize package. Where I live, pageants aren't a thing so I do find the pageant scene to be quite fascinating. I liked how the discussions evolved from simple makeup to makeup tutorials to expensive dresses to plastic surgery. Considering one of the prizes in the prize package was a trip to a plastic surgeon, it brings up a great topic of beauty and acceptance with regards to young adults and beauty influencers.  

 

The mystery itself wasn't bad, but I did find it somewhat predictable based on characters who did things that were predictable. It really wasn't that hard to figure out who the culprit was and I sort of wished it had gone in a different direction, but there you have it.  The set-up is pretty stereotypical as well as you have a power outage, an impending storm, things occurring to pageant members, and a room full of mothers and daughters who want desperately to win. There was a lot of foreshadowing included in this book that didn't quite work the way the author intended and left me feeling somewhat disappointed. 

 

Verdict

Dead Pretty Things was an interesting read, but I don't think it quite worked for me.  There were a lot of threads and plot lines in this book and I felt like the author wasn't sure which thread to have stand out or which one to pull the tightest.  I did like the discussion surrounding pageants, grudges, toxicity, etc... and there was a lot of unpack in terms of themes, but overall, the ending was unsatisfying and I thought the overall character development was weak.   

 

Review: Half City by Kate Golden

Half City (Harker Academy, #1)

by Kate Golden

Release Date: February 17, 2026

2026 Ace

Audiobook & Ebook ARC; 496 Pages

ISBN: 978-0593953433

ASIN:  ‎ B0F88X3LP9

Audiobook: B0FBH51228

Genre: Fiction / Urban Fantasy

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

Viv Abbot is an average twenty-one-year-old girl. She lives in an expensive city where the rent is too high, works long hours at a thankless job, and is dating a guy she doesn’t even like in the hopes of winning her prickly mother’s approval. She just also happens to be a demon hunter.

Ever since her father's murder, she's been forced to hunt deviants alone, meaning everyone, including her family, sees her as an outsider. . . . Until the day she crosses paths with a dangerously alluring demon, Reid Graveheart. The reformed deviant tells her of a school for people just like her: Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she enrolls, she'll learn to hone her craft, work with other hunters, and never be alone again.

But Viv has a deadly secret. One that not even her new friends at Harker can know about. Not when the school might hold the answers to untangling the mystery surrounding Viv's father’s death. When strange occurrences begin to plague the students, Viv will have to figure out who she can trust, and fast. All while trying to ace her classes, not fall for a demon, and make it through her first year at Harker in one piece. How hard could that be?

 

My Thoughts

Half City is one of those books that took me a little while to really get into, but now I'm fully invested. I think part of the problem is that I couldn't warm up to Viv at all, but I liked the world-building and the other characters enough to continue so when things really started to get interesting, I was in it for them and not necessarily for Viv. There were plenty of twists and turns and while some of them were a bit predictable, there were enough of them that caught me off guard to keep this story interesting.

 

First of all, let's start with Viv as a main character. While she eventually did grow on me somewhat, and I do understand why she is the way she is, there is something about how she looks down on others that is a bit condescending, as if her powers and how she has been fighting demons for her entire life grants her the right to be that way. When things go sideways later on in the book because of some bad decisions on her part, I was glad to see some redemptive arcs in her character development so I am hopeful the author created her this way on purpose and we will see how grow throughout the series.  For now, that is enough and while I can't empathize with her at the moment, I understand her a bit better by the end of the book and am glad to see the author is not neglecting character development.  

 

I did however, really enjoy the secondary characters in this book, and one character really caught me off guard as I did not guess what was happening there at all, so I am looking forward to learning more about them and seeing them grow and develop along with Viv.  For me, the secondary characters made up for Viv and her attitude.  And Deacon? Probably one of the best characters in this book so far, so mysterious and...I don't know what else to say about him at this point. But can't wait to find out more.

 

The plot actually moved a bit slowly at the beginning as it was focused on world-building and Viv's background, but when it picked up, it definitely picked up and I had to put the book down to think about all the little side plots that were going on. I liked the concept of the demon hunter academy and while I know the concept is not new and is quite tropy, it was still fun as all get out.  I did think the weakest point of the book was the 'romance', not because I am opposed to romance in this book, but because I didn't quite feel it yet. Don't get me wrong, I want some zap and some zing between Reid and Viv, nand while it was fun, I'm not fully feeling it. And I have some theories about our Reid and his role in this book.  And about Deacon. Should be some interesting times ahead for our characters. 

 

Verdict

Half City was an engaging read, and I enjoyed the audiobook quite a bit. While it did start a bit more slowly as it spent some time world-building and introducing characters, it built up to quite a crescendo in the end where I couldn't stop listening.  I enjoyed the overall investigation as well as the attacks on the school and thought the training was interesting, but I liked that kind of thing which is why I gravitate towards LitRPG because there are so many books with that trope.  I am glad to see the author put a lot of emphasis on character development as well as plot development and yet, there is still a lot of room for our characters to grow. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys urban fantasy and I am looking to my ARC read of book two.  

 

Review: In Case I Go Missing by R.N. Swann

In Case I Go Missing

by R.N. Swann

Release Date: May 26, 2026

2026 Viking Books for Young Readers

Ebook ARC; 400 Pages

ISBN: 978-0593695333

ASIN:  ‎ B0FNVY6N8V

Audiobook: B0GR8CP6MK

Genre: Fiction / YA / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

Seventeen-year-old Fenny Allen has been Sarah Vincenty's sidekick for as long as she can remember, ever since the two of them solved the mystery of the stolen library books back in elementary school. Over the years, Sarah has ruffled a few feathers in their small town, building a reputation as both an amateur detective and a vigilante who has dispensed her own form of justice.

Now Sarah is missing. The police have written her off as yet another teen runaway, but Fenny is convinced that something more sinister has happened. When she discovers a binder Sarah left behind entitled In Case I Go Missing, Fenny learns that at the time of her disappearance, Sarah was investigating her biggest case yet.

Fenny knows that it's up to her to finish what Sarah had begun. As she and her friend Sam piece together the clues that Sarah left for them, they find themselves up against a decades-old mystery—one that links to the town's dark history. But is this binder a guide to finding Sarah—or are Fenny and Sam already too late?

 

My Thoughts

In Case I Go Missing was an intriguing YA mystery that focused on the disappearance of a friend as the other two friends in their friend group learn she was secretly investigating a case on her own. This book had quite a few twists and turns, but what intrigued me the most was the effect Sarah's disappearance had on the friendship of the two left behind and how it affected them going forward. Yes, there were a lot of secrets exposed in the town and the investigation was interesting, but I really enjoyed the human element behind Sarah's disappearance and how everyone reacted to it.

 

The story is told from Fenny's POV, but this is one time I wish we also had Sam's POV as I found his character to be quite as interesting as Fenny's and would have loved knowing his thoughts and insights. Fenny was quite capable and very determined to find out what happened to her friend, but I also loved how she wasn't reckless or stupid in her investigation, knowing when to keep her counsel, when to get the police involved and not keep clues to herself, and being smart. I really enjoyed the relationship between Fenny and Sam and am so, so, so glad the author didn't make their relationship a romantic one, but stuck to a platonic one as it would have felt so out of context for the story.  Both of them had major struggles going on and I am glad the author didn't ignore those struggles and took the time to focus on them and intertwine them with Sarah's investigation.

 

I became quite invested in this investigation and I have to credit the author's writing style for that. It was definitely a suspenseful murder mystery, but it was so much more than that as the clues Sarah left behind for Sam and Fenny allowed the author to reflect on the power of friendship and how well friends can really know each other.  This shone through the events and gave Fenny and Sam purpose as they found clues that only they would recognize and understood that Sarah was not necessarily ignoring them, but protecting them.  I did suspect quite early on what had happened, but that was okay. The author kept the tension high from pretty much the first page of the book and didn't let you relax until the last page and managed to pull all the different threads floating around into one interesting ending. It might seem a bit chaotic at times, but upon reflection, there was purpose behind everything in this book. There were multiple themes running through this book; loyalty, friendship, the unraveling of family legacy and secrets, neglect, murder, trust, the conflict between justice and revenge, loneliness, death, and the list goes on.  

 

Verdict

In Case I Go Missing was an unpredictable book and I was not sure in which direction it was going for most of it, but at the same time this was an accessible book and definitely written with the YA audience in mind.  Both the plot and character development were good, and the tension never really let up right from the first page. Yes, naturally there were some cliche moments and there were some tropes used, but they didn't interfere with the scope of the story nor did they interfere with the twists and turns of the story. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a tension-filled mystery and I am looking forward to reading more works by this author.

 

Review: One Second Away by Rick Mofina

One Second Away

by Rick Mofina

Release Date: April 28, 2026

2026 Doubleday Canada

Softcover ARC; 400 Pages

ISBN: 978-0385701983

ASIN: B0FJ7YXY96

Audiobook: B0FJBDDJGZ

Genre: Fiction / Thriller

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

3.75 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

One sunny day in California, Jessie is hugging her nine-year-old son, Dylan, goodbye at the airport. He's travelling by himself, all the way across the country, to visit his father, Jessie's soon-to-be ex-husband, and his grandparents. Several hours later, Jessie gets a frantic call from Dylan's grandmother in New York. Dylan is missing.

In a second, Jessie's world turns upside down. The AirTag she'd stuck in his backpack says he's still at LAX. The airline insists that he was picked up at JFK by an elderly couple claiming to be his grandparents—but Jessie's in-laws insist they haven't seen him. Dylan has disappeared into thin air.

At the same moment, miles away, in Toronto, a train operator loses control of a subway train, and the fiery crash injures dozens of passengers. Jessie doesn’t know it yet, but this crash is inextricably linked to Dylan's disappearance. She has to find out how—and where her son is.

 

My Thoughts

One Second Away is one of those books that I read with a lot of trepidation as it took several of my fears and put them into one book: one, the fear of losing a child; two, the fear of being in train/plane collision; and three, having no control over any of it. This author grabbed your attention with a train crash right at the beginning of the book and pretty much never let up on the tension from that point on. 

 

While I enjoyed this quite a bit, I did struggle with Jessie as a main character.  I could certainly forgive her abrasiveness when wanting to know more information from the police about her missing child, but it irks me to no end when a person thinks they have a right to know everything and even barges in on a scene that is being criminally investigated and could compromise evidence. This was Jessie. Don't be Jessie. While brilliant when it comes to computers (something I'll come back to in a moment), she was not very good with personal relationships. While I understood her being abrasive with the police as they thought she was a suspect, she was like that with her friends as well. And for such a brilliant computer coder/designer, she spent most of her time running around the country like a chicken with her head cut off rather than doing any of her brilliant computer stuff. I know she had a team to help her, but why wouldn't she help them too? Why wouldn't she at least try to take some of the information herself and try to figure it out? She kept hinting at how it could be personal, so why share everything she had with others when they may not be trustworthy? I just didn't get it. 

 

Where this book really shines however, is the plot. This is not a character-driven story by any means, so the fast, tension-filled plot redeems the lack of character development. This is one of those books I kept picturing as a movie as it moved pretty quickly and the tension never let up. And I kept thinking of the movie Speed, how fun it was, but how silly some of the scenes were because you had to suspend belief for a lot of the movie. This is exactly the way it was in this book. Great action scenes, but you just had to go with it. I didn't find it difficult to figure out the culprit(s) in this book, but as I mentioned the character development was one-dimensional, at best.

 

Verdict

One Second Away was a fun, propulsive thriller that was heavy on tension and plot, but light on character and character development. You had to suspend belief quite a few times and just go with it, but that was okay, although I am sure those with more technological know-how might have different thoughts about this. I liked how the author managed to pull all the threads together even if I thought the reason was flimsy in the end. If you like fast-paced thrillers, this one might be for you.