Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Review: The Magical Tea Shop (Charmed Love Book 1) by Aimee O’Brian


In the small town of Hazard, finding your soulmate might require magical intervention.

Ivy Wayland has a bet with her sister, who says you can’t have it all—success in business or love, but not both. Since opening her tea shop, Ivy knows where her priorities should be, but she has her heart set on her landlord. All her life, she’s heard the family lore about how their antique cookie press infuses homemade cookies with so much love that the recipient will fall head over heels for the giver. Ivy decides to take the chance.

Jaxon Langford is ready to move on. The only thing stopping him from selling up is concern about how some of his small business owners would fare with a greedier landlord. When one of his enthusiastic tenants brings him a tin of delicious-looking cookies, he’s charmed. He takes the cookies to his baseball team’s practice, only to watch them be devoured without getting so much as a bite.

Suddenly, Ivy has her pick of the town’s eligible bachelors—except Jaxon. How can she prove her sister wrong and win Jaxon’s heart?

 

My Review:

A magical love story.

What started out as a friendly bet with her sister, Ivy Wayland needed to find love and improve the business at her tea shop.  Already being attracted to Jaxon Langford, Ivy decided to make a batch of her family’s secret recipe magical cookies to win him over.  What could go wrong?   

The book moved along at a good pace.  Everything about this story gave me warm fuzzies.  I look forward to reading the next book in this series.  

 

Monday, January 6, 2025

Review: Whipping Up Worry (Little Dog Diner Book 8) by Emmie Lyn


April showers bring murder near the lighthouse flowers!

A missing teenager shows up at Dani Mackenzie’s Sea Breeze home on Blueberry Bay, but the runaway is too terrified to reveal anything about herself. The police, however, aren’t the least bit shy when they arrive right behind her, searching for Claire. It seems the teen was hiding at the Kitty Point Lighthouse—exactly where a body was discovered.

There’s a long list of people who are happy this victim, the Misty Harbor town manager, is dead, but Claire’s circumstances make her the prime suspect. Dani hesitates to bring more drama into her world, but after she learns that Claire is related to a dear friend in Misty Harbor, she agrees to hide the young woman to keep them both safe from harassment or worse.

But the evidence keeps coming, whipping everyone’s fear into a frenzy. Dani, along with her Jack Russel terrier, Pip, jump into high gear to unravel a deadly tangle of greed before another body is found.

This time it could be Dani’s.

 

My Review:

Lots of twists and turns.

This is another great addition to the Little Dog Diner series.  When the Misty Town manager is found dead on the same day a runaway teen, is found at the same location, all fingers point to her.  But Dani and her crew know Claire is innocent and set out to prove it.  With lots of twists and turns, this was a hard book to predict what would happen next or who the killer was.  I didn’t want to put this book down until I found out how it ended.