Title: How to Grieve Like a Victorian
Author: Amy Carol Reeves          
Genre: Romance   
Rating: DNF

Even in the wake of loss, there’s still love, life, snark, and burlesque to be had…

Dr. Lizzie Wells, a professor of British literature and bestselling author, is grieving her husband the Victorian way. She keeps a lock of his hair in a choker around her neck and dons widow’s weeds—and notifies her colleagues and students that she will accept only paper letters instead of email.

But then she’s offered a trip to London for escape and healing, where she befriends fellow bestselling novelist AD Hemmings. Rakish and handsome, Hemmings pushes her out of her comfort zone. She attends a Victorian-style séance, gets pulled onstage at a burlesque bar, and sightsees with her young son.

All the while, back in South Carolina, her late husband’s best friend and lawyer, Henry, peels back the layers of a family secret her mother-in-law is desperate to keep hidden. Cross-Atlantic “family business” updates turn into regular FaceTime hangouts and their friendship evolves into something more. Lizzie fears she’s falling in love with him…

Struggling with conflicting feelings, Lizzie travels to Brontë country, where in the windswept moors, she comes to peace with grief, joy, and all the in-betweens.

I didn’t make it too far in this. Lizzie’s decision to make everyone around her conform to what she believes is right felt absurd and pretentious—and is a picture of what’s wrong in society. Her pretentions got on my very last nerve—as did her kissing her husband’s best friend a month after her husband died unexpectedly and then fluttering around like a trapped moth, making a show of her reaction…but not actually caring. I had no desire to read any more about a person like that.

Amy Carol Reeves lives in Indiana. How to Grieve Like a Victorian is her new novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin Trade Publishing | Canary Street Press in exchange for an honest review.)

Title: Reports of His Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Author: James Goodhand    
Genre: Fiction   
Rating: DNF

lifetime ago, Ray “Spike” Thorns was a well-regarded caretaker on a boarding school’s grounds. These days, he lives the life of a recluse in a house rammed with hoarded junk, alone and disconnected from family or anyone he might have at one time considered a friend.

When his next-door neighbor drops dead on Spike’s doorstep, a case of mistaken identity according to the police, the hospital, the doctors—everyone—Spike is dead. Spike wants to correct the mistake, really he does, but when confronted with those who knew him best, he hesitates, forced to face whatever impression he’s left on the world. It’s a discovery that brings him up close to ghosts from his past, and to the only woman he ever loved.

Could it be that in coming face-to-face with his own demise, Spike is able to really live again? And will he be able to put things straight before the inevitable happens—his own funeral?

I loved A Man Called Ove, but I could not get into this. It was just a total non-starter for me. I have a hard time with neurotic people, and he was one, so there was just no connection for me.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/MIRA in exchange for an honest review.)

Title: Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds  
Author: Allison Brennan       
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Rating: DNF

Mia Crawford is responsible to a fault. She has to be. Between her high-demand job and taking care of her grandmother and her cats, she has little time for anything else. What time she does have, she pours into reading. Mysteries, romances, thrillers…books filled with women who are far more impulsive than she would ever dream of being. Now, forced into taking a long-overdue vacation, she finds herself on a luxurious private island where she just might have a chance to reinvent herself—for a little while, anyway. She can explore the island. Flirt shamelessly with a cute bartender. Have a vacation fling. Live like a heroine in one of her favorite novels.

Or she can curl up with a good book on the beach. Turns out reinventing yourself is easier planned than done. But when gossipy notes written in the margins of an old book turn out to be clues to the disappearance of another guest, Mia finds herself diving headfirst into a dangerous adventure. With everyone at the resort hiding secrets of their own, she’ll have to solve this real-life mystery before she becomes the next target.

Look, Mia was so obsessed with finding a man when she was going on this great vacation that it got on every nerve I had. Then she hears about the missing woman on the island and is immediately obsessed with that. I just can’t waste my time reading about someone like that.

Allison Brennan is a bestselling author. Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin/MIRA in exchange for an honest review.)