Case of the Vanishing Visitor

Case of the Vanishing Visitor by Shanna Swendson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a long, slow news week for Lexie Lincoln, editor of the Stirling Mills Gazette, and by the time she's sent the paper to press, she's ready for her weekly Tex-Mex dinner at Margarita's restaurant. This week, the place is hopping, with no time to socialize with the staff, but Lexie is joined at the bar by a visitor, Florence Marz, who is in town to house sit for a friend. The two women have a great chat and agree to meet the next day so Lexie can interview Florrie about her impressions of the town. The next morning, however, Florrie doesn't show up and doesn't answer her phone. Lexie's instincts tell her something is amiss, yet no one else remembers seeing the woman in the restaurant. Since Lexie can see and talk to ghosts, the first thing she must do is determine whether she had dinner with a living person or a dead one. Once she answers that question, next up is what happened to Florrie, and why. Lexie does voice her concerns to a certain handsome police officer, who knows to take her seriously, but once the evidence starts to add up, it is just a little too perfect, so Lexie decides to keep digging until things start to make sense.

The fourth installment in the Lucky Lexie series is a fast, plot-driven read. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I do wish the slow-burn romance between Lexie and Wes wasn't quite so very slow. But at least this book builds on the secrets shared in the previous book, and they use those to work together to solve the mystery.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. There is no sex or swearing, and no real violence, though Lexie is threatened with a gun. There is virtually no character development in this book, but it relies on relationships built in the first three books, so reading them in order is highly recommended.

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Payback's a Witch

Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emmy Harlow left town as soon as she graduated from high school and has only been back to visit a few times since then, determined to live a magic-free life on her own terms in Chicago, after a painful breakup from an ill-advised secret romance with the Blackmoore family scion decimated her self-esteem. Now 26, Emmy has a job she adores, a mountain of student-loan debt, and a fierce desire to maintain her distance from everyone and everything she used to love. Enter The Gauntlet, a centuries-old tradition wherein the scions of the town's magical founding families compete once "every fifty years to determine which founding family got to preside over all things magical in Thistle Grove." The Harlow scion is the impartial Arbiter, and Emmy is the Harlow scion.

Her first night back in town, Emmy heads to a local bar and encounters her worst nightmare: Gareth Blackmoore and his drunk buddies. For his part, Gareth...absolutely doesn't recognize her and tries to hit on her, stunned that his pickup lines fail to impress. Natalia Avramov witnesses Emmy and Gareth's encounter and, to Emmy's shock, not only recognizes but actively remembers her from high school, though Talia was two years ahead. The women spend the rest of the evening drinking and bonding. The following morning, Emmy drags her pounding head to brunch with her BFF Linden Thorn and gets another shock: not only has Talia also had..."unfortunate relations" with Gareth, but he recently broke Lin's heart. Talia crashes their brunch to propose revenge: an unprecedented alliance between the Thorn scion (Lin's twin brother Rowan) and Avramov scion (Talia) against the Blackmoore scion (Gareth) at the upcoming Gauntlet. Though the challenges cannot be known in advance, plotting and planning provides ample time for sparks to fly between Talia and Emmy. Will those sparks be enough to rekindle Emmy's love for their town, or will they flame out as the Gauntlet ends?

This book was great fun to read, especially the descriptions of how the magic felt as it roared through Emmy, and I really enjoyed the steamy romance between Talia and Emmy, though sometimes I wanted to remind them that relationships which last cannot be built from chemistry alone--feeling "at home" with your partner is far more important than flutters and zings. Reading Emmy's struggle with her quarter-life crisis made me grateful to be past that phase of life. So much angst and self-delusion, so much pointless resistance to that which feeds her soul. I also appreciated that for all the angst, sexuality was a non-issue. No one batted at eye at Emmy being bisexual or Talia having a strong preference for women, yet also having a foolish fling with a man after a bad breakup. Humans are humans, and heartbreak is heartbreak.

I look forward to book two in the series, which presumably will feature Rowan and Isidora. Perhaps the author will flesh out some unanswered world-building questions in that installment, such as how intermarriage between founding families affects magical abilities and bloodlines. Surely this has come up at some point in the past 300 years? They can't *all* have married "normies." Or along those same lines, how are family names passed down? Specifically, do men who marry into the founding families take their wives' last names? Is that how Emmy's grandmother was able to keep and pass on the Harlow name? Or Gareth's grandmother? These questions and others didn't keep me from enjoying the story, but they did make me stop and wonder.

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways are both strong. There is a lot of swearing and drinking (I am seriously concerned for their livers!) but no violence. Tons of flirting, raging hormones, sexy thoughts and banter--in short, it's pretty steamy/spicy, but not especially explicit. The Gauntlet is reminiscent of the Triwizarding Tournament in Harry Potter.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eGalley ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

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