Occasionally I review a book for NetGalley. I just re-read a review I wrote last fall, long before its release date (today), and thought I'd mention it here, in case there are other people who don't read the reviews on the bookseller sites.   

Resting Place by Camille Sten is a page-turner. A murder, a manor house deep 
in the Swedish countryside, longstanding family conflicts, and a blizzard provide plenty of atmosphere, questions and chills. Ms. Sten knows how to write an eerily compelling mystery. I read until I absolutely had to go to bed, and then bits of Resting Place intruded on my dreams. The surprising denouement will leave you pondering. I’m looking forward to another book by this author.

Note: I read a lot, and I’m a tough critic. I don’t recall a single typo, wrong word/bad word choice, or clunky bit in this book. This is so rare, I’m amazed.

I received an ARC for my fair review.

And then I thought, why not post a review of one that's not out yet? So here's what I wrote about And By Fire, a dual-time police procedural by Evie Hawtrey, which will come out on May 10, 2022.   

When dual time novels work well, they can be very good indeed. Because I am picky about historical detail, I am frequently not so much disappointed as annoyed. Even the best author may trip when writing about an earlier period through failure to do enough research or to understand just how much he or she does not know. Evie Hawtrey’s dual time police procedural/mystery And By Fire came as a pleasant surprise.

The modern day sections involve the hunt for a serial arsonist in London by a pair of detectives, male and female, who have a prior romantic history. That by itself makes a good story. The parts set in 1666 at the time of London’s Great Fire follow the efforts of a fireworks maker and a lady-in-waiting to solve the murder of a friend committed during that conflagration. The background is well researched and the characters are believable for that period. They are not 21^st century people in costume.

The two sets of characters’ methods and situations differ but some of their dilemmas are the same. Together the stories dovetail and reinforce each other. This was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I received an ARC in return for my unbiased review of And By Fire.  

Note: Galley proofs come with the advisory that typographical errors will be corrected before publication. As I have seen many, many typos in books put out by major publishing houses, I tend to be cynical. In this case, I do hope the publisher corrected the use of  "alright" which was my only real criticism of this novel. No matter how many times you see “alright” appearing in professionally published books, it’s still not a real word. 

From https://www.grammarly.com/blog/alright-vs-all-right/ “People are often surprised to learn that alright is not an accepted spelling of all right. Although the one-word spelling of alright is seen in informal writing, teachers and editors will always consider it incorrect. To use the expression with impunity, it is best to spell it as two words: all right.”