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[Book Review] Ghost House By Alexandra Adornetto & Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce
17-year-old Chloe Kennedy can see dead people. It’s a gift she’s had since she was 6, but managed to block with her mother’s help. Now, with her mother gone, the ghosts are back and they want her attention. With her father lost to his own grief, it is decided that Chloe and her younger brother will spend winter vacation with their paternal grandmother at her English country estate turned Bed and Breakfast, Grange Hall. Almost from the moment Chloe sets foot on the estate, the spirits that haunt it make themselves known. One of those spirits is Alexander Reade, a devastatingly handsome gentleman ghost Chloe feels a strong, unshakable attraction…
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[Book Review] Jillian Spectre & The Dream Weaver By Nic Tatano & Paramount Coffee Almond Amaretto
When last we saw seer/astral projector/healer Jillian Spectre and her also-paranormally-gifted friends, they were busy getting through their senior year of high school and stopping Jillian’s deadbeat, technopathic (and kind of psychopathic) dad from taking over society. Now, while facing the challenges of their first year of college, the group is once again called upon to save the world as they know it – this time from the Dream Weaver, a powerful enemy who can bend a person’s reality and manipulate them into a dream-like state, even if they’re wide awake at the time.
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[Anthology Review] Lovecraft’s Monsters Edited By Ellen Datlow & Boca Java Spiced Vanilla Bean Coffee
I've only ever been a casual fan of Lovecraft, having never delved much into his work or Mythos, but I love his monsters – their intense otherness, the fear of the unknowable they strike in the heart of readers. An anthology paying homage to these monsters, kicked off with the work of Neil Gaiman, was a perfect fit for me.
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[Book Review] Crane By Stacey Rourke & Coffee Shop Of Horrors Ichabod’s Dame
Crane is a very unique and imaginative take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that manages to stay true to the essence of the original while adding in its very own dark twists and turns. The story unfolds in chapters that alternate between present day, with the return of the murderous Headless Horseman, and flashbacks to when the original tale took place in the late 1700's, telling the real story of what transpired all those years ago in Sleepy Hollow.
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[Book Review] Black Widow By Jennifer Estep & Coffee Beanery Caramel Apple
Gin Blanco, the badass ice and stone elemental wielding assassin with a seemingly perpetual target on her back, is back in the 12th installment of the Elemental Assassin series. The person targeting Gin this time around is very different from her usual adversaries – M.M. Monroe is calm, confident, and very very cunning, patiently bidding her time and quietly weaving a web of misfortune around Gin and her friends from behind the scenes using all the power money and connections can buy in a town as overrun with corruption as Ashland, and that’s before she even unleashes a drop of the powerful acid magic she has at her finger tips.
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[Book Review] A Groom For Christmas By Cara Marsi & Starbucks Christmas Blend
I love Hallmark Christmas movies. They’re feel-good movies at their finest and they get me through the stress of the holiday season. They’re a little too cutesy, and cliché as all get out, but also so heartwarming and romantic - they’re my guilty little pleasure and I just can’t get enough of them. A Groom For Christmas reads exactly like a Hallmark Christmas movie. (Well maybe not exactly like a Hallmark Christmas movie, but if Hallmark movies were x-rated, then it would be exactly like a Hallmark Christmas movie - this book has a couple pretty explicit, steamy scenes)
books, mindful living, and everyday magic
