[Review] What Comes After - Katie Bayerl

Summary: Mari never gave much thought to the afterlife before her untimely demise, but she certainly didn’t think it would be an experimental wellness enclave called Paradise Gate—a place where the newly dead go to sort out the unfinished business of their lives. She also didn’t think the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her also recently deceased mother, Faye. Mari quickly realizes Faye is her unfinished business, and in order to move on to whatever’s next, she’ll have to find a way to forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all. But there’s so much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, and abandoning Mari in the end.

It’s a lot to sort through, but faced with the possibility of being turned out into the abyss, Mari gets to work. She enrolls in the prescribed self- actualization classes (think: journaling, positive self-talk, and lots of Youga™). It all seems pretty hokey, but still, the assignments force Mari to confront difficult truths about her past.

When a shocking revelation about Mari’s death captures the attention of the afterlife media, Mari is suddenly in the spotlight, her messy history being judged by the whole realm. She finds escape in an equally troubled boy, who takes Mari to an obscure part of Paradise Gate and  introduces her to rebels who show Mari that this “wellness center” is not all  it pretends to be. With classmates disappearing and an afterlife revolution brewing, Mari must decide whether to play it safe or break the rules. At stake? Her eternal fate. Literally. (Pub Date: Apr 29 2025)

[Blog Tour] The Keeper of Lonely Spirits

The Keeper of Lonely Spirits

Author: E.M. Anderson

Publication Date: March 25, 2025

ISBN: 9780778368526

MIRA Hardcover

 

[Blog Tour] ONE IN A MILLION

ONE IN A MILLION

Author: Beverley Kendall

Publication Date: March 18, 2025

ISBN: 9781525830327

Format: Trade Paperback

Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing / Canary Street Press

Price $18.99

 

[Review] Witness 8 - Steve Cavanagh

Summary: Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson.

A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth.

Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head.
 (Pub Date: Mar 25 2025)

[Blog Tour] Beach Vibes

Beach Vibes

Susan Mallery

On Sale Date: March 18, 2025

978-1335402530, 1335402535

Hardcover

$30.00 USD, $37.00 CAD

Fiction / Family Life / Siblings

384 pages

 

[Review] True Life in Uncanny Valley - Deb Caletti

Summary: Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a new, better reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous—a secret. 

When Eleanor’s spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo's young son—her half-brother—she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers. She only has to do one thing:  become someone else. With just a few well-placed lies, Eleanor is catapulted into an unfamiliar, intoxicating whirlwind of money and ego, and into a new romance with a cute boy who works for Hugo. But in a place where image is everything and reality can be rewritten, is anything real—even the Harrisons themselves?

Caught between her own secrets and the ones she’s uncovering about her father and his latest invention, Eleanor faces a question that technology can't answer: what is your true self, and how do you know when you find her? (Pub Date: Mar 18 2025)