Angieville

My online book group does a Secret Santa exchange every year, and this last year mine knocked it out of the park. She sent me a copy of Brigid Kemmerer 's Letters to the Lost  along with the most creative accompanying letter and series of clues and mementos tied to a fictional relationship not even wholly of this world. It tied in perfectly with the book and, once I read it, her creativity and extra mile effort meant that much more. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and immediately sought out the companion book featuring Declan's enigmatic best friend Rev. More Than We Can Tell begins shortly after the events of Letters to the Lost  and, while Declan and Juliet are in the story, it focuses primarily on Rev and a new character named Emma Blue. I was already half in love with Rev Fletcher from the glimpses we get of him in the first book, so it was in no way surprising that I fell into his story without a hitch. This book can definitely be read as a standalone, though I think it...

The first review of the year! Writing this one always feels fresh and hopeful to me and like it may set the tone of my reading year in a way. This was a very good one to start with. And the moral of this story appears to be: I will never tire of Beauty and the Beast retellings. A fact I was not unaware of, but that I am happy to have confirmed once more, this time after reading Brigid Kemmerer 's A Curse So Dark and Lonely . My favorites tend to run the Robin McKinley way, with the most recent favorite retelling being Meagan Spooner's wonderful Hunted . But this is the first retelling of my favorite fairy tale that I've read that includes both traditional fantasy and modern contemporary settings. I didn't think it could work. Or, at least, I was skeptical that the one would interfere with the other or that the different dialogues might clash. How happy I was to find that the whole thing played out seamlessly. How happy I am to have discovered Brigid Kemmerer's w...