Tag Archives: book reviews

Review: The Accidental Alchemist, by Gigi Pandian

Illustration of a crouching gargoyle, smiling, with large wings, holding a cooking whisk. In the background is a large house. Text includes the title: The Accidental Alchemist, and author: Gigi Pandian.

The Accidental Alchemist, by Gigi Pandian (Midnight Ink, 2015)

An ex-alchemist. A living gargoyle. A delinquent teen. What could possibly go wrong?

Zoe Faust hopes she’s finally found a safe place to settle down in Portland, Oregon, after so many years living on the road in her travel trailer. Except she discovers the gargoyle Dorian in one of the crates shipped from her former shop in Paris. And a local teen, Brixton, breaks into her house on a dare because everyone thinks it’s haunted.

Not the most peaceful start. Then a man is murdered on the property and valuable items are stolen. Zoe, Dorian, and Brixton forge an unlikely team to solve both crimes—before time runs out for Dorian.

It’s the characters that give this mystery heart. They share a common bond of not fitting in. Zoe’s full of regret, and Dorian isn’t human. The friendship that develops, extending to include Brixton, is heartwarming. And Dorian… who’d expect a formerly stone gargoyle to be a French chef? (The book includes vegan recipes—at over 300 years of age, Zoe is particular about what she puts into her body.)

The Accidental Alchemist is book 1 in the Accidental Alchemist Mysteries series. Highly recommended for a good read.

Gigi Pandian’s other series are the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mysteries and the Secret Staircase Mysteries. I’ve read the first in each one and look forward to the rest. For more about the author and her books, visit gigipandian.com.

[Review copy from the public library.]

Reviews: Red Moon Rising and Dirty Glory, by Pete Greig

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Red Moon Rising cover art. Image: blackk-silhouetted people facing a red sky with a red moon in the top right. A darker circle beneath with text about foreward, revision, update information.

Red Moon Rising and Dirty Glory, by Pete Greig (with Dave Roberts for Red Moon Rising)

Q: What happens when a group of Christians decide to pray 24-7 for a short time, maybe a month or two?

A: It starts a movement that’s still going strong 25+ years later.

Red Moon Rising: Rediscover the Power of Prayer chronicles the 24-7 Prayer movement’s first five years, and Dirty Glory: Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You covers the next five and beyond.

This is clearly a story of what God did—through obedient people, to be sure, but there’s no way a group of humans could build and sustain an international, interdenominational movement like this. Nor could humans arrange the more dramatic experiences these books relate.

Book cover image: folded hands drawn in black, raised in silhouette against a red moon against a blue background. Text: Dirty Glory, Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You. Pete Greig.

They began in prayer. Then they found themselves on mission in the strangest places, still praying but also serving and working for justice. This is an interdenominational movement that sees Christians from widely different backgrounds and denominational preferences serving and worshipping side by side for the glory of God. Looks like the Body of Christ to me.

If you want to be encouraged, even excited, in your faith, or if you’re just curious what this international 24-7 Prayer movement is all about, I highly recommend both of these books. Then, check out the 24-7 Prayer International website (or possible your country has one) for more details and resources.

The books read like novels, and if you have the chance to catch them in audiobook format the author’s energetic delivery adds to the impact. That’s what I did, but now I want to go back and read in print or digital so I can highlight the most impactful bits and also linger over some of the well-turned phrases.

The story doesn’t finish with the books. Have a listen to Pete Greig’s 25^th anniversary message in 2024. As it happens, I’m posting this review on September 5, 2025—the 26^th anniversary of 24-7 Prayer’s quiet beginnings.

Pete Greig’s biography on the 24-7 Prayer International website describes him as “a best-selling author, pastor and bewildered instigator of the 24-7 Prayer movement which has reached more than half the nations on earth.” For more about him, visit dirtyglory.org. For more about the 24-7 Prayer Movement or for prayer resources, visit 24-7prayer.com.

[Review copies from the public library via the Hoopla app.]

Review: Under Lock and Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian

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Under Lock and Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian (St. Martin’s, 2022)

This first-in-series mystery novel ticks so many boxes. Interesting characters, strong family dynamics, good friendships, threads from the past that may include a generational curse, a puzzling crime with multiple misdirections… and food, all in a clean read. Plus bonuses like multi-ethnic characters, stage magician know-how, references to classic mysteries and authors, and best of all secret rooms and staircases. Oh, and crossover characters from at least one of the author’s other series.

I did say it ticks a lot of boxes…

Tempest Raj loves her multigenerational, ethnically-mixed family and their unique home. Visits are great. But she’s not happy to be living there again after a performance-gone-wrong that nearly killed her in front of an audience.

Then she’s present when a fresh body is discovered at her father’s construction company’s job site—in a room that hadn’t been opened for years. The rumoured family curse says “the eldest dies by magic.” Was Tempest the intended victim?

As unexplained, possibly supernatural, happenings abound, the family must consider that the curse may be real. Or is it all a cleverly-executed illusion?

Under Lock and Skeleton Key comes with recipes and discussion questions, and although this mystery is solved at the end the ongoing mystery of Tempest’s mother’s disappearance/death is ongoing. I’m eager to read book two, The Raven Thief.

Under Lock and Skeleton Key is multi-award-winning author Gigi Pandian’s twelfth novel, first in The Secret Staircase Mysteries. Her other series are the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mysteries and The Accidental Alchemist Mysteries.

Visit the Gigi Pandian website for more about the author and her books. Get both a free short mystery and a recipe book by signing up for her author newsletter.

[Review copy from the public library.]

Review: Vinyl Resting Place, by Olivia Blacke

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Overhead view of a storefront with cafe table and chairs and a cat. A vinyl record lies broken just outside the door. A large image of a vinyl record at the top of the cover says "Vinyl Resting Place The Record Shop Mysteries".

Vinyl Resting Place, by Olivia Blacke (St. Martin’s, 2023)

They grew up in their grandparents’ record store. Between fond memories and family ties, it’s no surprise when three Texan sisters open a combination record shop and coffee bar on the original site.

In the small town of Cedar River, just outside of Austin, everyone remembers the Jessup sisters—and the store. The grand reopening draws a crowd—including a murderer.

Juni (Juniper) is the youngest, recently moved back to town after a corporate buyout. She and sisters Tansy and Maggie have pooled their savings to set up the store.

They should leave solving the crime to the professionals—except the police make Uncle Calvin look like the number one suspect. The suddenly-missing Uncle Calvin, who’s just skipped town.

Vinyl Resting Place is a good, clean, quirky mystery with a heavy dose of family, puns (you got that from the title, right?) and an undercurrent of rivalry for Juni’s attention between her ex and her childhood best friend.

Where do the puns come in? Well, they had to name the drinks for their coffee bar. How better to do it than by riffing off song titles?

This first book in the Record Shop Mysteries series is a perfect de-stressing read. There’s even a cat. Books 2 and 3, Fatal Groove and Rhythm and Clues, are already on my to-read list.

Author Olivia Blacke’s website describes her as “Mysterious, Spooky, Cozy & Kooky!” As well as the Record Shop Mysteries and the Brooklyn Murder Mysteries, she writes “darkly humorous supernatural mysteries.” Like the Ruby & Cordelia Mysteries, where one of the sleuths is a ghost. For more about the author and her work, visit oliviablacke.com.

[Review copy from the public library.]

Review: What We Hide, by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker

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Book cover: What We Hide, by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker. Image: woman running toward an ornate stone building, passing benches and trees. Overcast sky suggesting an approaching storm.

What We Hide, by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker (Thomas Nelson, 2024)

A crumbling southern US university. A couple whose marriage shattered with the death of their toddler. A cache of artifacts that seem to be being sold with illegal provenance papers. And… a corpse.

Savannah and Hezekiah Webster might have survived losing their daughter—if he hadn’t turned to alcohol. Two years later, Hez claims to have changed. Savannah doesn’t dare risk her heart again, but when she becomes a person of interest in the on-campus death, she needs his help.

She’s a history professor looking for tenure in the university her father helped establish. He’s a top defense attorney with a new passion for helping the unjustly accused. Can working together reunite their hearts? Will they live long enough to find out?

Much of the story takes place on or near the university grounds, and fans of Colleen Coble’s Pelican Harbor series will recognize some of the nearby town’s residents.

What We Hide is a Tupelo Grove Novel, and the epilogue highlights an unanswered thread that’s begging for a sequel (Where Secrets Lie, releasing June 2025).

This writing duo has also released a stand-alone tech thriller, I Think I Was Murdered, with different characters and a different location. And no, it’s not a ghost story. It features a widow and an advanced AI chat feature. On my to-read list…

What We Hide comes with discussion questions, but don’t peek before you reach the end. Spoilers…

Colleen Coble is a bestselling author of over 75 Christian romantic suspense novels. Rick Acker is a Supervising Deputy Attorney General by day and a bestselling author of Christian legal thrillers by night. For more about the authors, visit colleencoble.com and rickacker.com

[Review copy from the public library.]

Review: How to Hear God: a simple guide for normal people, by Pete Greig

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How to Hear God: a simple guide for normal people, by Pete Greig (Zondervan Reflective, 2022)

Can humans today hear from the God of the Bible? Not necessarily audibly, but can we know what He’s saying to us? If you’re curious, I highly recommend this book as an excellent, inspiring resource.

You can tell from the subtitle that it’s not a dry theological work. Instead, it’s a refreshing, accessible, and practical look at various ways Christians can “hear” God (and how to discern A: is it God, and B: am I hearing clearly?).

The key Scriptural passage acting as a framework for the book is the two travellers on the Emmaus Road from Luke 24, where the risen Christ walks with them and teaches them. And the emphasis is on hearing as a natural part of a conversational relationship with God.

While acknowledging Jesus as the Living Word, the book also addresses hearing God’s external word through the Bible, prayer, and prophecy, and His internal word in our spirits, in dreams, and in community, creation, and culture.

Chapters include examples from the Bible, personal experience, quotations from other works on the subject, and mini bio features of Christians both contemporary and historical.

Pete Greig is an excellent speaker, and by narrating his own book in audio form he makes it feel like hearers are listening to him on a podcast or at a conference. Now I want to buy a print copy to study in more depth. The questions for individual and group discussion will be helpful, as will the recommendations for further reading.

The author is also one of the founders of the 24/7 Prayer movement, which brings us, among other resources, the Lectio365 app and the Inner Room prayer app. You can read his bio at dirtyglory.org or at 24-7prayer.com/team/pete-greig.

[Review copy from the public library—but it’s on my to-buy list!]

Review: A Forboding of Petrels, by Steve Burrows

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A Forboding of Petrels, by Steve Burrows (Point Blank, 2022)

If you like British-based police procedurals, unconventional detectives, down-to-earth characters, and plenty of bird sightings, the Birder Murder Mystery series is for you. This particular mystery will take you to rural England and to Antarctica.

In England: A disciplinary suspension bars DCI Dominic Jejeune from involvement in any active cases. Not that there’s much going on except someone setting a few fires. Well, until they find a body.

In Antarctica: A research scientist is murdered.

Dominic gains access to the local research centre connected with the dead scientist. From the reports and sporadic contact with the expedition’s leader, he begins to trace the clues.

But when his findings become linked with arson at the local research centre, he’s skirting dangerously close to breaking the terms of his suspension.

This is book 7 in the Birder Murder Mystery series. Each novel’s mystery is complete. A reader new to the series starting here would be able to follow the plot but would miss the nuances that have built over time between the characters. It’s a series worth reading from the beginning, so I suggest you start with A Siege of Bitterns.

I love the loyalty that’s grown among these characters, and the descriptions of the natural settings. Like this one:

It had rained earlier that morning, a fine mist so gentle it had settled on the stalks of the grasses without bowing them. (p. 202, Chapter 29)

I also appreciate the way each book touches on details of environmental issues (in an organic way, never feeling like an agenda or a lesson).

Award-winning author Steve Burrows is a UK-born, Canadian-based writer with a long history of experience in the birding world. For more about the author and his work, visit steveburrows.org.

[Review copy from the public library.]

Review: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, by John Mark Comer

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Orange book cover with no images. Simple text: John Mark Comer; The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (the word hurry is scratched out); Foreword by John Ortberg

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, by John Mark Comer (WaterBrook, 2019)

Subtitle: “How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World”

“The problem isn’t when you have a lot to do; it’s when you have too much to do and the only way to keep the quota up is to hurry.” (p, 21)

Can you relate? In this book, author John Mark Comer invites us to discover “what the way of Jesus has to say to the epidemic of hurry.” (p. 76)

He’s approaching the topic from a Christian perspective. However, there’s plenty of valuable content about the problem—and possible solutions—for people of other faiths or no faith.

Meticulously researched, quoting multiple sources and studies, the book is highly readable. Look at the endnotes too. Sometimes they expand on quoted material, and sometimes they’re funny. I found some other books I hope to read later.

There’s a link at the end to a digital workbook called How to Unhurry, which comes with brief teaching videos.

For me, this is a gateway book leading into his newer book, Practicing the Way, which I’m hoping will further expand on the principles I’ve just read.

Highly recommended. Thought provoking. And with practical suggestions on how to implement the practices of “Silence and Solitude, Sabbath, Simplicity, and Slowing.” Not everything will feel applicable, but if we gain only one or two things it will be a journey worth taking.

John Mark Comer is a teacher, speaker, and bestselling author with a refreshing delivery of longstanding truths we need to hear. For more about him and his work, including links to podcasts, his blog, and his newsletter signup, visit johnmarkcomer.com.

[Review copy from the public library.]

Review: Stumped, by Emily James

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Book cover with a maple leaf. Main image is a suitcase with a bloody handprint, sitting in a pool of blood. Text" Maple Syrup Mysteries; Stumped; Emily James.

Stumped, by Emily James (Stronghold Books, 2020)

She left high-pressure city life behind and is now part-owner of a maple syrup farm in Michigan and a partner in a small-town law firm. She’s also a wife and expectant mother—and an amateur sleuth with a knack for digging out the truth.

There weren’t supposed to be any new cases for Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes-Cavanagh to tackle before her baby’s birth. But when a man shows up at her office covered in blood, with no idea what happened, she knows he’s going to need a defense attorney.

Nicole only represents innocent clients. How can she be sure he’s telling the truth?

And how did we get to 13 books in the Maple Syrup Mysteries series? I’ve enjoyed them all.

This series is written for a mainstream audience. As such, although Nicole and her husband are Christians there’s not an overt faith thread. In this novel, I appreciated watching her wrestle with one of the murder suspects being a priest.

She can’t dismiss the possibility of his guilt, but she doesn’t want to be one of those people who look at church scandals and automatically assume the worst. Because of her faith—and her experience with believers who sometimes do wrong but who often are simply misunderstood—she’s glad to be the one pursuing this investigation because she can approach it with more sensitivity.

Stumped is a strong ending to an engaging series. The Maple Syrup Mysteries are cleverly plotted, the characters have depth, and there’s enough quirky humour to make me smile.

I’d encourage anyone new to the series to start at the beginning and follow the characters and their relationships. You can get a free ebook copy of the prequel, Sapped, at the author’s website by signing up for her newsletter. Here’s the link: authoremilyjames.com/book/sapped.

Emily James is also the author of the Cupcake Truck Mysteries and the Cat and Mouse Whodunits. There’s at least one other author with the same name, so to see more about this Emily James and her work, it’s best to visit her website at authoremilyjames.com.

[Review copy from my personal library.]

Picks from 2024

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Goodreads tells me I read 59 books in 2024.

Calendar, 2024, books. Text: My Year in Books 15,935 pages read, 59 books read. Image of Janet Sketchley. — Image credit: Goodreads. Click to view full details on Goodreads.

From those 59 books in 2024, here are my top picks:

Book of the year, fiction: Born of Gilded Mountains, by Amanda Dykes

Book of the year, nonfiction: Abiding in Christ, by Andrew Murray

Christian living: Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, by Tyler Staton; God Has a Name, by John Mark Comer, Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer, by David G. Benner

Fantasy: The Sunlit Man, by Brandon Sanderson

Favourite re-read (fiction): The End of the Magi, by Patrick Carr; The Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge

Favourite re-read (non-fiction): Practicing His Presence, by Frank Laubach and Brother Lawrence (Gene Edwards, editor)

Heartwarming reads: The Divine Proverb of Streusel, by Sara Brunsvold

Mystery/suspense: Queen of Hearts, by Heather Day Gilbert; The Grey Wolf, by Louise Penny

Nova Scotia fiction: The Bad Reputations, by Karen V. Robichaud

Science fiction: The Icarus Job, by Timothy Zahn

To see what I loved most about my top three picks, see my entry at Shepherd.com.

Some of these books were produced in 2024, some previously. Pop a note into the comments with your own favourites?