New Release! Merry Everything by Joanne DeMaio ~ My Thoughts #MerryEverything

Congrats Joanne

on the recent release of

Merry Everything!

Merry Everything by Joanne DeMaio

Holiday Fiction, Christmas, 248 pages

Published October 1, 2025, by Joanne DeMaio

From New York Times bestselling author Joanne DeMaio comes a much-anticipated holiday novel and love story to warm your heart.

“Enchanting.” “Delightful.” “Enthralls.” “Feel-good.” “Rich with nostalgia, like a black-and-white Christmas movie you look forward to viewing again and again.” USA Today, as well as one of the nation’s bestselling magazines—along with readers everywhere—know you can count on Joanne DeMaio for a New England Christmastime classic.

“Merry Christmas, Eddie.”

“Should we never meet again, Nora, merry everything.”

For Nora Chadwick and Eddie Alden, those parting words close out each holiday season. Seasons that run the gamut from comfort and joy to hurt and heartbreak. But their fond farewell prevails through it all. 

Set against the backdrop of a beautiful New England landmark, Merry Everything is inspired by an iconic Connecticut treasure. Nora and Eddie’s endearing love story not only brings this special place back to life—but also brings back the way life could (and used to) be.

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My thoughts about Merry Everything ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)

First lines—"Snow fell overnight. Not much, but enough."

I love Christmas stories. I totally enjoy this time of year, with all the new holiday books coming out. And I'm a huge fan of Joanne DeMaio's stories. Merry Everything is the best of both worlds!

Merry Everything has a nostalgic feel to it with the beautifully decorated department store, all of the Christmas decorations, the joy of the season, the friendliness and familiarity of the staff and customers, and the traditions. I really wanted to become a part of this world. 

Then throw in the friendship of Nora and Eddie. They see each other for two weeks every year when Eddie comes back the store to operate the store's old, manual elevator. See, there's that tradition I was talking about. Their deep friendship grows over the years, with Eddie watching Nora go through her good times and her bad times. For those two weeks each year, he is there for her.   

Merry Everything is a heartwarming, beautiful love story that I enjoyed immensely. I highly recommend it and you should definitely add it to your holiday reading list.

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About the author

Joanne DeMaio is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary fiction. She enjoys writing about friendship, family, love and choices, while setting her stories in New England towns or by the sea.

Joanne’s books include the New York Times Bestseller Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans, the first in her ongoing and groundbreaking Seaside Saga. These eleven (and counting) novels journey with a group of beach friends, much the way a TV series does, continuing with the same cast of characters and their storylines from book-to-book.

Joanne’s winter novels have also received much acclaim. These heartwarming standalones are set in the same snowy New England town. Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes became a USA Today Bestseller, and has been featured in national magazines and Six Flags theme parks.

In addition, Joanne’s debut novel, Whole Latte Life, won first place in a competition at BookExpo America and was named a Kirkus Reviews Critics’ Pick. Her other novels have appeared in Redbook, First for Women magazine, Southern Living, USA Today and more. ~ Author's website

Connect with Joanne

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

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Cover Reveal! Alice Adrift by Susan Bacon #AliceAdrift @XpressoTours

Alice Adrift by Susan Bacon
Publication date: November 4th 2025
Genres: Contemporary, Women’s Fiction

Alice Adrift is an intimate human drama about loss and recovery, coupling and uncoupling, and a child caught in the turmoil.

It’s the 1990s. The Fishers—Alice, David and their two sons, Tobias and Jeremiah—live in the upper Northwest quadrant of Washington DC, home to an urbane mix of journalists, academics and professionals. Alice is a composer and music professor. Her husband is an architect of some note. The economy is booming. Life is good. But their seemingly perfect existence is shattered when Jeremiah, their youngest, dies suddenly of an unidentifiable illness.

In the years that follow, Alice and David seem to lose their bearings. When Toby appears to be struggling, they move him to an alternative school with a baffling curriculum (“They don’t even teach reading, Mom”) and a peculiar set of rules (“Absolutely no television!”). Alice doesn’t seem to fit in, but David is drawn to everything about the place including, Alice eventually realizes, one of Toby’s teachers, the striking woman with the long, tangled red hair.

Not long after David moves out of the house, a group of young men move in next door, ingratiating themselves to Alice. She finds herself attracted to one of them, which sets her further off-kilter. How will she find her way back? How will Toby emerge from all this disruption? And what on earth will happen to David?

Add to Goodreads | Pre-order

About the author

Susan is best-known for her award-winning mysteries — The History Teacher and its sequel The Art Collector. Her latest novel, Alice Adrift, is a bit of a departure. An intimate human drama about loss and recovery, coupling and uncoupling, and a child caught in the turmoil, it is slated for release on November 4, 2025.

A graduate of Barnard College with a degree in history, Susan is a former journalist, copywriter and ghostwriter whose credits include an international best seller. She grew up in Wilmington, Delaware and has lived in New York City, Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, all of which serve as settings for her novels.

Connect with Susan

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Instagram

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Release Day! So Transparent by Mallory Pierce ~ My Thoughts & an Excerpt! #SoTransparent

Happy Release Day!

Congratulations Mallory

on the release today of

So Transparent!

So Transparent by Mallory Pierce

(GhostWriter Mystery #3)

Paranormal Cozy Mystery, 290 pages

Published October 27, 2025

Wedding bells are ringing in Woebrook, which is cause for celebration…until the Grim Reaper crashes the party.

The town’s resident celebrity, horror writer Nolan Drake, brings his ghostly housemate, Gwen, to the nuptials, and she’s excited to attend her first Frink family function in over a century. Too bad everything that can go wrong before the ceremony does, and all the snafus and drama culminate in wedding planner Natalie Doyle’s body being found face down in a pile of cake.

As Nolan (and in no small part Gwen) helped the police solve two recent murders, he’s recruited by the WPD’s cockiest cop to participate in a “bro-vestigation.” The men, and their tag-along spirit, soon learn that Natalie’s personal and professional lives were very complicated and messy. In the days leading to her demise, she was cheated on, stolen from, manhandled, sabotaged, and verbally accosted in public twice!

With a host of suspects lying through their teeth and pointing fingers at each other, this might be Nolan and Gwen’s toughest case yet. At least, it’s not ice-cold like Gwen’s own unsolved murder, which continues to haunt her. Will the discovery of a clue from the past finally set her on the path to putting that mystery to rest?

If you enjoy sassy sleuths and supernatural shenanigans, you won’t want to miss So Transparent! It’s similar in tone and content to the works of Paranormal Cozy Mystery authors Angie Fox, Danielle Garrett, and Amy Boyles. 

    

Buy So Transparent here

My thoughts about So Transparent ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First lines—"Lying in a supine position atop an exam table with an elastic strap wrapped around the base of his skull, Nolan looked as though he was being subjected to some form of medieval torture."

This series is so much fun and So Transparent is book three of the series, so there's a lot of paranormal fun to be had. 

Nolan and Gwen work together to solve murders with Nolan working directly with the police to solve the cases. Gwen feeds him a lot of useful information that she is able to discover using her ghostly powers. I love their relationship and how they feed off of each other to solve the case. I am constantly chuckling at their antics. 

Natalie, the wedding planner, isn't having a very good day. All of the plans for this beautiful wedding are falling apart, due to no fault of her own—someone is out to get her. And then when she is found face down in the wedding cake, things definitely aren't going her way. But then that's when the fun begins, with Nolan and Gwen on the case, discovering who dunnit.

Along with the murder cases that they always find themselves in the midst of, they are also trying to uncover the truth of Gwen's demise. That is an ongoing case and I am totally invested in learning the truth about that.

I highly recommend So Transparent and it's the perfect Halloween read for right now! I devoured it and I look forward to more antics and crime-solving from Gwen and Nolan. Check it out!

I received an ARC of So Transparent and this is my honest opinion.

Read my thoughts about That's the Spirit!

Read my thoughts about Ghost with the Most

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Excerpt

Marcus retreated inside the townhouse and was about to shut the big, black door in the other men’s faces when I shouted, “Wait! We don’t know his whereabouts at the time of Natalie’s death!”

Nolan’s hand jutted out to stop the door from shutting. “Where were you between four forty-five and five forty-five this afternoon?”

Marcus poked his tousled head through the crack between the door and its frame. “Is this book writer seriously asking me for an alibi?” he posed the question to Warmond, and yes, he put a disdainful emphasis on the word ‘book’, which conveyed his lack of appreciation for that art form.

“If you have one, we could cross you off the suspect list,” the police officer said with a hopeful lilt in his voice. 

Marcus glowered. “I went for a run to burn off some steam after getting that text about the baby from Nat.”

Smiling with relief, Warmond turned to Nolan and said, “Did you hear that? He went for a run, which makes perfect sense because athletes have to stay in shape.”

Warmond might have been satisfied by Marcus’s response, but I wasn’t. “As far as alibis go, that’s a very vague one. Try and extract more details from him.”

“Where did you go for this run?” Nolan inquired.

“There’s a sweet running path down by the river,” Warmond noted with a glance back at the darkened water.

“He’s feeding the man answers!” I exclaimed with dismay.

“Yeah, that’s where I like to run,” Marcus said.

“He’s still being vague. You need to pin him down!” I urged Nolan.

“How many miles did you run this afternoon?” he asked our suspect.

“Not sure,” was his noncommittal response.

“Your Garmin” —Nolan gestured at the large-faced black watch strapped to Marcus’s left wrist— “should have that information, and its GPS would have logged your location at the time of Natalie’s death.”

“Good thinking!” Warmond gave Nolan an Attaboy! slug to the arm before telling Marcus, “I can confirm your alibi by checking the data on your Garmin.” He reached out his hand, clearly expecting his friend to turn over the watch.

“I didn’t have it on earlier,” Marcus claimed, then crossed his arms over his chest in a defiant stance.

“So, you went for a run without your running watch, but you’re wearing it now just to lounge around the house?” Nolan’s disbelief, which I shared, was evident in his tone.

“I’m done answering questions. If the police” —he looked pointedly at Warmond “want to ask me anything else, they can contact my lawyer.” And with that proclamation, Marcus slammed the door shut, leaving Warmond and Nolan to stare at it in dumbfounded shock.

“You know what one of the best things about being a ghost is?” I asked Nolan, who turned to me with a raised eyebrow. 

“I can enter a home and look around without a search warrant,” I said with a smirk, then walked right through the closed door.

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About the author

Mallory Pierce is a third-generation graveyard enthusiast (tombstones tell such interesting stories!), reader of Nancy Drew, player of Clue, devout dissectologist (look it up!), and the owner of several fetching trench coats. So, it makes perfect sense that she spends her days writing stories about a plucky, crime-solving ghost.

Despite having visited haunted houses from San Jose to Savannah, Mallory has yet to have a close encounter with anyone from the Great Beyond and that’s probably for the best because she’s sort of a wimp. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone. 

Ghost With the Most is the second book in the GhostWriter Mystery Series, which is penned by Mallory Pierce (a pseudonym of award-winning Romantic Comedy author Tracie Banister). 

Connect with Mallory

Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading? October 27, 2025 #IMWAYR

    

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It's an opportunity to visit other blogs and to comment on their reads. And ... you can add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome everyone. This meme started with J Kaye's Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date. And here we are! 

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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a good week. 

Happy reading!

What I'm currently reading

The Perfect Hosts

by Heather Gudenkauf

eARC for review

Pub date ~ November 4

Dear Orchid: Letters and New Beginnings—True Stories and Fiction filled with Heart, Humor, and Hope

by Carol Van Den Hende

eARC for review

Pub date ~ November 11

Red Skies

(Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters #4)

by Kay Bratt

audio-book from my TBR collection

Published January 2014

What I recently finished

So Transparent: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery

(GhostWriter Mystery Series #3)

by Mallory Pierce

eARC for review

Pub date ~ October 27

I Thought You Said This Would Work

by Ann Wertz Garvin

audio-book from my collection

Published May 2021

What I am going to read next

Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

print for review

Published February 2025

I really love my reading life!

What are you reading this week?

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Book Blitz! Pity Please by Whitney Dineen ~ Excerpt and #Giveaway! #PityPlease @XpressoTours

Pity Please by Whitney Dineen
(Pity Series, #7)
Publication date: October 25th 2025
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, Romance

She had a foolproof plan. He thought his future was sealed. Neither of them imagined life would take them down a different path …

Allie

I never planned to live in Elk Lake again, but here I am. I was going to get married, have a great family and career, and then I’d get my happily-ever-after stamped on the passport of my life.

But Brett cheated and got his mistress pregnant with quadruplets. Karma was my consolation and believe me when I tell you, I couldn’t have been more satisfied by the outcome.

Just as I was busy with my fresh start, Noah Riley walked back into my life. I’ve always worshipped my best friend’s older brother, but he never noticed me.

Until that one day …

Noah

What coach gets demoted after taking their high school basketball team all the way to third in the state? Me, that’s who.

I could have gotten any other job in Chicago, but my anger and hurt pride caused me to accept a position at my alma mater. That’s right, I’m the new basketball coach of the Elk Lake Crappies. Don’t think the irony is lost on me.

My goal is to make a splash with my new team, and then have my old school beg to hire me back. Of course, I won’t accept until there’s an appropriate amount of groveling, along with a substantial pay raise.

When I moved to Elk Lake, I never expected to run into my sister’s best friend from childhood.

Who knew Allie Rogers would make me reconsider my dream?

Goodreads | Amazon

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EXCERPT

Instead of agreeing that I should be the captain of my own ship, my mother laments, “I always thought your life would turn out like one of those delightful romcoms from the nineteen nineties. You know, single girl meets the love of her life in a quirky, yet totally believable way …”

I’m not sure which movie she’s thinking of as I’ve grown up watching them all with her. On repeat.

“Which Julia Roberts character did you envision me being? If it’s Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman, I’ll have to move to LA and become a sex worker first.” My mom pushes out of my arms and stares at me in horror.

Instead of letting the subject drop, I feel a burst of indignant steam start to build. “If you want me to be like Anna Scott in Knotting Hill, I’ll also have to move to LA, but this time I’ll have to figure out how to become a movie star. Then I’ll need to find an abusive boyfriend so I can cheat on him with a bookstore owner in London.” How does she find these to be believable scenarios?

Hurt tinges her voice as she responds, “What about Jules Potter in My Best Friend’s Wedding?”

“She didn’t even wind up with the guy!” I shout.

“How about the Runaway Bride?” This woman is relentless.

“I would have to get engaged three times so I could dump three men before my true love showed up to write an article about my chaotic life,” I remind her.

My mom’s face screws up in an agonizing expression like she’s painfully wracking her brain. “Maybe not a Julia Roberts movie then. What about Sandra Bullock? Her romcoms were more girl-next-door, which is exactly what you are.”

Raising my hand into the air, I start ticking off fingers. “While You Were Sleeping would involve nearly killing someone in a train accident so I could lie to the victim’s family and fall for his brother. In Miss Congeniality, I’d have to be an FBI agent masquerading as Miss New Jersey. Hope Floats would get me that husband and child you so badly want me to have but said husband would have to dump me on national television before running off with my best friend. Do you want me to go on?” I demand.

Confusion riddles my mom’s features resulting in my feeling an unexpected wave of compassion for her. “I don’t want any of that for you. I just want you to have a beautiful and happy ending to your story.”

“My story is a long way from being over, Mom.” I’m not going to tell her that my vision of the future is nothing like what she’s hoping for. As in, I’m pretty sure I’ll never let myself be vulnerable enough to give love a second chance. I know for certain I will never have my own children. Three lost pregnancies are enough for me to take the hint.

My mother inhales deeply before telling me, “I’m not good at leaving things in the hands of fate.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the worst control freak I know, but that doesn’t mean you’ve been appointed God and get to make all the decisions for my life.”

“I don’t want to make all the decisions. I just want you to start living again!”

“I’m enough on my own, Mom. I don’t have to be a wife to have value.” I can tell I’ve hurt her feelings again, but what else can I do? It’s like we’re two different species with zero understanding of how the other works.

With hands on hips, she demands, “What’s your five-year plan?”

“To still be breathing,” I tell her honestly.

“Do you ever want to get back into publishing?”

I offer a brief shrug. “Can’t say.”

“Do you plan on working at Rosemary’s for the rest of your life?”

“Would there be anything wrong with that? Would you not be able to love me anymore if I don’t get the Hollywood ending you’ve always imagined for me?”

My mom’s face turns bright red, which is a sure indicator she’s about to lose her cool. But instead of screaming at me, she merely turns around and strides out of the dining room like she’s on her way to execute a military coup. Napoleon had nothing on this woman.

I take her reaction to my question to mean that her love is dependent on my capitulation to her vision. Well, too freaking bad, Margaret. I’m not going to try to make you happy when I don’t even know what will make me happy.

My phone pings before I can stand up and clear the remnants of my uneaten breakfast. Picking it up, I click on the message notification and read a text from Lorelai.

Lorelai: Noah is driving me crazy! I’ve been asking him to put my navy-blue cashmere sweater in the mail for a week, and he hasn’t done it. Would you mind going over to my parents’ house and sending it? The key is under the mat.

My nervous system responds by causing me to break out into a cold sweat. I do not want to see Noah Riley. To be honest, I hate that he’s moved back to Elk Lake. There is no place in my life for my childhood crush. He’s part of my past and I will not go out of my way to run into him again.

Having said that, Lorelai is my best friend, and she never asks for anything. Shoot! I’m going to have to do it. I’ll just have to make sure to go when Noah isn’t there.

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About the author

Whitney loves to laugh, play with her kids, bake, and eat french fries -- not always in that order.

Whitney is a multi-award-winning author of romcoms, non-fiction humor, and middle reader fiction. Basically, she writes whatever the voices in her head tell her to.

She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jimmy, where they raise children, chickens, and organic vegetables.

Gold Medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2017.

Silver medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2015, 2016.

Finalist RONE Awards, 2016.

Finalist at the IRFA 2016, 2017.

Finalist at the Book Excellence Awards, 2017

Finalist Top Shelf Indie Book Awards, 2017

Connect with Whitney

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | X | Instagram

Pity Please Blitz Giveaway

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