Reading Reality, LLC

09/21/2025

The Sunday Post/Virtual Nightstand for September 21, 2025

Today is the last OFFICIAL day of Summer - no matter how much it feels like the season was over weeks ago. Which means that the hop ends tonight along with the season, and the hop starts tomorrow morning.

The beginning of fall meant that today was a good Sunday to post a picture of Hecate at her grumpiest - and this week's featured book is the first of my for this season, with more on the way!

Here are this week's highlights:
Featured Giveaway: SUMMER 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop (ENDS TONIGHT!)
Book of the Week: The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
Feature for the Coming Week: FALL 2025 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

09/21/2025

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 9-21-25

Tomorrow is the first OFFICIAL day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere - which means that the holidays can't be far behind! (I've already started reading Halloween books with The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy and that was a marvelous story to kick off the season!) The coming of Fall means th...

09/20/2025

Stacking the Shelves for September 20, 2025

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.



This meme is hosted every Saturday by yours truly, - The covers shown here are merely a TEASER! Link to full post in bio to see the pretty covers of ALL the books in this week's stack!

09/20/2025

Stacking the Shelves (671)

I don't think that 'pretty' is the right word for this week's covers, unless it's part of the phrase 'pretty fascinating'. THAT seems accurate because this week's stack is chock-full of books I'm really curious about, really fascinated by, or just plain am simply gasping to read ASAP. The book I've....

09/19/2025

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish

This is a story at the delightful intersection where meets and with the help and hindrance of more than a few scary ghosts and adorable kittens.

The blurb gives away the premise, that Jamie Wendon-Dale has found their life-work as a haunted house designer, while Edgar Lovejoy is already entirely haunted. It shouldn't work - and it might not. It's not just that Edgar needs to get out of his comfort zone, he needs to find a way out of his self-imposed isolation because he's frightened of, not just the ghosts he can see, but the ghosts of his childhood trauma as well.

That description doesn't sound like a happy story - and yet - it definitely is one. Because it's about the healing. And it's about acknowledging who you are and what that means both TO you and FOR you and fighting your own corner. No matter how long or how much it takes. It's about feeling the fear and screwing up the courage to do it anyway and finding the people - and the person - who will have your back every time you try - including the times when you fail.

I utterly adored Jamie and Edgar, together and separately. I wanted to stand up and cheer for Jamie, and wouldn't mind being adopted by Edgar's wacky family just as Jamie is. If you're looking for a feel-good romance that will also put you in the right frame of mind for the spooky season, is a delightful treat of a read!

09/19/2025

A+ : The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish

My Review: This isn’t exactly an ‘opposites attract’ romance - or it is from a certain, slightly magical, just a teensy bit paranormal point of view. Or at least in a kind of ‘laissez les bon temps roulez’ perspective. Because the ability to see ghosts is exactly the kind of thing that New...

09/18/2025

A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau

Mrs. Gilroy is dead, to begin with - but the story isn't about her death at all. (I did kind of wonder, but no) The story is about the huge can of worms that her death opens up, because those worms have wormed their way into everything at B&H Foods and contaminated the product.

Literally.

The product is canned food, people ARE dying, and Mrs. Gilroy left just half of a guilty confession before she passed, leaving Margot Baxter Harriman with an unfinished note and a huge problem. She's knows there's something terrible going on at the company she inherited - but she doesn't know exactly who, what, when, where or even why.

Which is where Loretta "Rett" Mancini comes in. Margot needs someone she can trust who is not involved with the company to help her investigate the mess - without leaking to either the stockholders or the press - as Margot is already walking a tightrope as a woman business owner actually managing her own company in 1912.

They may not be as experienced or as prepared as either of them would like to be, but they've got a case to solve before their bodies add to the total already piling up. They'll just have to figure it out as they go along, and work around all the men who are just so damn sure that they can't handle it. Without revealing that they are handling anything at all.

The stakes are high, the history is fascinating, and the case is utterly compelling. I couldn't turn pages fast enough - and hopefully you'll be just as riveted. If you like or you'll be thrilled with .

09/18/2025

A- : A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau .bsky.social .bsky.social &ManciniMysteries

My Review: This is a story about doing what is right instead of what is easy. Not that Margot Baxter Harriman has EVER taken the easy way, even when what is right flies in the face of accepted wisdom. Or at least, the ‘accepted wisdom’ of society that proclaims, frequently, loudly and often in t...

09/17/2025

Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi

There was a lot to love in this book, and initially I did and very much. That LOT included so many good things, an FMC with a bit of anxiety, a whole lot of writer's block, and an excellent case of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. (Also very nearly anywhere, which was initially a typo but also works)

Her besties are ride or die and fantastic, and the romance is OMG smoking hot in all the best ways. That there's ALSO a sapphic ghost romance was icing on what should have been a really tasty cake - because our FMC, Rosemary, can see ghosts. Including the two lovely women who need to figure out that they're hanging around their former residence for each other and not because they're not welcome to go into the light. Because they love each other in spite of what the mores of the Regency said about same-sex relationships.

There's even a ghost dog and he's the best boi to ever haunt a person - and stick around to play with his best doggy buddy even from the afterlife.

But as much as I loved the romance between Rosemary and Ellis Finch, and I did, he gave me even more problems than his casting in her movie created for her. Because for all his dominant tendencies in the bedroom, he's a doormat when it comes to his relationship with his evil agent, a career that is going the wrong way entirely too hard, and the publicity shenanigans that his agent blackmails him into, over and over and over.

So there were parts of this I really got into, but the need for a scene where the evil agent gets kicked to the curb that involved actual, physical kicks - and maybe some punches - left this reader feeling that the "hero" didn't quite live up to his "action hero" billing.

Your reading mileage may, and hopefully does, vary.

09/17/2025

: Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi .bsky.social .bsky.social

My Review: The blurb for this book, while it isn’t exactly wrong, isn’t right either. Those elements are all there, but, if I were saying this aloud I’d be saying that the “accent is on a different syllable” but with “syllable” pronounced with its accent in the wrong place. Verbally, t...

09/16/2025

Falling Into Leaves Giveaway Hop

"Spring is sprung, Fall is fell..." or so the old doggerel goes. Fall is indeed fell around here - there's a bit of a nip in the air and I'm looking forward to putting flannel sheets on the bed to keep my feets from freezing.

OTOH, I'm not looking forward to Daylight Saving Time ending in just a few weeks. I'd rather have it be light later than earlier, but then I'm a night owl and I understand opinions vary on this topic. Honestly I'd be happy if they just picked one and sticked to it - whichever it turned out to be - but c'est la vie.

What are you most - or least - looking forward to when it comes to the Autumnal season? Visit Reading reality in the link up in the full bio - or at https://wp.me/p3gHJx-esm - for a chance at an Amazon GC that will at least buy a pair of really cozy socks - or a book to read while you're snuggled up in cozy!

09/16/2025

Falling into Leaves Hop

Welcome to the Falling into Leaves Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox and Mom Does Reviews! Fall has certainly FELL around here - and it's lovely. Admittedly, fall in Atlanta just means that the temps have dropped to the low 80s during the day and the mid 60s at night, but it does mean that the ai...