Georgie Radcliffe finds herself acting as an amateur sleuth because she a) pays attention and b) is a keen horticulturalist. She lives at Radcliffe Hall in Buncombe-upon-Wooly, a small village in the Cotswolds in the 1930s. In that tiny village, there have been four murders, three of which she solved through her horticultural knowledge. So far you’re thinking that this is about as cosy as cosy mysteries get, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but there … Continue reading And Then There Was The One by Martha Waters→
This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next … Continue reading Miss Caroline Bingley: Private Investigator by Kelly Gardiner and Sharmini Kumar→
This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next … Continue reading Look Before You Leap by Virginia Heath→
This is my first Bad Decisions Book Club of 2025. Sleep became a distant memory with this book. For context, I have a newborn. I had the opportunity to sleep, but chose not to because this book was much more important. It is also the start of a series and it’s a series I’m now very excited about! Euphemia Flite was raised in a school for girls on the outskirts of Victorian London. Her origins … Continue reading Rules for Ruin by Mimi Matthews→
By the time The Trouble with Anna made its way to me through the library hold list I heard so many people complain about the characters that I fully expected to hate it. Turns out I didn’t hate it all but I also didn’t love it, and that was frustrating because I ALMOST loved it. I would have loved this book about fifteen years ago, but these days I just don’t have the patience. The … Continue reading The Trouble With Anna by Rachel Griffiths→
This book is part of a series, but operates alongside another series, and they are very much connected. The first is ‘The Secret Scientists of London’ which focuses on women scientists working at Athena’s Retreat and the second, of which this is the second installment, is ‘Damsels of Discovery,’ which features women scientists not operating within Athena’s Retreat but nonetheless linked to it. I have dipped in and out of both, and it’s becoming clearer … Continue reading The Lady Sparks a Flame by Elizabeth Everett→
The Resurrectionist is an imperfect but entertaining gothic romantic thriller set in Edinburgh in 1828. A small but avid subset of Smart Bitches may recognize that the term ‘resurrectionist’, when used in Edinburgh in 1828, had a real-life sinister meaning. Yes, my gory gothic Bitches, this was the year that the real-life notorious William Burke and William Hare decided that committing murder and selling the corpses to anatomists was less trouble than digging up bodies. … Continue reading The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap→
This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next … Continue reading Something Extraordinary by Alexis Hall→
Christmas with the Queen is a cozy historical romance that would be perfect for fans of The Crown or anglophiles in general. The royal family are a backdrop to this romance, but it’s not about them directly. It’s also a blend of historical fiction and romance that I think will work for non-romance readers. The book alternates between VE Day in 1945, and the “present” day in the 1950’s. The book opens in 1952 with … Continue reading Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb→
One Burning Heart is the fourth, and I hope not the last, book in Elizabeth Kingston’s Welsh Blades series. I’ve loved this series since reading the first book nearly 10 years ago, so I was beyond excited when it was out. It is also the first book by Kingston since 2019 – and that’s “the before times” so it feels extra long! I reviewed Desire Lines that year. I one-clicked it and started reading this … Continue reading One Burning Heart by Elizabeth Kingston→
This series has been hit-or-miss for me. This one wasn’t quite the heights of some of the other books by this author that I’ve read, but I devoured it nonetheless and am happy to recommend it to others. Stella Hobhouse is a clergyman’s sister, a great friend, an excellent horsewoman and completely stuck in life. Her brother has really strict expectations of her and Stella chafes against them. (This later causes serious ructions in her … Continue reading The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews→
