Engaging Deception by Regina Jennings - Joplin Chronicles, book 3

Olive Kentworth has spent her life hiding her interest in architecture, even though she pores over architectural books and sketches buildings. When she accepts a job on a home expansion, it's only because her cousin Amos agrees to pose as the builder. To further hide her involvement, Olive takes a position as a nanny--not knowing that she'll be working for her idol, Joplin's leading architect, widower Maxfield Scott. Maxfield is intrigued by his new nanny--she makes his home and his life bearable again. His work, on the other hand, is a disaster. An untrained builder is remodeling a completed project of his. What's worse, Maxfield's current client wants changes to his plans because of that builder's work. As the architectural one-upmanship heats up, Olive's involvement becomes harder to hide. Will the relationship between her and Maxfield survive, or will they both miss out on building something for their future?

Ever feel like some has borrowed your life and put in fiction form? Olive (an architect) and I (an artist) share a lot of the same traits. A LOT. There's the conflicting fear and desire to be known; the fear of failure, which can be debilitating, right along side the stress of success, which is almost worse (at least when you fail, you can crawl back into hiding). Olive faces the imposter syndrome of one who hasn't gone to school for one's job (me again). And like Olive, I've even used relatives as a face man to handle the talking. And we each might be practical and a wee bit stubborn.

Suffice to say, I really connected with the character.

But besides that, it's just a really good story. It's largely a love story between two people dealing with grief in opposite ways, yet that grief allows them to connect on a deeper and more sincere level than they can find elsewhere. Maxwell, even with his snobbish faults, is an appealing hero. I even kind of liked Ruby, Maxwell's initial love interest who's doomed to be kicked to the curb. Usually when there's The Other Woman involved, she's pretty awful, even if the hero doesn't see it at first. Ruby is definitely not a good fit, but she isn't awful; she's actually pretty great with the kids, but she's immature yet, and neither her heart nor her ambitions are centered on Maxwell.

All in all, it was an excellent conclusion to the Joplin Chronicles.

Joplin Chronicles
1. Courting Misfortune
2. Proposing Mischief
3. Engaging Deception

The Vanishing at Castle Moreau by Jaime Jo Wright

In 1865, orphaned Daisy Francois takes a position as housemaid at a midwestern Wisconsin castle and finds that the reclusive and eccentric Gothic authoress inside hides more than the harrowing tales in her novels. With women disappearing from the area and a legend that seems to parallel these eerie circumstances, Daisy is thrust into a web that may threaten to steal her sanity, if not her life. In the present day, Cleo Clemmons is hired by the grandson of American aristocratic family the Tremblays to help his matriarchal grandmother face her hoarding in the dilapidated Castle Moreau. But when Cleo uncovers more than just the woman's stashes of collectibles, a century-old mystery of disappearance, insanity, and the dust of the old castle's curse threatens to rise again, and this time, leave no one alive to tell its sordid tale.

No matter how strange, how creepy, how unearthly, you can always count on Jaime Jo Wright to have a rational and believable explanation for all happenings in the end. There were a lot of direct parallels between the two (technically, three) timelines that made me wonder how she was going to pull it off--no one can live for 220 years, for instance. And ghosts don't exist. But Wright pulls it off expertly, as usual.

There was something about the past timeline with Daisy and Lincoln that put me in mind of the movie Rigoletto (the 1993 Beauty and the Beast-esque Feature Films for Families movie, not the classic opera), even before I got a full view of Lincoln or learned the castle's secrets. Now at the end, I stand by that impression even more. I can't really draw too many comparisons for sake of spoilers, but it's safe to say that appearances can be very deceiving. 

Wright has a way of pulling hope out of the bleakest circumstances in her stories, but I think this one holds more hope than all the others. There's a significant amount of darkness--abuse permeates all timelines of the story--but there is light for those watching for it.

Thank you Bethany House and NetGalley for the complimentary e-book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.