lagilman | Delighted Author Dance: "an underlying strength that elevates it..."

So, everyone loves it when a reviewer - a professional critic - likes their book. But honestly, the thing that makes us jump up and down and do the Delighted Author Dance?

Is when a bookseller likes our book. Because booksellers aren't critics, they're critical readers. And I mean critical in both senses of the word... they're picky, and they're necessary.

And if they like you, odds are they'll be picking up your book and saying to buyers "here, this one. I liked this one."

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I was utterly delighted to be pointed to this review of COLLARED on the Seattle Mystery Bookshop's "What We've Been reading" page:

Fran recommends:

I'm not a fan of cutesy. My sweet tooth is dedicated to chocolate, and my reading tastes tend to be a bit sharper. So I'm serious when I tell you that the cover of L.A. Kornetsky's first "Gin and Tonic" mystery, Collared is a bit misleading. Collared certainly has some cute components, but it's got an underlying strength that elevates it from fluff to good reading....

Virginia (Ginny) Mallard has a personal concierge service in Seattle, and she's good at organizing things, from picking up dry cleaning to arranging a child's birthday party. So when she overhears someone complaining about needing to find his uncle, who wandered off with some paperwork, Ginny figures that it can't be any harder than finding the perfect getaway holiday for a lovestruck couple and she jumps at the chance. But it's soon obvious to her that she's going to need help, and her bartender friend, Teddy Tonica, has the connections she needs. Ginny has three days to find Jacob and the papers, but he hasn't just wandered off -- he's deliberately gone into hiding, and there's a reason for it. Suddenly Ginny's job has become a lot more dangerous than she imagined.

L.A. Kornetsky manages to do something that is not at all easy to do: she throws in snippets of action as seen through the eyes of Ginny's Shar-pei, Georgie, and Teddy's bar cat, Mistress Penny-Drops. I didn't think it would work, but Kornetsky manages to keep their interactions intriguing and interesting... And it works.

I liked that Ms. Kornetsky was willing to take the chances she did, allowing bad things to happen instead of taking the easy way out. She has created a couple of realistic and likeable humans, and her feline and canine protagonists are pretty darned cool too.

(emphasis and ellipses mine, natch)

You can read the entire review (and pre-order the book) here

On-Sale November 13th.