Skirting the Grave by Annette Blair

Skirting the Grave by Annette Blair - 277 pages
A Vintage Magic Mystery #4

Maddie has her hands full planning her sister's baby shower and organizing her other sister's fundraiser.  She doesn't have the time to also take on the intern she was coerced into mentoring.  But when Maddie goes to pick up her intern from the train station, she discovers the woman already dead.  Later that evening, a woman claiming to be the intern, and looking identical to the dead body, arrives at her doorstep.  Now Maddie must figure out who was killed and why.

This is the fourth book in the series.  I enjoyed the story and liked the character of the mysterious intern  I do think the romance took more of a central role in the this book which was a little distracting to the mystery.

Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede

Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede - 344 pages
Frontier Magic series: book 1

Eff has grown up her whole life knowing that as the 13th child in her family that she will turn out bad and end up cursing her family.  She's fine with that as long as her twin brother Lan, the seventh son of a seventh son, fulfills his role as the lucky, powerful wizard.  To escape the persecution of her extended family, her parents move her and the youngest children to the frontier where her father will be a college professor of magic.  And this works for a while -- until a plague of grubs strikes just outside of the magical barrier destroying all their crops.  Now it is up to Eff, Lan, their friend William, and her father to determine what the grubs are and how to stop them.
 I really enjoyed this first book in the Frontier Magic series.  Although most of the book is setup for the grub problem in the last third of the book, it doesn't feel contrived or boring.  Instead, you get a really good feeling for the characterization and setting of the story.  I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series.

You Are Here by Jennifer E. Smith

You Are Here by Jennifer E. Smith - 251 pages

Emma has just stolen her brother's car and decided to try to find the grave of the twin brother she never knew she had.  Then the car breaks down.  She calls next door neighbor Peter to see if he could help and amazingly he does - having just "borrowed" a car himself to take a roadtrip to see Civil War battlesites.
I really enjoy Jennifer E. Smith's books.  They are great stories for teen girls dealing with death, relationships, and everyday life.  While I did not think this book was as good as Comeback Season or The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, it was still a very enjoyable read.