Review: All Fun and Games by Honor Raconteur
Genre: Gaslamp Fantasy
Published: August 1, 2025
Print length: 422 pages
Links: Goodreads | Direct Sales | Amazon
Kindle Unlimited? Yes
Series: The Case Files of Henri Davenforth (book 11)
Warnings: Murders by various grisly means (none on-screen), serial killers.

Synopsis:

A headless body and a clue-free crime scene. Never a good way to start the day.

Jamie Edwards, leader of the Queen’s Own, was just settling in for a quiet morning in the office. Of course that didn’t last. Summoned to a shipping magnate’s mansion, she and her team of royal investigators found a decapitated shipping magnate in a room devoid of evidence, all traces of the perpetrator erased by cleaning charms. That’s tough enough, but just as the squad begins digging into the case, a second business executive is murdered.

Jamie and her partner Henri have a serial killer—or killers—on their hands, and the race is on to find the guilty parties before they strike again. There seems to be no pattern to the victims, the weapons used, or the locations. If they can’t solve the puzzle, someone close to them might be the next to die.

What I thought:

I always know I’ll enjoy a Jamie and Henri book, but this turned out to be one of my favorites in the series.

If you like fantasy mystery stories with endearing characters and a cozy romance that develops at a leisurely pace, you’ll love The Case Files of Henri Davenforth. Quick catch-up: Jamie is an FBI agent on modern Earth who was supernaturally abducted to a pseudo-Victorian world where magic works alongside technology. There she teamed up with Henri, a magical forensic examiner, to solve crimes above the pay grade of the regular police. We readers have watched as their relationship grew from purely professional to romantic over the course of the so-far 11 books in the series.

It’s Jamie, Henri, and the delightful cast of characters around them who make these novels a treat. The crime plots are usually… okay, I guess?... but honestly not all that special. This one was different. In All Fun and Games, the murders were creatively executed and the mystery was genuinely puzzling. The use of cleaning charms, which had been mentioned in passing in earlier books, to remove evidence from crime scenes was a logical extension that added depth to the magical technology in this world.

The final entry in the series is reportedly coming out later this year (2026). I’ll be sad to see it end, but these are the kind of books I love to re-read, so I’ll be spending more time with Henri and Jamie in the future. At this point they’re like old friends that I never get tired of hanging out with.

Who will love it:

• Fans already hooked on the series; you don’t need me to convince you, but trust me, this is even better than usual.
• Anyone who enjoys cozy romantic fantasy in a steampunk-type world with a side dish of police procedural. I know it sounds like a weird mix, but give it a try!

Favorite quotes:

“Hey. What do you think ASAP means?” “After some additional procrastination.”

“I’m capable of making good decisions…. It’s just that I’m fantastic at making bad ones.”

About the author:

Honor Raconteur was born loving books. Her mother read her fairy tales and her father read her technical manuals, so was it any wonder she grew up thinking all books were wonderful? At five, she wrote and illustrated her first book.

At *mumbles age* she’s lost count of how many books she’s written and has no intention of stopping before she climbs into a grave. Right now, she lives in Michigan in a wonderful old Craftsman house with two dogs and four cats.

She also writes under the pennames Allie Brahms, AJ Sherwood, and Jamie Danners.

For more information about her books, to be notified when books are released, or get behind the scenes info about upcoming books, sign up or visit her at: NEWSLETTER or honorraconteur.news@raconteurhouse.com


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