The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katrina Bivald

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Synopsis (written by me): Sara, a young woman living in Sweden, has been pen pals with an elderly woman named Amy in Iowa and they have bonded over their love of books. Sara decides to visit Amy, only to arrive and find that Amy died recently. Instead of turning right around and going home, Sara sets about selling Amy's books and trying to introduce the townspeople to her love of reading.

I checked this out from my local library because I saw the title popping up in the bookish sections of the Internet and being referred to with warm regard. This is one of my repeated attempts to read something other than romance. I just finished reading it and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

While the book itself was written well enough (there were no grammatical errors and Bivald did provide an interesting turn of phrase or two), I struggled with a few aspects of the book that I believe related more to my particular taste than a failing on the author's part. The book is set in a failing town, which made the tone a touch too melancholy for me. All the reviews of this book talk about how quirky the characters are, but I found them to be slightly odd at best. (Of course, I spent my early 20s devouring Tom Robbins novels, so my bar for "quirky" is set pretty high.) There were a few slight nods to romance that, as a romance reader, were not satisfying at all.

Still, the book was not quite as navel-gazing and slow-moving as I find a lot of literary fiction to be. Also, it was nice to read something outside my usual choices and not totally hate it. This is a gentle book that I could hand to anyone who would enjoy a story where an entire small town pulls together to achieve something.

View all my reviews

American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis

American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of slightly twisted stories about the things that housewives get up to during the day. I don't read short stories very often, so I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this. After several of the stories, I wished I could grab someone and say, "Listen to this!"

I experienced this on audio and I think the accents and fast pace of the reading (I listened at 1.25x speed) added a little more humor to the prose. If I had read the print version, I suspect I would have found some of these stories a bit more creepy. There were four different readers -- Kathleen McInerney, Lisa Cordileone, Rebecca Lowman, and Dorothy Dillingham Blue -- and they all did a fine job. A southern accent used to comic effect without being insulting is a fine thing, and the readers put it to good use here.

I had two favorites in this collection. "Dumpster Diving with the Stars" is set on a reality competition show and that is one of my favorite story settings; I wish it was a full novel. "The Fitter" was both weird and touching, and the accent the reader used was perfect. My least favorite was "Hello! Welcome to Book Club", probably because I know some kids on the autism spectrum so I had trouble finding some of the references in that story amusing.

The running length of the audiobook is three hours and 46 minutes, which makes it a fun choice without a huge time investment.

View all my reviews

Illusions of Happiness by Elizabeth Lord

Illusions of Happiness by Elizabeth Lord
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Note: This post contains possible spoilers.

I didn't get very far in this book, but I don't feel that I can describe why I abandoned it without including some detail of the plot. You've been warned.


This book is about Madeleine Ingleton, an 18-year-old who graduates finishing right at the beginning of World War I. Her parents have arranged for her to marry a man that she likes as a friend but doesn't love. Maddie embarks upon a secret affair with the local milkman's son. With our innocent and naive heroine, you can imagine where this is going. Yes, she gets pregnant and her paramour tells her to get an abortion or fend for herself. Maddie refuses to take that course of action; in fact, she doesn't take any course of action (which is the first thing that annoyed me). She just keeps going on chaperoned dates with the man her parents have picked for her until one day she faints. The doctor is called and the parents discover she is with child. Her father, an unfeeling authoritarian, sends Maddie to a home for unwed mothers the very next day and tells her to never come back or contact them again because they no longer have a daughter.

I read up to the 28% mark and then skimmed it after that. Another Goodreads reviewer called this "a dark novel of near constant unhappiness" and that is a perfectly succinct description of how I felt about this novel. I've read books where bad things have happened to the heroine in the past or even in the first chapters of the book, but then there was a turnaround where her life improves. I kept waiting for that to happen with this book but it felt like it was never coming.  Even when Maddie marries a wealthy man and is able to move out of the tenement she was living in, she doesn't seem to be happy. That was when I decided to give up on the book. I couldn't bring myself to keep devoting my limited reading time to this book when I had a romantic comedy waiting on my Kindle that was part of a series that has already proven to bring me joy.

View all my reviews

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Genre: Fantasy
Format: Digital audio book borrowed from library
Publication date: 2012

My 3-star rating of this book is an average of what I would rate it for myself (2 stars) and what I would rate it for everyone else (4 stars). Rating a book on a five-star scale is not the easiest thing to do, especially when it is in a genre I don't usually read. I recognize that Mitch Albom is a good writer and that most people would be moved by this fable about living in the present, but the lessons it sought to teach felt obvious to me.

As I said, The Time Keeper is a fable. It starts off with the story of Dor, the first man to discover how to track time. Dor is consumed with knowing things like when the sun will come up and when the full moon will come again. He conducts his experiments and finally creates the first clock. Dor is punished for the audacity to quantify days and is banished to a cave for 6,000 years, after which he is given a mission to find two people and teach them what time is really worth.

The minimal amount of dialogue was one thing that made it difficult for me to get through this book. The majority of the book was filled with the somber tone of the narrator telling me the stories of Dor and the two people he chose for his mission, an elderly man named Victor and a teenage girl named Sarah. Victor is at the end of his life and obsessed with the idea of cheating death while Sarah is an overweight teenager who can't find anything good about her life.  Even with so much time spent learning about their lives, I didn't feel much of a connection to any of them.

There didn't feel like there was much action, either, for most of the book. Although the lesson was obvious to me before I finished listening to the prologue, I still kept wondering where the book was going. Why am I learning about the lives of these three characters? It wasn't until 3/4 of the way through the book when all three of their lives intersect that my interest picked up, but even then the lessons that Dor taught Victor and Sarah and the ones he learned himself were very obvious.

One of the best things about the book for me was the narrator, Dan Stevens. His English accent went a long way in helping me get through this. Also, the audio book is only five hours, so if you are interested in sampling Albom's writing, it is fairly short.

Here are a few lines from the book that Albom used to shove the lesson in the reader's face, albeit gently:

Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

When you are measuring life, you are not living it.

Despite the melancholy vibe, the ending wasn't as much of a downer as I expected. Overall the book reminded me of those stories that circulate on Facebook about how people who don't realize how good their lives were until it was too late. If I were to recommend it, I would say that it might appeal to the readers of books like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, if they can get through the first half of the book.

 The Time Keeper at Book Depository (affiliate link)
The Time Keeper at OverDrive

Sometime Soon by Debra Doxer

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Genre: Chick lit, I think
Format: Free e-book found on Amazon (no longer available as an e-book)
Heat level: Subtle -- one sex scene and it wasn't described in detail

Sometime Soon by Debra Doxer is a what you might call a chick lit novel, or perhaps a slice of life novel. Our heroine is 30-year-old Andrea Whitman. She works in the marketing department of a tech company, she owns her own home, and she has family and friends that she enjoys spending time with. The only thing that isn't going smoothly is her dating life. The people closest to her keep telling her that she is too picky, but Andrea just believes that she has a strong sense of right and wrong. She's decided that she would be perfectly happy with taking a break from dating, but her family and friends won't let that happen.

My feelings about this story were lukewarm. This title has been sitting on my iPad since 2013 and I had forgotten what it was about. I assumed it was a romance, but it really isn't. The story is written in the first person and Andrea tells the reader about what is going on with her family, friends, and a few guys she's dated. There wasn't any big conflict that needed to be resolved and nothing to really keep me turning the pages other than a mild interest in what was going to happen next.

There were a few times when I wasn't sure if I was too far away from the dating scene to understand why Andrea was upset with some of the men. Some of her deal-breakers seemed more like preferences to me -- it would be nice if the guy did XYZ but I could probably overlook the fact that he didn't if he was otherwise a good guy. Andrea got upset over a couple simple things that made me wish someone else was reading this book so I could discuss it with them, but that was the only part of the story that got my blood going a little.

Overall, I found this to be a bland read. It is reading for killing time in the doctor's office. There was just enough spark, though, that I would be willing to check out the author's later books to see if her storytelling skills got better.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, adapted by Nick Bertozzi

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Genre:  Classic, historical fiction
Format: Free digital ARC from NetGalley in exchange for honest review; no monetary compensation
Heat level: Subtle -- the result of liaisons is mentioned, but not the act itself
Expected publication date: 04 Jul 2017

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this post. If you click through and buy something, I will get a few coins toward the butter that goes on my bread. Thanks for contributing!

I want to read classics -- in theory. The practice has been more difficult. Perhaps if I had given more time to reading classics when my brain was young and fresh, I might not have so much trouble understanding them now. Maybe they all need to be turned into graphic novels. Anyway . . .

The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winner written by Pearl S. Buck and originally published in 1931. It is the life story of a poor Chinese farmer named Wang Lung, starting with the day that he goes to the richest man in the village to get a wife from the slaves in his house. This is a review of a new graphic novel adaptation by Nick Bertozzi.

I read this novel in high school as many people did, but the only thing I remembered about the plot after all these years is that a woman gives birth and goes immediately back to work in the fields. So I basically approached this graphic novel with fresh eyes. That didn't stop me, however, from wondering what was discarded from the original text to create this adaptation. After reading it, I went back to the novel and made a few spot comparisons. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the illustrations, though spare, accurately replaced the words and conveyed the emotions from many sections.

Speaking of illustrations, don't be misled by the beautiful cover. This is not a full-color graphic novel. The art style throughout the book is somewhat minimalistic but it gets the point across effectively. There aren't even the traditional comic-strip boxes bordering each scene, yet I had no trouble following the flow of the text and illustrations. I have had trouble following black-and-white graphic novels in the past because I couldn't tell the characters apart. Even though Bertozzi doesn't draw each character with the same look consistently, it is always clear who is in the scene.

The Good Earth is a sweeping family saga. The reader follows Wang Lung as he deals with all that life hands him, as well as a few messes he steps in himself. As the title suggests, the one constant is the land, the earth that sometimes withholds its bounty but more often than not provides a good living for those who are willing to put in the work, as Wang Lung does. Although the book is set somewhere in the early 1900s (Buck doesn't give specific dates, but a few events suggest that time frame), its story of feast and famine and familial strife is something that modern readers can understand.

I think the graphic novel format makes this an obvious choice for a high school student who has The Good Earth on her required reading list. I doubt you could get away with passing a test just from reading this, but it makes a good introduction to the material and may help a reluctant reader get through the original novel.

The Good Earth on Book Depository
The Good Earth on OverDrive
The Good Earth on Amazon

The Little French Bistro by Nina George

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Genre: Literary fiction? Romance?
Format: Free digital ARC from First to Read (no compensation in exchange for review)
Heat Level: Subtle -- sex is mentioned, but not explicitly described
Expected publication date: 13 Jun 2017

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this post. If you click through and make a purchase, I'll get a few coins to put toward my light bill. You don't want me sitting in the dark, do you?

This book confused me as far as how it should be categorized. Literary fiction? Romance? Women's fiction? I expected it to be cheerful and uplifting. Wouldn't you expect that if the book was described as having "buoyant charm"? Anyway . . .

The Little French Bistro by Nina George is a novel about a woman discovering her power late in life. Marianne has been married for 41 years to a man she is pretty sure doesn't love her. On a vacation to Paris, she decides she can't take it any longer and runs off to Brittany. Once there she slowly reinvents herself and has to decide where she truly belongs.

Having never read any of George's work and knowing little about this novel before requesting it from First to Read, I was expecting a comic chick-lit trifle. Instead, if I had to describe it in one word, I would say "melancholy". The tone and plot similarities (a German woman shows up in a random town after a breakup and makes friends with the locals) reminded me of the 1987 movie Bagdad Cafe.

The description of Marianne's childhood and marriage definitely helped me understand how she got to the point where she wanted to escape her life. I also appreciated reading a book about people closer to my own age. Most of them were at least 60 years old and had all the life experience and heartache to go with their advanced age. Marianne experiences a reawakening that is a welcome reminder that you can't always tamp down your own desires in favor of someone else's preferences.

After the first few chapters, however, this book began to resemble literary fiction, which I do my best to avoid. I mean, I like pretty words as much as any other reader, but I also like dialogue and characters actually doing something. There wasn't much dialogue and when there was dialogue, it was poetic but vague. There was a lot of talk of superstitions and witches and healing and the power of nature and the sea that became tedious to read. The reader is treated to the inner thoughts and reminiscences of each of the characters, but not enough scenes to make us understand why the residents of the small seaside town that Marianne escapes to fall in love with her.  There were incidences of almost magical realism that don't come to fruition.

The Little French Bistro is well written, but it feels more like a meditation on life rather than a story. The reader is given a look into the sadness and melancholy of each character's life, a few lines about how (some of) the characters' lives improved, and then the book is over. Despite the age of the characters, I would have enjoyed this in my late teens when I was into reading all about melancholy and pretty words just for their prettiness. Nowadays I want books that get to the point a little quicker.

The Little French Bistro on Overdrive
The Little French Bistro on Book Depository
The Little French Bistro on Amazon

The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Genre: General adult fiction, women's fiction
Format: Free ARC through NetGalley (no compensation for review)
Expected publication date: 25 Apr 2017


Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this post. If you click through and make a purchase, I will get a few coins and my coffee budget will thank you. However, if you are skint and have to borrow the book from your library, I understand.

The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey is a historical novel set in 1908 and based on a real organization by the same name. It follows four young women -- Caprice, Ada, Maria, and Thea -- who are daughters of Italian and Jewish immigrants in Boston's North End. Each of them is trying to reconcile their families' traditional ways with their own American-born ambitions. Caprice wants to open a shop, Ada is hiding her aspirations for higher education from her father, Maria's desire to protect her family is leading her down the wrong path, and Thea makes a choice to stick with tradition despite the disapproval of her friends.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book because I had forgotten what genre it was by the time I started reading it. For three-quarters of the book, it read like a novel for 12-year-old girls. I'm talking about books handed to girls when I was 12, not the angst-ridden YA novels that are aimed at that age group now.  The usual types are represented: Maria is the head-turning beauty, Ada is the crazy smart one, Thea is the plain and chubby one (although Healey avoids saying it), and Caprice is the one who keeps them all together. It was all about the four main characters being friends to the end, a bit like a historical Babysitter's Club book. Despite reading young, the book occasionally has a melancholy tone because the women all realize that they are on the cusp of changes that will limit their time together. There were also some references to organized crime and domineering men in the last fourth of the book that almost made it read like an adult book, but not quite.

Healey says that she wrote this book after doing research on Paul Revere pottery, which was created by members of the actual Saturday Evening Girls Club and currently is considered a collector's item. I wish there had been more of the club's workings in the book.  Instead, it was used mostly as the location for conversations. At the opening of the novel, the main characters have already been members of the club for seven years, so the reader doesn't get a sense of how the club has helped them in their lives, even though the characters are often saying thank you to the women who run it.

Overall, the book is fine. It is the kind of book that sits right in the middle. Healey gives us a slice of life in the 1900s in the tenements, but it is the sanitized version. Characters mention things like hunger and prostitution in passing, but the reader doesn't feel the sting of them. I can't really say that the book ends on a cliffhanger, but the reader says goodbye to the characters at the start of some major decisions and doesn't get to see them through. I would say that if you want a light historical to cleanse your reading palate between other books, this would be it.


The Saturday Evening Girls Club at Amazon
The Saturday Evening Girls Club at Book Depository

"The Edge of Town" by Dorothy Garlock

The Edge of Town is set in 1922 and it follows the residents of a small Missouri town. The main family, the Joneses, is pretty much being held together by the eldest daughter Julie. She is a 20-year-old who quit school at 16 to take care of the household for her father and her siblings when her mother died. She has a budding romance with Evan, the son of the local foul-mouthed drunk. There is a subplot involve a man who has been raping young girls in the town for years and getting them pregnant.

I tried hard to stick with this book, but I finally gave up. I've read that there is also a murder in the plot which I didn't get to because having romance and rape in the same book was jarring for me. I don't consider myself a prude, but reading a scene about happy family life on the farm and then having it followed by a character expressing his sexual preference for little kids in rather crude language was a bit much for me. When the book switched back to the sweet scenes, I couldn't enjoy them. Having the mystery of the rapist still hanging out there cast a shadow over the romance for me.

While it is fun for a book to have some surprises, I like to have a feeling for what type of book I'm reading from the start. Although I read a lot of Christian historical romances, I also sprinkle in modern romances, magical realism, literary fiction, memoirs, and lots of other genres. Foul language and difficult subject matter isn't quite as unsettling if I chose to read that kind of book.

"The Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club" by Wanda E. Brunstetter

The Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club by Wanda E. Brunstetter
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

Join the club of unlikely quilters who show up for Amish widow Emma Yoder’s quilting classes. A troubled young woman, a struggling couple, a widower, a rough and tough biker, and a preacher’s wife make up the mismatched lot. But as their problems begin to bind them together like the scraps of fabric stitched together in a quilt, they learn to open up and lend a helping hand. Is this what God had in mind to heal hurting hearts and create beauty from fragments?

I wanted to like this book. It is a familiar trope: the misfit group of people who are forced together into a situation and build friendships despite their differences. It is a story setup that I normally enjoy, but in this book it didn't gel. The dialogue didn't feel natural, and the friendships between the characters weren't fleshed out enough. The entire book seemed like a sketch of the book that someone wanted to write instead of the final draft.

I have three other Wanda E. Brunstetter books on my Goodreads list. I had heard that she is one of the leading authors in the Amish fiction genre, but after this I'm not sure if I want to try another of her books.  

View all my reviews

"Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind" by Ann B. Ross

Summary from Goodreads:

Miss Julia, a recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow and unceremoniously announces that the child is the bastard son of Miss Julia's late husband. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small Southern community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal-and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence turns her life upside down.

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind is the first book in a long-running series by Ann B. Ross. I can't quite remember why I added this book to my TBR list. It was probably during one of my phases when I wanted to find more books set in North Carolina. While the book ticked that box, I'm still not sure how I feel about it overall.

Even though there were crazy things going on all around Miss Julia, I kept waiting for her to "speak her mind". The book is written in first person, and she is very opinionated in her thoughts. However, she never really speaks OUT the way I thought she should. Miss Julia's housekeeper fit into the sassy Southern woman mold more than Miss Julia did.

Speaking of the housekeeper, the characterization of the only black character in the book made me uneasy. Generally, I'm not overly sensitive about black characters written to speak in the black vernacular, but something about the housekeeper in this book made me uncomfortable. It wasn't only the way that the housekeeper talked but the way she acted and the way other people treated her as if what she said should be disregarded because she is black. The book was written in 1999 and supposed to be contemporary for the time (there were monster trucks and cell phones), yet it felt like it was set in the 1960s or 1970s. In one scene, Miss Julia tells her housekeeper as she is going into a building to be careful because there weren't any of "your people" in there. What? I reminded myself that Miss Julia is almost 70 and kept reading, but it is easier for me to accept that kind of thing when I am reading a historical novel.

There are a few good things about this book. For one, it is fairly clean. Even though it is based on the premise of a cheating spouse, I think most people wouldn't hesitate to hand it to their mothers or grandmothers. There was one surprisingly tender moment between Miss Julia and her late husband's mistress toward the end of the book that sticks out as the highlight for me. Also, the book doesn't end in a cliffhanger so you can feel free to try it for yourself without getting stuck in a bad series (something that has happened to me more than once).

As for me, I think I will try at least one more book in the series. It is up to 16 books now, so there must be a lot of readers out there enjoying them. Perhaps I will figure out the attraction.

"When Calls the Heart" by Janette Oke

When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up because Hallmark is running a TV show based on the series. Since I had already watched the first three episodes of the show, I figured reading this book would be like a review. Boy, was I wrong! I don't know if the plot points from the show were pulled from later books in the series or created specifically for TV, but they aren't anywhere in this book. From what I know of Janette Oke's writing, I think the TV scriptwriters adding twists to try to make the story more exciting.

The one thing the book and TV show have in common is that the main character Elizabeth is a privileged young teacher who leaves her family to teach on the other side of the country in a small town. The book is a quiet year-in-the-life sort of story told in first person. You follow Elizabeth from settling in to the teacherage at the beginning of the school year until she leaves at the end of the school year, with all her little adventures in between -- getting supplies, ridding her house of mice, and such.

Overall I did enjoy the book, especially the fact that the main character isn't quite as helpless as she appears on the TV show. There is a Christian aspect to the book, but it isn't as front-and-center as in some Christian romances. Also, the story ends with what I think is the right balance for a book that is part of a series. You could stop at the end of this book and be satisfied that the story is wrapped up, but reading another book with these characters would also be nice.

View all my reviews

"Ruby" by Lauraine Snelling

Ruby by Lauraine Snelling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Christian fiction, romance
On my TBR list?: Yes, since Sep 2010

Book 1 of 4 of the Dakotah Treasures series


Synopsis, from LauraineSnelling.com:

Journey west to a land of adventure in the untamed Dakota territory!

Ruby Torvald sets out on a daunting journey with her young sister, Opal, to hopefully see their long-lost father once more and claim the promised inheritance. But instead of the treasure they expected, the sisters discover something most shocking.

Ruby's bold determination in the face of scandal is the only way to redeem her father's legacy. Does she have it in her?

This book has been on my TBR list for quite a while. I enjoyed Lauraine Snelling's Norwegian books quite a bit and I was afraid to read something of hers that didn't have the same vibe. However, this book is still set in the 1800s and the title character is Norwegian, so Snelling didn't stray too far afield with this series.

In 2005 Bethany House published a volume containing all four books in the series, and I'm recommending up front that this is the way it should be experienced. "Ruby" reads like the first few chapters of a longer story. Taken as a whole, the series is about the growth of a small frontier town. If you read the descriptions of the other three books, you will be spoiled on major plot points. In my opinion, it would be better to get the completed series in one volume at the start and enjoy all four stories as a whole.

This book is part of a genre I would call "gentle storytelling". It isn't edgy or shocking like more modern fare, and you won't be too surprised by any of the plot twists. Snelling creates characters that you care about, and that is enough to propel me through the story. The Christian aspect seems to have been inserted a bit more clumsily than it was in her Blessing books, but it didn't turn me off.

"Ruby" is a book that you could hand to your 13-year-old daughter, but I doubt that it would appeal to her. My first thought was that it would appeal to an adult in a remedial reading program. The subject matter wouldn't seem juvenile to an adult yet the vocabulary isn't complicated. It is perfect for some of the maiden aunts in my family.

"Royal Blood" by Rhys Bowen

Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: cozy mystery in a historical setting
4th book in the Her Royal Spyness series
On my TBR list? Yes



Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness series is set in Great Britain in the 1930s. The heroine is Lady Georgiana (Georgie), a young lady in her early 20s who is 34th in line for the English throne. Because she is unattached and unemployed, the queen keeps giving her little assignments that end up entangling her in a murder mystery. I believe that this series definitely fits into the "cozy mystery" genre, as the books are peopled with quirky characters and the descriptions of the murders aren't gory. For me, the innocence of a cozy mystery works best in a historical setting and Bowen carries it off well.

In Royal Blood, Lady Georgiana is asked to represent the British royals at a wedding in Transylvania. Of course, you can't mention Transylvania without making the reader think of vampires and Bowen addresses that in her usual lighthearted fashion. All of Georgie's family and friends from the previous books are represented here, but Bowen includes them in a way that doesn't feel like she had to give each character equal time. The Great Depression is not ignored in this book; part of the reason why Georgie is at the mercy of the queen's whims is because she has no money and she gets sent to house parties where she can eat well for a time. Still, I appreciate that Bowen keeps the mood of the stories airy by focusing on the people who still had money during that time.

This is my favorite out of the Her Royal Spyness series to date and it made me want to rush to read the next installment. Many people turn to lighter books during the summer months and I think this series fits the bill. You could easily pick up any book in the series and not feel lost, but they are like popcorn: you will want to read them all.

View all my reviews

"Sixteen Brides" by Stephanie Grace Whitson

Sixteen Brides by Stephanie Grace Whitson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Christian, prairie romance

On my TBR list?: no

Summary, from Goodreads:

Sixteen Civil War widows living in St. Louis respond to a series of meetings conducted by a land speculator who lures them west by promising "prime homesteads" in a "booming community." Unbeknownst to them, the speculator's true motive is to find an excuse to bring women to the fledging community of Plum Grove, Nebraska, in hopes they will accept marriage proposals shortly after their arrival!

Sparks fly when these unsuspecting widows meet the men who are waiting for them. These women are going to need all the courage and faith they can muster to survive these unwanted circumstances--especially when they begin to discover that none of them is exactly who she appears to be.

The fact that I read this book in its entirety in a single day is a testament to how engaging it is, especially since it wasn't even in large print! At first I thought that I would have trouble keeping up with all the characters, but the author does a good job of quickly winnowing down the list to a manageable number and I had no problem remembering who was who. Whitson's writing style managed to keep frontier life from sounding monotonous by showing the characters engaging in all different kinds of activities. She avoided the trap of describing one quilting bee or harvest supper after another -- passages that fill pages without pushing the plot forward. I didn't find myself skimming over long descriptive passages of the color of someone's dress, either. This novel was 300-odd pages of solid writing that kept me turning page after page until I finished it at 1:30a.

Although this book was published by Bethany House, it was a bit more earthy that other Christian romances I've read. Don't get me wrong -- it doesn't cross the line into vulgarity. However, there are a couple characters who make no secret about enjoying physical closeness with a man. For instance, when one character asks her mother what she would like, her mother responds thusly:

Mama twitched both eyebrows. "I want to be young for just one dance with that handsome rancher. Or an evening." She grinned wickedly. "Or perhaps even a very long evening."

"Mama!" Ella scolded.

"You don't want to know, don't ask."

Now Mama is one of the most devout women in the book. This quote along with others shows that she is also a women who is vibrant and loving life. Whitson has created characters that are far from one-dimensional and it is refreshing to see.

Another thing that was different was how this book approached Christianity. My first exposure to Christian fiction was with the authors Lori Wick and Janette Oke, so I am accustomed to having a mini sermon coming out of one of the characters' mouths every few pages. The characters in this book all have more than a passing familiarity with the Bible but their faith is shown in a more matter-of-fact manner. There aren't long passages detailing church services, as you would find in a book by Wick or Lauraine Snelling. There is one character who turns directly to the Bible and finds guidance to turn his life around, but most of the characters change their ways and live by the principles of the Good Book without quoting it directly.

All in all, Stephanie Grace Whitson presented readers with a solid Christian romance and a quick read. I will definitely seek out more of her books.



View all my reviews

"Changeless" by Gail Carriger

Changeless by Gail Carriger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Genre: romance, steampunk, supernatural

On my TBR list?: Yes, as of Mar 2011

Book 2 in an ongoing series

Summary, from Goodreads:

Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears - leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. Even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.

She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

This second book in the Parasol Protectorate series is just as delectable as the first. The snappy rejoinders mixed in with the supernatural and romantic elements make this an exciting novel to read. Alexia's sister Felicity is even more wicked with the barbs and her best friend Ivy is still amusingly clueless. For you romantics, Conall is also taking every opportunity to feel up his wife!

I appreciated reading a story where the "will they or won't they?" part of the romance has already been taken care of. Having a couple get on with the business of life while obviously still loving each other is refreshing.

Carriger is a skilled writer who manages to remind the reader of events from the first novel without making it feel like she is writing a recap. Her characters are ones that you want to spend more time with. That is why it was a bit frustrating that, unlike the first book, this one ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. If you are the impatient type, you may want to have the third book on hand before you start reading this one.

View all my reviews

"Soulless" by Gail Carriger

Soulless by Gail Carriger

Genre: romance, light steampunk, fantasy
On my TBR list?: Yes, since Nov 2009

Book #1 of The Parasol Protectorate, 3 books published so far

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Summary, from Goodreads:

Without a morsel of exaggeration, its publisher describes this debut novel as "a comedy of manners set in Victorian London full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking." At the center of Soulless's "parasol protectorate" is Miss Alexia Tarabotti, a young woman who lacks not only a suitor but also a soul. And those are not her only problems: When she accidentally kills a vampire, it begins a series of events that she must set out to resolve without the help of any proper authorities.

It has been quite a while since a book grabbed my attention from the very first page, but Soulless managed to do exactly that. It is a charming mix of 19th-century romance and the supernatural, with just enough steampunk thrown in to spice up the story without boring less science-inclined readers like me. This sense of balance is exhibited in several ways throughout the book.

The first example of Carriger's balanced writing style is our heroine, Alexia Tarabotti. She is feisty enough to appeal to a modern reader, yet none of her behavior steps so far outside the parameters of her 19th-century setting as to be unbelievable. Carriger also did an excellent job of writing the lovemaking scenes in a manner that does not jolt the reader out of the story. I've read more than one book that goes "literature, literature, literature, PORN, literature, literature"; the sex scenes were so shocking that they seemed to have been lifted from a different manuscript. In the case of Soulless, the author manages to construct the amorous passages in the same lilting style of the rest of the story, with a well-placed nudge and a wink.

All in all, I would say that this is a first-rate showing, especially for a debut novel. If you follow me on Goodreads, then you know that my 18-year old is already clamoring to read it. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone younger than that because the love scenes, while tastefully written, are still explicit enough that I would feel uncomfortable handing the book to my 14-year-old daughters. This book may be a tad too romantic for the hardcore steampunk or supernatural fans, but I think it could appeal to the readers who don't mind a touch of those fantastical elements in their romance stories.





View all my reviews

"The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Genre: fiction, young adult, dystopian
On my TBR list?: Yes, since April 2010

Summary from Goodreads:

Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event--an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle. With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful new novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.


This book didn't work for me. I was surprised because I enjoyed Life As We Knew It, the first book in the series. At first I thought I was judging it unfairly because I wasn't in the mood for a novel set in a dystopian future, but I also had the third book on hand (This World We Live In) and immediately became engrossed in it. So what was my issue with this book?

I think that the the point of view was the problem for me. Unlike the other two books, the story in this one is told in the third person. That made the book depressing but still removed from my real life. However, when reading Life As We Knew It, the first-person diary point of view made me feel like the events were happening in my world NOW. There were times while reading taht book that I would have to remind myself when I woke up each morning that everything was normal. My teenage daughter had to put the book down because it affected her so strongly. I didn't get any of that with this installment of the series.

Although I am generally not a proponent of skipping books in a series, I would recommend that readers skip this one and head straight for the third book. It picks up shortly after the events in the first book and I didn't get the feeling that I was missing anything.



View all my reviews

My Favorite Children's Book

Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book by Dr. Seuss

This morning a friend mentioned that she had to buy a children's book to take to a function and asked me for a recommendation. Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book immediately leapt to mind and it occurred to me that I have never mentioned this book on my blog.

I didn't discover this book until my kids were a bit too old to have picture books read to them. Still, I read it to them right before bed on Christmas Eve for several years, and I'm sure they would listen if I offered to read it to them again. The rhymes in the book are the most pleasing to roll around on my tongue of all the Seuss books I've read. When I read it at night, I really get a sense that people all over the world are dropping off to sleep right at that moment.

This is one of my favorite passages:

But it isn't too good when a moose and a goose
Start dreaming they're drinking the other one's juice.
Moose juice, not goose juice, is juice for a moose
And goose juice, not moose juice, is juice for a goose.

The illustrations are great, too. Many of the creatures look all fuzzy and fluffy, like stuffed animals you would want to snuggle up with at night. Even thought it is a little long, I still think this is the perfect bedtime book.

"My Life in Pink & Green" by Lisa Greenwald

My Life in Pink & Green by Lisa Greenwald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: middle-school fiction
On my TBR list? Yes, since Aug 2010



Summary, from Goodreads:

Twelve-year-old Lucy Desberg is a natural problem solver. After the local homecoming queen shows up at her family’s struggling drugstore with a beauty disaster that Lucy helps to fix, Lucy has a long line of makeover customers for every school dance and bat mitzvah. But all the makeup tips in the world won’t help save the pharmacy. If only she could find a way to make the pharmacy the center of town again—a place where people want to spend time, like in the old days. Lucy dreams up a solution that could resuscitate the family business and help the environment, too. But will Lucy’s family stop fighting long enough to listen to a seventh-grader?


This story, with its young heroine who knows more than the adults, could have been annoying. Many of us have grown up watching TV shows and movies with parents portrayed as morons and kids who have too much power and freedom. However, Lisa Greenwald gave it context that made it more believable. It was easy for me to see how a 12-year-old and her college-student sister could do the research needed to help save the family business, especially when the grown-ups are so close to the problem that they are frustrated and blinded to the possibilities. I remember reading a few stories like this when I was a teen and I found them inspiring. Even when the circumstances are bit unrealistic, the idea that you can at least try to do something to make things better -- no matter what age you are -- is uplifting.

C1, my 13-year-old daughter, had a few things to say about this book, as well:

My Life in Pink and Green was written for girls my age, but even so, I found it kind of hard to relate. I had a feeling of what she was going through with the money problems, but other than that, I found the book a little boring. In the description above, the book sounds like it is all about makeovers, but it took a long while to get to the makeover parts. When we finally got there, she didn't stay on the subject for too long. It seemed like doing makeup was a side thing, while the real issue was whether or not the mayor is going to give them the grant. There was a touch of romance in the book, but since she was only twelve it didn't go very far. I read books with main characters a lot older than me, so I'm used to people at least getting to the first date, before the book is over. All in all, I think this book is good for girls my age or younger, but I personally didn't like it that much.

View all my reviews