Reading Fanatic Reviews
Contemporary RomanceJewel of the Bay by Brea Viragh
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Thalia, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, Indigo (Chapters), and Bol.de
Jewel of the Bay*
Yes, Even Contemporary Romances Can Be Trope-Heavy
I don’t know how I managed it, but this is the second book in as many days where the heroine is on a road trip to somewhere else but is waylaid in a small town, finds a job, and decides to stay there. Makes me wonder whether this is becoming a tired trope in small-town romance. I felt like this story was missing progressive complications through the middle section until the BIG complication. Yes, things were happening around the camp, but there didn’t seem to be progressive complications in terms of the romantic relationship. Much of the middle felt like we were just going from one annoying little camp moment to another. While the characters may have had to deal with camp drama, it should not have felt like the main thrust of the book. The characters never really became wholly real to me.
Italian Summer Series by Lily Zante
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Italian Summer Series*
Superficial
This set of books didn’t quite do it for me. While I like a good contemporary romance, these stories and characters are superficial and actually made me feel uncomfortable reading them. I hate a heroine who thinks she’s all that and a bag of chips and even put down their own girlfriends who are good people (even if not exactly like them or living the life that they would lead). Still, if you’re looking for a meaningless little set of romances to while away your time on vacation, this might be your cup of tea.
California Can Wait by Marci Bolden
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
California Can Wait*
Not as Good As Other Books by this Author
As one who’s really enjoyed Ms. Bolden’s first four novels of the Stonehill series, I was looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, compared to those stories, I didn’t feel like this one was as well written. Right on the first page, I saw a wrong word choice (a communicable disease, not a communal one). I felt like the couple, Andi and Graham, had a good rocky beginning as often happens in a romance, but they started to have an attraction to each other even during that which didn’t seem realistic. Their problems from the past seem like good fodder for motivations and conflict, but I didn’t feel the urgency or tension for most of the way along the story. The couple didn’t have chemistry for me. I thought the book ended too abruptly. Minutes before it ends, it looks like All Is Lost, but then it is resolved, and—BOOM!—the novella is over. I would have liked to have gotten a glimpse into more of the actual resolution and how they move on from there, both as a couple and professionally. As the one who adored that the author knew how to pull emotional heartstrings in the Stonehill series, I found this book to be a disappointment.
The Way We Met by Patricia M. Jackson
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
The Way We Met*
The Meet-cutes of Ten Couples Across Time
What a lovely collection of ten somewhat long short stories that each highlight how a particular couple met. The stories range in time from the late 1800s to now. They are written alternating between the hero’s and the heroine’s perspectives in the first person. I would have liked to have seen the POV mixed up a little in these stories, as the first person can be a little tedious to read for such a long time, especially when you’re constantly switching characters. In these stories, the author is able to give a real sense of both time and place, from Ellis Island in the late 1800s to Midwestern farms. Even though these are relatively short, she is able to make each of the characters distinct. In the brief span of time that we see these couples, I felt like I got to know the characters and became invested in their stories. Each story could be read in about the time of a break or a lunch, perfect for reading while at work.
Lacewood by Jessica James
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Thalia, Smashwords, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, Indigo (Chapters), and Bol.de
Lacewood*
An Odd Combination of Parts
I am not quite sure what to make of this book. I think the author had an interesting premise, but it was not fully realized on several fronts. I found the first part of the book to be so dull that I almost did not continue. Nearly 10% of the book is just taken up with how the heroine got to New Hope and her walk around Lacewood manor. Another significant portion just following this seemed to just detail home repair and the heroine’s growing involvement with the future hero. Things get more interesting when the heroine finds out more about the old home’s previous owners through artifacts and letters.
But then the book does a strange flip. Part 1 takes place in the present, and then part 2, which doesn’t happen until after the 75% mark, takes us back to the Civil War past of the manor. The last 7% or so is part 3 and takes place in the present again. These broad jumps in time made the book feel disjointed. Rather than have parts, and such lopsided parts, I think the book would have been better if the past storyline had been integrated with the present one. For example, the author could have interleaved pertinent past chapters within the current storyline as interrupters, especially if they illuminated what the current heroine found. It would have made for a more cohesive story and overall plot line. I also felt that the author’s prose was too flowery in places, especially in the beginning section, and was a little too heavily dependent on descriptive words like adjectives and adverbs that actually distracted from the reading because it was overloaded with unnecessary details.
While I completely bought into the Civil War romance (even if the hero of that arc seemed too good in general and an unbelievably fantastic love letter writer), I didn’t get any chemistry from the contemporary couple. Their romance didn’t hit all the right notes (conventions and obligatory scenes) that a love story should have. The big themes that the writer promised would be shown in the blurb were not realized in the book itself (though we were TOLD they were addressed by the characters). In all, I found this book unsatisfying.
Hope’s Dream by Peggy Jaeger
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Hope's Dream*
Lovely Little Holiday Romance
This is a sweet little romance that reminds me very much of a Hallmark made-for-TV holiday romance. Hope is a driven and compassionate young lady who works two jobs to help support her and her mother. Unfortunately, her mother was in a bad accident that actually killed Hope’s father, and she is in a wheelchair and requires a lot of expensive medical treatment. The hero, Tyler, is a lawyer for a small New York firm. He has been tasked to get Hope to sign an agreement for her to receive an inheritance from her father’s side of the family. She and her mother have been estranged from them because they disowned their son, her father, when he chose to remain with and marry her mother. They thought she was a gold digger who was beneath their family. The hero had been trying to contact Hope, but she did not respond to the firm’s letters. He figured since she was so reticent, she needed a delicate and personal touch to get it all sorted out. The hero is a sweet guy who is too involved in his job to have a personal life. So he falls pretty quickly for the kind and lovely Hope. He fears that his little secret will destroy their budding relationship.
I actually enjoyed this lovely little romance. It is relatively low angst, and the characters are both delightful, kind-hearted people who deserve each other. I quite enjoyed watching their story unfold. I can tend to read some pretty intense books, so every now and then it is lovely to read a book that is simply pleasurable. If you like the Hallmark-type of love story, you may very well enjoy this book.
Asking for a Friend by Shay Quin
Unknown where this book is available. At the time of review, it was not at Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble. Will continue to check on this and will update when I know more.
Asking for a Friend*
I Didn’t Feel the Romance
I had enjoyed the first book I read by this author, Marrying Mars, which was a quirky little book about a woman in a The Bachelor style romance setting that had to do was a man who lived on Mars. I didn’t find this book nearly as enjoyable. Since the reader is stepping in late to the hero and heroine’s courtship, where he is on the cusp of asking her to marry him, I found the first part of the book simply fell flat for me. Then the hero makes several mistakes, keeping them from their HEA. I didn’t really sense any chemistry between the couple, so on all fronts, I pretty much found this book to be a disappointment.
Blow by Tracy Ewens
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Blow*
Didn’t Like the First Part; Second Part Much Better
Millie is just hoping for some time away to write her first, what she calls, serious book–one that her father would respect. She is actually a best selling romance writer, and her father sees such books as trash. What she hopes will be quiet times to inspire her muse turns out to be quite loud because of her next-door neighbor’s penchant for loud music as he runs his glass-blowing business. They butt heads for a while, but as they get to know each other, their attraction grows. They both have inner demons that they wrestle with. Which will triumph, inner demons or love?
As a sometime writer myself, I enjoyed all of the author-ly bits in this book. (I loved the discussion on romance covers!) I am actually quite familiar with this part of coastal California as I lived for ten years north of the story setting in Fort Bragg. Having been a foggybottom in a tourist town, I was a bit put off by the way the author portrayed life in a small coastal village. In our city, we didn’t treat tourists like the author has Drake and some of the others treat Millie (and as they refer to having done to other tourists). The book definitely had some formatting issues (words ran together) and errors with grammar and punctuation (comma splices aplenty).
I also thought that Drake just acted so rude for the first part of the book–so selfish and unrelenting–that I almost stopped reading because I couldn’t get past his attitude and see him as a potential hero. However, I’m glad I stuck with it, as he does have a stream of revelations as he wrestles with his demons that made him reevaluate himself, making him more interesting and allowing me to stick with the story. As the characters got to know each other, the extent of their personal issues (their backstories and how they were impacting them in the present) became apparent gradually, and this was actually masterfully done by the writer. By the end, I was wholly invested in the characters and cared about what happened to them. Drake’s gift at the end was lovely and heartwarming; while it didn’t end the book, it was probably the most satisfying part of the end; the symbolism and the beauty of his words was a delight. There are several heartrending and poignant moments in this book as well as some humor; I like a book that can have both. I thought their first sex scene was perfectly done because it was so true to these characters as they had been developed. The road to romance is rocky for so many reasons, and after being put off by the first part, I was completely pulled into their evolving relationship because of the depth of the characters and the emotional honesty of their portrayal. That is rare to see in a romance book.
The Eyewitness by Nancy C. Weeks
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
The Eyewitness*
Romance Fell Flat, But Suspense Plot Was Good
This contemporary romantic suspense starts with an unfortunate bang as the heroine’s father is murdered just after they had a big argument. The book details the investigation into this as well as the budding romance between the heroine and the hero, who happened to be her dead father’s partner.
This book was mostly well written, but I didn’t quite buy the romance aspect. This is an enemies-to-lovers spot, and I think that is hard to pull off in general but especially when there’s so much else going on in the story (like there is in this one). We need to see a pivotal shift for both characters that’s believable and contextually correct. Yes, I got that the two had a bad history, which sets up the enemies part, and they continue to butt heads even while they have an undeniable attraction to each other. Neither part rings true for me. Another thing that didn’t quite sit right for me was the idea of a hot-headed person being a forensic scientist; the two ideas just don’t blend well together in my mind. I know one of the themes that runs throughout is that she is working on that aspect of herself, but it seemed like an oil-and-water combination that would be unlikely to happen in real life. I also didn’t feel like the initial hospital scene was accurate in several ways; I won’t detail all the reasons, but I am an RN, and I wondered if the author had done much research into what goes on in a hospital and what it’s really like (including security).
The familial relationships in this story are complex in a way that feels accurate to real life. I enjoyed the dialogue in that it seemed natural, but I didn’t think that the key characters had enough differentiation in their voices. The suspense aspect was better done than the romance aspect. There were plenty of twists, turns, and surprises. While the book didn’t technically end on a cliffhanger, there are some unresolved issues. All in all, despite the glowing reviews for this book, it doesn’t inspire me to read the next book in the series to see how those loose ends to tie up.
Last Words by Shari J. Ryan
Available at Amazon and Scribd
Last Words*
Stunningly Beautiful Novel About the Triumph of Love and Human Spirit
I read and review a lot of books. I’m generally able to dictate a review rather quickly. But when a book truly is exceptional and moves me, I feel like my meager words cannot do it justice. This is one of those outstanding books I am trying very hard to do proper justice to. This is simply an amazing book about the power of true love to triumph over hate and time. The book is an emotional journey not just for granddaughter Emma in the story but for the reader as well. In this book, the author has rendered beautifully both the greatest potential of the human soul as well as what we are when we are at our worst. The writing draws you right into Grandma and Emma’s story effortlessly. The story alternates between the points of view of Grandma (in the form of her diary) and Emma. The author has given them each a distinct voice; you know which is which even without referring to the note at the top of each chapter. Grandma’s story gives Emma a vision of what true love is and empowers her to live a better life with a man who treats her right. Grandma and Charlie’s story is full of so much pain but also love and hope in what was one of the darkest hours of human history. The author tells the harrowing tale with a brutal honesty that is at once inspiring and heartbreaking (though that word does not do it justice). As Emma starts to turn her life around, her story is the perfect counterpoint to her grandmother’s story, adding sweetness and a little levity. An exquisite, beautiful work that should be read by people who enjoy good love stories that touch the heart.
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