The Proposal

Author: Jasmine Guillory
Genre: Chick Lit
Publisher: Penguin Publishing, 2018
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hardest part - they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans.

At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik's rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He's even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik's social media blows up - in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes.

Review: The Wedding Date was cute so I knew I wanted to continue with this series. The Proposal was good and did not disappoint.

The Lying Game

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller 
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press, 2018
Pages: 416
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten, along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrive that first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister.

The next morning, three women in and around London - Fatima, Thea, and Isa - receive the text that they ahd always hoped would never come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, "I need you."

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second-rate boardnig school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in her own way, the four become inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty. But their little game had consequences, and as the four converge in present-day Salten, they realize their shared past was not as safely buried as they had once hoped.

Review: Maybe it was a mistake to listen to two books back-to-back written by the same author and read by the same narrator. However, I loved The It Girl so much that I couldn't wait to dive into another Ruth Ware novel. Unfortunately, The Lying Game was good not great.

Ruth Ware Novels
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
The It Girl
The Turn of the Key
The Woman in Cabin 10

The Wedding Date

Author: Jasmine Guillory
Genre: Chick Lit
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2018
Pages: 336
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Agreeing to go a wedding with a guy she gets stuck in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's hard to resist. 

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible. Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other...

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collison course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century - or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...

Review: This was my choice for the February reading prompt in one of my Facebook's group reading challenge, "Read a debut novel by an author of color."

The Wedding Date was the right book at the right time. A little spicy, fun, and light reading as a whole. Alexa and Drew's meeting is improbable, but not impossible, and I think that's partly the appeal of this novel. 

The Gales of November

Author: Robert J. Hemming
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Contemporary Books, 1981
Pages: 248
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Immortalized in song by Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot and still argued over by Great Lakes experts, the fate of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew has attracted more widespread attention than other thousands of shipwrecks recorded on the Great Lakes. The 729-foot ore freighter and its entire crew mysteriously and suddenly disappeared during a violent November storm on Lake Superior in 1975. 

Review: I knew the song, Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, from childhood. It's haunting melody and tragedy of the shipwreck stayed with me for years. At some point I learned that the bell from this ship was located at The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Last summer we vacationed in northern Michigan and added this museum to the itinerary. My then 8 year old son was fascinated, by all the ships lost in the Great Lakes. 

This book alternates between intense, sad, and back to intense. Such a tragedy. Had these men lived the oldest would "only" be in their 80s, still possibly alive had fate dealt them a different hand.

Impossible

Author: Nancy Werlin
Genre: Teen Fiction
Publisher: Dial Books, 2008
Pages: 384
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Lucy Scarborough is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or fall into madness upon their child's birth. But Lucy is the first girl who won't be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents beside her. And she has Zach, whose strength amazes her more each day. Do they have enough love and resolve to overcome and age-old evil?

Review: Reading this was what I'll call a happy accident. My daughter and I went to the library together. I didn't realize some of her books were mixed in with mine. Then, after the book drew me in, I noticed the big pink "TEEN" label on the spine.

Right away this book gave me A Witch in Time vibes, a book I hadn't expected to even like, let alone love. Novels like these are ground in reality, with a bit of the supernatural, and the plot is solid.

I always say that when one is in a reading slump, the best way out is to choose something you wouldn't typically read, a genre that you don't normally read.

Tomorrow's Promise

Author: Sandra Brown
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Mira, 1983
Pages: 296
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Thousands of feet above the ground on a crowded flight to Washington D.C., radio personality Keely Williams feels the irrestible pull of handsome congressman Dax Devereaux. The two are on their way to a congressional hearing about Vietnam soldiers listed as MIA. Tragically, Keely's husband is among the missing. He had been her childhood sweetheart, her future, her love - and then the unanswered question she dedicated her life to solving.

Until she begins to entertain the possibility of a new future with Dax. But can Keely allow herself to love again while still honoring the man of her past?

Review: I'm in some kind of reading slump lately, but I have found myself venturing into the smutty romance genre. This isn't a genre to which I typically gravitate.

Predictable and somehow still a poignant read, Tomorrow's Promise hit all the right notes for whatever I have going on in my life or my head right now. I was transported to the 1980s, when the Vietnam War wasn't something we learned about in history books yet. It was a recent event that still impacted the day-to-day lives of everyday people. Eeryone had a memory of Vietnam, whether in Asia or the United States.

Tomorrow's Promise takes place in both Washington D.C. and New Orleans, a city we plan to visit in June so that was a fun surprise. I enjoy reading novels set in places I've been, and where I am going.

Long Time Coming

Author: Sandra Brown
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2006 (first published in 1988)
Pages: 208
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: He arrived out of the blue - a flesh-and-blood phantom from the past in a sports car sleek and sexy as Law Kincaid himself. The world-famous atronaut was as devastatingly attractive as the first time Marnie Hibbs had laid eyes on him, seventeen years before. But she well knew the perils of falling for a ladies' man like Law. And this time she had someone besides herself to protect. Law is dtermined to discover who is sending him anonymous letters claiming he'd fathered a son he knows nothing about. Showing up at the Hibb's return address from the letters seemed like a step in the right direction. Marnie swears she isn't the guilty party, but shen Law meets her son, it's like a one-two punch to his solar plexus. The boy is nearly a spitting image of Law. Law can't remember sleeping with Marnie - then again, he can't remember much about his crazy past. But there's more to it than Marnie claims the boy isn't biologically hers.

As the tension between them becomes unbearable and the attraction undeniable, Marnie is forced to reveal a long-held secret...one that might cause her to lose both the boy she loves more than anyone - and the man she desires more than anything.

Review: I had no trouble listening to The It Girl, but getting into a print version of a book, any book, has been a struggle recently. Historical fiction wasn't doing it for me, which is usually my go-to genre, I tried reading a fiction novel and while it was good, it wasn't grabbing me and my mind drifted. I decided to try a light book by an author I'd heard of, but hadn't read.

This novel was published in 1988, and that is an important detail. I don't know what women were like in the 1980s, but novels published during that decade or something else. By today's standards it's problematic - women are made to look like idiots, or as this novel flat-out calls them, "bimbos," and the ones who aren't "bimbos" need to be rescued by a wildly successful male who oozes toxic masculinity.

However, if you're able to let yourself be transported to the 80s and realize this was typical for novels of that time, and apparently what women wanted to read, or did read then, it's an entertaining book and I couldn't put it down. I read this novel in a few short hours, and now I want to seek out more by this author.

If you need a bit of smut in your life or to break a reading slump, this may be just the book. 

Suspension of belief - required!

The It Girl

Author: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press, 2022
Pages: 464
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. 

Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends - Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily - during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead.

Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah's world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide. . .including a murder.

Review: While I have trouble getting into print versions of Ruth Ware's novels, I love her books on audio. Imogen Church, the narrator, brings them to life. The It Girl may be my favorite yet. This novel had everything - great plot, characters, setting. And for once, I didn't guess the ending. Just so good.

Ruth Ware Novels
The Death of Mrs. Westaway
The Lying Game - review coming soon
The Turn of the Key
The Woman in Cabin 10

The Seamstress of New Orleans

Author: Diane C. McPhail
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Kensington, 2023
Pages: 352
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: 1900: Though the dawn of a new century promises social progress, there are few options for women like Alice Butterworth, pregnant and abandoned by her husband. In desperation, Alice leaves Chicago's bitter cold and travels to New Orleans, where she offers sewing lessons at an orphanage. 

Young widow Constance Halstead has thrown herself into charity work since her husband's death. Seeing Alice's skill, she offers lodging in exchange for help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all-female krewe of Mardi Gras. Leap Years offer women a rare opportunity - to turn the tables on men, upending convention. As the breathtaking gown takes shape piece by piece, it becomes a symbol of empowerment for them both.

Review: Since we are planning a family vacation to New Orleans this summer, I wanted to read a book set in the Crescent City. It will be our first time and we're super excited. I loved the cover of this novel. However, the story was very lacking, and very predictable. I knew where the plot was going early on, and I just found it boring. There also wasn't a lot of New Orleans specific details to set time or place, or to get a person excited about visiting.