Genre: Chick Lit

Review: The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Book Club Hotel by Sarah MorganThe Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, holiday fiction, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 368
Published by Canary Street Press on September 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This Christmas, USA Today bestselling author Sarah Morgan returns with another heartfelt exploration of change, the power of books to heal, and the enduring strength of female friendship. Perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Jennifer Weiner.
With its historic charm and picture-perfect library, the Maple Sugar Inn is considered the winter destination. As the holidays approach, the inn is fully booked with guests looking for their dream vacation. But widowed far too young, and exhausted from juggling the hotel with being a dedicated single mom, Hattie Coleman dreams only of making it through the festive season.
But when Erica, Claudia and Anna—lifelong friends who seem to have it all—check in for a girlfriends’ book club holiday, it changes everything. Their close friendship and shared love of books have carried them through life's ups and downs. But Hattie can see they're also packing some major emotional baggage, and nothing prepares her for how deeply her own story is about to become entwined in theirs. In the span of a week over the most enchanting time of the year, can these four women come together to improve each other’s lives and make this the start of a whole new chapter?

My Review:

This is the story of how the Hotel Book Club transformed the Maple Sugar Inn into The Book Club Hotel – with a little bit of help from the spirit of Christmas. It’s also the story of four women living the old saying that goes, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

The members of the Hotel Book Club, former college roommates Ericka, Anna and Claudia, have met up every year since those college days at some hotel or another to catch up with each other, sightsee a bit, drink wine and talk about books. Not necessarily in that order.

As the story begins they are all just one side or the other of 40. Which is turning out to be one hell of a milestone birthday for each of them – even if they are having a difficult time admitting that to themselves – let alone each other.

There’s that saying about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence? They’re all feeling a bit of that because they went very different directions after college, which was not exactly a surprise as they were not exactly peas in a pod when they met.

Anna and Claudia both envy Ericka for her high-powered and highly-successful career and the lifestyle it affords her. Ericka and Claudia both see Anna’s happy marriage and picture-perfect family as a touchstone, proof that some relationships do work and some marriages are successful and some families are perfect – even if that hasn’t been the experience for either of them in their birth families or their own history. While Ericka and Anna both have a touch of that same envy over Claudia’s passion for and expertise in being a chef.

And all of those things are true, but, under the surface each situation is nowhere near as perfect as it seems from the outside. Anna is beset by empty-nest syndrome as her ‘job’ as the ever-supportive mother to twins Meg and Daniel is moving to a new and dreaded phase as those twins get ready to leave for college.

Claudia’s 10-year relationship with John has just ended, and she’s just lost a job that burned her out so badly she’s thinking seriously about re-inventing herself as something, anything, to get out of soulless kitchens run by abusive dictators that do not respect her skills AND leave her no time for a personal life.

While Ericka is waffling on the first steps of the road not taken. Or rather, the road her father took minutes after she was born, leaving her and her mother behind to fend for themselves while he ran about as far away as he could get. An event that sent her life into an utter inability to depend on anyone else for anything ever – with Anna and Claudia seeming to be the only exceptions.

When the friends gather at the Maple Sugar Inn that early December, they enter what seems like a picture perfect place to spend a week putting each other back together – even if none of them can admit that’s a big portion of what they are there for.

Just as they arrive, that picture-perfect picture melts down. The innkeeper Hattie is having a crisis of her own. Multiple crises, in fact, as both her head housekeeper and her five-star chef have quit in the midst of tantrums worthy of a two-year old while the inn is full to the rafters and there seems to be no help in sight.

But there is. And in the course of helping Hattie set the inn on the course she finally has the spoons to create for herself, Anna, Claudia and Ericka each find the fork in their own roads – and reach out to take it.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up for two reasons, and I’m not sure which is first or second. The whole concept of a vacation just to read and spend time with lifelong friends and read, (did I mention read?) and relax and oh, yes, read – sounds a bit like heaven. And the setting of The Book Club Hotel seemed particularly idyllic, including a brief trip to a ‘Winter Wonderland’ without having to stick around for the next several months of freezing temperatures, gray snow and mud. (Been there, done that, the t-shirts are all long-sleeved and insulated.)

The Stacking the Shelves stack that included this book garnered a whole lot of comments about just how wonderful this particular vacation sounded, so I’m clearly not alone in thinking it would be lovely.

That other reason for picking up The Book Club Hotel is that I really enjoyed this author’s The Summer Seekers a couple of years ago, and was hoping for something similar.

In spite of the wildly different settings, that particular wish was just a bit too on the nose. The characters read a bit too similarly particularly Ericka and Anna standing in for emotionally distant Kathleen and helicopter worrywart mother Liza.

The story follows a familiar outline. Four women, each at their own personal crossroads, come together accidentally and on purpose and forge or re-forge the bonds between them while figuring out which way to turn at that crossroad with a little help from their old and new friends.

It’s a familiar formula because it works – and it certainly does in The Book Club Hotel. And that’s down to the four protagonists, Ericka, Anna, Claudia and Hattie. It helps a lot that not only are they all individually charming, each in their own ways, but they also represent different but very real dilemmas. Readers may not identify with all of them, but it would be difficult not to resonate with one or two. (Personally, I was on Team Ericka and Team Claudia but your reading mileage may take you down the other fork in the road.)

What really makes it all work is that each of these women does find a happily ever after, but it’s not the SAME happy ever after – and it shouldn’t be. I particularly liked that not all of those HEAs were wrapped around relationships and children. They each needed to work on themselves, and happiness followed from that work.

I have to confess that, in spite of my deep, abiding love for the concept of an actual Book Club Hotel, the story in said hotel didn’t pull at my heartstrings quite as hard as The Summer Seekers but a good reading time was absolutely still had by this reader.

If you like women’s fiction/relationship fiction, I’m confident that you will, too.

Review: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> C Reviews
Review: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
Narrator: Kristin Atherton
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, time travel romance, women's fiction
Pages: 368
Length: 13 hours and 15 minutes
Published by Harlequin Audio, Harlequin MIRA on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


If you had the power to change the past…where would you start?

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until now.• She's just been dumped.• She's just been fired.• Her local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.

My Review:

The problem with wanting to change things is that things change – including things we had no intention of changing. There’s that thing about the butterfly and its unintended wing flap to consider.

But when Cassandra Dankworth discovers, on her second repeat of the second worst day in her life, that she has the power to change her past, she quickly discovers that for every single thing she attempts to fix, there’s a journey down the road not originally taken that might be even worse than the one she originally took.

As difficult as that is for her to imagine. Because it really, truly was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. Tinkering with it isn’t going to make things any better. Tinkering with the worst day of her life, the day her parents were both killed in a car accident ten years ago, seems to be out of her reach.

The one thing she can do, the event that the universe seems to be pointing her towards with increasingly sharp, poking fingers, is the day that she met her boyfriend, Will. The boyfriend who began her terrible, horrible, etc. day by breaking up with her.

She can’t save her parents, but she can save her relationship. If she can use her seemingly endless ability to tweak time to fix things. And herself. All she has to do is learn the lessons that the universe seems determined to teach her.

Even if they are not the lessons she wants them to be.

Escape Rating C: I ended up with a whole lot of mixed feelings about Cassandra in Reverse. I flipped back and forth between the audiobook and the text, trying to find a way to make myself comfortable in the story.

Which was probably a mistake on multiple levels, because the way the story begins makes it abundantly clear that Cassandra Dankworth is just not a comfortable person to be with. In audio the listener is bombarded with Cassandra’s rapidly firing mental processes – and it’s impossible not to understand why the people around her find her so “difficult”.

Howsomever, because we’re in her neurodivergent head and her first-person perspective, we are also able to empathize with Cassandra in a way that the people around her most definitely do not.

So we get both sides with both barrels – which does not make either of them a comfortable read.

Which means that it is not a surprise that when Cassandra discovers her limited power to time travel, the thing she truly wants to change – and by that I mean “fix” – is herself. Considering all of the completely negative and utterly damning messages that she has received over her life, and how much she has internalized those messages, she’s convinced that everything that happens to her is her fault because she’s broken. She ends up rewriting and resetting her encounters with pretty much everyone in her life, over and over, in order to learn proper behavior so she can fix herself and be happy like everyone around her.

The hard lesson in this story is that she’s not going to ever be happy like everyone around her because she isn’t like everyone around her. The lesson she needs to absorb is about accepting herself, finding other people who accept her as she is and not as society expects her to be, and make a life that works for her.

It’s a very hard lesson, and one that most of us struggle with for all of our lives. And at the end of Cassandra in Reverse I’m not even sure that Cassandra has figured out that that’s the lesson she was supposed to learn. Although it is possible to interpret the story that she did, and that her journey involves resetting everyone else’s as she passes by.

So I’m torn by this one. It didn’t work well for me, and found the audio to be a particularly rough ride because the drumbeat of how much Cassandra does not fit into the world around her is so very loud and harsh. I felt for her too much to want to experience the way the world treated her from so intimate a perspective.

Your reading mileage may vary.

Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Beach Read by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily Henry
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 358
Published by Berkley on May 19, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

My Review:

Beach Read has been in the virtually towering TBR pile ever since I read – and fell in love with – Book Lovers early this year. I’ve been “playing along” with the Kindle Achievements every quarter, so when the list of possible titles to fulfill that last badge included Beach Read, it seemed like the universe was telling me that now was the time. So here we are.

Both January Andrews and Augustus Everett are best selling authors – but most definitely NOT in the same genre. January writes women’s fiction (not all that different from the author herself), while Augustus Everett is famous for his dark and gritty literary fiction.

Their characters and worlds do not even begin to intersect – but they do. They are both graduates of the same University of Michigan Creative Writing Program. In fact, they attended together and graduated at the same time, spending four years competing for every single award and critiquing pretty much every single one of each other’s works.

Saying they are familiar with each other is hardly a stretch – even if they have nothing in common. Or believe they have nothing in common. At least not until they find themselves next door neighbors in a northern Michigan beach community, wanting nothing to do with each other.

But needing each other all the same.

They’ve each fallen into some really deep ruts, and they are separately having a damn hard time crawling out of those ruts. January has stopped believing in happy ever afters, after the one she believed her parents had found turned out to be based on a lie. A year after her dad’s death, she has a book due, an empty bank account, and a severe case of writer’s block.

Leading her to her dad’s old home town and the house he shared with his childhood sweetheart at a point considerably after either of their childhoods.

Gus has never believed in happy ever afters. Or even happy for nows. He’s always looked on the dark side and is in the throes of his third book, this time about death cults and their few survivors. But he’s going through his own case of writer’s block, for reasons that he isn’t willing to share with January. Because sharing isn’t something that Gus does easily. Or at all.

Still, they’re both writers and they’re both stuck and they have a whole lot of common ground to build on – even if that ground is more than a bit shaky on both sides. So they challenge each other as a way of breaking their writer’s block.

And it turns into the making of a happy ending for everyone – including sorta/kinda – the protagonists of not one but two surprising new books.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed Beach Read, but not quite as much as Book Lovers, because it’s a bit too much like Book Lovers. Which isn’t fair to Beach Read, as it was published first even though I read it second. Still, if you like one you’ll like the other – although it probably isn’t a good idea to read them too close together.

Like Nora and Charlie in Book Lovers, January and Gus are not just both in the book business, but in the same end of the book business as each other. (Nora and Charlie were both editors, January and Gus are both authors). Which means that both books, in addition to being just the kind of stories that January writes, are steeped in the book business – merely different aspects of that business.

And both stories begin when the protagonists meet when both parties are in the midst of a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” What makes both stories fun to read is the way that they get themselves and each other past the horribleness.

We’re in January’s head in this story, so we know what she’s been through, what she’s thinking, and what she’s feeling. Because she and Gus knew each other fairly well – and very nearly better than that – once upon a time, we are also aware of all of her pre-conceived notions of who Gus is and what he thinks of her and in both of their situations.

Which gives Beach Read a very strong sense of “assume makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me’” because January’s assumptions about Gus were and are too frequently wrong, wrong, wrong. But this steers clear of misunderstandammit territory because Gus has a damn hard time communicating his thoughts and feelings in any way other than expiating the worst of them through his writing.

While it was a given from the outset that January and Gus were going to reach at least the kind of happy for now that both the character January AND the author usually write, what made this book interesting and different was the books that January and Gus each produced on their way to it, and how those books managed to be both a departure from their usual styles while still expressing the core parts of their personalities and their reasons for becoming writers in the first place.

So a good reading time was definitely had in Beach Read. Because it was most definitely a good reading time, and because one of the other possible titles for that last achievement was the author’s People We Meet on Vacation, I bought that too. I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking that up and meeting those people the next time I’m looking for a feel-good read!

Spotlight + Excerpt: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Excerpts> Spotlight
Spotlight + Excerpt: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, time travel romance
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on June 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


If you had the power to change the past…where would you start?

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until now.• She's just been dumped.• She's just been fired.• Her local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.

Welcome to the blog tour for Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale. I’ll be reviewing this book later this month, but in the meantime, here’s a bit of a teaser to whet ALL of our reading appetites!

Here’s how Cassandra’s story starts…(Excerpt from the first chapter of Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale)

WHERE DOES A STORY START?

   It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning—the opening of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline.

  • But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest.
  • Maybe that’s why humans like them.
  • And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club.

Here are some other things I’ve been asked not to return to:

  • The Blenheim Road Readers Group
  • A large flat-share I briefly attempted in Walthamstow
  • My last relationship
  • My current job

   The final two have been in quick succession. This morning, Will—my boyfriend of four months—kissed me, listed my virtues out of nowhere and concluded the pep talk by ending our relationship.

   The job situation I found out about eighty seconds ago.

   According to the flexing jaw and flared nostrils of my boss, I’ve yet to respond to this new information. He seems faint and muted, as if he’s behind a pane of thick frosted glass. He also has a dried oat on his shirt collar but now doesn’t seem the right time to point it out: he’s married—his wife can do it later.

   “Cassie,” he says more loudly. “Did you hear me?”

   Obviously I heard him or I’d still be giving a detailed report on the client meeting I just had, which is exactly what I was doing when he fired me.

   “The issue isn’t so much your work performance,” he plows on gallantly. “Although, Christ knows, somebody who hates phone calls as much as you do shouldn’t be working in public relations.”

   I nod: that’s an accurate assessment.

   “It’s your general demeanor I can’t have in this office. You are rude. Insubordinate. Arrogant, frankly. You are not a team player, and do you know what this office needs?”

   “A better coffee machine.”

   “That’s exactly the kind of bullshit I’m talking about.”

   I’d tell you my boss’s name and give him a brief description, but judging by this conversation, he isn’t going to be a prominent character for much longer.

   “I’ve spoken to you about this on multiple occasions— Cassandra, look at me when I’m talking to you. Our highest-paying client just dropped us because of your quote, unquote relentlessly grating behavior. You are unlikable. That’s the exact word they used. Unlikable. Public relations is a People Job. For People People.”

   Now, just hang on a minute.

   “I’m a person,” I object, lifting my chin and doing my best to stare directly into his pupils. “And, as far as I’m aware, being likable is irrelevant to my job description. It’s certainly not in my contract, because I’ve checked.”

   My boss’s nostrils flare into horsiness.

   I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup. While it fills me up, I have to work out what the hell it is, where it came from and what I’m supposed to do to stop it spilling everywhere.

   Rage that doesn’t feel like mine pulses through me: dark purple and red.

   His colors are an invasion and I do not like it.

   “Look,” my boss concludes with a patient sigh that is nothing like the emotion bolting out of him. “This just isn’t working out, Cassie, and on some level you must already know that. Maybe you should find something that is better suited to your…specific skill set.”

   That’s essentially what Will told me this morning too. I don’t know why they’re both under the impression I must have seen the end coming when I very much did not.

   “Your job has the word relations in it,” my boss clarifies helpfully. “Perhaps you could find one that doesn’t?”

   Standing up, I clear my throat and look at my watch: it’s not even Wednesday lunchtime yet.

   Relationship: over.

   Job: over.

“Well,” I say calmly. “Fuck.”

So that’s where my story starts.

It could have started anywhere: I just had to pick a moment. It could have been waking up this morning to the sound of my flatmates screaming at each other, or eating my breakfast (porridge and banana, always), or making an elaborate gift for my first anniversary with Will (slightly preemptive).

   It could have been the moment just before I met him, which would have been a more positive beginning. It could have been the day my parents died in a car accident, which would have been considerably less so.

   But I chose here: kind of in the middle.

   Thirty-one years into my story and a long time after the dramatic end of some others. Packing a cardboard box with very little, because it transpires the only thing on my desk that doesn’t belong to the agency is a gifted coffee mug with a picture of a cartoon deer on it. I put it in the box anyway. There’s no real way of knowing what’s going to happen next, but I assume there will still be caffeine.

   “Oh shit!” My colleague Sophie leans across our desks as I stick a wilting plant under my arm just to look like I’m not leaving another year of my life behind with literally nothing to show for it. “They haven’t fired you? That’s awful. I’m sure we will all miss you so much.”

   I genuinely have no idea if she means this or not. If she does, it’s certainly unexpected: we’ve been sitting opposite each other since I got here and all I really know about her is that she’s twenty-two years old and likes tuna sandwiches, typing aggressively and picking her nose as if none of us have peripheral vision.

   “Will you?” I ask, genuinely curious. “Why?”

   Sophie opens her mouth, shuts it again and goes back to smashing her keyboard as if she’s playing whack-a-mole with her fingertips.

   “Cassandra!” My boss appears in the doorway just as I start cleaning down my keyboard with one of my little antiseptic wipes. “What the hell are you doing? I didn’t mean leave right now. Jesus on a yellow bicycle, what is wrong with you? I’d prefer you to work out your notice period, please.”

   “Oh.” I look down at the box and my plant. I’ve packed now. “No, thank you.”

   Finished with cleaning, I sling my handbag over my shoulder and my coat over my arm, hold the box against my stomach, awkwardly hook the plant in the crook of my elbow and try to get the agency door open on my own. Then I hold it open with my knee while I look back, even though—much like Orpheus at the border of the Underworld—I know I shouldn’t.

   The office has never been this quiet.

   Heads are conscientiously turned away from me, as if I’m a sudden bright light. There’s a light patter of keyboards like pigeons walking on a roof (punctuated by the violent death stabs of Sophie), the radiator by the window is gurgling, the reception is blindingly gold-leafed and the watercooler drips. If I’m looking for something good to come out of today—and I think I probably should—it’s that I won’t have to hear that every second for the rest of my working life.

   It’s a productivity triumph. They should fire people for fundamental personality flaws more often.

   The door slams behind me and I jump even though I’m the one who slammed it. Then my phone beeps, so I balance everything precariously on one knee and fumble for it. I try to avoid having unread notifications if I can. They make my bag feel heavy.

Dankworth please clean your shit up

   I frown as I reply:

Which shit in particular

   There’s another beep.

   Very funny. Keep the kitchen clear

It is a COmmUNAL SPaCE.

   It wasn’t funny a couple of weeks ago when I came down for a glass of water in the middle of the night and found Sal and Derek having sex against the fridge.

   Although perhaps that is the definition of communal.

   Still frowning, I hit the button for the lift and mentally scour the flat for what I’ve done wrong this time. I forgot to wash my porridge bowl and spoon. There’s also my favorite yellow scarf on the floor and a purple jumper over the arm of the sofa. This is my sixth flat-share in ten years and I’m starting to feel like a snail: carrying my belongings around with me so I leave no visible trace.

   I send back:

OK.

My intestines are rapidly liquidizing, my cheeks are hot and a bright pink rash I can’t see is forming across my chest. Dull pain wraps itself around my neck, like a scarf pulled tight.

   It’s fascinating how emotions can tie your life together.

   One minute you’re twelve, standing in the middle of a playground while people fight over who doesn’t get you as a teammate. The next you’re in your thirties, single and standing by the lifts of an office you’ve just been fired from because nobody wants you as a teammate. Same sensations, different body. Literally: my cells have cunningly replaced themselves at least twice in the interim.

   The office door swings open. “Cassandra?”

   Ronald has worn the same thing—a navy cashmere jumper—every day since he started working here a few months ago. It smells really lovely, so I’m guessing there must be plural. He walks toward me and I immediately panic. Now and then I’ve caught him looking at me from the neighboring desk with an incalculable expression on his face, and I have no idea what it could be. Lust? Repulsion? I’ve been scripting a response to the former for a month now, just in case.

I am honored by your romantic and/or sexual interest in me given that we’ve only exchanged perfunctory greetings, but I have a long-term boyfriend I am almost definitely in the process of falling in love with.

   Well, that excuse isn’t going to work anymore, is it.

   Ronald clears his throat and runs a large hand over his buzz-cut Afro. “That’s mine.”

   “Who?” I blink, disoriented by the grammar. “Me?”

   “The plant.” He points at the shrubbery now clutched under my sweaty armpit. “It’s mine and I’d like to keep it.”

   Ah, the sweet, giddy flush of humiliation is now complete.

   “Of course,” I say stiffly. “Sorry, Ronald.”

   Ronald blinks and reaches out a hand; I move quickly away so his fingers won’t touch mine, nearly dropping the pot in the process. It’s the same fun little dance I do when I have to pay with cash at the supermarket checkout, which is why I always carry cards.

   I get into the lift and press the button. Ronald now appears to be casually assessing me as if I’m a half-ripe avocado, so I stare at the floor until he reaches a conclusion.

   “Bye,” he says finally.

   “Bye,” I say as the lift doors slide shut.

And that’s how my story starts.

   With a novelty mug in a box, a full character assassination and the realization that when I leave a building I am missed considerably less than a half-dead rubber plant.

Excerpted from CASSANDRA IN REVERSE. Copyright © 2023 by Holly Smale. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins.

 

About the Author:

Holly Smale is the internationally bestselling, award-winning author of the Geek Girl (soon to be a Netflix series) and The Valentines teen series, which have sold 3.4 million copies worldwide. In January 2021, Holly was diagnosed autistic at the age of 39. Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Holly regularly shares, debates about, and celebrates neurodiversity on Twitter and Instagram @holsmale. Cassandra in Reverse is her adult debut and was named A Reese’s Book Club Pick, an Amazon Editors’ Top Pick of the Month, and a June Must Listen on Apple.

Social Links:
Author Website: https://www.hollysmale.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/holsmale
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holsmale/
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Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Happy Place by Emily HenryHappy Place by Emily Henry
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 400
Published by Berkley on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

My Review:

Ironically, Harriet’s “happy place” isn’t all that happy when she arrives – no matter how much everyone, including Harriet, tries to recapture the happiness they all always feel when they get there.

Once upon a time, all the way at the beginning of their freshman year at Mattingly College, the algorithm that matches up roommates matched three girls who, on the surface, couldn’t have been more different.

A serendipitous match that gave Harriet, Cleo and Sabrina the ‘sisters from another mister’ that none of them had ever had. They belonged together in a way that was so profound that it took them through college, graduate school, and beyond, culminating every summer at Lobster Fest in a tiny coastal town in Maine where Sabrina’s extended birth and step-family owned a gigantic, fully stocked summer house. (Honestly, more like a summer mansion or a compound. It’s vast and sprawling and perfect – except for one teensy little problem which we’ll get to in a minute.)

Every summer, the girls share one fantastic week together, a tradition that has not wavered as they have each found other roommates, friends and lovers along life’s way. As this summer visit begins, the three have been six for several years, and they are all thirty years old or on the cusp of it.

Sabrina, the great organizer of the group, has pulled them all together – in spite of more than one person’s reluctance – because this is going to be the last summer of their happy place. Her dad has sold the house.

But that’s not the only rain on this particular parade. On the one hand, there’s the good news that Sabrina and her lover, Parth, are getting married that weekend, on the beach near the house, with all their besties around them.

Sabrina and Parth’s good news – if it actually happens – is overshadowed by whatever is eating at Cleo and her girlfriend Kimmy – which is in its turn eating at Sabrina. Harriet, in the second year of a medical residency, has pushed everyone away, partly out of exhaustion but mostly in denial over her own depressing secret.

A secret that greets her at the door, when her long-term ex-fiance is waiting, intending to help her keep up the deception that they are still together. When they’re not. And haven’t been for several months but haven’t managed to tell anyone.

Because they fear it will affect the dynamic of the group – a group which has become a family they both need – whether separately or together.

And because they don’t really want to let each other go – no matter how much they each believe the other is better off without them.

Escape Rating B+: I went into Happy Place hoping for another Book Lovers – which I utterly adored. When I didn’t get that, I found this to be a tough read for most of its length, but now that I’ve finished the book I keep thinking about it and it’s turning out to be one of those cases where the whole is absolutely greater than the sum of its parts.

The story as it progresses seemed like a giant misunderstandammit for the longest time. But the thing about those kinds of books is that what makes them so awkward is that it’s obvious to the reader that all it would take would be one frank conversation to clear up the mess.

That’s not true here. While a bit of frankness would go a long way, it would take WAY more than one conversation to clear things up. All of them are bottling up how they really feel or what is really going on in order to keep the peace – and it’s not working for anyone.

Just as occurred in Book Lovers, this mess needs to build up to an explosion for that air to get cleared. It just takes a week of heating up before it all boils over.

On top of that, what really got to me about this story as I looked back at it was just that, the looking back. Because this is the last summer at their ‘happy place’ they are all aware that an era is ending. That, in combination with all of them turning 30 this year, makes all of them realize that life is changing and that this family that sustains all of them could come to an end if they don’t figure things out and learn to adapt to the changes they are all going through.

And yet, with the secrets hanging over them, they are in danger of not figuring things out. With all the nostalgia on tap on this trip, and with all of the music they play because it is the background of their lives together, (and because they mention Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” playing on the radio) I realized that this is the summer where they are all aware that whatever happens next for any of them, the years they spent together are the “Glory Days” they will be looking back on for the rest of their lives.

The question in the story is whether they can get beyond what’s driving them apart to find a new way to hold each other together – no matter where the future takes each of them.

In the end, I didn’t love Happy Place the way I did Book Lovers. But once I finished I realized that I liked it quite a bit more than I initially thought!

Review: Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Book Lovers by Emily HenryBook Lovers by Emily Henry
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction
Pages: 377
Published by Berkley on May 3, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....
Nora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.
Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.
If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.

My Review:

When it comes to Happy Ever Afters, one size definitely doesn’t fit all – even if a certain ubiquitous type of romance movie leads you to believe it does.

You know the ones I mean, on the channel created by the equally ubiquitous greeting card company, where a City Person™ is forced by circumstance to spend a month (or two) in a (very) small town and discovers true love, happiness and fulfillment in the welcoming embrace of that small town and particularly in the arms of one of the handsomest or most beautiful people there who loves the place and everyone in it that all that love converts the City Person into a country person.

This is not one of those stories.

This is a story about the city people that former City Person left behind back in the big city. Because there’s always someone in that city who they were supposed to marry as soon as they got back – which they never do. Whether that other City Person just doesn’t really understand or love them after all, or whether that person is the reincarnation of Cruella de Vil (whether male or female, doesn’t matter), that person who thought they knew where their life was going and who it was going with is left in the lurch, scrambling to put things back together.

Nora Stephens has been that ‘left behind’ person four times now. She’s a highly respected, perhaps just a teensy bit cutthroat book editor who will do anything and everything for her clients – but doesn’t leave much time, energy or effort for herself. She’s been left behind in love so many times that she’s given up on the idea.

The one person in her life that she always makes time for – even if not nearly fast enough or often enough – the one person she loves without reservation is her younger sister Libby. So when Libby entreats, inveigles and somewhat emotionally manipulates Nora into taking a vacation, together, just the two of them, away from Nora’s all-consuming job and Libby’s beloved husband and two little girls, Nora caves. Pretty much instantly. Libby has that effect on her.

Nora can sense there’s something that Libby’s not telling her. And whatever it is, she needs to get to the bottom of it so she can fix it for her sister. Because that’s what Nora always does, one way or another.

Because she can’t fix the one thing that both of them want more than anything. She can’t bring back the mother who died and left her girls behind. So she’ll give everything else instead. Including her own dreams of a Happy Ever After.

Unless, just this once, Libby can fix things so that it’s Nora who finally gets to have it all. While still managing to remain that City Person. But finally a City Person with her very own, fitted just for her, HEA.

Escape Rating A+: I loved this one for all the reasons that made Nora’s HEA seem so impossible to her at the beginning. Because her HEA fits her and doesn’t fit the cookie-cutter mold. And I loved her for it every bit as her sometimes-nemesis (but not really) does. So there’s a reason Book Lovers won so many plaudits and was on so many “Best of the Year” lists and I’m there for every single one of them.

The story is a bit meta, but in a terrific way. It’s a book about romance tropes and a romance between two people who love books, fall for each other, and have a romance that appears to be casting against all those romance tropes, only to learn that they’ve been happening while they haven’t been looking at anything but each other.

There’s also a bit of a relationship fiction/women’s fiction/chick lit story going on very much in the foreground of the story, as the only long-term relationship in Nora Stephens’ life isn’t a romance – because she’s been avoiding those or failing at them (or a bit of both) – right, left and center.

The sustaining relationship in Nora’s life is her love for her younger sister Libby. Normally, I don’t like misunderstandammits, but it’s fascinating in this book because the misunderstandammit in Book Lovers isn’t in Nora’s very slowing brewing romance with Charlie Lastra, but rather with her sister Libby.

There’s something wrong between them, and Nora knows it but doesn’t know what it is. Libby’s keeping something important from her, but she doesn’t know what that is, either. It’s only when the blowup actually happens that we – and Nora – finally understand why it needed to happen. AND why it had to reach such a huge boiling point so that Nora could finally hear it instead of trying to fix it. That what it’s about is so very real was a big part of why this book was just so damn good.

This is a story with not just one beating heart for the romance, but actually two – one for the romance and one for their sisterhood. It gives the story the kind of balance that it needs to make it work. Because Nora can’t be truly happy unless things are alright with Libby, which can’t happen until Nora stops playing “mom” so she can just live being “sister”.

And then there’s the romance. As much as the romance in this story doesn’t fit a lot of the usual tropes as Nora describes them early on, it does fall very nicely into the enemies to lovers trope. Not that Nora and Charlie Lastra ever were truly enemies. They’re not rivals or competitors in any way. They just met on what turned out to be a terrible day for each of them. Every single word of their entire conversation wasn’t heard without being filtered through their respective miseries. They gave each other good snark but just couldn’t get past their own admittedly terrible crap to see the person on the other side of the table.

Two years later, unbeknownst to each other, in the middle of trips that they’ve each been separately strong-armed into, they run into each other in the tiny town of Sunshine Falls, NC, to discover that their enmity isn’t really all that strong, but their bantering snarkitude is excellent.

It’s not every couple who gets to say they bonded over truly terrible Bigfoot erotica. But when you’re both book lovers, the bad ones are THE MOST FUN to giggle over. Together. (If there’s any truly great Bigfoot erotica I doubt that either of them would want to know. And neither do I.)

I loved Book Lovers very, very hard. Which means I’m now very much looking forward to the author’s next romance with relationships story, Happy Place. It’s coming in April so happily I don’t have that long to wait!

Review: Pets of Park Avenue by Stefanie London

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Pets of Park Avenue by Stefanie LondonPets of Park Avenue (Paws in the City, #2) by Stefanie London
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, romantic comedy, women's fiction
Series: Paws in the City #2
Pages: 336
Published by HQN Books on December 6, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

"One of the year's most delightful rom-coms."—New York Times bestselling author Julia London on The Dachshund Wears Prada
The perfect romcom for dog lovers! Pets of Park Avenue is the story of a self-confessed hot mess who learns that life is more fun when things don't go according to plan.

What do you do when The One is also the one who broke your heart?

Self-proclaimed hot mess Scout Myers is determined to prove she’s finally got her act together. Raised by grandparents who saw her as her wayward mother’s wayward daughter, Scout’s used to being written off. So when the opportunity for a promotion arises at Paws in the City, the talent agency where she works, Scout is desperate to rise to the occasion. With shared custody of her little sister also on the line, Scout can’t afford a single mistake…like suddenly needing a canine stand-in for an important photoshoot. Luckily (or not) she knows the owner of the perfect pup replacement: the estranged husband she walked out on years ago.
On the surface, it appears Lane Halliday’s life has been blissfully drama free without Scout, but she suspects her handsome-as-ever not-quite-ex-husband doth protest too much. Working together even feels like old times—except for all that lingering, unresolved tension. But Scout’s not sure she’s ready to confront the reasons she left Lane, and when their plans to finalize the divorce become very real, Scout starts to wonder whether second chances might be worth a little hot mess.
Paws in the CityBook 1 - The Dachshund Wears Prada

My Review:

Pets of Park Avenue combines a second chance at love romance with a bit of a comedy of errors wrapped around the paws of an adorably fluffy little Bichon Frisé who seems to be experiencing nearly as much sad fluff as her people.

Both the one she still has and the one that only thinks she got away.

This followup to The Dachshund Wears Prada follows the second member of the Paws in the City media team, that self-proclaimed hot mess – and Isla’s best friend – Scout Myers. When the small agency’s star Bichon Frisé, Sasha, is accidentally dyed hot pink in the middle of a big opportunity for both the dog and the agency, Scout is the one sorta/kinda in charge of their canine charge.

At least, she’s the one who feels responsible for the accidental dye-job. Because being held responsible for every accident that happens in her vicinity and taking the blame for all the fallout is just what her cold, rule-bound, hidebound grandparents have conditioned her to do.

Theirs was not a house in which the phrase “shit happens” was ever even uttered, let alone believed. If Scout was nearby, it must have been her fault – whether it was or not. Because Scout was just like her mother, their wayward daughter, and had to be straight-jacketed into proper behavior no matter how much it broke her spirit.

Reining Scout in was the only way her grandparents could hope to save Scout’s little sister Lizzie from her terrible influence. So they did. At every opportunity. Until they kicked her to the curb at age 21. For not being properly obedient and respectful and for not following every last one of their stifling and arbitrary rules.

So Scout feels responsible for the temporarily pink Bichon, and needs a well-behaved substitute until the dye and the resulting buzz-cut grow out. Which is where her not-exactly-ex-husband, and his suddenly not-exactly-perfectly-behaved Bichon come in.

Scout ran out on both the man and the dog five years ago because, well, reasons. Reasons that they never told each other. They were together for one glorious month and have been separated for five years of limbo but Scout needs a dog just like Sasha, and Twinkle Stardust (yes, really) is her best chance to fix what’s broken.

With the agency and possibly with herself.

What she really needs is to either put her past behind her or, perhaps, put it back in front of her again. She’s a bit older, possibly wiser, and trying to be more responsible. Because she wants custody of her teenage sister. Because she needs to start adulting.

And because she’s never found anyone to remotely match the one that she left behind.

Escape Rating B: The thing about Pets of Park Avenue that made this one so interesting was that it’s Scout’s discovery that she doesn’t need to get it together because she’s had it together all along. It’s also about the difference between what is said and what is meant, and that’s a sad and often hard lesson to learn.

In other words, Pets of Park Avenue isn’t as light and fluffy as one of the Bichon Frisés. I missed The Dachshund Wears Prada, at least the social media account that both establishes Isla as a media influencer AND gets her in so much trouble. Because the voice of the Dachshund that Isla puts out there is wry, funny and so very sharply observant that it gives the book a lighter tone than this one in spite of just how much Isla also needs to overcome.

Scout IS a hot mess in this book, but not for any of the reasons she thinks she is. She’s a hot mess because that’s all she’s ever been told she can be, and she’s taken that lesson so very much to heart. Throughout the story, it seems as if her grandparents are the villains of the piece. And they kind of are.

But they also kind of aren’t. Or at least, they didn’t intend to be. But what they meant versus what they said and how they said it, how much they saw AND treated Scout as if she was a carbon copy of her mother, sent their relationship and Scout herself off in some terrible directions that she spends the whole story dealing with.

The second-chance-at-love romance was, at first, heartbreaking. But as the story continues, they are both forced to acknowledge that they were just too young and too impulsive. The bitter turns to sweet as they look back at themselves and look now at each other in order to figure out what direction they need to go, together or apart. Either way would have made a satisfying ending, but I preferred the direction they chose – if only to give Twinkle Stardust her own happy ever after.

So The Dachshund Wears Prada had a whole lot more lightness in it. Pets of Park Avenue was leavened with a bit more bittersweet. I’m looking forward to seeing what just what kind of canine and human drama we’ll get in Confessions of a Canine Drama Queen next summer!

Review: A Wish for Winter by Viola Shipman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Wish for Winter by Viola ShipmanA Wish for Winter by Viola Shipman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, holiday fiction, holiday romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 416
Published by Graydon House on November 15, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“I love this book—funny, perfect and wonderfully good. A not-to-be-missed delight.” —New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery
With echoes of classic Hollywood love stories like Serendipity and An Affair to Remember, Viola Shipman’s latest winter charmer following the USA TODAY bestseller The Secret of Snow is sure to tug on heartstrings and delight readers who love books about books, missed connections and the magic of Christmas.
Despite losing her parents in a tragic accident just before her fourteenth Christmas, Susan Norcross has had it better than most, with loving grandparents to raise her and a gang of quirky, devoted friends to support her. Now a successful bookstore owner in a tight-knit Michigan lakeside community, Susan is facing down forty—the same age as her mother when she died—and she can’t help but see everything she hasn’t achieved, including finding a love match of her own. To add to the pressure, everyone in her small town believes it’s Susan’s destiny to meet and marry a man dressed as Santa, just like her mother and grandmother before her. So it seems cosmically unfair that the man she makes an instant connection with at an annual Santa Run is lost in the crowd before she can get his name.
What follows is Susan and her friends’ hilarious and heartwarming search for the mystery Santa—covering twelve months of social media snafus, authors behaving badly and dating fails—as well as a poignant look at family, friendship and what defines a well-lived and well-loved life.
“Viola Shipman has written a captivating story for anyone whose memories run deep… This book keeps faith and hope alive!” —New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

A Country Living Magazine Best Christmas Book to Read This Holiday Season!

My Review:

First of all, A Wish for Winter is a heartfelt love letter to the entire Mitten State of Michigan. Every single square inch and winter snowflake of it, from the hungry lakes to the deep bays to the very rocks, specifically the Petoskey stones that are foundation, the bedrock, the official state rock and the name for the tiny tourist town where the Claus family, officially known as the Norcross family, make their home.

Second, this is very much a paean to the spirit of Christmas – not necessarily in the religious sense but rather in the faith and belief that is strangely but sometimes beautifully displayed by the more ‘Hallmark-y’ aspects of the season. The idea that with a bit of belief in the magic of the season, it is more than possible to reach out and pluck a star – or at least a happy ending – down from the heavens, the top of a tree, or the place where dreams really do come true.

It is also a sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting story of Susan Norcross, the owner of the Sleigh by the Bay bookstore in beautiful Petoskey, Michigan, where her grandparents play the part of Mr. and Mrs. Claus every December in the front window of the store she inherited from them.

Susan’s grandparents may keep Christmas in their hearts all year round, and display it pretty much every chance they get, but Susan hasn’t felt all the joy of the holiday since she was ten years old. Because that’s the holiday season when her parents were killed by a drunk driver. Susan is now forty, the age her mother was when she died, and she’s been stuck cycling through the first four stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining and depression) for the past thirty years without ever reaching acceptance.

Without ever managing to forgive either the drunk driver – in a coma all these years – or herself.

Not that Susan hasn’t had her own version of a wonderful life. Her grandparents are everything anyone could ever have wanted in mentors, parents AND grandparents. She’s an integral part of a town that loves and supports her and her bookstore, she’s respected in the publishing industry to the point where authors, their agents and their publishers court her for appearances at her store and cover quotes.

And she has the best, most supportive even if sometimes a bit too up in her business best friend in the world. Along with excellent colleagues who have become the greatest found family she could ever have imagined.

As her 40th year approaches she’s becoming aware that there’s something missing. Both her mother and her grandmother met their perfect matches when said matches were wearing Santa suits. As a child, Susan expected to do the same. Then her parents were taken from her and she walled herself off from getting too involved and being too hurt.

But those friends, those wonderful, loving, a bit too intrusive friends, have a solution to Susan’s missing ‘Single (Kris) Kringle’ by putting Susan’s search for the Santa of her dreams on social media and inviting the entire country to watch her hunt for her very own one true Santa.

They’re going to pull Susan out of her uncomfortably comfortable rut – no matter how many likes and ‘thumbs up’ emojis it takes to make it happen.

Escape Rating B: If you’ve ever heard of “sad fluff” and wondered what it was, look no further because A Wish for Winter is a perfect example of the type. “Sad fluff” is a story where a whole lot of sad stuff happens but at the same time there’s an earned happy ending – whether romantic or not – and there are plenty of happy or even funny bits in the story. There’s lots of good support for the main character, but that character is still going through the story with a sucky place inside and the tone of the book is ultimately just a bit, well, sad.

And that’s A Wish for Winter in a nutshell. Susan has plenty of reasons to be sad, reasons that still overwhelm her at times even after 30 years. And there’s no one process or amount of time needed for an individual to process their grief, which in Susan’s case is not just real but also overwhelming. Because Susan suffered such a big loss so young, it has affected her entire life. It’s not something she’s ever going to get over or get past, nor should she. But she’s well past the point where she needs to reach the acceptance stage of grief and not hold onto it quite so tightly because the only person it’s hurting is herself.

The story of Susan taking those two steps forward, one step back towards that acceptance is a bit halting – not in the pacing sense but because her journey is supposed to be halting and uncertain. Still, her journey through that slough of despond hangs over all of the lighter moments in the book.

Although there certainly are plenty of those lighter moments. Her friends are an absolute delight even as they are invading her comfort zone, pushing her out of it and making her hesitant search for her HEA go viral.

I also adored the love of books and reading and bookstores, and the transformative power of all of the above that practically shines through every page. This story has all the elements of being a book lover’s delight from the very beginning.

As a reader, I found the sadness of the sad fluff took a bit too much of the joy out of a story that is ultimately joyful. For me, that pall took a bit too long for the book to process – making no comments whatsoever on how long it took the character to process it because no one can go there for another.

In the end, I liked the book, I liked some aspects of it quite a lot, but didn’t quite love it as much as I did my first exposure to the author’s work in The Clover Girls. Your reading mileage, of course, may vary.

Review: Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Ship Wrecked by Olivia DadeShip Wrecked (Spoiler Alert, #3) by Olivia Dade
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Spoiler Alert #3
Pages: 416
Published by Avon Books on November 15, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

After All the Feels and Spoiler Alert, Olivia Dade once again delivers a warm and wonderful romantic comedy about two co-stars who once had an incredible one-night stand--and after years of filming on the same remote island, are finally ready to yield to temptation again...
Maria's one-night-stand--the thick-thighed, sexy Viking of a man she left without a word or a note--just reappeared. Apparently, Peter's her surly Gods of the Gates co-star, and they're about to spend the next six years filming on a desolate Irish island together. She still wants him...but he now wants nothing to do with her.
Peter knows this role could finally transform him from a forgettable character actor into a leading man. He also knows a failed relationship with Maria could poison the set, and he won't sabotage his career for a woman who's already walked away from him once. Given time, maybe they can be cooperative colleagues or friends--possibly even best friends--but not lovers again. No matter how much he aches for her.
For years, they don't touch off-camera. But on their last night of filming, their mutual restraint finally shatters, and all their pent-up desire explodes into renewed passion. Too bad they still don't have a future together, since Peter's going back to Hollywood, while Maria's returning to her native Sweden. She thinks she needs more than he can give her, but he's determined to change her mind, and he's spent the last six years waiting. Watching. Wanting.
His shipwrecked Swede doesn't stand a chance.

My Review:

This third book in the Spoiler Alert series may seem a bit detached from the previous books, Spoiler Alert and All the Feels. Which makes total sense as all of Peter and Maria’s scenes in the infamous (and fictional) God of the Gates TV series (all resemblances to the final seasons of Game of Thrones indubitably intended) were filmed on a tiny, remote island off the coast of Ireland.

The Aran Islands substitute for the remote island where the characters they play in the series, Cyprian and Cassia, were literally shipwrecked early in the book series that was adapted – sometimes very badly indeed – for the hit TV series. An island where their characters spend six long and frustrating years pining for each other, transforming from enemies into lovers.

Into dead. Because it’s that kind of series. As we know even if we never watched the thing.

Life has imitated art more than a bit, as Peter and Maria also spent their six years filming the series pining for each other every bit as much as their characters did. Only to give in to temptation after the cameras film their final scene – just before they are scheduled to leave the island and go their separate ways.

While they don’t immediately end up dead in real life – because they haven’t really been guarding a hellmouth for six years that has finally opened to bring their doom – their much longed-for relationship keeps tolling its own death knell even as they find ways to spend yet more glorious days and nights together.

Both Peter and Maria came to that deserted island with some serious abandonment issues, and not just in romantic relationships. They may love each other, they certainly want each other, but they can’t seem to get past the trauma in their pasts to realize that they both want the same things – but are no good at expressing what they need and want to the most important person either of them will ever find.

Their characters were shipwrecked, and the real-life (relation)ship that fans have been shipping throughout the entire run of the series looks like it’s wrecked as well. Unless they can find a way to turn it into an HEA with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of the one thing that Peter is bad at – communication.

Escape Rating A-: The beginning of this was just a bit jarring – not their one-night stand, not at ALL – but that the story went all the way back to the early days of the series, back when the showrunners were still adapting the author’s work. When the scripts were still more than halfway decent even if the two showrunners were already scum.

The earlier books in the series, Spoiler Alert and All the Feels, started during the final seasons of the series, at the point where the showrunners had gone past the author’s work and were, well, winging it. Badly. Destroying all the character arcs and most of the characters along with them. Both of those earlier stories center around stars of the series behaving badly because they so desperately want to reveal that the final season is AWFUL with a capital AWE and they fall in love either while behaving very badly (All the Feels) or while violating their NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in new and creative – literally and literarily – ways (Spoiler Alert and All the Feels).

Peter and Maria and their film crew, while not exactly shipwrecked themselves, are isolated from the rest of the cast and crew except via group chats and off-season convention appearances. Their story arc was completely separated from everyone else’s and so are they.

Which doesn’t mean that they don’t deal with the shittiness of the showrunners every bit as much as the rest of the cast – or maybe even a bit more because the showrunners think their physical isolation gives them some sort of psychological advantage. Or simply because they are asshats. Which they most definitely are.

And that’s where one of the more interesting threads of the (book) series in general and this entry in it in particular comes in. Peter and Maria are playing shipwrecked Vikings. They are both big people – which is appropriate for the characters they play. So, while the books don’t specify that they are bigger than the usual Hollywood actors, it seems like good casting.

But the showrunners, being slimeballs, have a plan to make Maria – and by extension Peter, but honestly it’s aimed at Maria – go on a crash diet before her second season because they’re supposed to be starving on the island. And she refuses and makes it stick – even in the face of being fired and re-cast. Maria is righteously all about body positivity, and not wrecking her body for life for anyone or anything, and she’s very aware that her body positivity campaign has played extremely well in the media. AND that the slimy showrunners are already in trouble on every side and need her way more than she needs them.

Those showrunners pulled similar shitty stunts on the plus-sized heroines of both Spoiler Alert and All the Feels and got their heads handed to them both times, but it was terrific to see it happen again – with bells on – this time around.

Oh yeah, there’s a romance in here too. And it’s a bit of a heartbreaker – not that it doesn’t come around to an HEA in the end. As it should. Because ALL the best shipping fics do – no matter how much angst the characters have to go through along the way.

But it’s a heartbreaker both because they nearly break each other’s AND because they’ve had both of theirs broken so many times in ways that have nothing to do with romance but still rear their ugly heads when they might just manage to reach that HEA. Because they’re both afraid of getting left – again – and think they’d rather walk away than have it happen. Again.

Not that they’re both equally stubborn and clueless about it or anything like that.

Last but not least, and speaking of things coming around again, the book series as a whole is rooted both in fanfiction as a labor of love and in the complaints and gossip about the final seasons of the real TV series, Game of Thrones. Which also ran two seasons beyond the last published book in its series and also did “interesting” things with its characters and their arcs. Earlier in the book series I wondered whether Spoiler Alert  would lose the pointedness of some of its inside jokes after Game of Thrones finished.

But then House of the Dragon came along, a prequel series based on the same author’s work that is equally unfinished in book form. So we might have more of Spoiler Alert  to look forward to no matter how, if, or whether House of the Dragon ever floats your shipping boat.

And that is an EXCELLENT thing!

Review: A Matter of Happiness by Tori Whitaker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: A Matter of Happiness by Tori WhitakerA Matter of Happiness by Tori Whitaker
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, historical fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 364
Published by Lake Union Publishing on November 8, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cherished heirloom opens up a century of secrets in a bittersweet novel about family, hard truths, and self-discovery by the author of Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish.
Melanie Barnett thinks she has it all together. With an ex-fiancé and a pending promotion at a Kentucky bourbon distillery, Melanie has figured out that love and career don’t mix. Until she makes a discovery while cleaning her Jordan MX car, a scarlet-red symbol of the Jazz Age’s independent women that she inherited from her great-great-great-aunt Violet. Its secret compartment holds Violet’s weathered journal—within it an intriguing message: Take from this story what you will, Melanie, and you can bury the rest. Melanie wonders what more there is to learn from Violet’s past.
In 1921 Violet Bond defers to no one. Hers is a life of adventure in Detroit, the hub of the motorcar boom and the fastest growing city in America. But in an era of speakeasies, financial windfalls, free-spirited friends, and unexpected romance, it’s easy to spin out of control.
Now, as Melanie’s own world takes unexpected turns, her life and Violet’s life intersect. Generations apart, they’re coming into their own and questioning what modern womanhood—and happiness—really means.

My Review:

Melanie Barnett and her ‘Great Aunt Grape’ were simpatico in a way that Melanie and her judgmental, disapproving and disappointed mother were not. So it wasn’t at all surprising that the late and much lamented Violet Bond left her classic 1923 Jordan Playboy car to Melanie when she died.


1920 Jordon Playboy at Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum

What is surprising is the treasure trove of her personal papers and memories that Violet hid inside the car – just waiting for Melanie to check all the compartments and bring them to light.

As this story opens, Melanie is finally claiming that legacy, wishing that she had taken a look a whole lot earlier. But the time is now, and Melanie discovers the whole truth of Violet’s story just in time to help her decide the path she should take for her own.

In spite of her mother’s constant needling that Melanie’s choices are all the wrong ones. Inspired by Violet’s story, Melanie takes a good hard look at what she’s doing and where she’s going, and figures out that when it comes to the matter of her happiness the choices will have to be her own.

Just as Violet’s did. No matter what anyone else might think.

Escape Rating B+: I picked up A Matter of Happiness because I loved the author’s first book, Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish. I liked A Matter of Happiness quite a bit, but it didn’t quite match up to the first book, although I think that the nostalgia of its Cincinnati setting pulled a bit more at my personal heartstrings than this one did. But I think that’s a ‘me’ thing and not a commentary on either book. A Matter of Happiness was definitely worth the read.

Like Millicent Glenn’s story, this one also exists in two time frames – but it is also told by two rather different people. Melanie’s story is set in pre-COVID 2018 (I have a feeling that authors are going to avoid the COVID years a LOT because they were just SO WEIRD). Melanie is at a bit of a crossroads in her life. The man she thought she’d marry thought that she would be happy to give up her career for his big promotion. But that promotion was taking him to Silicon Valley, and her career is in the Kentucky bourbon industry, which necessitates that she live, unsurprisingly, in her home state of Kentucky.

And now she’s sworn off men, devoting herself to her career, pursuing a promotion to management at the company she’s been working at for several years. She hopes that if she reaches a management position that her striving, seeking, disapproving mother will finally be proud of her.

But she’s found her great-aunt’s diary in the hidden compartments of that old car. A diary of Violet Bond in the 1920s, in her 20s, at a crossroads in her own life. Going off to Detroit to get a job in the burgeoning automobile industry, living on her own by her own wits and on her own wages, pursuing a career and swearing off men – albeit for different reasons than Melanie.

Melanie sees a bit of her own journey in her beloved great-aunt’s story. And we see a bit of our own in both of theirs. And in reading about the choices and the sacrifices that her aunt made in order to live the life she wanted, Melanie finds her own way forward.

Along with a secret that changes her perspective on how both she – and her mother – see their past and their places in a family they thought they knew.

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