Laura
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Mercy and Adam have Got married And gone away in a trailer for Their honeymoon To a campground near a river where a monster has been Tempting humans in to the river and eating them Assisted by The local 1st nation Americans, Coyote and others of his kind Mercy saves the world again. Not the best in the series, but entertaining enough.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Linus, a Repressed, but decent man working for a grim magical supervisory department is sent to a mysterious far away island. Here he finds 6 especially different magical children Lucy (Lucifer), son of the devil; Talia, a gnome; Chauncey, a jelly-fish-like creature who wants to be a bellhop; Sal, a frightened and damaged shape-shifter; Theodore, a wyvern; and Phee, a forest sprite. Two adults care for the children Arthur, who eventually turns out to also be magical, a phoenix; and Zoe, and island sprite. Linus is afraid of them all at first, but gradually loosens up, and helps them to branch out as well. Tension introduced by way of hostility from bigots in the nearby village.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
2nd in series. Amber Blackwood, her sister, and aunt are good witches. A bad witch from a cursed family wants to find a hidden spell book, which will give them great power. The chief of police now knows that Amber is a witch & trusts her. Fun listen, not memorable, narration average.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Relentlessly chirpy, poor young women works for Dreamland, an American theme park. One day she submits a drunken proposal and unexpectedly gets the job. The boss is a cold-hearted handsome swine, which turns out to be because his dad, devastated after his mum died, was bitter and cruel for the second half of his childhood . Major crisis when after playing in the snow, she almost dies, and he can't handle it Lots of vanilla sex. Story is quite enjoyable, but not memorable.
Downtrodden, but feisty, female vampire is recognised as special and moves to live and work in the virtually all-male vampire centre of power, where she immediately becomes a commander, training resentful sexist males. She falls for the biggest sexist of the lot.
It passed the time, but was not great. The characters were 2D, not believable. the development of the romance was boring, and not convincing. The hero was meant to be arrogant in a good way, but he wasn't. There were few other women in it, and they were all shallow and unpleasant.
Woman with excellent chef skills and ambitions to own a restaurant, with an awful mother, and trust issues, works for an unpleasant restaurant business. On a business trip into the countryside, she meets a handsome cider-making farmer, with whom she had a very brief fling in college. His family immediately love her and her cooking. The usual romance stuff ensues. It passed the time, was inoffensive and instantly forgettable.
Modern addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon. It's WW2 and someone has invented a way to cause people to spontaneously combust, seemingly without outside interference. Sherlock & Watson are supposedly based on the Basil Rathbone duo, although Watson seems a lot more intelligent and capable than he was in those films, as does Lestrade. Plenty of adventures, with life-threatening peril. It was convincing as a Conan Doyle copy, and an enjoyable read.
Strongly based on Groundhog Day , but different in enough ways to be fresh. Woman working in publishing, with husband and 2 children, is allowing work and other commitments to overshadow the important things. The repeat days are punctuated with yearly anniversary letters from the past, written by her husband. From these you gradually learn about their history, and eventually what else is really happening. The ending was a bit of a cop-out, probably not wanting to alienate the readers who want the standard ending every time. Very clever, believable characters, really enjoyed it.
I have hidden major spoilers to aid my memory. Read them at your peril.
Story of a woman, her brother and her school friend in 2 parts. First part, when they were children and kept a terrible secret from everyone else she was sexually abused by their neighbour whom she didn't want to reject because he was her then only friend. Also, the brother never got over being rejected by a boy who was the love of his life Second part as adults, dealing with the fallout. Also, the friend ended up in jail The first part is best. Small amount of magical realism around the rabbit.
All characters excellent, writing very good. Inventive. Loved it.
Poem/play about a small Welsh village. Beginning at night, describing the scene, and then the villager's surprising dreams. The action continues until the following evening. Dark thoughts behind the respectability. All sorts of bad behaviour going on. Beautiful imagery in the introduction. Got a bit bored by the end, but impressed.
It's a pleasant enough story: human woman finds out that she's special, entanglements with supernatural beings ensue. Dead people start being attracted to her, and need her help before they can move on. The grim reaper becomes the love interest. Other “normal” people in her life turn out to be involved with the afterlife as well . There's a bit of mystery and romance. Extra points for the heroine not being either 18 or 25 and gorgeous for once. She's 40 and quite attractive.
The reason it's 2 stars is because it ended in the middle of the story on a cliffhanger. I think that this strategy is cheating in order to get repeat readers for the next book. If the story is good enough you don't need to do that. If it hadn't done this, I would have put the next one on my tbr list. But it did, so that's me done with this series, and one star off because l'm annoyed.
I have hidden major spoilers to aid my memory. Read them at your peril.
Musical Boy runs away from his uncle's home and joins up with 2 children to go on adventures. The baddy wants to steal and sell the boy's valuable violin. He and his henchman butler kidnap him, and when he escapes, pursue him across the Shropshire countryside
Children's story, scarier than a Blyton, but scary situations resolved pretty quickly.
I love Molly Harper for her characters, fast moving plots, and the sharp dialogue (made so much better by Amanda Ronconi's snarky tone of voice). They are my favourite light relief after a heavier book. This one is just not as good as usual. It's like her heart wasn't really in it and she didn't love her characters like she normally does. It made it much more like a standard romance/fantasy rather than a Molly Harper story. I will probably try the next one in the series in a hopeful spirit.
This novel is long at over 1000 pages. I'm normally wary of anything over 400 or 500 pages because I know I will get annoyed with the unnecessary padding. This author is a rare exception, I think because she is very easy to read, and I'm already invested in the main characters. Even so, I'm surprised that I was never bored. It's best not to start it until you have some time available, so that you don't lose track of the plot twists and characters. I scribble the names down on the back of an envelope with a quick note next to each one, and before long I've got them all in my head and can throw the envelope out. I really enjoyed it.
I gave this a low mark because the fighting between the couple just went on and on. It was funny, and inventive, for a while, but then it just got tedious. The fighting went on for between half and two thirds of the book, without you learning a great deal about them or their problems whilst ploughing through it. There is never a clear explanation of what caused such a catastrophic break-down between them. Well, there are some reasons kind of given, but I wasn't convinced by them, because the author never explained why. Then a resolution happens in the last quarter to a third of the book, which I wasn't convinced by either. I need to believe that a character's behaviour has a reason and is plausible. Too little explanation.
I enjoyed this more than the first Midnight book, and that one was a great read. We find out a bit more about a couple of the existing people in Midnight, and there are some new arrivals, including some old friends if you have read her previous books. The range of characters is much wider than in many paranormal stories, more complex, and not all either goodies or baddies. I'm not sure what the blurb on the back of the midnight books means by saying they are darker than the Sookie stories as I don't they have been yet. Dark enough for me though. Looking forward to the next one.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Man with many failings is collected by a reaper after his death, and taken to a café in some woods, where souls go to pass on when they are ready. The living humans visiting the café are not aware of the souls or of the café's real purpose. He meets the owner His eventual love interest and the owner's dad who it turns out has not passed on because his son is not ready to cope without him. Souls are not allowed to leave the café except by the trap door in the roof, which is the door to the afterlife . One previous soul has run away and is deteriorating. The hero helps to bring him back into the fold . At the end the hero is restored to life and will remain to love and assist the café manager (I think forever)
The book seems to have turned ordinary recipes into green ones by simply removing the protein, or cutting it down to a very small amount. This is OK for some meals, but not as a general rule. We do need to be greener, but we also need protein. I was hoping for a cook book that showed us how to eat a properly balanced diet at the minimum cost to the environment. This wasn't the one for me.
The latest in the Strike/Robin detective agency series. It has a main investigation of a cold case, and several smaller jobs, running concurrently. These, plus the interplay between Strike, Robin and several new employees of the agency held my interest, despite the length of the book, which I would normally find off-putting.
This is the best Pride and Prejudice spin-off that I have read. The P&P characters are all believably Jane Austen's, but have been developed in interesting directions, and influenced credibly by later events. The story starts before Pride and Prejudice, going on to show the events of that story from Mary's very different point of view. The bulk of this story takes place a couple of years after P&P however, when Mary is struggling to find her place. I found this mostly pretty convincing as well. If I have a criticism it is that there was eventually a bit too much romantic angst, going on for too long for my taste. But degrees of angst are a personal thing, and this may well be right up your street. If you like P&P spin-offs I highly recommend it, especially the audiobook version, read excellently by Kristen Atherton.
I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
Piranesi lives in a fantastical underground world. He doesn't know that he has forgotten what has happened to him in the past. He trusts the only other person that enters his world, and he shouldn't. The story is strikingly original and beautifully written. The end of the story is a bit of a let down as he escapes into the real world above ground .
Luckily I bought this book in a second hand shop, because the ingredient quantities in the recipe that I tried were wildly out. I'm wondering if these recipes were ever tested. I tried the recipe as printed although very dubious about it , and I was right: there was far too little liquid, and my bread machine was not even able to mix the ingredients properly. It came out looking like a monstrous growth rather then a loaf. I retried the recipe with my own estimate of what the right amount of liquid would be (double what this book said), and the loaf was fine. So I would say get this book if you are already confident enough with your machine to be able to edit the recipes yourself before trying them. I'm going to use it as an ideas book rather than a set of recipes.
