I have still been reading – not just puzzling – but I haven’t had the motivation to sit down and write reviews for the books I have finished. I do want to share them, however, so here are my recent reads with the book blurb and my very short thoughts!
Blurb: On the verge of her second marriage, Carla Carter knows she’s found the one. She and her fiancé, Tom, met through Logical Love, a dating agency she founded for the pragmatically minded, and she’s confident that, together, they’ll dispel an old family curse claiming Carter women are unlucky in love.
But when Carla’s superstitious family insists she visit a fortune teller before her big day, the tarot reveals that the love of Carla’s life is not Tom, but one of the men she dated on a gap year—twenty-one years ago. With her wedding just weeks away, Carla sets off across Europe, tracking down her exes from that unforgettable year to prove the fortune wrong. From Spain to Portugal, Italy to France, will one of them be her perfect match? And could a face from Carla’s past help her rewrite her entire family history forever?
My thoughts: 3.5 stars – Nice story about whether love should be based on the head or the heart and how to know when you have found the right person for you.
Blurb: Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.
My thoughts: 4.5 stars – Fun story about handling life after death and divorce. Quirky characters.
Blurb: A snowstorm. A stranger. A spark. And it’s Christmas!
It should be the perfect start to the perfect love story.
But real life is far messier and more complicated than in the pages of the books in Megan Taylor’s family bookshop – the last few years have left this young widow in no doubt of that. Moving back home to York should have been a fresh start, but all it did was allow her to retreat from the world.
When prize-winning author Xander Stone rams his supermarket trolley into her ankles and then trashes her taste in books, Megan is abruptly awoken from her self-imposed hibernation. It’s time to start living again, and she’s going to start by putting this arrogant, superior – admittedly sexy – stranger in his place.
Just as she is beginning to enjoy life again, the worst happens and Megan begins to wonder if she should have stayed hidden away. Because it turns out that falling in love again is about more than just meeting under the mistletoe…
My thoughts: 4 stars – Enjoyable holiday romance. Bonus points for being centered on the book world.
Blurb: Since her husband’s death six months ago, Yesica Diaz-Taylor seems to be taking her grief in stride. Then an angry outburst at work shatters the illusion. Her mandated support group counseling doesn’t help much. Yesica has always kept her feelings close, so even when an unlikely friendship blossoms with the group’s facilitator, she still has reasons for holding back. She’s just not ready to share.
Ana Diaz has been widowed for five years and continues to live life exactly as she did with her late husband. When her house floods, she’s forced to shake things up. Although it was never part of her plan, Ana moves in with her eldest daughter, Yesica. But the new living arrangement tests their already strained relationship.
Shadowed by unresolved tensions, Yesica, Ana, and matriarch Mama Melda must learn to share a home, their heartbreak, and, once and for all, the haunting family secrets that have kept them apart.
My thoughts: 5 stars – I got this for free on my Kindle as an Amazon First Reads and finally got around to reading it. I don’t know why I waited so long because I loved it! I enjoyed the way each of the women’s stories unfolded and how their relationships evolved over the course of the book.
Blurb: The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit.
Turns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who—as a parting practical joke in his will—insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.
With little but their grief and this one day in common, Alice and Ben form a very special, very strange friendship, meeting just once a same day, same time, same place—different silly costume. As the years pass and grief alters, can their unique bond help them cope with the hardest part of life?
My thoughts – 4 stars – This was another Amazon First Reads that I enjoyed. It was a combination of fun and deep, and I really liked the friendship that grew between this unlikely pair.
