I loved this book. I tried to think of another way to start this review, but that is the overwhelming thing that comes to mind. Reading Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! is like getting together with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while and catching up on all that has happened in her life during the past year.
Though I am a gay male and admit I have never read any lesbian erotica, I was more than willing to give Ms. West’s short story “Night Train To Florence” a try after having read her novel The Leaving just a few months ago. West wrote it with pure perfection when it came to good story telling and strong characters, so I expected her shorter work to be no different and I truly was not disappointed.
Robin Nolet’s book starts out with a very applicable quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other, and are invigorated by the stretching. In The Shell Keeper, the island is the Colorado skiing town of Blue River and the shells tossed on the beach are Gwen, Claire, and Del. Thrown together by tides they cannot fathom, the women find a common thread that brings them together as friends despite their best intentions to remain strangers.
Every once in a while there’s a book that almost gets away, especially when you are like me and read and review mostly indie or small press titles. I just can’t read them all. That’s almost what happened to Lara McLaughlin’s Alabaster Houses which was first queried to me last October. Other reviewers passed on it, but there was something in this book that made me pick it. And now I’m glad I did.
Normal young women go on dates on Saturday nights. Betty “Boo” Boorman goes on ghost hunts. The paranormal investigator is more comfortable around ghosts than guys, anyway. A violent haunting forces Betty to team up with her rival ghost hunter, the arrogant Carter Lansford. When the violence is turned toward her, though, Betty enlists the help of a handsome stranger, who introduces himself simply as Maxwell, Demon.
I selected The Brevity of Roses to review based on the Amazon preview. It intrigued me because it was well written and made me wonder what happened next. I wasn’t disappointed once I read the whole book, it remained well written and hard to put down.
It’s not often that I read a book that stays with me. By “staying with me” I mean I think about it and the characters long after finishing the last page. I can recall the events that took place, and often every character’s name, as if they were real pages from my own life story and real people that I know and love. A book like this is usually one that I consistently suggest to other readers that I know will appreciate it as much as I did. Appalachian Justice by Melinda Clayton is all of this.
A group of exchange students meet up in turbulent Spain to spend seven months working there. We get to know them as they navigate a foreign country amid all the chaos and random attacks. However we never learn the backgrounds of the other interns even though we know they are full of enthusiasm and a sense of adventure.
Epic Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Romance. I have been waiting for a chance to read The Fallen Queen for quite some time now. I’ve had the privilege of catching some snippets of the book while playing on Twitter, and the concept intrigued me, so I jumped at the chance to get my hands on an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of the book.
Artist Megan Nelson has never lived anywhere but the tiny Texas town in which she grew up. There is one bus, one corner store and everybody knows everybody. So when a stranger shows up, Megan is more than curious.
Adam is more than he seems: beautiful and strange. Megan soon finds herself falling in love with him as she learns who he is and where he comes from.
