Review: Never Too Late by Robyn Carr + Giveaway

Posted on March 31, 2015March 30, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: contemporary romance
Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Date Released: March 31, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Clare Wilson is starting over. She’s had it with her marriage to a charming serial cheater. Even her own son thinks she’s given his father too many chances. With the support of her sisters, Maggie and Sarah, she’s ready to move on. Facing her fortieth birthday, Clare is finally feeling the rush of unadulterated freedom.

But when a near-fatal car accident lands Clare in the hospital, her life takes another detour. While recovering, Clare realizes she has the power to choose her life’s path. The wonderful younger police officer who witnessed her crash is over the moon for her. A man from her past stirs up long-buried feelings. Even her ex is pining for her. With enthusiasm and a little envy, her sisters watch her bloom.

Together, the sisters encourage each other to seek what they need to be happy. Along the way they all learn that it’s never too late to begin again.

My Review:

There’s something about Never Too Late that makes it seem like a precursor for the utterly marvelous Four Friends (reviewed here).

I say precursor because Never Too Late was originally published in 2006, and is being reissued in the wake of Four Friends’ success.

Instead of four friends, Never Too Late features three sisters. Clare, Maggie and Sarah have each come to a crossroads in their lives, and are in different places but possibly the same set of ruts. Then Clare has a life-altering automobile accident and in the stress of re-working her own life, all three sisters find themselves taking a sharp look at their own.

At the time of the accident, Clare and her husband Roger were separated. Again. Roger has a problem keeping his pants zipped, and Clare has left him. Again. She usually takes him back. Eventually. There have been a lot of good times in their marriage, and they have a teen-aged son they both love. Roger isn’t a bad husband, he just isn’t a faithful one, and never has been.

Clare stops by their house, which Roger is still living in, to drop off a birthday card and pick up some of her kitchen stuff. Roger said he was going to be out of town on his birthday. Instead, Clare finds him in their old bedroom boinking some blond. Or being boinked, since the blond is on top.

It’s finally enough to break Clare’s cycle of discovery, separation, reconciliation. In a strange way, Roger isn’t totally wrong this time. They are separated and have been for months at this point. But he lied about being out of town, and he’s doing it with someone else in their bed. It does blow away Clare’s willingness to reconcile – it finally makes her witness that he is never going to change.

She speeds away from the “scene of the crime” only to get stopped by a handsome young cop who clocks her 15 or 20 miles over the speed limit. He’s too smitten to write Clare a ticket, and Clare feels a boost from having a younger man hit on her.

It all goes to crap when she gets T-boned in the next intersection by a distracted driver who totally blows through a red light. Clare wakes up in the hospital in agony, shattered in more places than she ever imagined.

Physical therapy is going to take months, and her entire life is thrown out the window. Her sisters Maggie and Sarah rally round, along with their Dad, as they all pitch in to take care of Clare while she needs it.

But as Clare gets back on her feet, she makes changes in her life that will have far reaching consequences. And that handsome young police officer provides a much needed boost to her ego as well as a friend she can confide in, while Clare recovers and waits to see if there’s anything there beyond friendship and some really hot chemistry that her fractured pelvis won’t let her act on – yet.

At this point, it seems like the story is going to be about Clare moving into a new future with her hot cop, but instead, the story shifts.

In the middle of her divorce from philandering Roger, Clare discovers that she’s not ready to get into a serious relationship with someone new. She’s still getting her life on track. Unfortunately for Sam the cop, he’s fallen in love and wants to start a serious relationship right now.

But Clare’s sister Sarah is totally smitten with Sam, and when Clare moves out of her way, Sarah swoops in.

Meanwhile Maggie finally realizes that her perfect marriage isn’t really perfect. She can’t even remember the last time she had sex with her husband. Is the spark just gone, or is there a medical cause that can be fixed?

As Clare plans on a future without her ex, she looks for a job. She’s been a substitute teacher for years, but now she needs to go back full-time. Where she knows she’ll have to work with a former flame. She’s felt guilty for 19 years about her drunken one-night stand with Pete – because at the time she was engaged to his brother. A brother who later died in an Air Force training exercise. She’s never gotten over her guilt and regret, and Pete’s never gotten over her.

Escape Rating B: I enjoyed Never Too Late quite a bit. It was a good antidote for several excellent but scary, sad or just plain disturbing books that I read recently. You will finish Never Too Late with a smile on your face, and that’s always a good thing.

I’ll admit that I didn’t identify with the characters in the same way that I did Four Friends, so it didn’t quite “sing” for me.

The sisters make for interesting contrasts. Maggie is always organized and on top of things, Clare is always forgiving, and Sarah is always retreating into her own little world. After Clare’s accident, everything changes.

Clare has always been too accommodating. It’s not just that she sees the best in people, but she always tries to take care of everyone. And she’s too self-effacing about it, because she never takes care of herself. That she took Roger back over and over (and over) drove her family crazy. It also made them think less of her.

Her willingness to forgive Roger stems from her own need for forgiveness over her long-ago indiscretion. She feels like if she can’t give it, she can’t be worthy of it herself. What she needs to do is forgive herself, and for that she needs some closure with Pete.

Sarah’s pursuit of Sam comes a bit out of nowhere. As a teen, she was a wild child, and their mother was always after her about it. When their mother died, those issues were unresolved. (There are lots of unresolved issues in this story). In grief, or as penance, Sarah flip-flopped from being a wild child to a complete frump.

When she meets Sam, she falls into insta-lust, if not insta-love. But frumpy Sarah goes unnoticed. She finally steps out into the world, and celebrates herself again, in order to have a chance at sweeping Sam off his unsuspecting feet. The poor guy is on the rebound from Clare and doesn’t stand a chance.

The entire story wraps up a bit suddenly and a bit too easily at the end, but I really enjoyed my visit with Clare, Sarah and Maggie.

GIVEAWAY

Robyn and the tour organizers are giving away a copy of Never Too Late to one lucky U.S. winner.
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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: First Time in Forever by Sarah Morgan + Giveaway

Posted on March 2, 2015March 1, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Puffin Island #1
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: February 24, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Windswept, isolated and ruggedly beautiful, Puffin Island is a haven for day-trippers and daydreamers alike. But this charming community has a way of bringing people together in the most unexpected ways…

It’s been a summer of firsts for Emily Donovan. From becoming a stand-in mom to her niece Lizzie to arriving on Puffin Island, her life has become virtually unrecognizable. Between desperately safeguarding Lizzie and her overwhelming fear of the ocean—which surrounds her everywhere she goes!—Emily has lost count of the number of “just breathe” pep talks she’s given herself. And that’s before charismatic local yacht club owner Ryan Cooper kisses her…

Ryan knows all about secrets. And it’s clear that newcomer Emily—with her haunted eyes and the little girl she won’t let out of her sight—is hiding from something besides the crazy chemistry between them. So Ryan decides he’s going to make it his personal mission to help her unwind and enjoy the sparks! But can Puffin Island work its magic on Emily and get her to take the biggest leap of trust of all—putting her heart in someone else’s hands?

My Review:

Get it out of my head! It took me way too long to recognize where I’d heard the phrase “First Time In Forever”, but once I did, I couldn’t get the song from Frozen out of my head. The ear worm is driving me crazy.

At the same time, the song is a perfect descriptor for the story. And also Frozen. It gets damn cold on Puffin Island in Maine in the winter. Not that we experience one during this particular book, but as the series continues, I bet we see at least one snowstorm before we’re done.

Both Ryan and Emily have faced the sudden responsibility of caring for young children at different points in their lives. It provided them with a shared experience, and some of the same reactions to that experience. It means that they understand each other from the beginning of the story, even if they don’t quite see it.

Ryan was forced into adulthood at 13, when his parents were killed in a crash. He became an adult while caring for his younger siblings, including his then 4-year-old sister Rachel. While Ryan was not the responsible adult in the household (his grandmother had custody), she relied on him as if he were an adult, while his baby sister looked to him as the one stabilizing force in her young life.

While he wouldn’t miss the close relationship he still has with Rachel, he did escape the Island the minute he got old enough. He never had the chance to be a teenager, but he did move out to have child-free adventures all over the world as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. Then he came home, and started a business on the island.

But his experience raising his siblings gave him a life-long aversion to having children of his own, or even of settling down and getting married. He likes children – they all go home with other people. He just doesn’t want to feel that tied down ever again.

Until Emily arrives on the island. Emily, along with her college friends Brittany and Skylar, came to the island while they were in college. Brittany’s grandmother Kathryn owned a cottage that now belongs to Brittany. All three women vowed to return to the cottage whenever they needed a place to be safe. And Emily needs one now.

She is on the run from the paparazzi that chased her famous sister Lana into a fatal accident. Emily is protected Lana’s 6-year-old daughter Juliet from reporters and cameramen who have invaded her home in search of their “big story”. Juliet is six and traumatized. Emily, who hadn’t seen her sister in years, is now the guardian of a 6-year-old that she never met, and is an instant parent who never planned to have children.

Emily’s last experience guarding a child scarred her forever. She blamed herself for a tragedy that should never have happened, not because Emily screwed up, but because her alcoholic mother left her 6 year old self in charge of her 4 year old baby sister. Emily never got over the result, and never let anyone else into her heart.

Until little Juliet, who she renames Lizzy to protect her from the paparazzi, comes into Emily’s life and steals her heart away, a heart that Emily believed was no longer there to steal.

Lizzy is a good little heart thief – she steals Ryan’s too. But can either of the adults in this trio manage to admit that they love the little girl, and each other?

Escape Rating B: In Puffin Island, the author has created a marvelous place, not without its ups and downs (particularly of the economic variety) but a place where the characters, and the readers, can feel like they belong.

The story starts out because of friendship. The enduring strength of the friendship between Emily, Brittany and Skylar shines every time the women are together, or even talk about each other. They have all found a solace in this family-of-choice that none of the had in their birth families, even though the reasons for that vary wildly.

We don’t even meet Brittany in person, but she is still very much a part of this story. Also, it is her past and her friendship with Ryan that starts his initial involvement, and allows Emily to trust him at the beginning. The absent Brittany serves as much-needed glue, both for Emily’s initial panic and the start of her bond with Ryan.

Speaking of Emily’s panic, it did feel as if Emily was a bit too panicked for too much of the story. She comes into this suffering from a huge childhood trauma that has never been resolved, and is scared to death of the paparazzi. While that last part is a reasonable fear under the circumstances, she was so scared in so many different directions that it was amazing that she functioned at all. It felt a bit like the author piled on her so that she would need Ryan, and then he gets to be her white knight. I might have liked her more if she had one tick less to panic about at the beginning.

There are two secrets that hang around the first half of the story – the nature of the traumatic mess in Emily’s past, and the event that caused Ryan to retreat back to the island to start over. Ryan’s secret in particular felt like it hung in limbo a bit too long, looming over events more than it perhaps warranted. There was a point where I just plain wanted to KNOW already, and then the reveal felt anticlimactic.

That being said, I enjoyed Ryan and Emily together. Their shared experience of becoming sudden surrogate parents before they were ready was unusual, but it gave them a strong bond. I love the relationship between Emily, Skylar and Brittany, and can’t wait to see more of them, and how their HEAs unfold. Skylar really needs to get a clue and drop the guy she’s with. He’s not a bad person, he’s just bad for her. It’s too bad that the author is saving Skylar’s story for book 3. The next book is Brittany’s story, so it will be great to have her be back to the island in person in Some Kind of Wonderful. (OMG it’s another song title. I feel the ear worm coming in for another turn!)

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to Sarah and BookTrib, one lucky reader will be able to take their own virtual trip to Puffin Island with a copy of First Time in Forever.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson

Posted on January 12, 2015January 9, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: historical fiction
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Date Released: January 6, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

The internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France returns with her sweeping second novel—a tale of class, love, and freedom—in which a young woman must fnd her place in a world forever changed

After four years as a military nurse, Charlotte Brown is ready to leave behind the devastation of the Great War. The daughter of a vicar, she has always been determined to dedicate her life to helping others. Moving to busy Liverpool, she throws herself into her work with those most in need, only tearing herself away for the lively dinners she enjoys with the women at her boardinghouse.

Just as Charlotte begins to settle into her new circumstances, two messages arrive that will change her life. One is from a radical young newspaper editor who offers her a chance to speak out for those who cannot. The other pulls her back to her past, and to a man she has tried, and failed, to forget.

Edward Neville-Ashford, her former employer and the brother of Charlotte’s dearest friend, is now the new Earl of Cumberland—and a shadow of the man he once was. Yet under his battle wounds and haunted eyes Charlotte sees glimpses of the charming boy who long ago claimed her foolish heart. She wants to help him, but dare she risk her future for a man who can never be hers?

As Britain seethes with unrest and postwar euphoria fattens into bitter disappointment, Charlotte must confront long-held insecurities to fnd her true voice . . . and the courage to decide if the life she has created is the one she truly wants.

My Review:

England after the end of World War I was a different place than it had been before the war. An entire generation of young men had died in that war, leaving behind a generation of women for whom there simply would not be nearly enough men to marry for those that wanted to. Which meant that, in spite of the country’s desire to return to the gentler days before the war, there was a generation of women that was going to have to earn a living because there was no choice.

Women had spent the war years working at jobs that men did, for relatively good wages, and did not want to give those jobs and wages up. It was difficult to return to the kind of unskilled and unstimulating labor that they had left behind to become nurses and ambulance drivers at the start of the war. And there were too many families where the husband could no longer work because of war-related injuries, but the wife either couldn’t get a decent paying job, or her husband wouldn’t allow it.

Add to this the changes for those privileged, and those in service. A significant number of young people who would have gone into service for a wealthy and titled family before the war, went into military uniform and experienced a life with considerably more equality. Often it was the equal share in being shelled or gassed, and an equal share in the possibility of dying. But the world changed. Fewer people came back to service after the war, and the life of the privileged classes was forced to change, even if those changes went very much against the grain.

Think of the post-WWI world portrayed by Downton Abbey. The post-war period is markedly different from the pre-war. The universe had changed.

After the War is Over is the sequel to Robson’s excellent Somewhere in France (reviewed here). The point-of-view character is one of the friends of Lilly and Robbie from that first book. Charlotte Brown is radically different from Lilly and Robbie, bordering occasionally on downright radical.

Charlotte was a nurse during the war, but before and after she served as an aide to a constituency advocate in Liverpool. Charlotte’s job is to find aid and assistance for families suffering from the economic downturn. Even with all the women being fired from what are supposed to be “men’s jobs” there still aren’t enough jobs for all the returning soldiers.

While Charlotte is happy for Lilly and Robbie, and content in the job she is all but married to, something is missing in her life. Someone. Charlotte fell in love with Lilly’s brother Edward the day she met him. Unfortunately, any chance they have for happiness seems doomed. At first, Edward is caught in an engagement arranged by his parents when he was a child. Then, when his father dies and he inherits the earldom, he discovers that his father did a lousy job of managing the estates and that the death duties are ruinous. He breaks off his engagement and searches for a rich young woman whose family fortunes can repair his own.

But the real block to any possibility of happiness is Edward’s continuing depression and illness after the war. He feels as if he will never be a whole man after losing his leg, and he appears to be drinking himself into an early grave. Edward is suffering from shell-shock, but perhaps something more as well.

It will be up to Charlotte and her nursing skills to find out what is really wrong, and to make sure that he takes the care and cure that he needs. Even if she knows she is making it possible for him to be whole with someone other than herself.

She’ll be happy again. Someday.

Escape Rating A-: It’s easy to sympathize with a lot of Charlotte’s story. She is a career woman, long before it was cool. She has an inbuilt drive to do something about for the people who need help. It’s not just that she saw too much as a nurse, it’s the way she’s always been. She recites her own story in a public speech, off the cuff, and it explains so much about what motivates her.

She was also lucky in that her parents supported her goals, whether they completely understood them or not. Her situation contrasts strongly with Lilly’s, as Lilly had to fight to be her own person. Charlotte always was. While there is a difference in class, Charlotte is firmly middle-class, she also faced the expectation that she would marry and have children. Her mother worries that she won’t be happy without those things, but still loves the person she is, and doesn’t try to change her.

It’s good to see a story like this where the heroine has supportive parents and isn’t running away from a horrible, or even just stifling, situation.

A lot of this story is about women’s relationships. Not just about the friendship between Charlotte and Lilly, but particularly about the life Charlotte has created for herself as a single woman. Her friendships (and frenemy-ships) with her co-workers and her housemates are important. As is the late war that hangs over everything in the story.

Charlotte’s relationship with Edward reminded me a bit of Downton, specifically Matthew’s illness after the war and his engagement to the heiress Lavinia Swire. The way that his injuries affected him, the engagement to a woman who may have been the “right woman” to solve his family’s problems but was certainly not the one he loved, and the problems of class were similar to Edward’s predicament, his engagement, and his love for Charlotte. Nothing turns out quite the same, except the happy ending, but the situations are predicated on some of the same decision points.

After the War is Over is much less soap-opera-like over all. The central story is Charlotte’s becoming everything that she can be, and learning to love the life she has, in spite of difficulties thrown into the path of a career woman in the 1920s. Her happy ending is excellent icing on a well-told cake.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 10-5-14

Posted on October 5, 2014October 5, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Nobody won anything this week, but there are three giveaways going on this week. All gift cards, which is very handy for buying more books!

October is also Queer Romance Month, because, as the website says, “Love is not a subgenre”. I’ll have a couple of reviews this month, and my fellow book pushers over at The Book Pushers are doing reviews and/or guest posts every Friday to commemorate what we hope is the first ANNUAL event.

And in other news there are two surprisingly similar attempts to stifle bloggers going on at the same time, one among book bloggers and one in library land. Ellora’s Cave is suing Dear Author and its chief blogger, Jane Litte, for reporting the facts about Ellora’s Cave’s current economic troubles. In my other world, a male librarian who is known in the whisper network as a broken stair has sued two female librarians for publishing on their blogs that women tell other women not to be alone with this guy. If you are interested in details, just Google #teamharpy for a rundown. Both Dear Author and #teamharpy are looking for donations to contribute to what will probably be massive legal expenses. And yes, I’ve contributed to both. This is about prevention of the chilling of free speech through monetary pressure, and I am #notchilled.

Stacking the Shelves (106)

Posted on October 4, 2014October 4, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I didn’t buy any books this week. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t buy ANYTHING, just not books. The season premieres for TV are staggering out of the gate, so I finally have new episodes of NCIS, NCIS:LA (and the amazingly fun NCIS: New Orleans) to watch.) One of the best things about streaming TV shows is NO COMMERCIALS. And we can watch whenever we want.

When I’m not reading, that is.

dorothy parker drank here by ellen meister

til dragons do us part by lorenda christensen

ryder american treasure by nick Pengelley

For Review:
All That Glitters (Jake & Laura #2) by Michael Murphy
Demons in My Driveway (Monster Haven #5) by R.L. Naquin
Dorothy Parker Drank Here (Dorothy Parker #2) by Ellen Meister
Falling Sky by Rajan Khanna
Gunpowder Alchemy (Opium War #1) by Jeannie Lin
Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4) by Catherine Bybee
The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein
Ryder: American Treasure (Ryder #2) by Nick Pengelley
Taste of Treason (Tudor Enigma #2) by April Taylor
‘Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons #3) by Lorenda Christensen
Undercity by Catherine Asaro
Witch Upon a Star (Midnight Magic #3) by Jennifer Harlow

Borrowed from the Library:
Designated Daughters (Deborah Knott #19) by Margaret Maron
The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin

Review: Pie Girls by Lauren Clark + Giveaway

Posted on October 3, 2014September 29, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: women’s ficton
Length: 338 pages
Publisher: Camellia Press
Date Released: August 5, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Princess, Southern belle, and spoiled-rotten social climber Searcy Roberts swore on a stack of Bibles she’d never return home to Fairhope, Alabama. After marrying her high school sweetheart and moving to Atlanta, Searcy embraces big-city life—Carrie Bradshaw style.

But now, Searcy has a teeny, tiny problem. Her husband’s had a mid-life crisis. He’s quit his job, cancelled her credit cards, and left her for another man.

Searcy returns to Fairhope, ready to lick her wounds. But when her mother falls ill, she’s is thrust into managing the family business—only to discover the beloved bakery is in danger of closing its doors forever.

Enlisting the help of the adorable bike store owner next door, an array of well-heeled customers, and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Searcy hatches the plan of the century to save Pie Girls.

My Review:

There are two completely opposite literary tropes about going home. One is the title of the Thomas Wolfe novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. The other is the quote from Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

For Searcy Roberts, home is definitely Frost’s version. She has to go back to tiny Fairhope, Alabama, and it has to take her in. Not initially because either she loves it or it loves her, but because they both love her mother Maggie, the owner of Pie Girls.

And Searcy has no place left to go. Considering the amount of glee she expressed on seeing Fairhope in her rearview mirror 10 years ago, there’s more than a little schadenfreude around town that she got stuck coming back.

The person Searcy is at the beginning of the story deserves every bit of that karmic payback, too. She’s vain, shallow and using conspicuous overconsumption to fill in the huge holes in her life and, frankly, her personality.

Searcy is a woman who not only can’t live without regular consultations with her personal shopper, but she expects champagne (her favorite and in her signature style) while she does her consultation. And then she feels fully justified in dropping $3,000 on “just a few things”.

Searcy isn’t mean or bad tempered, she’s just chosen to become high-maintenance to make up for everything lacking in her life. Like any relationship at all with her husband. Or much relations, ever.

When Alton finally does the very late but ultimately couragous thing and calls both their marriage and his advertising career, over and done, Searcy answers a call from her mother and realizes that her only option is to go home to Fairhope and regroup while she checks in on her mother’s health and on the family business, Pie Girls.

Both the shop and her mother are ailing. In fact, they are both terminally ill, and they need Searcy to give them both a new lease on life, every bit as much as Searcy needs to go back to her roots and find herself a new purpose.

it’s too late for Searcy to rescue her marriage (in fact, it was too late on her wedding day), but it isn’t too late for Searcy to make a fresh start on the rest of her life.

Escape Rating B: As a heroine, Searcy is a study in contrasts. The woman she is at the beginning of the story isn’t a person I liked very much. She felt like a caricature of one of the stars of Real Housewives, rich and pampered and completely shallow. She wasn’t bad or mean, she just wasn’t really there.

Then her marriage finally gives up its last ghost, and she’s depressed and desperate. And completely self-absorbed. She’s ashamed to let her friends know what happened, so she hides and covers up.

When her mother calls, it’s a rescue. Not in any financial way, but simply because it adds purpose to an otherwise purposeless life. It’s only when Searcy stops feeling sorry for herself and gets herself re-involved with Fairhope and Pie Girls that she becomes a person that you’d want to know.

Because of this, the first half of the book moves a bit slow. I wanted Searcy to see the clue-by-four way earlier than she did. It actually takes her soon-to-be-ex-husband bringing his boyfriend around to meet her that she finally gets that he’s gay, and has been all along. (The reader figures this out much, much earlier)

Although if I had to deal with his mother, I’d probably hide myself too. Possibly in Greenland. Or Antarctica. Far, far away from his mother and her badly behaved, spoiled rotten purse-dog.

But once Searcy starts taking care of her own mother, the store, and her old friends in town, her life perks up and her story gets much more interesting. And fun. I liked Searcy at the end, quite a lot, and I was rooting for her happy ending.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Lauren is kindly giving away a $20 gift card for Amazon. To enter, use the Rafflecopter below, and for more chances to win, visit the other stops on the tour!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Butternut Summer by Mary McNear

Posted on September 26, 2014September 25, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: paperback provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: women’s fiction
Series: The Butternut Lake Trilogy, #2
Length: 401 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Date Released: August 12, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Summer at Butternut Lake—a season full of surprises . . . and life-changing choices.

Preparing for her final year of college, Daisy is crazy busy now that she’s back at Butternut Lake. She’s helping her mother, Caroline, run their coffee shop and trying to build a relationship with the absentee father who’s suddenly reappeared. She never expected to fall in love with Will, the bad-boy from high school who works at the local garage. With every passing day she and Will grow closer to each other . . . and closer to the day they will have to say goodbye. As summer’s end looms, Will and Daisy face heartbreaking choices that might tear them apart.

Caroline already has her hands full trying to make ends meet at the coffee shop without having her no-good ex suddenly show up. Now that Jack is back, he’s determined to reconnect with the family he walked out on twenty years ago. But with the bank pounding on her door and Jack’s presence reminding her of the passion they once shared, Caroline’s resolve begins to crumble. As Daisy’s departure looms and her financial worries grow, Caroline just may discover the support she needs . . . in the last place she ever imagined.

My Review:

After having read both Butternut Summer and the first book in the series Up at Butternut Lake, I believe that Butternut Lake should be renamed “Second-Chance Lake”. A lot of people get some marvelous second chances at love in tiny Butternut, Minnesota.

We met Caroline and her daughter Daisy in the absolutely lovely Up at Butternut Lake. Caroline owns the local diner, Pearl’s, and everyone in town comes for breakfast (and lunch) at the place that serves the best blueberry pancakes anywhere.

In the first book, Caroline was just dealing with Daisy’s move to Minneapolis for college, and the empty nest syndrome was hitting her pretty hard. Even though that first book is someone else’s story, Caroline has a pretty big role to play, and we learn a lot about Pearl’s and Caroline’s life in Butternut. Caroline was a divorced single-mother, after Daisy’s boozing, gambling, floozy-chasing father left one morning and never came back.

He’s back. He’s also sober and wants a second chance with Caroline. She, of course, has damn good reasons for never wanting to see Jack Keegan again, but he seems to be back in Butternut to stay. Caroline doesn’t believe him.

While Caroline is trying to keep Jack out of her life, she’s also trying to eject Daisy’s new boyfriend Will from her daughter’s life. Will, one of the bad boys when Daisy went to high school, reminds Caroline much too much of a younger Jack. She wants to make sure that her daughter doesn’t make any of the same mistakes that she did.

But it’s a truth that you can’ t really keep someone from learning their own lessons and making their own mistakes. Gandalf was right, “The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.”

And while it is also true that you can’t make someone change, they can decide they want to change for themselves. Will in high school was a bad boy, but Will the adult is capable of changing, with the right incentive. And so is Jack. It’s just a question of whether Caroline can see it, before she damages her relationship with her daughter.

Escape Rating B+: Butternut Summer starts out as Daisy’s story (mostly) but becomes Caroline’s story somewhere in the middle, and it works really well. While Daisy’s romance with Will is similar to a pattern of “bad boy reforms with the love of a good girl”, it’s a little more than that.

Not so much that Daisy and Will start out on opposite sides of the tracks, because neither family is wealthy, but that they start out with very different sets of expectations in life. Daisy is focused on studying and making a career for herself. She’s expected to go to college and achieve.

No one seems to have ever given much of a damn about Will, and he’s drifting through life with no goals. He’s not actually bad in any material way, but he’s not exactly good either. But when he meets Daisy again, he starts looking to become something more than he has been, and do something with his life. He wants to be worthy of Daisy, of being her first love, her first everything. He wants to become someone she can build a life with.

Daisy changes from overachiever with only one purpose to a more rounded individual. She still wants her career, but she also wants to have a real life to go with it.

One of the scenes I enjoyed was when Will tells Daisy that her ideas of him following her around were great in Butternut, but that he has to be more and do more for them to be together. They both grow up.

At the same time that Daisy is experiencing first love, her mother Caroline has to deal with the love that never really died. Daisy has been in contact with her runaway father, Jack, and he has changed since he ran. He still loves Caroline, but she is rightly skeptical that he’s any different than he was 20 years ago.

The difference for him is that he’s admitted he’s an alcoholic, and has been participating in AA for two years. His first hurdle is to get Caroline to see that he was an alcoholic when he left, and that his terrific job at covering up created some of the bad behavior she experienced.

And that he was a cowardly ass who needs her forgiveness.

Jack’s struggle is hard, as it should be. It takes a lot for Caroline to forgive him, and she’ll never forget. Nor should she. But his redemption makes their second chance very sweet.

If you love small-town romances, you’ll definitely want to take your own trip to Butternut Lake.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Palmetto Moon by Kim Boykin

Posted on September 16, 2014September 15, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: paperback provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: women’s fiction
Series: Lowcountry
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Date Released: August 5, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

June, 1947. Charleston is poised to celebrate the biggest wedding in high-society history, the joining of two of the oldest families in the city. Except the bride is nowhere to be found…

Unlike the rest of the debs she grew up with, Vada Hadley doesn’t see marrying Justin McLeod as a blessing—she sees it as a life sentence. So when she finds herself one day away from a wedding she doesn’t want, she’s left with no choice but to run away from the future her parents have so carefully planned for her.

In Round O, South Carolina, Vada finds independence in the unexpected friendships she forms at the boarding house where she stays, and a quiet yet fulfilling courtship with the local diner owner, Frank Darling. For the first time in her life, she finally feels like she’s where she’s meant to be. But when her dear friend Darby hunts her down, needing help, Vada will have to confront the life she gave up—and decide where her heart truly belongs.

My Review:

Palmetto Moon is a sweet, gentle and slow-building story about a young woman who seizes her life with her own two hands, no matter what it will cost her.

Vada Hadley’s transformation from obedient society child takes both courage and time; she is a child of extreme privilege in 1947. A young Southern woman in the years after World War II, a time when women in general were supposed to give up their jobs and independence and return to subservience to the men in their lives.

Vada has returned from college at Radcliffe College (Harvard’s college for women) with the idea that she should have some say in her own life. When her wealthy parents arrange her marriage to a young man in their class who philanders now, and plans to go right on doing it after their marriage, Vada rebels.

She doesn’t love Justin, and isn’t willing to be the kind of obedient wife and social ornament that her mother has been. She wants more. It takes her almost all the time she has, until the night before her misbegotten wedding, to pluck up her courage and run.

There’s a teaching position waiting for her in the small town of Round O, if she can just get there. The parents of her heart, her parents’ servants Rosa Lee and Desmond, risk their own jobs to help her get away.

In the little town of Round O, she hides who she is. Vada just plain hides from her previous life and hopes that no one will find her or betray the secret that she refuses to tell. It’s difficult to put ourselves in her shoes; the status of women has changed a lot since those post-war years. It’s not just that her father will track her down and force her to marry Justin, but that he has the legal right to threaten Rosa Lee and Desmond with the loss of their jobs and the threat that he will make sure his friends never employ them either. As a black couple, they have no practical recourse, especially in the South.

So Vada hides, and her father sends agents out to find her. Meanwhile, Vada makes a life of her own, a life that she finds precious and an independence that is rewarding. She makes friends, and finally falls in love.

But her would-be lover doesn’t know her truth, and makes serious mistakes in trying to do the best for her, whether it is a best that she wants or not. Frank Darling loves Vada so much that he has a difficult time letting Vada make her own mistakes. And in his attempt to fix things, he unintentionally takes away some of her agency.

All the secrets come out in one nasty confrontation, when Vada’s father and her erstwhile fiance roll into Round O to show off their wealth and privilege, and to expose Frank’s good-intentioned attempts to manipulate Vada.
Not that they are not manipulating her as well, but as they both say, they’ve never lied about it.

Vada is faced with a horrible choice; to return to her life of privilege out of spite and fear, or to take up the life that she has made for herself in Round O, with Frank.

Escape Rating B: Palmetto Moon is a slowly unwinding story. It takes place in the sweltering heat of a Lowcountry summer, and meanders into Vada and Frank’s life just like the sticky heat that surrounds Round O.

Although Vada (and Frank) do find true love, the story feels like it is about Vada’s search for independence and self-determination. At first, she is running away, from her parents, from society’s expectations, and also from herself.

While there are practical reasons for Vada’s desire to keep her background secret, her embracing of that secrecy feels like another version of running away. She is over 21, and while it would be difficult for her to separate completely from her parents, she can if she is willing to pay the price in loss of money, status and privilege.

Vada’s life is more “real” in Round O, but it is also based on a lie of omission. It isn’t until all the secrets come out that she has a chance at determining her own destiny.

The example of the awful choices that face her new friend Claire serve to point out just what she is giving up. Claire is a very young war widow with three small children, and her life choices consist of living in a boarding house and taking in mending; marrying one of the old bachelor boarders who has a pension but is an asshole; or finding a job as a menial with three children in tow. All her choices initially suck. That she gets lucky in the end doesn’t take away the initial suckage.

The way that Vada takes her life into her own hands was the perfect ending to the story. Although Frank wants to rescue her from the consequences of her own (and his) bad choices, he simply doesn’t need to. Vada rescues herself; as she should.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 8-17-14

Posted on August 17, 2014August 17, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

We just finished watching the Livestream of the Hugo Awards at LonCon. While Livestream is not the next best thing to being there, it was still fun to watch. We both spontaneously clapped when Ann Leckie won Best Novel for Ancillary Justice. That book was positively awesome and deserves every single award that’s been thrown its way.

It was also terrific to see the attempt at Hugo Ballot stuffing by the self-proclaimed defenders of the old guard go down in flames.

However, it’s too bad that all the various nominations for Doctor Who related episodes cancelled each other out. (We still need to watch Game of Thrones).

As much fun as NASFiC was, we missed going to WorldCon this year. Next year in Spokane!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Current Giveaways:

2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino
Winner’s choice of The Cursed, The Hexed or The Betrayed by Heather Graham

Winner Announcements:

The winner of Inamorata by Megan Chance is Elizabeth H.
The winner of The Virtues of Oxygen by Susan Schoenberger is Laura P.

Blog Recap:

B Review: 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino + Giveaway
B+ Review: Unbound by Cara McKenna
B Review: The Sweet Spot by Stephanie Evanovich
A- Review: The Hexed by Heather Graham + Giveaway
B+ Review: An Unwilling Accomplice by Charles Todd
Stacking the Shelves (100)

Coming Next Week:

Black Ice by Susan Krinard (review)
Left Turn at Paradise by Thomas Shawver (blog tour review + giveaway)
Take Over at Midnight by M.L. Buchman (review)
Phantom Evil by Heather Graham (review)
The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne (review)

Review: The Sweet Spot by Stephanie Evanovich

Posted on August 13, 2014March 22, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, audiobook
Genre: Contemporary romance; women’s fiction
Length: 272 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Released: July 8, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

The amazing Stephanie Evanovich returns with The Sweet Spot, the sizzling story of everyone’s favorite couple from her New York Times bestseller Big Girl Panties: hunky professional baseball player Chase Walker and his sassy wife Amanda

When pro baseball player Chase Walker first meets Amanda at her restaurant, it’s love at first sight. While Amanda can’t help noticing the superstar with the Greek-god-build, he doesn’t have a chance of getting to first—or any other—base with her. A successful entrepreneur who’s built her business from scratch, Amanda doesn’t need a Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet. And a curvy girl who likes to cook and eat isn’t interested in being around the catty, stick-thin herd of females chasing Chase and his teammates.

But Chase isn’t about to strike out. A man who isn’t interested in playing the field, he’s a monogamist who wants an independent woman like Amanda. His hopes rally when she discovers that squeaky-clean Chase has a few sexy and very secret pre-game rituals that turn the smart, headstrong businesswoman on—and into his number one fan.

Then a tabloid discovers the truth and turns their spanking good fun into a late- night punch-line. Is Amanda ready to let loose and swing for the fences? Or will the pressure of Chase’s stardom force them to call it quits?

My Review:

The Sweet Spot is a prequel to last year’s Big Girl Panties. Big Girl Panties drove me absolutely nuts (see review) but the secondary couple in that story is the primary couple in The Sweet Spot.

By the time that Big Girl Panties takes place, all the events in The Sweet Spot have already happened. A significant chunk of the story is revealed as background for the other story, more than enough to make me want to see what happened first. This is it.

Chase and Amanda start out as strangers in the beginning of this story, but they are at much better places in their lives than either Holly or frankly Logan in the other book. So while The Sweet Spot has its own particular brand of crazysauce, the characters are stronger and it makes the early part of the story seem to be on a much higher note.

Chase is a major league baseball player at the absolute top of his game. He’s not just big, gorgeous and generally a decent guy, he’s one of those model players that raises the level of the game he’s in. (His incredible influence reminded me a bit of Michael Jordan during his glory years in the Chicago Bulls.) Everyone loves Chase, and Chase genuinely enjoys his fans, and absolutely loves playing his game.

There’s just one little (!?!?!?) thing wrong with his life. Chase likes to spank his girlfriends, and generally be just a bit dominant when it comes to sex, but not quite to the level of BDSM. (It’s a bit hard to characterize). However, his wholesome image will be shot to hell if information about his bit of kink gets out.

Chase is a genuinely nice guy with more than a bit of a romantic streak. It’s just that there’s a wider kinky streak to go with it.

He walks into Amanda’s trendy restaurant, The Cold Creek, and falls instantly in love with the way that she sasses him and refuses to fawn over him. Amanda normally treats her customers better than that, but Chase’s agent set up the reservation with a level of assholishness that put her back up, and with good reason.

So Chase gently but inexorably goes after Amanda. The problem is that as hard as he falls for her, he sees her as a lady who can’t possibly be into any kink. He’s sure he’s fallen for a vanilla, and it makes him crazy. It also causes a slump in his baseball game.

Chase tries (and fails) to figure out how he can keep Amanda and deal with the wilder parts of his nature, while Amanda falls for the sweet romantic who sweeps her off her feet.

Taking their relationship to where they both need it to be is hot and sweet. But Amanda has gone through her whole life believing that she can never have what she wants. That she’s absolutely destined to settle for second place. As happy as she is, she can’t help but look for the crash that she knows is coming.

When scandal threatens to snatch away everything they have built, Amanda runs away. And Chase makes the terrible mistake of letting her, and the best thing in his life, go.

Escape Rating B: I wish that The Sweet Spot had come out first. Not just because all the big events in Chase and Amanda’s story are spoiled in Big Girl Panties, but because they start out from much stronger places and it makes for a more fun story, especially at the beginning.

Amanda had a good life before she met Chase, and would have continued to be successful if they had never met. They complete each other emotionally, but she doesn’t start the story “so far down that bottom looks like up”, the way that Holly did in Big Girl Panties.

Amanda also has a lot of very reasonable sounding doubts about how the spanking thing is working for her. She is liberated and independent, and she has a difficult emotional journey getting to a place where she accepts that she enjoys Chase’s style of domination to the point where she deliberately provokes it. She keeps her agency, it just takes her a while to figure that out.

I will say that Chase’s reactions the first time he lets his kinky side out bothered me a bit. There was a definite element of him being smug about knowing what was best for her. And while she did enjoy it, he doesn’t explain what is going to happen, and he was a bit condescending about the emotional storm that results. It was one of the few times when I really didn’t like him much.

On the other hand, when the scandal breaks, Amanda’s actions were pretty childish. While I could understand and sympathize, she doesn’t stand up for herself and for their relationship, and leaves Chase holding the bag and dealing with the resulting mess. So they each definitely have big moments that could have been relationship-breakers.

But that drum circle where she finally finds herself and her courage was awesome.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

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