Author: Tim Johnston
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Genre: Mystery
Source: BEA

Goodreads: The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV.

As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?

Ope’s Opinion: I loved the synopsis. It made me want to read the book in one setting. However, the writing made it difficult for me to follow the story. At times, I had to reread parts to figure out who that portion of the story was about. The writing seemed to wander and I wasn’t sure where it was going.

The beginning had my attention. The middle drug on for me and I started skimming parts of it. The ending was not realistic at all and happened too fast. For me, there were so many questions left unanswered.

…. On a Bookshelf near you!

In October I hope to read….

Publication Date: October 3, 2023
Publisher: Atria Books

Goodreads: The latest in the Maple Hills series follows two summer camp counselors who reconnect after a sizzling one-night stand.

Maple Hills students Russ Callaghan and Aurora Roberts cross paths at a party celebrating the end of the academic year, where a drinking game results in them having a passionate one-night stand. Never one to overstay her welcome (or expect much from a man), Aurora slips away before Russ even has the chance to ask for her full name.

Imagine their surprise when they bump into each other on the first day of the summer camp where they are both counselors, hoping to escape their complicated home lives by spending the summer working. Russ hopes if he gets far enough away from Maple Hills, he can avoid dealing with the repercussions of his father’s gambling addiction, while Aurora is tired of craving attention from everyone around her, and wants to go back to the last place she truly felt at home.

Russ knows breaking the camp’s strict “no staff fraternizing” rule will have him heading back to Maple Hills before the summer is over, but unfortunately for him, Aurora has never been very good at caring about the rules. Will the two learn to peacefully coexist? Or did their one night together start a fire they can’t put out?

What is coming soon …. to a bookshelf near you?

Let me know – I am always looking for a good read!

Author: Wendy Holdern
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Fiction
Source: Purchased

Goodreads: Princess Diana was the most famous woman in the world, celebrated across the globe for her poise and glamour. But before stepping out of the royal carriage at St. Paul’s Cathedral she spent nineteen years as the shy, awkward Lady Diana Spencer. How did the aristocratic ugly duckling become a beautiful royal swan?

Bestselling author Wendy Holden explores the astonishing backstory and young adulthood of the ultimate royal celebrity.

Britain, 1961: A bouncing blond baby is born to Viscount Althorp, heir to the Spencer earldom, and his wife Frances. Diana grows up amid the fallout of her parents’ messy divorce. She struggles at school. Moving to London, she takes menial jobs as a cleaner and nanny. Her refuge throughout is romantic novels. She dreams of falling in love and being rescued by a handsome prince.

In royal circles, there is concern about the Prince of Wales. Nearly 30, Charles remains unmarried; the right girl needs to be found, and fast. She must be young, aristocratic and come to the royal family without any past liaisons.

The eighteen-year-old Diana Spencer is just about the only candidate. Her desperation to be loved dovetails perfectly with royal desperation for a bride. But as the ruthless Palace machine starts up, there are challenges for Diana to face plus mysteries she can’t fathom, from the strangeness of life within the palace walls to a certain Mrs. Parker Bowles. Can her romantic dream survive the forces that shape her into a global icon?

Ope’s Opinion: Although this was fiction it seemed like non-fiction. It felt so real and like I was reliving what I had seen and heard from the past. This was an authentic, sad retelling of what felt like the truth behind the marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

Princess Diana’s life seems to me to have been the perfect storm – her romantic idea of what a marriage will be like and the Royal families need for a perfect princess collide. She had such high expectations and was so young, she couldn’t or wouldn’t look at what was really happening. The Royal family wanted the world to see it one way and hid the ugly truth.

The book ending was sadly perfect!

Author: Carley Fortune
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Romance
Source: Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads: They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.

Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.

For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.

When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.

Ope’s Opinion: This started out to be one of my favorite books. I loved the friendship between Percy and Sam, I liked their innocences – it just felt fresh and clean and wholesome. As the book progress the foul language became an issue for me – place where it did not seem to fit and too often. The sexual scenes became more frequent and more detailed. I did not care for that either. It was still a four because the basis of the story was one I enjoyed.

The book was written in past and current time. It is well labeled and the story line had a nice flow to it. The ending was a good one. It had a really cute part that had to do with the beginning of the friendship between Sam and Percy ( don’t want to spoil it ).

Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Source: Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads:

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Ope’s Opinion: I read Ann Patchett one other time and found it very hard to read. This time my daughter suggested the book, so I decided to try her again. This book was easier to read. I did find it to move a bit too slow for me.

Moving back and forth from past to present was not marked as well I would have liked. Some times I did have to go back to figure out if she was reminiscing or if she was talking to her daughters in the present time.

I think this is a reminder to children that their parents were once young and had a life before they came along. It also showed how one decision, effects the next decision, which effects your life and those around you.

It was an interesting read that made think for a bit, but not one that will stick with me for a long time.

Author: Susan Lee
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Genre: Young Adult
Source: Inkyard Press ( Netgalley )

Goodreads: New from the author of Seoulmates comes a story of mistaken identities, the summer of a lifetime, and a love to risk everything for.

When Elijah Ri arrives in New York City for an internship at his father’s massive tech company, Haneul Corporation, he expects the royal treatment that comes with being the future CEO—even if that’s the last thing he wants. But instead, he finds himself shuffled into a group of overworked, unpaid interns, all sharing a shoebox apartment for the summer.

When Jessica Lee arrives in New York City, she’s eager to make the most of her internship at Haneul Corporation, even if she’s at the bottom of the corporate ladder. But she’s shocked to be introduced as the new executive-in-training intern with a gorgeous brownstone all to herself.

It doesn’t take long for Elijah and Jessica to discover the source of the they share the same Korean name. But they decide to stay switched—so Elijah can have a relaxing summer away from his controlling dad while Jessica can make the connections she desperately needs for college recommendations.

As Elijah and Jessica work together to keep up the charade, a spark develops between them. Can they avoid discovery—and total disaster—with their feelings and futures on the line?

Ope’s Opinion: This was a good story, but the foul language is over the top. I was disappointed in the adults in this book. They were not supportive of what was best for their kids. They were too worried about how their children would reflect on them.

This is fiction, so you do need to just throw away any ideas of it being realistic. It read really fast, easy, and light.

Author: Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke
Publisher: Alcove Press
Genre: Romance
Source: Alcove Press ( Netgalley )

Goodreads: Father of the Bride meets Bride Wars in Forever Hold Your Peace, in which two ex-best friends find themselves shockingly entangled after more than two decades apart, for fans of Good Company.

When their newly engaged kids ask all four divorced parents to meet each other over brunch, everyone RSVPs yes–secretly hoping someone at the table will get to the bottom of the bottomless mimosas fast enough to say what they’re all thinking: that this engagement, coming after a whirlwind romance between two people barely out of college, is too much too soon.

But at that brunch, it’s not the impulsive couple’s decisions that end up under the microscope, as it turns out June, mother of the bride, and Amy, mother of the groom, certainly do know each other–they’re ex-best-friends who haven’t spoken since their explosive falling out more than twenty-five years ago. Reeling from their unwanted reunion and eager to shift the spotlight off their past as decades-old secrets and rivalries come to light, the two moms battle it out for the prize of Most Enthusiastic About This Wedding.

But when their history—and their present-day shenanigans—threaten to crack the foundations of the happy couple’s future, June and Amy find themselves becoming unexpected allies in an all-hands-on-deck effort to get their kids (and themselves) a happily-ever-after two generations in the making.

Ope’s Opinion: This started out with a very original story line that captivated my interest. I kept turning the pages until the wedding planning started. At that point, each detail of the wedding was described – I started skimming this part. The relationships during the wedding planned seemed very immature and a bit much for me. I didn’t care for the characters lying to each other and expecting forgiveness.

The ending was wrapped up in a perfectly neat bow – not very realistic and disappointing after such a great start.

Author: Elin Hilderbrand
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company
Genre: Fiction
Source: A Friend

Goodreads: After tragedy strikes, Hollis Shaw gathers four friends from different stages in her life to spend an unforgettable weekend on Nantucket.

Hollis Shaw’s life seems picture-perfect. She’s the creator of the popular food blog Hungry with Hollis and is married to Matthew, a dreamy heart surgeon. But after she and Matthew get into a heated argument one snowy morning, he leaves for the airport and is killed in a car accident. The cracks in Hollis’s perfect life—her strained marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Caroline—grow deeper.

So when Hollis hears about something called a “Five-Star Weekend”—one woman organizes a trip for her best friend from each phase of her life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife—she decides to host her own Five-Star Weekend on Nantucket. But the weekend doesn’t turn out to be a joyful Hallmark movie.

The husband of Hollis’s childhood friend Tatum arranges for Hollis’s first love, Jack Finigan, to spend time with them, stirring up old feelings. Meanwhile, Tatum is forced to play nice with abrasive and elitist Dru-Ann, Hollis’s best friend from UNC Chapel Hill. Dru-Ann’s career as a prominent Chicago sports agent is on the line after her comments about a client’s mental health issues are misconstrued online. Brooke, Hollis’s friend from their thirties, has just discovered that her husband is having an inappropriate relationship with a woman at work. Again! And then there’s Gigi, a stranger to everyone (including Hollis) who reached out to Hollis through her blog. Gigi embodies an unusual grace and, as it hap- pens, has many secrets.

Ope’s Opinion: I am not even sure how to rate this one. A friend recommended this one to me. I have read several of Hilderbrand’s books before. All seem to have a formula, but they are easy beach reads. This one is very different. It started out very sad, then was very boring.

The main character Hollis seemed self centered and seemed to pass it on to her daughter as well. I just could not relate to them or their relationship.

These are just my thoughts. I am sure for others they would enjoy this read.

My favorite past times combined – a good book and a good puzzle!

This is the poster that came with the puzzle.

This is the finished puzzle.

This one was a little shinny and the pieces were a little thick, but it was still fun!

…. On a Bookshelf near you!

In Seotember I hope to read….

Publication Date: September 12, 2023
Publisher: Inkyard Press

Goodreads: New from the author of Seoulmates comes a story of mistaken identities, the summer of a lifetime, and a love to risk everything for.

When Elijah Ri arrives in New York City for an internship at his father’s massive tech company, Haneul Corporation, he expects the royal treatment that comes with being the future CEO—even if that’s the last thing he wants. But instead, he finds himself shuffled into a group of overworked, unpaid interns, all sharing a shoebox apartment for the summer.

When Jessica Lee arrives in New York City, she’s eager to make the most of her internship at Haneul Corporation, even if she’s at the bottom of the corporate ladder. But she’s shocked to be introduced as the new executive-in-training intern with a gorgeous brownstone all to herself.

It doesn’t take long for Elijah and Jessica to discover the source of the they share the same Korean name. But they decide to stay switched—so Elijah can have a relaxing summer away from his controlling dad while Jessica can make the connections she desperately needs for college recommendations.

As Elijah and Jessica work together to keep up the charade, a spark develops between them. Can they avoid discovery—and total disaster—with their feelings and futures on the line?

What is coming soon …. to a bookshelf near you?

Let me know – I am always looking for a good read!