Family Tree

family tree

Author: Susan Wiggs
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: HarperCollins

Goodreads:  For readers of Kristin Hannah and Jodi Picoult comes a powerful, emotionally complex story of love, loss, the pain of the past—and the promise of the future.

Sometimes the greatest dream starts with the smallest element. A single cell, joining with another. And then dividing. And just like that, the world changes.

Annie Harlow knows how lucky she is. The producer of a popular television cooking show, she loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Manhattan home they share. And now, she’s pregnant with their first child.

But in an instant, her life is shattered. And when Annie awakes from a year-long coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she’s lost.

Grieving and wounded, Annie retreats to her old family home in Switchback, Vermont, a maple farm generations old. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, Annie slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago: the town where she grew up, the people she knew before, the high-school boyfriend turned ex-cop. And with the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.

Family Tree is the story of one woman’s triumph over betrayal, and how she eventually comes to terms with her past. It is the story of joys unrealized and opportunities regained. Complex, clear-eyed and big-hearted, funny, sad, and wise, it is a novel to cherish and to remember.

Ope’s Opinion:  I was enjoying this book so much, I slowed my reading down just so I could savor each page.  The whole story was wonderful, the characters are amazing and the writing just flows. I have read Susan Wiggs before, this is one of her best.

It was fun to see Annie travel outside her family home to find her happiness back at her family home.  It was a long journey, with a lot of turns along the way.

The ending is predictable and that is a good thing as far as I am concerned.  It was a sweet love story.

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Can I See You Again?

can i see you again?

Author: Allison Morgan
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source:  Berkley

Goodreads:  From the author of The Someday Jar comes a witty and warm novel about a matchmaker who’s an expert at matters of the heart—except when it comes to her own…

Matchmaker Bree Caxton has a 98% success rate, a book about to hit the stands, and an amazing boyfriend. Until, that is, he gets cold feet about their future and runs from their relationship.

Afraid no one will buy a book on love from a woman whose love life is a mess, Bree begs her one matchmaking failure, Nixon Voss, to pose as her boyfriend. But when they become a hit with readers, they must carry on their charade just a little longer. Fortunately, they’re both having fun…

But then Bree’s ex decides he wants her back and a newspaper presents a challenge that could expose the truth about her rocky love life. Now she must find the courage to embrace what is, or risk losing something much bigger than her reputation: her heart…

Ope’s Opinion:  This book should be made into a Hallmark movie.  It is an adorable, fun, easy, summer read.  I love the characters!  The situations is probably unlikely, but so much fun to read.  

This is definitely one you want to take on vacation.  It is a relaxing read that will make you laugh a little and just enjoy it.  The ending is somewhat predictable, but that just made me like the story more.

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It Ends With Us

it ends

Author:  Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Atria Books
Genre: New Adult
Source:  Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads:  Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

With this bold and deeply personal novel, Colleen Hoover delivers a heart-wrenching story that breaks exciting new ground for her as a writer. Combining a captivating romance with a cast of all-too-human characters, It Ends With Us is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.

Ope’s Opinion:   Oh, My … This was an intensely great book.  It is really hard to review this book without talking about the spoilers.

The characters are very deep and realistic.  I personally do not know anyone in their situations, but I sure could feel their angst.  Colleen Hoover made me understand their circumstances.

I love the way this book ended, but now I would like a sequel.  I want to know where everyone is now.

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Everything We Keep

everything we keep

Author: Kerry Lonsdale
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Genre: Mystery
Source:  BEA 2016

Goodreads:  Sous chef Aimee Tierney has the perfect recipe for the perfect life: marry her childhood sweetheart, raise a family, and buy out her parents’ restaurant. But when her fiancé, James Donato, vanishes in a boating accident, her well-baked future is swept out to sea. Instead of walking down the aisle on their wedding day, Aimee is at James’s funeral—a funeral that leaves her more unsettled than at peace.

As Aimee struggles to reconstruct her life, she delves deeper into James’s disappearance. What she uncovers is an ocean of secrets that make her question everything about the life they built together. And just below the surface is a truth that may set Aimee free…or shatter her forever.

A luminous debut with unexpected twists, Everything We Keep explores the devastation of loss, the euphoria of finding love again, and the pulse-racing repercussions of discovering the truth about the ones we hold dear and the lengths they will go to protect us.

Ope’s Opinion: Wow!  This book really surprised me!  I just finished it and I am still absorbing the ending – not at all what I expected.  Please tell me there is a sequel to this book. I want to know where they all are now – even the background characters are interesting.

I am a slow reader and I read this book in two days.  It was so well written, that there were no wasted words or wasted dialogue.  The story goes into the past, when you need to know something to understand the present.  Just when you think this is going to be another predictable story line, Kerry Lonsdale takes you down another road.

I felt satisfied with the story until I read the epilogue – it threw me a little.  I am still soaking that part in…

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The Secrets She Kept

secrets

 

Author: Brenda Novak
Publisher: Mira
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Source:  BEA 2016

 

Goodreads:  Exciting, emotional, intense. The thrilling follow-up to New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak’s highly acclaimed The Secret Sister. The things that happen in families are always surprising and sometimes shocking! 

The rich and powerful Josephine Lazarow, matriarch of Fairham Island, is dead. The police say it’s suicide, but Keith, her estranged son, doesn’t believe it.

Keith bears scars—both physical and emotional—from his childhood, but he’s worked hard to overcome the past. After walking away from his mother and her controlling ways five years ago, he’s built a new life in LA. He’s also accumulated a fortune of his own. But as soon as he learns of his mother’s death, he returns to Fairham. He feels he owes it to his grandfather to put the family empire together again—and he’s determined to find his mother’s killer.

Problem is…coming home to Fairham puts him back in contact with Nancy Dellinger, the woman he hurt so badly when he left before. And digging that deep into his mother’s final days and hours entails a very real risk.

Because the person who killed her could be someone he loves…

Ope’s Opinion: The romantic and suspense of the story was well woven together.  The clues for the murderer did not really take me the person who did it.  The romance part was much too explicit for my reading taste.

The characters were interesting and likeable.  The descriptions made it so you could see what she was writing about, but the story itself seemed to bounce all over the place.

The romance ended the way you expected it to.   The murder part wasn’t obvious, but was believable.  This was the second in the series, but you could not tell while reading it.

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Love May Fail

love may fail

Author: Matthew Quick
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Source:  BEA 2015

Goodreads:  Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her ritzy Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself back in South Jersey, a place that remains largely unchanged from the years of her unhappy youth. Lost and alone, looking for the goodness she believes still exists in the world, Portia sets off on a quest to save the one man who always believed in her—and in all of his students: her beloved high school English teacher, Mr. Vernon, who has retired broken and alone after a traumatic classroom incident.

Will a sassy nun, an ex-heroin addict, a metal-head little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt Portia’s chances on this quest to resurrect a good man and find renewed hope in the human race? Love May Fail is a story of the great highs and lows of existence: the heartache and daring choices it takes to become the person you know (deep down) you are meant to be.

Ope’s Opinion:  Reading this was difficult with all the foul language.  If you took the foul words ( especially the “f” word ) out, this book would be at least five pages shorter.  For me the language was so distracting I almost quit reading a couple of times. I finally gave up.  I did not finish.

The characters did not make me feel sorry for them.  Bad things just kept happening, it made me depressed.  I did not find anyone I could relate to in this book.

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The Hopefuls

Author: Jennifer Close           hopefuls
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Fiction
Source: BEA 2016

 

 

Goodreads: When Beth arrives in Washington, D.C., she hates everything about it: the confusing traffic circles, the ubiquitous Ann Taylor suits, the humidity that descends each summer. At dinner parties, guests compare their security clearance levels. They leave their BlackBerrys on the table. They speak in acronyms. And once they realize Beth doesn’t work in politics, they smile blandly and turn away. Soon Beth and her husband, Matt, meet a charismatic White House staffer named Jimmy and his wife, Ashleigh, and the four become inseparable, coordinating brunch, birthdays, and long weekends away. But as Jimmy’s star rises higher and higher, their friendship–and Beth’s relationship with Matt–is threatened by jealousy, competition and rumors.

Ope’s Opinion: This felt like I was reading Beth’s diary.  She was telling me what was going on, but I didn’t really feel drawn into the story.

I could relate to Beth’s struggle of moving to a new place and attempting to make friends, find a grocery store and feel at home. I just recently moved and some of those adjustments were more difficult then others.

Since I live outside of DC, I did enjoy hearing about all the landmarks I recognized.  It was fun to hear the behind the scenes of political life too.

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Darkness the Color of Snow

Author: Thomas Cobb                         darkness
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Mystery
Source:  BEA 2015

Goodreads:  A haunting, suspenseful, and dazzlingly written novel of secrets, corruption, tragedy, and vengeance from the author of Crazy Heart—the basis for the 2009 Academy Award-winning film. An electrifying crime drama and psychological thriller in which a young cop becomes the fulcrum of a community’s grief and rage in the aftermath of a tragic accident.

“What happened is what happened, and the effects of it rippled out continuously. How could you stop the rippling of water?”

Out on a rural highway on a freezing night, Patrolman Ronny Forbert sits in his ten-year-old Crown Victoria cruiser trying to keep warm and make time pass until his shift ends. Then a familiar beater Jeep Cherokee comes speeding over a hill, forcing the rookie cop to chase after it. The driver is his old-friend-turned-nemesis, Matt Laferiere, the rogue son of a man as beaten down as the town itself.

Within minutes, what begins as a clear-cut arrest for drunk driving spirals into a heated struggle between two young men with a troubled past and ends in a fatal hit and run on an icy stretch of blacktop. The only witnesses are Officer Forbert and Laferiere’s three drinking buddies inside the Jeep.

As the news spreads around Lydell, a small upstate burg near the state line, Police Chief Gordy Hawkins is certain that Ronny Forbert followed the rules, at least most of them, and he’s willing to stand by the young cop. Finding the driver of the car that hit Laferiere, the judicious police chief tries to keep the situation from escalating dangerously out of control. But in a town like Lydell, where jobs are scarce and everyone is hurting, a few people—some manipulative, some just plain greedy—see opportunity in the tragedy.

Over the course of six days, as uneasy relationships, dark secrets, damning lies, and old grievances reveal themselves, the people of this small, tightly woven community decide that a crime must have been committed, and that someone—Officer Ronny Forbert—must pay a price, a decision that will hold devastating consequences for them all.

Evocative, atmospheric, and powerful, Darkness the Color of Snow is a portrait of decency and desperation, ambition and pragmatism, heated passion and cool calculation—of ordinary American lives.

Ope’s Opinion:  I understand that foul language in this setting is probably common, but I do feel like the author still over used it.  The story it’s self was well written. It is set in the present, but continues to go back in time, so you understand how each character ended up where they are.  The characters fit a small town setting, where relationships are complicated.

The beginning of the book really draws you in with a police officer making a routine stop, that is anything but routine.  You can’t help but want to know where it is going to go and how everyone will react to the circumstances around that stop.  It moves fast.

The ending was a let down and the epilogue didn’t really wrap things up.

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The Choices We Make

choices

Author: Karma Brown
Publisher: Mira
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Source:  HarperCollins

Goodreads:  Following her bestselling debut novel Come Away with Me, Karma Brown returns with an unforgettable story that explores the intricate dynamics between friends and mothers

Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate’s skirt with a mirror. While they’ve been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can’t help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created—complete with two perfect little girls.

She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah’s heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it’s Kate’s turn to do the rescuing. Not only does she offer to be Hannah’s surrogate, but Kate is willing to use her own eggs to do so.

Full of renewed hope, excitement and gratitude, these two families embark on an incredible journey toward parenthood…until a devastating tragedy puts everything these women have worked toward at risk of falling apart. Poignant and refreshingly honest, The Choices We Make is a powerful tale of two mothers, one incredible friendship and the risks we take to make our dreams come true.

Ope’s Opinion:   This is the one book  so far this summer I would say ” Read it Now”!  It is the most amazing story of two wonderful marriages with bumps along the way and friendship that lasts forever. There aren’t enough positive adjectives to describe this book.

It was a joy to read! As you read, if you think you know where the story is going… keep reading.  You will need a few tissues before it is all over.  Then you will want to pass this book on to your best friend, mother, sister and anyone else you know who reads.

The ending was exactly what I needed to complete this wonderful book.  I closed it and sighed just a little – so satisfying, but didn’t really want it to be done.

This is the second book by Karma Brown I have read and loved.  I will be looking for her next one.

 Let me thank Shara Alexander for sending me this book.

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NEWS!!!

This is so exciting!!
I already love MIRA, now I can add Park Row Books to my list!!ParkRow_Logo_Temp

INTRODUCING PARK ROW BOOKS
A New Literary Fiction Imprint from MIRA Books

New York, NY, July 1, 2016—MIRA Books announced today the official launch of Park Row Books, an exclusive line of thought-provoking and voice-driven novels by both celebrated and new authors. Park Row Books will be led by Margaret Marbury, Vice President, General Fiction Editorial, and Erika Imranyi, Executive Editor. Park Row Books will publish unique voices and powerful stories that inspire discussion. Inaugural titles are slated for release in summer 2017.

“With the success of MIRA’s rapidly expanding literary fiction program, we decided to establish a dedicated imprint that focuses on the incredible novels we are publishing,” said Marbury. “Park Row Books allows us to create new opportunities for talented literary writers who want a boutique publishing experience with the support of a powerhouse commercial publisher.”
“We are aggressively growing our imprints that publish hardcover and trade paper original fiction,” said Loriana Sacilotto, Executive Vice-President, Global Publishing and Strategy at Harlequin. “Park Row Books is acquiring powerful and compelling novels by talented writers who are looking for a house that will shine a spotlight on their titles.”

The name Park Row Books was inspired by the landmark street that runs through downtown Manhattan and ends at the Woolworth Building, the former home of Harlequin’s New York office for many years. Once known as “Printing House Square” and the location of many of New York’s major newspapers, Park Row has a rich heritage of fostering free expression, creative ideas and important voices.

“MIRA Books has a long history as an industry leader when it comes to publishing commercial fiction,” said Imranyi. “The passion and innovation of the MIRA team is second to none and we have seamlessly parlayed our strengths as a commercial publisher into our literary fiction program. It is a great privilege to be spearheading the expansion of MIRA’s powerful list with the launch of Park Row Books, which will be an exciting destination for talented literary voices whose books have broad mainstream appeal.”

The launch title for Park Row Books is the blockbuster debut novel The Improbable Flight of Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig, which Park Row acquired in a significant preemptive deal. The highly anticipated novel follows a recently adopted teenager with autism who is desperately plotting to get herself kidnapped by her birth mother. Told in an extraordinarily fresh and wholly unique voice, The Improbable Flight of Ginny Moon is a compulsively readable and unforgettable story about finding a place to belong in a world that doesn’t always add up. It will be published around the world in 11 territories and counting.

Park Row Books will also be home to the much-buzzed-about new novels by New York Times bestselling authors Mary Kubica and Heather Gudenkauf. Kubica’s book, a psychological thriller about a young widow’s pursuit of the truth in the wake of the devastating crash that took the life of her husband, takes readers inside the dark, twisted corners of a psyche plagued by grief. Her first novel, The Good Girl, has sold over half a million copies and has been published in two dozen territories worldwide. Gudenkauf’s next book, a high-concept crime thriller about a protagonist with profound hearing loss, features the bestselling author’s most compelling heroine to date. Gudenkauf’s first novel, The Weight of Silence, was an instant New York Times bestseller, spending 22 weeks on the list.

Other exciting titles forthcoming from Park Row Books include When I Think of You, from award-winning journalist and bestselling author Karma Brown, exploring how a woman’s life falls apart over a random act of courtesy; Hanna Who Fell from the Sky, a breakout literary novel set in the fascinating and unknown world of a polygamist society from award-winning Canadian author Christopher Meades; Undertow, by British journalist Elizabeth Heathcote, the much-buzzed-about debut domestic thriller in the vein of The Widow; and a new novel from Phaedra Patrick, the author of wildly acclaimed The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, that follows a down-on-his-luck jeweler whose life is changed when his estranged teenage niece makes a surprise visit to his quiet village.
Agents with manuscripts that feature strong, unique voices and groundbreaking content with mainstream appeal may send material to Erika Imranyi or Park Row Books editor Liz Stein.

About MIRA Books
MIRA Books is an imprint of Harlequin and features a lineup of some of the bestselling authors across North America as well as industry-anticipated debut authors. MIRA Books is committed to publishing the very best in commercial fiction, including women’s fiction, suspense and psychological thrillers, literary bestsellers, and historical. In 2015, 24 MIRA Books titles placed on bestseller lists (New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly) for a total of 194 weeks. MIRA publishes approximately 100 books per year in hardcover, mass-market and trade paperback formats.

About Harlequin
Harlequin (Harlequin.com) is one of the world’s leading publishers of books for women, with titles issued worldwide in as many as 34 languages and sold in up to 102 international markets. The company publishes more than 110 titles monthly and more than 1,300 authors from around the world. Harlequin is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, the second-largest consumer book publisher in the world, and has operations in 11 countries. For more information, please visit Harlequin.com and Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks. Follow Harlequin on Twitter: @HarlequinBooks.