Tag Archives: fiction

This Just In….

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From William Morrow

Publication Date:  June 6, 2017
Publisher:  William Morrow

Goodreads:  A ferocious talent on the brink of making it big in Nashville must confront her small town past and an old love she’s never forgotten in this engaging novel—a soulful ballad filled with romance, heartbreak, secrets, and scandal from the author of Season of the Dragonflies.

Playing to packed houses while her hit song rushes up the charts, country singer and fiddler Jo Lover is poised to become a big Nashville star like her idols, Loretta, Reba, and Sheryl. To ensure her success, Jo has carefully crafted her image: a pretty, sassy, down-to-earth girl from small-town Virginia who pours her heart into her songs.

But the stage persona she’s built is threatened when her independent label merges with big-time Capitol Records, bringing Nashville heartthrob JD McCoy—her first love—back into her life. Long ago Jo played with JD’s band. Then something went wrong, they parted ways and took their own crooked roads to stardom. Now, Jo’s excited—and terrified—to see him again.

When the label reunites them for a show, the old sparks fly, the duet they sing goes viral, and fans begin clamoring for more—igniting the media’s interest in the compelling singer. Why is a small-town girl like Jo so quiet about her past? When did she and JD first meet? What split them apart? All too soon, the painful secret she’s been hiding is uncovered; a shocking revelation that threatens to destroy her reputation and her dreams. To salvage her life and her career, Jo must finally face the past—and her feelings for JD—to become the true Nashville diva she was meant to be.

From Little Bird Publicity

Publication Date:  September 5, 2017
Publisher:  Graydon House

Goodreads:  This joyful, poignant and deeply uplifting novel celebrates the importance of living each day to the fullest through the tale of two very different women—one at a crossroads in life, one given three months to live—who team up to participate in the “100 happy days” challenge and embark on an unforgettable journey that brings each of them redemption, love, and happiness.

With her marriage over and her career stalled out, thirty-something Annie’s life is at a standstill. Then she meets colorful, upbeat Polly, whose recent cancer diagnosis has left her determined to make the most of every moment. Polly sets a challenge: learn to be happy in just 100 days. From dancing in fountains to riding rollercoasters, Annie is drawn into Polly’s world, discovering friends, hope and even love. But what happens when time runs out and she’s tested to her limits once again?

Let me know what you are reading!

Allie and Bea

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Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Genre: Fiction
Source: Little Bird Publicity

 

Goodreads:  Bea has barely been scraping by since her husband died. After falling for a telephone scam, she loses everything and is forced to abandon her trailer. With only two-thirds of a tank in her old van, she heads toward the Pacific Ocean with her cat—on a mission to reclaim what’s rightfully hers, even if it means making others pay for what she lost.

When fifteen-year-old Allie’s parents are jailed for tax fraud, she’s sent to a group home. But when her life is threatened by another resident, she knows she has to get out. She escapes only to find she has nowhere to go—until fate throws Allie in Bea’s path.

Reluctant to trust each other, much less become friends, the two warily make their way up the Pacific Coast. Yet as their hearts open to friendship and love from the strangers they meet on their journey, they find the courage to forge their own unique family—and begin to see an imperfect world with new eyes.

Ope’s Opinion: I understand that Bea had some hard things happen to her, but I just didn’t enjoy reading how she turned it on other people.  Allie on the other hand, at no fault of her own was also in a hard place.  Allie reacted to it all in a very different way.

Knowing where Bea and Allie came from helped to understand how they ended up helping each other.  Their adventure together got a little long for me.

The ending was a little disappointing – I think it was tied up too easily for me.

 

This Just In….

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From Emer at HarperCollins

Publication Date:  May 30, 2017
Publisher:  Park Row Books

Goodreads:  Bestselling author Karma Brown is back with a morally infused and emotionally riveting exploration of one woman’s guilt over an unexpected—yet avoidable—tragedy.

Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.

After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street…just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.

Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family—and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father, Andrew.

Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?

Both of the these are from William Morrow

Publication Date:  May 16, 2017
Publisher:  William Morrow

Goodreads:  Bestselling author Georgia Bockoven is at her powerful and emotional peak in this novel perfect for fans of Nancy Thayer and Elin Hilderbrand.

Unlock the door to the beach house…a place where life slows down, people come together, and love is the strongest force of all.

After you’ve given your baby to strangers, what do you say when someone asks if you have children?

Fourteen years ago, Melinda Campbell was fifteen and a half, pregnant and terrified. Desperate to protect her baby from a malicious grandfather and needed at home to take care of her own critically ill father, Melinda makes the most generous, heart-wrenching choice of all: adoption. Now she’s living the successful life her father struggled to give her, but missing her daughter with a longing that shadows every joy.

Jeremy Richmond knows the beach house the way a painter knows his canvas, intimately and focused on detail. His life revolves around his adopted daughter, Shiloh, the girl who’s owned his heart from the moment he first held her as an infant. They were a picture-perfect family until Shiloh was diagnosed with pediatric lupus and Jeremy’s wife walked away.

When Shiloh tells her father she’s tired of fighting her illness and wants to meet her biological mother before it’s too late, Jeremy agrees to find a woman he has no desire to meet.

From the moment Melinda and Jeremy come face-to-face, they realize their worlds will never be the same. Will the beach house that has harbored troubled hearts for decades prove to be the balm they need to heal…?

Publication Date: May 16, 2017
Publisher:  HarperCollins

Goodreads:  New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank returns to her magical Lowcountry of South Carolina in this bewitching story of marriage, love, family, and friendship that is infused with her warm and engaging earthy humor and generous heart.

One enchanted summer, two couples begin a friendship that will last more than twenty years and transform their lives.

A chance meeting on the Isle of Palms, one of Charleston’s most stunning barrier islands, brings former sweethearts, Adam Stanley and Eve Landers together again. Their respective spouses, Eliza and Carl, fight sparks of jealousy flaring from their imagined rekindling of old flames. As Adam and Eve get caught up on their lives, their partners strike up a deep friendship—and flirt with an unexpected attraction—of their own.

Year after year, Adam, Eliza, Eve, and Carl eagerly await their reunion at Wild Dunes, a condominium complex at the island’s tip end, where they grow closer with each passing day, building a friendship that will withstand financial catastrophe, family tragedy, and devastating heartbreak. The devotion and love they share will help them weather the vagaries of time and enrich their lives as circumstances change, their children grow up and leave home, and their twilight years approach.

Bursting with the intoxicating richness of Dorothea Benton Frank’s beloved Lowcountry—the sultry sunshine, cool ocean breezes, icy cocktails, and starry velvet skies—Same Beach, Next Year is a dazzling celebration of the infrangible power of friendship, the enduring promise of summer, and the indelible bonds of love.

Can’t wait to read these !!! 

Slightly South of Simple

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Author: Kristy Woodson Harvey
Publisher: Gallery Books
Genre: Fiction
Source:  Kristy Woodson Harvey

Goodreads:  Caroline Murphy swore she’d never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father’s death, her mother selfishly forced her to move—during her senior year of high school, no less—back to that hick-infested rat trap where she’d spent her childhood summers. But now that her marriage to a New York high society heir has fallen apart in a very public, very embarrassing fashion, a pregnant Caroline decides to escape the gossipmongers with her nine-year-old daughter and head home to her mother, Ansley.

Ansley has always put her three daughters first, especially when she found out that her late husband, despite what he had always promised, left her with next to nothing. Now the proud owner of a charming waterfront design business and finally standing on her own two feet, Ansley welcomes Caroline and her brood back with open arms. But when her second daughter Sloane, whose military husband is overseas, and youngest daughter and successful actress Emerson join the fray, Ansley begins to feel like the piece of herself she had finally found might be slipping from her grasp. Even more discomfiting, when someone from her past reappears in Ansley’s life, the secret she’s harbored from her daughters their entire lives might finally be forced into the open.

Exploring the powerful bonds between sisters and mothers and daughters, this engaging novel is filled with Southern charm, emotional drama, and plenty of heart.

Ope’s Opinion:  I enjoyed this book from the beginning to the end!  The story was set in the present, but the characters memories of the past were woven into it.  Seeing their memories helped to deepen the characters and made you understand why they reacted to circumstances the way they did.

The relationships in this book are amazingly written.  You can feel the angst, the love, and the struggles each of them going through.  It was such a good read!

 The end left a lot opened because this is the first in a trilogy.  I am excited to follow these characters into the next part of their lives.

Pick up any Kristy Woodson Harvey book and you will not be disappointed!!

After You

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Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Genre: Fiction
Source: Kristin of Kritters Ramblings

 

 

Goodreads: “You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. But I hope you feel a bit exhilarated too. Live boldly. Push yourself. Don’t settle. Just live well. Just live. Love, Will.”

How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future…

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

Ope’s Opinion: Some times it is fun to read where a character went from the authors perspective, some times it is more fun to let them go where you envisioned.  In this case, it was a toss up.  The movie and book of Me Before You were perfect and complete in a way, even though you didn’t know what Lou did after Will.

I did really appreciate that Jojo Moyes kept Lou’s voice as it was in the previous book.  Obviously she had changed since knowing Will, but you could tell Lou was still there under the grief and struggle to move on.

 

Invincible Summer

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invincible

Author: Alice Adams
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Source: BEA 2016

 

Goodreads:  Four friends. Twenty years. One unexpected journey. Inseparable throughout college, Eva, Benedict, Sylvie, and Lucien graduate in 1997, into an exhilarating world on the brink of a new millennium. Hopelessly in love with playboy Lucien and eager to shrug off the socialist politics of her upbringing, Eva breaks away to work for a big bank. Benedict, a budding scientist who’s pined for Eva for years, stays on to complete his PhD in physics, devoting his life to chasing particles as elusive as the object of his affection. Siblings Sylvie and Lucien, never much inclined toward mortgages or monogamy, pursue more bohemian existences-she as an aspiring artist and he as a club promoter and professional partyer. But as their twenties give way to their thirties, the group struggles to navigate their thwarted dreams. Scattered across Europe and no longer convinced they are truly the masters of their fates, the once close-knit friends find themselves filled with longing for their youth- and for one another. Broken hearts and broken careers draw the foursome together again, but in ways they never could have imagined.

A dazzling depiction of the highs and lows of adulthood, Invincible Summer is a story about finding the courage to carry on in the wake of disappointment, and a powerful testament to love and friendship as the constants in an ever-changing world.

Ope’s Opinion: Do you like books set in London with British flare to it?  Then you might want to read this book.  The characters and situations were predictable.  For the most part, you get the surface facts of their lives, but not really the deeper meaning of it, so it was hard to get invested in how it was going to turn out in the end.  It was an easy, sort of summer read, not deep or leave you with lasting memories. 

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Steena Holmes

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Today I wanted to give a shout out to an amazing author that has blown me away not only in her stories but also in person. Steena Holmes is a women’s fiction writer who has the heart of gold. Her books are captivating and the way she writes makes it so easy and a  pleasure to read.

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When I first met Steena in person her face lit up with joy when she noticed me. I was in shock that a little blogger like me would get such a heartfelt reaction. Her enthusiasm is infectious and it traveled with me through the rest of the day.

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Thanks to this amazing author and Lake Union Publishing, I get to sit with this incredible book and see what Abby has in store for the next chapter of her life. If you haven’t already read my review on Saving Abby, you can go see where Abby started or pre-order Abby’s Journey here.

Pretty Little World

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pretty

Author: Elizabeth LaBan and Melissa DePino
Publisher: Lake Union
Genre: Fiction
Source: Little Bird Publicity

 

Goodreads:  On a cozy street in Philadelphia, three neighboring families have become the best of friends. They can’t imagine life without one another—until one family outgrows their tiny row house. In a bid to stay together, a crazy idea is born: What if they tear down the walls between their homes and live together under one roof? And so an experiment begins.

Celia and Mark now have the space they need. But is this really what Celia’s increasingly distant husband wants? Stephanie embraces the idea of one big, happy family, but has she considered how it may exacerbate the stark differences between her and her husband, Chris? While Hope always wanted a larger family with Leo, will caring for all the children really satisfy that need?

Behind closed doors, they strive to preserve the closeness they treasure. But when boundaries are blurred, they are forced to question their choices…and reimagine the true meaning of family.

Ope’s Opinion:  I started out reading this with a little skepticism.  The thought of three families living together seemed a little odd to me. As I read, I bought into the idea.  The families seem to really meet each others needs.  The authors had convinced me this was going to work.  Then too much intimate details of their sex lives was written into the story – this added nothing to the characters or to the story line.  At that point, I was frustrated.  I did finish the book.  The ending left me up in the air.

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The Bookshop on the Corner

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bookshop

Author: Jenny Colgan
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: Fiction
Source: William Morrow

 

Goodreads:  Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

Ope’s Opinion: I read this on the plane on the way to Seattle.  It was such a nice relaxing, easy read.  Nina ( the main character ) started out in a bad place and I was afraid the whole book was going to be negative – just the opposite.  It was a very uplifting, positive book.

This book was set in Scotland, so if that appeals to you, you would really enjoy this book.  She talks about the landscape and places she goes, so if you are familiar with it, you would connect with this book.

I,( like Nina ), love to find “homes” for my books ( I do not sell them ).  After I read a book I enjoy finding someone I know who would enjoy it.  I think that would be such a great job!  The romance of the book was fun and not explicit, so I really enjoyed that part too.  Overall, a good book.

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Love May Fail

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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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