Home To Crossroads Ranch (Love Inspired No. 485)

LINDA GOODNIGHT

Synopsis: Finally, Rainy Jernagen has the child-filled home she's always wanted! Okay, so she still hasn't found Mr. Right, but the foster kids she's taken in fill her heart almost completely. Then handyman/rancher Nate Del Rio comes knocking, and Rainy starts to wonder if she really can have it all. There's only one problem: Nate doesn't want kids. At all. And nothing Rainy says will change his mind. Of course, she's not going to let that stop her. Not when she has a houseful of adorable allies to raid Nate's ranch and win his heart – whether he likes it or not.

First line: Nate Del Rio heard screams the minute he stepped out of his Super Crew Cab and started up the flower-lined sidewalk leading to Rainy Jernagen's house.

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, published by Steeple Hill Books, 2009. I don't remember where I got it – I have a zillion Love Inspired books that came from book sales, my sister, and directly through Harlequin Reader Services subscriptions.

My thoughts: When talking about Love Inspired romances, I always name Linda Goodnight as one of my favorite authors (along with Jillian Hart). But looking back over my reading logs today, I realized that this book is only the third book I've read by her (the other two being Finding Her Way Home and Missionary Daddy). Obviously I really enjoyed them, but if I hadn't already discovered her, this book would make me an instant fan.

                                    

Rainy is a sweet and likable heroine, a school teacher who is fostering a sibling group of three, plus another little girl. She's always wanted a houseful of kids and after not finding a Christian man and falling in love and having kids with him, she's turned to being a foster parent instead, putting romance on the back burner. She's not adverse to being married someday, but isn't willing to settle for just any man either.

Enter Nate Del Rio. He's certainly not looking for a wife, and he doesn't want to have any kids, ever. Which was a baffling attitude, because he's really good with the kids and they take to him very quickly. There's a tragedy in his past that is often alluded to, and it doesn't take long to sort of figure out the gist of it, though he details and circumstances are still quiet a surprise when he finally tells Rainy about it.

Great characters, including the children. Some snappy dialogue that made me laugh out loud at times. A very enjoyable book.

*SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER* Do not read further if you don't wish to be spoiled:

Being a foster parent can be heartbreaking at times, and some of the storyline dealing with that left a sour taste in my mouth. I work in the adoption field and I'm familiar with my state's DHS and the push for reunification. The little girl who is not part of the sibling girl ends up being placed back into her mother's custody, and I would have really liked more resolution to that storyline, i.e., reassurance that her mother really had turned her life around and that reunification really was the best step for that child. Because in real life it doesn't always work out that way.

Some other Linda Goodnight books currently in my TBR pile:

  

Rich Man, Poor Bride; The Christmas Child; A Time To Heal

    

His Prince's Secret Son; The Wedding Garden

Eternal Kiss of Darkness (Night Huntress World, Book 2)

JEANIENE FROST

Synopsis: Chicago private investigator Kira Graceling should have just kept on walking. But her sense of duty refused to let her ignore the moans of pain coming from inside a warehouse just before dawn. Suddenly she finds herself in a world she's only imagined in her worst nightmares.

At the center is Mencheres, a breathtaking Master vampire who thought he'd seen it all. Then Kira appears – this fearless, beautiful...human who braved death to rescue him. Though he burns for her, keeping Kira in his world means risking her life. Yet sending her away is unthinkable.

But with danger closing in, Mencheres must choose either the woman he craves, or embracing the darkest magic to defeat an enemy bent on his eternal destruction.

First line: Mencheres smelled blood even before he caught the earthy scent of ghouls clustered on the ground floor of the decrepit warehouse.

Stats for my copy: Mass market paperback, published by Avon Books, An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 2010; received through BookCrossing.

My thoughts: I love the Night Huntress Books. I love Cat, and I especially love Bones. The Night Huntress World books are spin-offs, featuring supporting characters from the other books. This one features Mencheres, Bones' grand-sire. Mencheres is, in his own words, “older than dirt”. He's also extremely powerful and has been well known for his visions of the future. However, he's recently lost that power and now he only has one vision – of a vast darkness. He takes this vision to be a portent of his pending death.

Kira is a private detective, who is walking home from work one night and hears the sounds of someone in pain coming from an old warehouse. Unable to walk away from someone who may need help, she goes into the warehouse where she sees Mencheres being tortured. Despite her fear, she pulls out her gun and demands “put down your knives”. Of course, since the torturers are ghouls, Kira is the one who ends up having to be saved by Mencheres.

After getting her to safety, Mencheres prepares to mesmerize her into forgetting what she saw. Except it doesn't work. He stares into her eyes, and she looks right back at him, and nothing happens. He thinks maybe it's because he forced some of his blood down her throat to heal her wounds – maybe his blood has made her temporarily immune. So he tells her that he cannot allow her to leave until the effects wear off and he can mesmerize her.

In the Cat and Bones books, Mencheres was never one of my favorite characters. I want to say I didn't dislike him, yet I think in a way I did. Maybe because Cat disliked him...I'm not sure why. Getting to know him and learning more about his background is nice. I like him a lot more now. Not as much as I like Bones, but then I'm starting to realize I may never like another vampire as much as I like Bones. Seriously. I'm head over heels about Bones. Which is a little embarrassing at my age, I mean for Pete’s sake, he's a fictional character in a book.

I do really like Kira, however. She's a wounded soul, who's heart was broken in the past, along with her dreams of being a police officer. She lives a pretty solitary life, not being close to anyone besides her younger sister, Tina. She doesn't want be attracted to Mencheres. Well, who in their right mind wants to be attracted to a vampire anyway. Especially when they've only just learned that vampires do exist.

Anyway, there's an enemy of Mencheres who wants his power and will stop at nothing to get it, there's lots of conflict and battles and hiding out and longing looks and self-discovery and so forth.

I enjoyed this book very much. Much more than the first Night Huntress World book. My understanding is that the next book will feature Vlad, and I'm looking forward to it, though I really wish Ms. Frost would give us a book about Tate.

October Acquisitions

One of the best days of October is bag day at one of our local library's annual book sale. They give you brown paper sacks and you cram as many books into the sack as you can for $5.00. I usually leave with three bags. This year, I left with five bags and around 150 books!

Not counting the library sale, only eight new books came into my home in October:

The Ivy Chronicles, by Karen Quinn

This came in the mail as a surprise from a BookCrossing member who saw it on my wish list.

                         
Just The Way You Are, by Christina Dodd

I picked this up at Walmart while buying groceries.

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella

This came in the mail from a Book Mooch member.

My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, by Meredith Maran

I ordered this from Alibris.

The Fifteenth Pelican, by Tere Rios, another one I got through Book Mooch. I used to love the TV show when I was younger, and have been watching reruns recently on one of our local TV channels, and when I realized it was based on a book, I immediately went searching for it.







And I did make a trip to a thrift store, which yielded three books:



Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear; The Sweetest Gift, by Jillian Hart; and Wish List, by Fern Michaels.

I really need to refrain from buying/ordering/mooching books as there's no space in my room for more! In addition to the five bags from the library sale I mentioned above, I have four bags of book from another library sale in September, and I've nowhere in my house to put them!

What I really need is a bigger house.

Intimate Danger, by Amy J. Fetzer

Synopsis: Clancy McRae is mad as hell. Charged with creating technology-enhanced troops, she's discovered her top-secret nano-device has been surgically implanted in four U.S. Marines without her approval. Though it makes them smarter, faster, and stronger than any human on earth, in this untested stage it can also drive them insane - or kill them. Now she's stolen classified data, risking her career - and her life - to go after them.

While recovering from a shoulder wound, Spec Ops leader Mike Gannon learns the rest of his team was dropped into the jungles of Peru to locate a chilling new weapon. Then: nothing, nada. Injured or dead, it's his duty to bring them home and destroy the threat. But when a scrappy red-haired beauty butts into his rescue mission, insisting the government turned his men into lab rats, Mike doesn't believe her - till she becomes a moving target.

Keeping Clancy with him keeps her safe, yet as the tropical temperatures rise with their passion, Mike and Clancy are ensnared in a labyrinth of ingenious deceptions concealing a peril no one suspects - and only they can stop. In the dark forgotten Andes, they unearth a deadly plan and an ancient menace that turns a rescue into the crucial fight for their very survival.

And the clock is ticking...

First line: Some people were a waste of human tissue.

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, published by Kensington Publishing Corp, 2007.

My thoughts: It took me a bit to get into this book, though I was hooked on Mike within a few pages. Clancy wasn't introduced until page 9, and she took a little longer to appeal to me. Until they actually met, I was more interested in Mike's parts of the story than hers.

While I love military heroes in romance novels, I think I prefer reading about them stateside. Crashing around in the jungles of some foreign country just doesn't really do it for me. With a plot like this, I tend to get a little lost in all the military and scientific talk. And there's a lot of it. And it gets pretty detailed - I certainly felt like the author knew what she was talking about even when I didn't.

Once Clancy and Mike finally met and began to interact with each other, I loved the banter between them. And I liked that while Clancy is a military girl herself, having served in Desert Storm, she's not just all tough and fearless. While struggling to keep up with Mike in the jungle, she often whines about how tired she is, and in one scene where their lives were in danger she whimpers with fear. Mike is the definition of the macho Alpha hero, but then he'll pull her close and is tender and encouraging. Of course attraction flares up, and eventually they share a kiss. And then another one here and there.

There was a subplot about an archeological dig that, while it was tied into the overall plot, still seemed irrelevant and extraneous. I felt those sections could have been removed and it wouldn't have made a difference.

I'd not read anything by this author before, so I don't know if all of her books are in this type of setting or not. But she did a great job with the two main characters, and based on that I do want to read more by her.

And a quick search of my TBR pile has revealed that I have one of her other books - TELL IT TO THE MARINES, a collection of stories which I bought at Half Price Books about a year ago because it just sorta jumped off the sale shelf at me. If the heroes are anything like Mike, then I'm sure I'll enjoy it!

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

NORMAN MACLEAN

Synopsis: Unique in the annals of modern fiction, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT is more than just a portrait of a vanished America – it is a living piece of that world. Written when Norman Maclean was in his seventies, his first book of fiction was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and became a bestseller.

The title novella recalls the experiences of a young man in frontier Montana: of his minister father, who taught his sons the ways of grace and fly fishing; of his brother, an artist at trout fishing but less than successful at life; and the swift, cold rivers that ran from the heart of the mountains into the still-mysterious heart of man.

First line: In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

Stats for my copy: Paperback, published by Pocket Books, 1992; purchased at a library book sale in 2007.

My thoughts: I made it through about 60 pages before I gave up. It's not a novel, it's a fly fishing manual.

The Mirror

MARLYS MILLHISER

Synopsis: The Mirror. It is a full-length looking glass in a grotesque bronze frame of talonlike fingers, brought from China to San Francisco in the late 1800s. And it is evil. When Shay gazes into the mirror's smoky depths on the eve of her wedding, she is mysteriously drawn back in time, awakening in the same house, but in another body, that of her grandmother, Brandy. And the independent, tempestuous Brandy is transported as well--from seventy-five years in the past into the present body deserted by her granddaughter, Shay.

Plunged into a primitive, 19th-century mining camp, condemned to a living hell of knowing the future and being forced to endure it unalterably, Shay finds herself marrying her own grandfather, giving birth to her own mother, and astonishing everyone by predicting the future--a future which is all too cruelly her own family past.

First line: The mirror was old.

Stats for my copy: hardback, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1978; purchased from the sale shelf at my local library.

My thoughts:  I first read this book many, many years ago, probably sometime in the 80's. It's one of those stories that I loved and it has always stayed with me, with a couple of scenes from the book still vivid in my mind. Only a couple though, as I realized upon rereading that the vast majority of the book did not jar any memories. Which was nice though, as it was like reading it for the for the first time. Anyway, when I saw it on the sale shelf at the library back in April 2006, I snatched it up. So now I've finally gotten around to actually reading it.

I love time travel stories. Not necessarily the science fiction time travel, though I'll read those. But my preference is the accidental, how in the heck did this happen and where in the heck am I time travel. Like Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, my all time favorite book ever, which I've read twice, and have recently been itching to read again even though I have a million books I haven't yet read once. And Seducing Mr. Darcy, by Gwyn Cready, a close runner up, which I've read once but kept because I know I'll read it again one day.

Shay Garrett lives in 1978, and is marrying Marek Weir tomorrow. Her elderly 90-something Grandma Bran has been released from a nursing home to attend the wedding. Shay and Grandma Bran both look into the ugly mirror and their eyes meet, and then Shay feels like she's in an earthquake, and when she wakes up, she is in another time, another body. She is now in Brandy's body, on the eve of her own wedding.

Shay finds herself married off and living in destitute conditions with her new husband, who seemingly has no interest in or affection for her – indeed, he married her in exchange for her father's mine. Cuz marriages often happened that way in those days (shudder). Brandy is known as being a little crazy, and had already turned down two marriage proposals, and her father hopes that with this marriage, and maybe some kids coming along, the talk and gossip about her will settle down and her family will no longer need to be ashamed of her. Little did he know.

Over the years, Shay attempts to get the mirror to work it's magic again and send her back to her own body in her own time, while learning to live in the past. She becomes known as a seer of the future. She ends up marrying again, this time to her own grandfather, and eventually she gives birth to her uncles and her mother.

At first, when she met her grandfather, I was a little put off by where the story would go, as was Shay. I mean, it's kind of creepy to think about having sex with your grandfather, even if he is young and gorgeous.

The book is divided into three parts, Shay's story, Rachael's story, and Brandy's story. Shay's is the longest, and the most interesting. Rachael is Shay's daughter, and her section is short, starting when she's a young girl and going up through her marriage, which her mother of course predicted. Rachael loves her mother, but resents Brandy (really Shay) always knowing what she will do before she does.

Then we get Brandy's story, starting from her own new awakening in Shay's body, and trying to adjust to this new loud and crowded world, where women go around barely dressed and couples kiss and grope each other in public. Where the wife sits at the table while the husband cooks. Where Shay's parents seem to actually care about their daughter and want her to be happy, rather than sending her off to marry a stranger.

Brandy has a lot more trouble adjusting than Shay did. For Brandy the struggle to adjust was more internal. I would have liked to see her out in the world, interacting with people more, but I get that the whole experience was probably a much larger culture shock for her than for Shay. Going into the future, you have no idea what to expect. Going into the past, you've studied history in school, you've heard stories from your parents, you might not have seen something in real life but you still know what it is because in your time people know about the past. Brandy was a much more passive person than Shay, but then she was also very much a product of her time.

I didn't really like the direction Brandy's story took, but I was satisfied with the way it ended. But even if I hadn't been, I still would have loved this book just for Shay's story. The writing is wonderful, the detail, particularly in Shay's story, is fantastic. The book is awesome.

The Devil to Pay

MICHELE HAUF

Silhouette Nocturne #55

Bewitching The Dark, Book 5

Synopsis: After the devil Himself claims Ivan Drake's soul on his twenty-first birthday, the vampire phoenix has no choice but to enforce his wicked role. But when the devil sends him to claim the Book of all Spells, the last thing Ivan expects is to square off with its gorgeous protector, the witch Dez Merevech – or to be attracted to her.

To retrieve the book might end the escalating war between the witches and the vampires, but to take it from Dez will ensure her death. With the fate of the paranormal world hanging in the balance, Ivan must choose wisely – and quickly...

Stats for my copy: paperback, published by Silhouette Books, 2009; purchased at Half Price Books.

I'd seen Michele Hauf's name before, but was unfamiliar with her work when I bought this book. Normally I don't read series books out of order, but with category romances the entries are often not linked to each other enough to matter if you read them in order or not. And indeed, in the “Dear Reader” letter from the author at the front of this book, Ms. Hauf states each story in this series stands alone. So I dove right in.

The hero of this book, however, Ivan Drake, is related to the couple in the second book of the series, KISS ME DEADLY. And two pages into the prologue, which gave a bit of background on his parents, I realized that I had read that entry, and at the time had not been overly impressed.

But I forged ahead anyway, and I'm glad I did. And let me say now, that as I read, more and more of that previous book came back to me, and I began to remember it a little more fondly. And I honestly think part of my problem at the time was that I read it on my iPhone. I don’t read many ebooks, and when I would put one on my phone, I usually only read it when out somewhere without a regular book with me, which meant I might go days between chapters, or even between paragraphs. After having an iPhone for about six months, I stopped even bothering with ebooks. I just don't like reading that way.

So. Ivan is a 28 year old half vampire, half witch, whose parents bargained away his soul before he was even born. The devil, always referred to as Himself, left Ivan alone until he turned 21, at which time he claimed his soul, and Ivan became his fixer. His days were his own, but his nights belonged to Himself, when he was given assignments and had to track down various creatures who had wronged Himself or reneged on a deal or whatever, and exacting whatever punishment Himself has directed. His newest assignment: to locate the Grande Grimoire, a magical book that contains every spell ever written, and take it from the witch who is its guardian.

Said guardian is Dez, a very powerful witch who is much older than Ivan. When she discovers he is only 28 years old, not 28 decades, or centuries, she is slightly appalled, calling him a baby boy. More than once throughout the book she reminds herself that in the world of the witches and vampires, age doesn’t really matter.

Of course Ivan and Dez are attracted to each other, but despite his growing feelings for Dez, Ivan can't not attempt to take the book from her. At night he is under the control of Himself, and he has no choice but to carry out his assignment. Or to attempt to anyway.

I like this world that Ms. Hauf has built. There is a war going on between the witches and the vampires, but (like many wars) it is unnecessary, and Ivan's parents and other members of the Gray Council, both witch and vampire, are searching for a way to end it. I like the characters. The author takes us inside their heads, giving us a good look at what has made them who they are today, and what is keeping them from being who they would like to be. With Himself being so powerful, it was hard to imagine how Ivan and Dez would be able to thwart him, and each victory they enjoyed over him, however fleeting, was very satisfying.

I read this book in a single day. Thankfully it was on the weekend and I didn't have to work! I'm definitely interested in reading the rest of the series, and someday I may even go back and reread the book about Ivan's parents.

Thwonk

JOAN BAUER

Synopsis: Imagine having a personal cupid -- an actual winged being -- pop into your life and offer to make your dreams come true. The catch is that he can help you in only one way: artistically, academically, or romantically. That's what happens to aspiring photographer Allison Jean (A.J.) McCreary. A.J. knows she should concentrate on getting into a top-notch art school. But she's spent five torturous months obsessed with handsome hunk Peter Terris. Just one shot from cupid's bow and thwonk! A.J. will have the undying devotion of Peter...forever.

Stats for my copy:  Puffin Books, Published by the Penguin Group, 2004. Given to me by a BookCrossing member in December 2003.

A.J. is a funny, self-deprecating narrator. She has a crush on Peter, the most popular boy at school, who takes absolutely no notice of her at all. A.J. is the photographer for the school newspaper, and when she's given an assignment to provide a cover photo for the Valentine's Day issue, she goes searching for the perfect picture. Cupids are everywhere, but she wants something more artisitc. Then she finds a stuffed cupid doll in the street and takes it home. The next day, it's come to life.

Of the three ways in the synopsis that Jonathan, the cupid, can help her, of course she chooses romantically. She wants Jonathan to shoot Peter Terris with one of his little arrows and make him fall in love with her. Well, we've all heard that old saying - be careful what you wish for.

When A.J.'s wish comes true, her joy is short-lived. It's tiring and hard work being with someone who is fanatically devoted to you.

In the end, A.J. learns about herself and about what she really needs in life to be happy. Her story was cute and amusing, though the characters were often a little frantic, always shouting or screeching. Like that wouldn't get tiring in real life. A lot of young girls out there need to learn the lessons A.J. learned.

September Acquisitions

In Sepember our local library had their annual book sale. I popped in during my lunch break the first day of the sale, a Saturday, and picked up three books:



Whispered Lies, by Sherrilyn Kenyn and Dianna Love; Time and Again, by Jack Finney; and Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell.

I went back on Sunday for bag day - they provide paper grocery sacks and you stuff as many books into a sack as you can for $5.00 - and went home with three bags and 105 books. Score!

After reading yet one more intriquing review of Dark Soul by Aleksandr Voinov, I broke down and ordered "the complete collection" from Amazon. I've read so many reviews, and at first I thought, not for me, but the more reviews I read the more interested I was.






A weekend trip to a Salvation Army thrift store yielded three shirts and five books:



Death of a Hangman, by Joseph A. West (which looking at the cover I thought was by Ralph Compton but turns about to be part of a series Compton started that was later written by West...or smething like that); Confessions of an English Maid and Other Delights, by Anonymous; The Heritage, by Frances Parkinson Keyes

 

Season of Joy, by Virginia Carmichael; and The Barefoot Princess, by Christina Dodd

And from the sale shelf at Half Price Books:



Heart of Steel, by Meljean Brook; and Dead Man's Walk, by Larry McMurtry.

Another trip to the Salvation Army thrift store one day yielded a small pile of books:



An Underground Education: The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, And Other Fields of Human Knowledge, by Richard Zacks - this just grabbed my attention, I started to put it back on the shelf, but couldn't resist it;
Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival, by Anderson Cooper; and Dogs Gone Wild: After Hurricane Katrina, by Theresa D. Thompson

                                             

A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar - this is a book I probably never would have picked up if I hadn't already seen the movie version.

Knockout, by Catherine Coulter - the 13th book in her FBI series. I've yet to read any of this series, but my mom liked them and gave me a few, so I've started picking them up when I come across them.



And three books by Janette Oke: Julia's Last Hope; Roses for Mama; and A Woman Named Damaris. Books 2, 3, and 4 of her Women of the West series. Of course, I do not have Book 1.

And an Amazon shopping spree:


 

How To Remodel A Man, by W. Bruce Cameron; The Heartbreaker, by Vicki Lewis Thompson; The Marriage Lesson, by Victoria Alexander

  

Old Enough to Know Better, by Vicki Lewis Thompson; Warrior, by Zoe Archer; Loverboy, by Victoria Redel

From two Book Mooch members:



Soul Whisperer, by Jenna Kernan; and Master of the Highlands, by Veronica Wolff

And through BookCrossing:



First Drop of Crimson, by Jeaniene Frost, which I've read and  reviewed, and Death's Excellent Vacation, which I've read and reviewed.

Behaving Like Adults

ANNA MAXTED

When I picked up this book to read, I wasn't really sure what it was about and I didn't bother reading the jacket copy. I knew it would be chick lit, you can tell that by the cover. And I enjoy the genre. In fact, I've been so immersed in paranormal the last couple of years I've come to crave contemporary stories, be they chick lit or straight out romance.

The way I see it, there are two varieties of chick lit. You have the fluffy stories with the silly young heroine who goes through life making a series of funny mistakes which often lead to hijinks and misunderstandings. Usually she grows a little as a person, though sometimes over the course of a series she never seems to really learn anything (yes, I'm talking about you, Rebecca Bloomwood).

Then you have the stories that still include a lot of humor but have a little more depth to them, a heavier subject matter, and a heroine who faces real and serious adversity (not to belittle addiction to shopping since that can certainly cause real and serious problems for people, so don't glare at me Becky). The heroines in these stories definitely grow as a person, and often do some soul searching along the way.

Behaving Like Adults falls into the second category. Holly is 29, fun and breezy, and loves love. She owns and operates a dating agency, where her life's work is to make perfect matches for other people. She and her long time fiancee, Nick, bought a house together but never actually set a wedding date, and after breaking up, are still living together (though sleeping in separate rooms) in that same house three months later.

When Holly dips her own toes into the dating world, she goes out with Stuart, who has applied to the dating agency and seems on paper to be too good to be true. And sure enough, he's a caddish jerk and the date is a bust. But when Holly needs a date for an agency event, she gives Stuart a second chance. And that second date turns into a nightmare that leaves Holly questioning the validity of love, the goodness of the human race, and doubting her abilities and instincts for matchmaking. I'm not going into detail about that date, but if you read further you are likely to figure it out, so be warned that this could be a SPOILER ALERT.

There is a great supporting cast in Holly's sisters and friends. As Holly sank deeper and deeper into her own thoughts and began pulling away from socializing, work and her friends, there were times where I sort of wanted to shake her and say “Talk to them! Tell someone about what that jerk did to you!” But she has a hard time believing that she didn’t bring her problems onto her self and putting the blame on Stuart rather than just on herself.

The narrative is in the first person from Holly's point of view, but the author does a good job of conveying the supporting character's personalities, so you feel as if you get to know them pretty well and know what they are thinking and feeling also.

There was just one tiny niggling detail that bothered me. Twice there is reference to calling 911. But do they use 911 in England? I thought the emergency services number there was 999 or something like that. Did the publisher's change it to 911 for us ignorant American readers? If so, I'm insulted.

Towards the end of the book, I cried. Literally. That doesn't happen very often when reading a book. I am definitely be adding Anna Maxted to my list of authors whose back lists I need to hunt down and read.

(I bought this book new. Because the cover jumped out at me.)

Photo Op

LYNN A. COLEMAN

I was very interested and intrigued when I started this book and realized that Dena, the heroine, is closer to my age than your usual romance heroine. In fact, she's older than me , being 52 I believe. Then the hero, Wayne is introduced, and he's like 38 I think (sorry, I don't remember exactly and don't want to go look).

There were lots of obstacles for the couple to overcome, in their minds anyway - neither had been in a relationship in about twenty years and neither was sure if they were ready to be in one; they lived in different cities, though Dena's son is the pastor at Wayne's church, so she has some ties to his community; they have very different careers, and Dena makes a lot more money than Wayne. It took them a long time to work through all these issues. Personally, for me, the fact that he is so much younger would have been the biggest issue, and I don't know if I could get past that kind of age gap. But for them, it was barely mentioned in passing and never seemed to really matter.

There was a background mystery going on about poachers, and when the culprit was caught it came out of left field, but part of the resolution to that whole storyline was very rushed and not completely explained away.

But overall, a pleasant read for some escape from real life.

Oh, and Wayne winked way too often. I don't trust a man who's constantly winking. I don't even like the sound of the word. Wink. Wink wink. A winker is a wanker.

(I purchased this book at a library book sale.)

Death's Excellent Vacation

Edited by CHARLAINE HARRIS and TONI L.P. KELNER 

This was definitely a hit or miss collection. I had been wanting to read this book for quite some time, because of Charlaine Harris and Katie MacAlister. That was long before I'd ever read anything by Jeanine Frost. Her story, "One for the Money", and the Sookie Stackhouse story, "Two Blondes", were by far the best two in the collection. I enjoyed MacAlister’s story “The Perils of Effrijim”, but not as much as her novels about Aisling Grey, Guardian, which Jim appears in.

The only other author in the book I was familiar with was Christopher Golden, and that was just for his Buffy/Angel books. His entry, "Thin Walls", was ok. “The Innsmouth Nook”, by A. Lee Martinez, was just weird and ended abruptly. I enjoyed the banter between the characters in “Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea…”, by Daniel Stashower, but the ending felt unfinished.

I was excited that L.A. Banks had contributed a story, “Seeing is Believing”. She’s an author who I’d never read before, but had heard/seen a lot about and so I was eager to be introduced to her work. But I didn't care for her story at all. I couldn't connect with the characters and I did not like the way they talked. When Justin tells Jessica he’s leaving by saying “So, I’ma go, okay?”, I just can’t take him seriously. I almost closed the book right there. But since the story only had eight pages left I forged ahead, only to give up in disgust one page later. Jessica says to Justin, “You’ve lost so much…even your dog.” But four pages earlier, she had said “You have a dog?” He replied, “Kinda.” Nothing else is said about the dog, so how does she know he lost one? Okay, I realize that Jessica has some kind of second sight, but she kept wondering why she couldn’t "read" Justin, so she wouldn’t have picked up the knowledge that way. I scanned backwards thinking I missed something, but could not find any mention of anything happening to his dog. And yes, I know, there had been some talk about werewolves. But it still didn’t make sense. And it just now occurred to me that maybe she "read" Justin’s grandmother and that’s how she knew about a lost dog, but you’d still think that something in the narrative would have indicated that. Of course, since I was having trouble staying interested in the story, I still could have missed something.

(I received this book through BookCrossing.)