Friday, October 2, 2015
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
August 2015 Book List
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice by Jennifer Paynter
Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl
Not books but:
A Sheltered Woman by Yiyun Li at <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/10/a-sheltered-woman">A Sheltered Woman</a>
2015 Winner of Sunday Times EFG short story prize.
Monday, February 3, 2014
October - December 2013 Book List
This is not going well, is it?
Inferno by Dan Brown
The Last Dragon-Child by Mikaela Steele
Inferno by Dan Brown
The Last Dragon-Child by Mikaela Steele
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
August - September 2013 Book List
The Bridesmaid by Beverly Lewis (Book 2 of the Hickory Hollow series)
The Guardian by Beverly Lewis (Book 3 of the Hickory Hollow series)
The Choice by Suzanne Fisher
Quick Thoughts
The Guardian: The only book of Beverly Fisher's that I've read that starred a non-Amish heroine. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the personal growth that each of the two adult heroines went through in this book.
The Bridesmaid: I enjoyed the premise, but really The Guardian is a much better book. If I had to pick one, I'd choose The Guardian. The characters here were fairly standard Amish fiction characters I think.
The Guardian by Beverly Lewis (Book 3 of the Hickory Hollow series)
The Choice by Suzanne Fisher
Quick Thoughts
The Guardian: The only book of Beverly Fisher's that I've read that starred a non-Amish heroine. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the personal growth that each of the two adult heroines went through in this book.
The Bridesmaid: I enjoyed the premise, but really The Guardian is a much better book. If I had to pick one, I'd choose The Guardian. The characters here were fairly standard Amish fiction characters I think.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
The Choice by Suzanne Fisher
Prior to this book, my only exposure to Amish romantic fiction has been the works of Beverly Lewis. Therefore I was immediately surprised by the non-Amish (to me) sounding names. I was also surprised by how quickly the plot moved along although at the end it all made sense.
Spoilers!
The real hero does not make an appearance in the blurb, and did not appear in the flesh until after the death of the red herring hero. In this respect the blurb did a good job of leading me down a merry path. I was expecting a story about love growing in a marriage of convenience - that seems to be quite a common romance novel theme - but this book upended my expectations by chapter 6.
The heroine is not obviously a role model or obviously NOT a role model. In this respect Fisher has given us a more real to life heroine than most romance novels - Amish or otherwise I would think. Other than being extraordinarily pretty, there was no one trait about her that particularly stood out, making her both more ordinary and more unusual among her usually one dimensional contemporaries.
For a romance novel with slow moving Amish protagonists, this was a page turner. The underlying mystery in the book was kept at a low simmer consistently throughout and the final unraveling was both believable (if foreseeable) and gently satisfying.
Somehow although this book did not come across as gentle as Beverly Lewis', and I would say is drawn with bolder colors, the final impression is that of a gentle story about gentle people handled gently by a gentle author. Nothing really stood out - and yet it wasn't a waste of time. It's just a gently satisfying read.
(gosh could I use the word gentle any more often in one paragraph?)
Spoilers!
The real hero does not make an appearance in the blurb, and did not appear in the flesh until after the death of the red herring hero. In this respect the blurb did a good job of leading me down a merry path. I was expecting a story about love growing in a marriage of convenience - that seems to be quite a common romance novel theme - but this book upended my expectations by chapter 6.
The heroine is not obviously a role model or obviously NOT a role model. In this respect Fisher has given us a more real to life heroine than most romance novels - Amish or otherwise I would think. Other than being extraordinarily pretty, there was no one trait about her that particularly stood out, making her both more ordinary and more unusual among her usually one dimensional contemporaries.
For a romance novel with slow moving Amish protagonists, this was a page turner. The underlying mystery in the book was kept at a low simmer consistently throughout and the final unraveling was both believable (if foreseeable) and gently satisfying.
Somehow although this book did not come across as gentle as Beverly Lewis', and I would say is drawn with bolder colors, the final impression is that of a gentle story about gentle people handled gently by a gentle author. Nothing really stood out - and yet it wasn't a waste of time. It's just a gently satisfying read.
(gosh could I use the word gentle any more often in one paragraph?)
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
July 2013 book list
Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer
When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman
When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman
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