Book Review: Being Shirley by Michelle Vernal
Reviewer: Terry The books starts with a tribute to Roz Annie’s sister as she and Carl- Roz’s best friend as well as Annie’s after her…
Book Review: Second Hand Jane by Michelle Vernal
Reviewer: Terry I was given a copy in exchange for an honest review. Summary: When footloose and fancy-free Jessica, a thirty-something writer, decides to follow…
In My Mailbox: Week of March 24
Title: Precious Words
Author: Leigh Fleming
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Emberly Fallon is a smart, beautiful American attorney who goes on a dream vacation with her two best friends to the UK, where she meets the irresistible Niccolo Bartoli, an Italian tennis pro who is just as commanding off the court as he is on.
Emberly resists his advances, not wanting anything to do with paparazzi and Nico’s rabid fans.
Currently ranked number two in the world, Nico finds himself struggling with his game and his personal life. Although always surrounded by his entourage, he is lonely in his world of celebrity and constant travel. Emberly makes him feel grounded, and despite her best intentions, she does fall in love with the dashing, foreign sportsman.
Their romantic adventures take them to Miami, New York, and Rome. This whirlwind love story was not in Emberly’s future plans, but she allows herself to be happy with Nico—until she becomes the victim of threats. Someone is trying to bring Nico’s success and newfound happiness to a tragic end … and that person is much closer than they suspect.
Title: Diamonds in the Sky
Author: MA Harper
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: DIAMONDS, LOVE, AND UFOS…
When struggling artist/shoe clerk Caddy Keyhoe stumbles across what may be a lost and untraceable diamond, her first reaction is down-to-earth: Maybe I can sell it. But how odd to be finding it in the gutter now, after last night’s dream of a UFO scattering bright gemstones. Research via Google leads her to the website of melancholy Alec Rix, semi-failed writer and newly-minted UFO authority—courtesy of his published interview with octogenarian Hatchell T. Beckham Sr., retired from farming and strangely eager to discredit the new crop circle on the Beckham property. The crop circle perpetrated by a neighborhood hoaxer. Or by those blazing diamond-shaped UFOs that just about everybody in Hopkins, South Carolina—except old Hatch—claims to have seen…?
As Caddy’s art career takes a magical turn for the stratosphere, Alec’s friendship with Hatch deepens through the old farmer’s tale of his long-lost family. Could there be a book in this? the blocked author has to wonder. But when pursuit of the story sends him blundering into radiant Caddy on the biggest night of her life, priorities immediately change. Because what can it really mean, to “follow a star”? And what does Hawaii have to do with it?
A feet-on-the-ground story with its head in the clouds, Diamonds In The Sky reports from the Unknown with quiet wit, endearing characters, and the speculation that love just might be forever—even if not all diamonds are.
Title: Keep Quiet
Author: Lisa Scottoline
Received: SHPNY
Synopsis: New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award winning author Lisa Scottoline is loved by millions of readers for her suspenseful novels about family and justice. Scottoline delivers once again withKeep Quiet, an emotionally gripping and complex story about one man’s split-second decision to protect his son – and the devastating consequences that follow.Jake Buckman’s relationship with his sixteen-year-old son Ryan is not an easy one, so at the urging of his loving wife, Pam, Jake goes alone to pick up Ryan at their suburban movie theater. On the way home, Ryan asks to drive on a deserted road, and Jake sees it as a chance to make a connection. However, what starts as a father-son bonding opportunity instantly turns into a nightmare. Tragedy strikes, and with Ryan’s entire future hanging in the balance, Jake is forced to make a split-second decision that plunges them both into a world of guilt and lies. Without ever meaning to, Jake and Ryan find themselves living under the crushing weight of their secret, which treatens to tear their family to shreds and ruin them all. Powerful and dramatic, Keep Quiet will have readers and book clubs debating what it means to be a parent and how far you can, and should, go to protect those you love.
Title: Confessions of a Paris Party Girl
Author: Vicki Lesage
Received: Vicki Lesage
Synopsis: Drinking too much bubbly. Meeting sappy Frenchmen who have girlfriends or are creeps or both. Encountering problème after problème with French bureaucracy. When newly-single party girl Vicki moved to Paris, she was hoping to taste wine, stuff her face with croissants, and maybe fall in love.
In her first book, this long-time blogger and semi-professional drinker recounts the ups and downs of her life in Paris. Full of sass, shamefully honest admissions, and situations that seem too absurd to be true, Vicki makes you feel as if you’re stumbling along the cobblestones with her.
Will she find love? Will she learn to consume reasonable amounts of alcohol? Will the French administration ever cut her a break?
Title: Second Hand Jane
Author: Michelle Vernal
Received: Michelle Vernal
Synopsis: When footloose and fancy-free Jessica, a thirty-something writer, decides to follow her journalistic instincts and trace the story of a young girl for her weekly column in a Dublin newspaper, she unwittingly embarks on a journey into Northern Ireland’s tragic past.
With her love of all things vintage, Jessica Jane Baré is known as Second-hand Jane to her friends. Hailing from New Zealand, these days she’s finding the grass is greener in Dublin and not just because of all the rain. In fact, life would be sweet if it weren’t for the reason she left home in the first place–her meddling mother. Marian views Jess’s life in Dublin as nothing more than a stop-gap until she meets Mr Right and he’s taking his time. Things look set to change, however, when Jess meets the delectable Nick, who ticks all of Marian’s boxes.
In the meantime, Jess’s latest second-hand collectible–a children’s book—gives her an idea for her column. Deciding to track down the girl whose name is scribbled inside the cover of that book, she uncovers more than she ever expected. “Amy was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the girl’s taciturn brother, Owen, informs her. Intrigued, Jess travels to the family pig farm in County Down and listens to Amy’s poignant tale unfold through Owen. With a little help from a rather cute runt of the litter she names Wilbur, Jess is about to help put the past to rest and learn that appearances can be deceptive.
Then Marian announces she is coming to Dublin to sort her daughter’s increasingly tangled love life out and Jess’s chance of a happy ending like those in the story books she collects looks about as likely as Wilbur flying.
Title: Bridal Bootcamp
Author: Bella Bailey
Received: Bella Bailey
Synopsis: Bridal Bootcamp is a contemporary romantic comedy set in Dublin, Ireland. When Yvonne’s boyfriend Simon accepts her marriage proposal, she resolves to give her family and friends the best wedding imaginable! And if the little matter of money gets in the way…well, she’ll worry about that later.
Besides, it’s not as if she has nothing else to fret about – Simon’s twin sister Tracey is hell-bent on finding a way to stop the wedding. When Simon’s ex, Sandra, returns from the past and reveals that Simon is the father of her baby, it looks like Tracey might get her wish – especially as Sandra is demanding a kidney from Simon for their gravely ill child.
And that’s the easy part….what Yvonne doesn’t know is that her best friend, Rachel, is harbouring a deadly secret that has the potential to obliterate Yvonne’s relationship with Simon forever…..a secret that comes to light in a dramatic crescendo on their big day in front of everyone they know.
The power of this young couple’s love is put to the test again and again, and they embark on a journey of discovery about their relationship. The issues they face force them to evaluate what’s really important to them – their wedding, or their impending marriage.
Book Review: The Brazilian Job by Michelle Vernal
Reviewer: Terry I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. The relationship between two sisters is often a complex and difficult one.…
In My Mailbox: Week of February 10
Title: Paper Phoenix
Author: Michaela Thompson
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: First comes divorce, then comes murder…
…or at least sweet thoughts of murder. Maggie Longstreet has plenty of them after slimy, ambitious Richard trades her in for a more recent model. She’s so depressed she can barely get out of bed when Larry Hawkins, a seemingly not-at-all depressed acquaintance, commits suicide out of the blue. Suddenly Maggie goes on high alert, remembering something her evil ex said about Larry—something highly suspicious.
And from there, it’s just a short segué to a bracing new development:
“When some women get divorced they go back to school, I thought. Some do volunteer work at the hospital, or join communes and learn to birth calves. Some have affairs with inappropriate men. My new interest is burglary. Maggie Longstreet, former wife and mother, past president of the Museum Guild, now starting a career as a second-story woman.”
Fortunately, Maggie isn’t alone in her adventure—a very attractive, much younger man proves a lot more fun than Richard ever was. In fact, the real delight of this witty, sly mystery is seeing Maggie come alive again after a suffocating marriage. Set in the’70s, it has a bit of that Mad Men feel of women on the brink of something big. And completely unexpected.
You know Maggie’s going to be okay when she says: “I’d rather have had one of those cute little guns with a mother-of-pearl handle, but this (diamond pin) would have to do. I concealed it in my hand. At least now I was armed—or pinned.”
Title: The Seduction of Miriam Cross
Author: WA Tyson
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Can Delilah Percy Powers figure out who killed Miriam Cross before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Miriam Cross, author, feminist and philanthropist, disappears from her Philadelphia home. A year later, a lonely recluse named Emily Cray is brutally murdered in her bed in a small Pennsylvania town. Miriam and Emily are one and the same. As Delilah and her staff of female detectives – a militant homemaker, an ex-headmistress and a former stripper – delve into Miriam’s life, they become submerged in an underworld of unfathomable cruelty and greed with implications that go far beyond the gruesome death of one woman or the boundaries of one country. Eventually Miriam’s fight for justice becomes Delilah’s own…until Delilah’s obsession with finding the truth may prove just as deadly.
Title: The Brazilian Job
Author: Michelle Vernal
Received: Michelle Vernal
Synopsis: Nobody’s Perfect Are They?
Rebecca Loughton’s bumbled her way through her thirty something years making a few cock-ups along the way. Of course, these wouldn’t be so glaringly obvious if it wasn’t for her golden haired, older sister Jennifer.
In a bid to escape Jennifer’s lengthy shadow and to find her happy ever after Rebecca, high-tails it out of her hometown of Christchurch to the other side of the world landing a legal secretary job in the buzzing city of Dublin. A few drinks later, all she has to show for her new life is an embarrassing one-night stand and a dollop of flirtatious banter with her boss Ciaran who just happens to have a predatory receptionist in hot pursuit of him.
Amidst plans of preventing such a merger, Rebecca receives news that Jennifer’s picture perfect life has a big, fat crack down the middle of it in the form of a philandering husband. Summoned home to look after her sister’s children and cooking school while she works on her marriage, Rebecca finds the reality of looking after two young children along with the bizarre array of guests booked into the cooking school grim. The only bright spot on her horizon are Ciaran’s e-mails but then she meets David Seagar whom she thinks might just be the ending to her happy ever after but will he prove to be far from perfect too?
Title: The Perfect Affair
Author: Claire Dyer
Received: Quercus Publishing
Synopsis: What happens if you fall in love with the wrong person?
Rose knows only too well the exhilaration and devastation of loving a married man. So she watches with a keen eye as Eve – her closest companion, the granddaughter she never had – meets Myles, the new tenant in her downstairs flat.
Quietly and softly and against the backdrop of their own unsatisfactory marriages, Myles and Eve fall in love and, as they try to have the perfect affair like Rose did before them, they come to learn about the pain of lost opportunities, to decide whether it is ever better to follow your head or your heart, to know what it is to be torn between love and duty.
