Literary Criticism
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Review: Rosie’s Traveling Tea Shop by Rebecca Raisin
This book has an adorable cover and I thought the premise sounded promising. After reading the summary, I thought this would be a great book for the modern woman. So many women are struggling to find a work/life balance right now and I think that a lot of readers could find something to relate to in this one. I also really loved the idea of a traveling tea shop! Here in Oregon, food trucks are all the rage and I thought that this book would a be a fun little diverting read that would be relevant yet light with some delicious food and tea! A comfort read was the phrase…
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Review: The Kindred Spirits Supper Club by Amy E. Reichert
This was a books that I was kind of ‘meah’ about when I read the description. It didn’t grab me in the way that I was expecting. Sure is a romcom with ghosts sounds interesting but for me ghosts are more about horror than romcoms. So it didn’t stand out as one that I was dying to read (no pun intended). However so many people were raving about it all over social media which made me stop and ponder a little bit more. After a week of seeing it all over the place on social media I finally broke down and downloaded it! Suddenly this book went from ‘meah’ to…
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Review: Under the Southern Sky by Kristy Woodson Harvey
Kristy Woodson Harvey is one of my absolute favorite authors! She is the sweetest thing and I just adore her books. I mean is it even spring time without a KWH book? No—no it is not! Every spring I look forward to one of her new books and this year was no exception! Her books always have so much heart, charm, and general warm fuzzies! Even the covers, I take one look at the covers and I can almost feel the soft sea breeze and sun on my skin. When I received the ARC of this one, it was early fall I believe and I couldn’t wait to read it…
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Review: The Smuggler’s Daughter by Kerry Barrett
This book’s cover is positively stunning and that’s how it ended up on my TBR list! I love the tempestuous looking sky, rocky coastline, and the pale peach of the girl’s dress on the cover. It suggests innocents and yet something stormy brewing in the sea. Not to mention the title suggests adventure! I love books set on the coast, it’s something so instantly atmospheric about it. Author Kerry Barrett, has written a couple of other books and while they sound good, this is the one that would naturally stand out to me. I love the description of the book and the setting, and as I noted before, the cover…
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Review: A Wicked Conceit (Lady Darby Mysteries #9) by Anna Lee Huber
I have been a long time fan of all Anna Lee Huber’s books, but the Lady Darby series stands out as a favorite of all her books. I will gladly clear my calendar for any upcoming Anna Lee Huber book because they are just that good! This book is the ninth in the series and I will say that I encourage readers to start this series from the beginning. Some of the books could be read out of order but there are relationships and back stories that spread across multiple books, thus making it difficult for readers to fully appreciate the nuances of the characters and the mysteries. This book…
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Review: In a Book Club Far Away by Tif Marcelo
I have read a couple of Tif Marcelo’s books and I have to say that my favorite has been The Key to Happily Ever After. Her books are always so great and written with so much heart and perspective not to mention rich with family relationship complexities. I have really enjoyed reading them and when I saw that her latest novel In a Book Club Far Away, was a Book of the Month pick, I was even more excited to get my hands on it! Even though I had a digital copy of the book to read, I did make this one my BOTM pick not just because the book…
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Review: What the Devil Knows (Sebastian St. Cyr #16) by C. S. Harris
I absolutely love Sebastian St Cyr. I read the entire series last year in one long binge read. I adore the books and even if some of them have fallen into a bit of a formula, I still enjoy the characters so much. This one was high up on my TBR pile. I always set aside time in the early spring to read a new Sebastian mystery and I am never sorry about that. The mysteries are intelligent, a little on the gritty side, and full of questionable characters all with their own motives. Going into this one, I was fully ready for just that and I wasn’t disappointed! But…
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Review: To Love and to Loathe (The Regency Vows #2) by Martha Waters
When I read Martha Waters debut novel, The Have and to Hoax, I laughed out loud multiple times and absolutely fell in love with the characters and writing! Waters is funny and cheeky, I adored the banter and chemistry between the characters. Which is why this one went on my auto buy list! I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one! I picked this one up while I was waiting for my son’s soccer camp to finish and I was looking for something that was easy reading that would put me in a good mood and that I could put a bookmark in as needed and then pickup…
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Review: Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #2) by Holly Jackson
One of my book club’s very first books was A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder last spring and we absolutely loved it and couldn’t put it down! So needles to say this book was our pick for March. While we all range in age from late forties to early thirties, the first YA mystery novel in this series kept us all inthralled! We all had high expectations for this one too. I will say though, we do have people in the book club who haven’t read the first book so we were a little nervous picking this one. But most of the early reviews that I read noted that this…
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Review: Lost, Found, and Forever by Victoria Schade
This is my second novel by Victoria Schade and I have absolutely fallen in love with her novels! They are light hearted reading with romance and tons and tons of sweet dogs! The adorable doggies on the cover just get me every time and this one is no different. I jumped at this one because it sounded too cute and that dog on the cover was screaming ‘read me!’. By Schade’s books are more than just adorable dogs on the cover, I have really loved the romances that are woven into the story. This one was especially tender and adorable. I fell in love with Griffin about as fast as…