4 stars — Man, I needed this. I can always count on Ms. Mayberry for just a solid romance, but without any of the usual clichés. I think the only reason I hadn’t bumped up to 4.5 is because there was the almost cliché of them both being in love but not believing the other […]
3.5 stars — This was fairly different from most books I read, most especially for the lack of romance…but that seems to be the picks I gravitate to for my hubby buddy reads. And this was a book club book…for June, but whatever, so I’m a wee bit late. 😛 I definitely enjoyed it, though […]
DNF @ page 144 — Yeah, I know…50 pages left, but I was like forcing myself to read. It wasn’t even a terrible book, but I wasn’t captured and we were getting into only the second steamy scene of the whole book, and I was playing sudoku instead. And I thought, why? So I put […]
2.5 stars — I think I’m going to have to just dump the rest of Ms. Marinelli’s books. She used to be a favourite of mine, but what I’ve noticed is that they start strong and get me really excited…and then the second half gets worse and worse until I’m a cranky motherfucker by the […]
2 stars — I only read this whole thing because I thought it might be like those Harlequins where there’s a payoff of growth and misunderstanding at the end. As you can see by my rating, that was not the case. The characters were both pretty shitty IMO. I started getting icky feelings right from […]
2.5 stars — I mean…it was easy reading. But wow, I’m really not the reader I was 10-15 years ago. Emma was okay. I appreciated that she did try to stand up for herself on occasion, and even succeeded. I wish we’d gotten to see more of her life, her painting, her passions. I did […]
4 stars — Ah yes, another review I wrote in short form, and now I’m too lazy to expand and make it more readable…you get what you get. I LOVED the nerdy stuff, and was fascinated by how complicated it would be to be a woman with intellectual pursuits in this time period. I also […]
3 stars — Wow, I really have changed. I know I read this, and kept it last time. It wasn’t bad, and I’m wavering about going with 3.5 stars, but I’m in a bad mood, so this is what you get. In some ways it was a very typical Presents. Arrogant, kind of a dick […]
3.5 stars — There were parts of this story that I loved, but I will admit I became frustrated with both Emma and Jake for holding on to preconceptions for so long. But at the same time, they felt pretty real — their flaws were easy to see, easy to connect with, and while I wanted […]
4 stars — I wasn’t sure how this book was going to play out, but I found 90% of it to be absolutely delightful, and I loved it! I’ll get to the other 10% later. I loved learning about yet more pieces of world history that I knew nothing about — in this case the Cuban […]