My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Nothing says time to move on like having your husband file for divorce so he can marry one of your best friends.

“Ordinarily, I’d have a retort for that, but right now, I’m all out of snark.” “Allie, your snark well has never run dry.” “Well, it did today, Des. I used it all up on Clint.” Allie grinned. “But it was snark well spent, believe me.’

It’s not a big deal, Allie. He’s a good kid… Allie, you act like the guy came in here with punk green hair smoking a joint and grabbing her butt.

I have visions of people lined up for miles for burgers but we’ve run out. They’re carrying pitchforks and chanting your name. I’m hiding out in the vineyard with the dogs, by the way.

My Review:

I was further drawn into the steady current of Ms. Stewart’s smooth storytelling and was soon fully immersed and residing in the small town of Hidden Falls along with her enticing and cunningly nuanced characters. I was fully invested in their saga and labored beside them during renovation efforts as well as with their budding relationships with each other and new community. The rehab of the historic theater was bumping along until a massive storm wrought major damage and a setback to their plans and depleted bank balance.   Another fly in the ointment continued to be the contentious and shrewish personality of Allie, who appeared to be gradually softening but still leaning toward the vile harpy end of the scale.

This series would make an excellent miniseries as I hung on each new twist and complication. The relationships and family dynamics were front and center and quite compelling as the storylines continued to expand and interweave with additional layers or mystery, revelations, and insights. An unexpected discovery indicates papa appears to have more of a bounder than anyone knew. I am hooked and more than eager to dive into the next installment. I don’t recall four hundred pages ever flying by so quickly!

From New York Times bestselling author Mariah Stewart comes the first novel in her all-new series, The Hudson Sisters, following a trio of reluctant sisters as they set out to fulfill their father’s dying wish. In the process, they find not only themselves, but the father they only thought they knew.

When celebrated and respected agent Fritz Hudson passes away, he leaves a trail of Hollywood glory in his wake—and two separate families who never knew the other existed. Allie and Des Hudson are products of Fritz’s first marriage to Honora, a beautiful but troubled starlet whose life ended in a tragic overdose. Meanwhile, Fritz was falling in love on the Delaware Bay with New Age hippie Susa Pratt—they had a daughter together, Cara, and while Fritz loved Susa with everything he had, he never quite managed to tell her or Cara about his West Coast family.

Now Fritz is gone, and the three sisters are brought together under strange circumstances: there’s a large inheritance to be had that could save Allie from her ever-deepening debt following a disastrous divorce, allow Des to open a rescue shelter for abused and wounded animals, and give Cara a fresh start after her husband left her for her best friend—but only if the sisters upend their lives and work together to restore an old, decrepit theater that was Fritz’s obsession growing up in his small hometown in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Guided by Fritz’s closest friend and longtime attorney, Pete Wheeler, the sisters come together—whether they like it or not—to turn their father’s dream into a reality, and might just come away with far more than they bargained for.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

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The Pieces of You and Me

by Rachel Burton

Purchase Link: mybook.to/PiecesYouMe

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Gem, I know you’re over the moon about getting married and I’m delighted for you, but it doesn’t mean that you get to matchmake. Even if I am the last one left on the shelf.

We were born twelve hours apart – you at six p.m. and me the following morning – in the same hospital, our mothers recovering in beds next to each other… You were early and I was late, which was the pattern that continued for the rest of our lives. You were always waiting for me to catch up with you.

Too young to be here, too old not to be. We’d always done terrifying things together. It felt like the first time we jumped into the deep end of the swimming pool, hand in hand, as children.

Looking back on it now with the advantage of age and hindsight I realised how foolish I’d been, how foolish we are when we’re young. Maybe that alone was reason enough for us to have gone our separate ways. I had been too young to understand nuanced grey areas of thought back then, too young to understand discretion and diplomacy and how sometimes we have to say things we don’t really mean just to keep the peace.

My Review:

One of my favorite tropes just so happens to be second-chances, and this couple was more than deserving of a rekindled relationship as they had each been living a rather miserable half-life while a decade apart. Serious health and family issues and tendencies to live too deeply inside their own heads further compounded their pressures and littered their path with landmines. This could easily have been a maudlin tale but Ms. Burton craftily shaped and paced her endearing flawed yet stubborn characters’ insights, memories, and encounters to circumvent the reader falling into the pit of despair.

While the narrative was often melancholy and angsty – which typically has me twitching and sighing in agony – I am absolutely astounded to report that I didn’t seem to mind. Ms. Burton may well have deployed some sort of magical word voodoo on her book file as, despite the angst, the tender quality and ingenious tempo of her superb storytelling kept me fully engaged, deeply invested, and intensely curious about their slowly unraveling and intriguing story. Contemplating this surprising and momentous phenomenon leaves me rather astonished and blinking in amazement. Such a sly and clever wordsmith deserves a five-star rating for that alone.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars

by Glendy Vanderah

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

As always, words fail when you most want to say the right thing… I’ve decided language isn’t as advanced as we think it is. We’re still apes trying to express our thoughts with grunts while most of what we want to communicate stays locked in our brains.

He was teaching her how to play poker, and they were using oyster crackers as betting chips. “First guns, now gambling,” Jo said. “You’re a bad influence.” “Not for long,” he said. “We can’t stop eating our money.”

“And I know what you’ve been through—how it could have …influenced what you did.” Why did everyone think that? She kept her mouth shut, but she wanted to say that she wouldn’t have done anything different if she still had her mother and her breasts and her ovaries. She would love Ursa just as much.

Did she tell you she once snuck a lamb into the hospital? … She knows I love the baby farm animals she works with, so she packs the lamb in her car with its milk, drives up to Chicago, and sneaks it into my room two days after my breasts were removed. She takes this tiny lamb out of a shoulder bag, lays it on my bed, and hands me the bottle. There, she says, who needs tits anyway? There are other ways to give milk.

Before his life fell apart, he’d wanted to be an astrophysicist. He named his daughter Ursa for the Big Bear in the sky, and he’d taught her the names of stars and constellations. When Ursa was afraid of the dark, he would open her window a crack and tell her good magic that fell out of the stars was coming in her window. He said the magic would always keep her safe. After he died, Ursa opened her window wide every night, trying to let in lots of good magic.

 My Review:

This captivating book bewitched and enthralled me. I delighted in the unexpected and stealthy hits of clever wit and levity that was surprisingly tucked into the most unexpected places. I gleefully endured the prickling and tauntingly enticing mystery that relentlessly beckoned to me to continue reading and ignore anything and everything beyond the screen of my Kindle.

Ms. Vanderah’s writing was alchemy and I was ensorcelled. I was repeatedly taken with the layered depth of the fascinating and quirky characters as well as the thoughtful creativity of the storylines, which were complex and beautifully textured with cleverly amusing and cringe-worthy details.

I waffled in my theories of whether the girl’s fantastical explanations and alien assertions could be true as she was oddly intelligent and insightful, and far more advanced than many adults in her ability to absorb knowledge or sketch, yet she was a small child with an estimated age of nine. My curiosity was as unabating as Ursa’s quarks.   I reveled in this stunning and cunningly crafted tale from beginning to end and was absolutely staggered once aware it was the author’s debut. Glendy Vanderah is definitely one to watch. A Five-Star rating is not enough by half.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

‘I don’t have needs.’ ‘You don’t?’ ‘Nope, not me, none. I’m like a self-cleaning oven. No upkeep required. You don’t need to worry about me.’ ‘Well, just remember. It’s not healthy to self-clean for too long.’

Roxy the Rocket, their class’s very own man-eater. She’d been round the campus more times than the Domino’s delivery guy.

A slip of the tongue, Rufus? Really? Exactly where has your tongue been slipping?

That man could put a positive spin on a dysentery epidemic. Sure, I shit my pants, but I went down a belt notch!

Please, Octavia, you’re one to talk about looking unnatural. You’ve been tucked so many times you look like a hospital corner.

 My Review:

I adored this delightfully amusing book from beginning to end.  The writing was crisp, breezy, and heaving with zingy levity and colorful observations that conjured keen visuals. The storylines were cleverly developed, highly entertaining, and kept me smirking.   I will also confess to few outright giggle-snorts escaping my mouth. It wasn’t all fun and games as a few rather unpleasant intrusions to their marital bliss needed to be ironed out and the main characters may have each needed a swift kick or two in the derriere to dislodge their misplaced craniums, but they found their way to my must have and highly satisfying HEA. It is a red-letter day as the dual personality of Lilly Bartlett/Michele Gorman has a new fangirl and I have a new author to stalk.