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20 May 2022

The Change by Kirsten Miller (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

 

Title: The Change
Author: Kirsten Miller
Publication: 3 May 2022
Format: Kindle eArc via NetGalley & William Morrow


Amazon Description

Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick—a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp feminist revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town. 

In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment…

After Nessa James’s husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she’s left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead—a gift she’s inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.

On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn’t left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriett’s life is far from over—in fact, she’s undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis.

Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent thirty long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw—until she realizes she has the ability to channel them, and finally comes into her power.

Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio of women discover a teenage girl whose body was abandoned beside a remote beach. The police have written the victim off as a drug-addicted sex worker, but the women refuse to buy into the official narrative. Their investigation into the girl’s murder leads to more bodies, and to the town’s most exclusive and isolated enclave, a world of stupendous wealth where the rules don’t apply. With their newfound powers, Jo, Nessa, and Harriett will take matters into their own hands…


Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
No, I'm still not done with The Vine Witch .... and this is one of the reasons why. 
I've been trying to read both and I don't multitask books well. Especially not when I'm also trying to deal with every thing else going on. But ... oh my gosh ... THIS BOOK. 
I'm getting to be at "that age." 
I rarely need the heat on when it's freezing out. 
I almost always need a fan or ice-cold drink within arms reach. 
Estroven is one of my new best friends. 
Nothing I have ever done before to lose weight works anymore.
Yes, boys and girls, your resident Pirate Queen is well and truly in the midst of peri-menopause on top of everything else. Thanks to Kirsten Miller, now I'm just waiting for my own special super powers to take hold like Jo, Nessa, and Harriett. I would especially be happy with Harriett's. She ranks right up there with Robert Thorogood's Judith for "I want to be like her when I grow up" characters. Although, being able to scald horrible people with my hot flashes like Jo can wouldn't be so bad, either. Not sure I could handle Nessa's without freaking out completely.
You'll just have to read the book yourself to know.



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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 
& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

13 May 2022

The Vine Witch by Luanne G Smith (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

 


Title: The Vine Witch
Author: Luanne G Smith
Publication: 1 October 2019
Formatpaperback


Amazon Description

For centuries, the vineyards at Château Renard have depended on the talent of their vine witches, whose spells help create the world-renowned wine of the Chanceaux Valley. Then the skill of divining harvests fell into ruin when sorcière Elena Boureanu was blindsided by a curse. Now, after breaking the spell that confined her to the shallows of a marshland and weakened her magic, Elena is struggling to return to her former life. And the vineyard she was destined to inherit is now in the possession of a handsome stranger.

Vigneron Jean-Paul Martel naively favors science over superstition, and he certainly doesn’t endorse the locals’ belief in witches. But Elena knows a hex when she sees one, and the vineyard is covered in them. To stay on and help the vines recover, she’ll have to hide her true identity, along with her plans for revenge against whoever stole seven winters of her life. And she won’t rest until she can defy the evil powers that are still a threat to herself, Jean-Paul, and the ancient vine-witch legacy in the rolling hills of the Chanceaux Valley.


Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
Thank you life upheaval for once again making reading not a thing that happens easily or often. I feel like I've been reading this book -- or trying to -- for ages or at least several weeks. 
Change of job, routine, exhaustion level, blah blah blah. 
It's a good book from what I've read so far. I'm determined to get it done this weekend.
 
[Edited on 5/19 to add : and it's still not done .... but it is still excellent!]



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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 
& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

29 April 2022

Impossible by Darcy Burke (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

 


Title: Impossible
Author: Darcy Burke
Publication: 18 April 2022
FormatKindle eBook


Amazon Description

Ada Treadway has been in love before, and it brought nothing but heartache. Still, she retains her cheerful optimism and is fiercely protective of the independence and respect she’s earned as bookkeeper of the Phoenix Club. When the owner enlists her help to organize his friend’s estate ledgers, she’s eager to prove her expertise and her worth. But his friend turns out to be a disagreeable, unpleasant beast, and Ada works to find the warm-hearted gentleman she’s sure lurks beneath.

Maximillian Hunt, the Viscount Warfield doesn’t care if he lives to see tomorrow, and he certainly doesn’t want to recall yesterday. The arrival of the meddlesome and effusively positive woman who will put his accounts in order not only reminds him of the past he’s desperate to forget, she sparks something within him he thought dead. Tempted by a future he never imagined, he must do the impossible: convince her that he’s worth risking her heart a second time.


Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
While not my favorite Phoenix Club installment so far, I still absolutely loved Impossible and already have the next on my wishlist (finally more Dougal!!!).

I fell for poor Max instantly in spite of the little we had seen of him previously (if you've read the other books in the series, that is). I have a thing for moody soldiers, after all. 

It's very much a slow burn romance which I appreciate to no end given the tragedies both Max and Ada were dealing with overcoming. Damaged people don't tend to fall easily and, in spite of her perkiness, Ada is in her own ways almost as damaged as Max. In fact, it's the perkiness ... and not nearly enough Evie and Lucien ... that would be to blame for knocking this down to 4 stars.

Well, 4.5 ....

               which will probably be upped to 4.75 after a re-read ....

                                  so I might as well just give it 5 from the get-go.



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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 
& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader

26 April 2022

The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

 


Title: The Mad Girls of New York
Author: Maya Rodale
Publication: 26 April 2022
FormatKindle eARC via NetGalley & Berkley


Amazon Description

An exciting novel based on the fearless reporter Nellie Bly, who would stop at nothing to expose injustices against women in early 19th century New York, even at the risk of her own life and freedom.

In 1887 New York City, Nellie Bly has ambitions beyond writing for the ladies pages, but all the editors on Newspaper Row think women are too emotional, respectable and delicate to do the job. But then the New York World challenges her to an assignment she'd be mad to accept and mad to refuse: go undercover as a patient at Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum for Women.

For months, rumors have been swirling about deplorable conditions at Blackwell’s, but no reporter can get in—that is, until Nellie feigns insanity, gets committed and attempts to survive ten days in the madhouse. Inside, she discovers horrors beyond comprehension. It's an investigation that could make her career—if she can get out to tell it before two rival reporters scoop her story.

From USA Today bestselling author Maya Rodale comes a rollicking historical adventure series about the outrageous intrigues and bold flirtations of the most famous female reporter—and a groundbreaking rebel—of New York City’s Gilded Age.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff


I was a bit worried about this one, to be honest. I majored in communications and studied Nellie Bly and her writings quite a bit way back when. I was worried that this would end being a bit too much like the Lifetime movie catastrophe "Escaping the Madhouse" ... and not enough like anything that actually happened.

Sure, this is fiction and liberties have definitely been taken when it comes to what we know and what we don't about Bly and the time surrounding the Blackwell's investigation. Characters have been added. Details imagined. When it comes right down to it, though, they were all added and imagined with what appears to be great care and I'm okay with all of it. 

Hell, if I can be okay with Jane Austen time travelling or becoming a vampire, I can be okay with just about any historical tweak ... as long as it's written well. Maya Rodale has definitely written Nellie well and I look forward to reading more. There's a little matter of a 72-day trip around the world that isn't talked about nearly enough ... as well as her novel-writing that is talked about even less.

 
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"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. 

"Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

19 April 2022

The Turquoise by Anya Seton (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

 

Title: The Turquoise
Author: Anya Seton
Publication: originally 1946 -- Houghton Mifflin
FormatKindle ebook


Amazon Description

A novel of a girl’s journey from an orphaned childhood in New Mexico to an opulent life in Gilded Age New York, by the author of Avalon.

In 1850, as her mother lay dying and a priest stood by, Santa Fe Cameron was named by her Scottish father after the town in which she had just been born. At seven years old, she would also lose her father.

Shortly thereafter, a Navajo shaman recognized psychic power in the orphan girl, and gave her a turquoise pendant as a keepsake. This turquoise, the Indian symbol of the spirit, will dominate her life—even after she leaves the simple beauty of her native New Mexico to search for happiness in the glamorous New York of the 1870s.

For “Fey,” life is made up of violent contrasts: the rough wagon that brings her East and the scented carriages waiting before her own Fifth Avenue mansion; the glittering world of the Astors and a dreary cell in the Tombs. Filled with color, excitement, and rich period detail, and starring an unforgettable heroine, this is a stirring historical saga from the author of Katherine, Foxfire, and many other novels.


Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I wasn't sure what to expect from Anya Seton. She published twelve novels between 1941 and 1975 and I had no idea who she was until she made a place on my neverending TBR back in December thanks to Amazon offering up her Dragonwyck as a Deal of the Day on my birthday. I still haven't read it, but the monthly mini-challenge for the Alphabet Soup group is birthstones so I knew it had to be when I did a search for "turquoise" on Goodreads and Seton was the first one to pop up. I try not to read too much into reviews (I know, right?), and read that it was "not her best" over and over again. If this wasn't one of Seton's best then I am definitely looking forward to reading her others as I quickly became entranced by Fey and her journey -- personally, spiritually and geographically.





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"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Socrates' Book Reviews. 

"Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.