Num8ers

Num8ers
Rachel Ward
325 pages
Publisher: The Chicken House/Scholastic
Source: Barnes & Noble
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Since her mother passed away, Jem has seen numbers in her head.  When she looks a person in the eye she can see the date they are going to die, a gift that she's frustrated with and causes her to be something a social outcast.  When she meets Spider, they quickly become involved with each other and with something else... that leaves them on the run from the law.

This was a really good book.  The concept was interesting and unique, it was executed well, the characters were colorful, and all-in-all it was a book that I really enjoyed reading.  My one minor complaint is that it dragged on a bit, just a tiny bit, toward the ending.  Still, I'm looking forward to reading the sequel eventually, especially because of the bit of a cliffhanger the author left me with.

I have a major complaint, about this book though.  I seriously debated subtracting a star from my rating because of it, but in the end I choose not to.  Nevertheless, I was seriously bothered by the word choice of the author a few times.  In discussing a reality show the author writes, "Thousands of no-hopers queuing up for hours like cattle, thinking they're going to make it big.  Retards.  Even the ones who could sing." (p. 23).

The word retard(ed) showed up a few more times in the novel and it's a word that needs to be removed from the teenage vernacular, just like the word gay (as in "That's so gay!")  That word is offensive to people who have or know someone who has mental disabilities and should not be used by teenagers to express something as stupid.  There's my little rant, and I'm disappointed that Rachel Ward felt the need to use this word in her book.

Mating Rituals of the North American WASP

Mating Rituals of the North American WASP
Lauren Lipton
353 pages
Publisher: 5 Spot
Source: Barnes & Noble
★★☆☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary of this novel here.

Peggy is eager for her boyfriend of seven years to propose.  Then on a trip to Las Vegas with some of her best girlfriends, she wakes up one morning, not remembering the night before, married to a WASP from Connecticut.  Because of the frail state of his aunt and for financial reasons they decided to go on with the sham of a marriage until the woman dies and they can sell her house.  I know, how touching, right?

According to the Wikipedia definition of a WASP, I'm not technically one but I do know a few.  They're not rich or entitled and I don't know any that act like the WASPs in this novel.  Of course, they're not from Connecticut, so maybe that has something to do with it?  Or did the author make up this sense of entitlement?  I'm sure it used to be there, but is it still?  Ultimately the book made me wonder: are WASPs from Connecticut really like this?  Do they really still worry about marrying one of their own?  Are they really that opposed to people from Queens?  I doubt it.

SPOILER ALERT:  The ending discouraged me a little.  I was happy Peggy and Luke ended up together, but they fact that they inherited a large sum of money in the end?  They could have been happy together without the money and I think they author could have made a stronger point if they hadn't been handed the easy life in the end.

I bought it at the bookstore thinking I would really enjoy it.  Unfortunately, I had to give it just two stars for "it was okay" because it was just okay.  The plot didn't hold my interest and the characters were kind of bland except for Aunt Abigail.  Overall, it was a light chick-lit read that killed last night and this afternoon.

The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
Bridget Asher
405 pages
Publisher: Bantam
Source: Goodreads win!
★★★★★

You can read the Goodreads summary of this novel here.

This novel has been compared to Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir that I absolutely hated.  Thankfully for The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, this novel was everything that Eat, Pray, Love wasn't.  It had characters that I cared about and a plot that actually moved.  By the end of the book I wasn't happy it was over; I was sad there weren't more pages to read.

Two years after her husbands tragic death, Heidi is still struggling to come to terms with it.  Then, when her family's home in southern France is damaged in a kitchen fire, her mother convinces her to take her young son and jaded-with-life niece to France to begin repairs and renovations.  There Heidi will learn more about herself and her relationship with her deceased husband, her son will grow, and her niece will harbor a life-changing secret that will bring the family together in a way they've never been together before.

Heidi's character was not selfish.  It would only be natural for her to take on a sense of "woe is me" because her husband was gone, but she was also focused on her son, whom she loved with all her heart.  The characters in this novel are real, believable and deep.  The scenery is gorgeous and themes throughout the novel are woven together.  It was complex and beautiful.

The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted is being released tomorrow and I highly suggest heading over to your local bookstore or favorite book-selling website and picking up a copy.  If you hated Eat, Pray, Love like I did this novel will delight you.  And even if you did like Eat, Pray, Love, I think you'll enjoy this one, too.

Note: Despite the fact that I won a free copy of this novel, that fact didn't influence my review in anyway.  I genuinely loved this novel.

Smokin' Six-Shooter

Smokin' Six-Shooter
B.J. Daniels
213 pages
Publisher: Harlequin
Source: The Harlequin Ambassador's program
★★★★☆

Holy suspenseful Harlequin!  Like I've said before, I don't normally review Harlequin novels, but I must be hitting a lucky streak with them because here's another really good one.  Our heroine, Dulcie, mysteriously inherits some property after her parents die so she heads out to Wyoming to figure out who left her the land and why.  While there she runs into Russell Corbett, a local, wealthy rancher who feels protective of Dulcie after her arrival.  Dulcie soon learns someone murdered the woman who owned and left her the property and the murderer seems to be harassing the local school teacher, Jolene, with pieces of a very realistic short story... why is the school teacher involved?  What does the murdered want with her?  Soon Jolene and Dulcie are working together to solve a mystery that the locals seems to be trying to keep a secret.

Definitely a suspenseful read that kept me on the figurative edge of my seat the whole way through!

I think this Harlequin was especially good because there were more than two main characters.  Usually its just the man and the woman and maybe some children, but here there are other main characters who are equally developed as the main characters and who play into the story as a whole.

On a side note, I have no idea what the title has to do with the story and what is with these new Harlequin covers?  I can't tell if the guy on the cover is sexy or creepy, but I'm kind of leaning towards creepy!  If you want to read this book (and I think you do) you can find it on my PaperBackSwap shelf, where incidentally I am also running a special - 3 Harlequins for 1 credit.

*Note: Though I did get this book free through the publisher, that had no bearing on my review at all.

Wicked

Wicked
Gregory Maguire
406 pages
Publisher: Harper
Source: Barnes & Noble
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary of this novel here.

Yeah, I got on this train late in the game seeing as how the first edition of this novel was published back in 1995, when I was eight years old.  Because of that it was off my radar until I got to high school and the Broadway show was produced.  For years I waffled off and on about reading it and it wasn't until I found it on sale at Barnes & Noble (buy two get one free table) that I finally took the plunge.  Even still, it sat around for a few months.

I went into this book knowing that many, many people have read it with high hopes and have ended up disappointed, actually really hating the novel.  Despite knowing that many people have been disappointed, I couldn't help think they must all be wrong.  Surely it's not that bad.  My copy says it's sold over four million copies, surely four million people can't be wrong!

Here I sit, having just finished the novel, dismayed that they weren't completely wrong.  I didn't hate or abhor it as other people have, but I'm not in love with it.  It wasn't until page 306 that the book redeemed itself for me; things got really interesting and made sense in the larger context of the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.  That's what I'd been looking for all along!  Really, for me, the beginning was good, the middle was a struggle, and the ending was great.  That's why this book gets three stars from me.

One review I read claimed this novel was written at a fifth grade reading level.  It absolutely is not that easy of a novel to read.  Rarely in a book do I come across words that I don't know, but I came across quite a few in this novel, which I consider a good thing.  If I'd actually bothered to look the words up, I might have learned something!  A big plus.

Another pro - it's a fairytale retelling.  Who doesn't love a good fairytale retelling?  Although I wish there had been more focus on Baum's characters and less on Maguire's made up characters, like Elphie's parents.

On the other side of spectrum, I found parts of the plot confusing.  Although it must have been mentioned somewhere, I'm not sure how Elphie went from place to place.  I don't mean, did she walk or ride a horse, I mean what in her life spurred her arrival at the convent, or at least I think it was convent.  But I didn't miss so much that I didn't understand the plot as a whole, which was a relief.

What more can I say?  You will probably enjoy it if you're big on fantasy books and I did thoroughly enjoy the ending, which made it totally worth it for me.  If you're interested in reading Wicked, you can find it on my PaperBackSwap shelf.

16 Lighthouse Road

16 Lighthouse Road
Debbie Macomber
371 pages
Publisher: MIRA
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★☆☆☆

16 Lighthouse Road is the first book in Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove series.  The series has been around for about ten years now so I thought I would give a crack at the first book and see how well I liked it.  I didn't dislike it at all, but I didn't find myself loving it, either.  It was fast, quick read with not much plot or character depth.  I felt out of touch with the characters.  I suspect that's because the main characters were women with grown children, looking forward to being grandmothers, something I certainly can't relate to.  I don't know if I'll continue on with this series even though a few things weren't even close to being resolved in the first novel.

John Adams

John Adams
David McCullough
651 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★☆

I'll admit - I was hesitant to read anything by David McCullough, but his being the most popular biography of John Adams and the most accessible to me, I chose to read it.  I know he's popular, but I find it difficult for myself to read any book considered a history book when it has not been written by someone with an actual degree in history.  McCullough instead has a degree in English.  This obviously benefits him in that his book was written very well, but still, part of studying for a history degree is learning the proper way to go about research and how to represent history in a fair manner.  I am not trying to insinuate that McCullough doesn't know what he's doing, that he doesn't know how to write history (he certainly does), but I cannot be sure how much of his book he took liberty with.  How can he know for sure what some people were thinking?  How many times a letter was drafted and thrown away before the final was produced?  Though, I am sure overall that the historical accuracy of this book is spot on and general public need not be worried they're being mislead (not that any of them were concerned about that).

McCullough portrays Adams as a successful man who was at times unappreciated by his colleagues for his efforts.  At times I felt for Adams.  I wanted to pat him on the back and say "Good job!" when no one else would.  Though, by the end of his life he was recognized for what he did and appropriately lauded for it.

I loved the section where McCullough details the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Probably too many Americans believe it was written in a few days and then signed on the 4th of July in 1776.  False. The Declaration was accepted on July 2nd but not signed until August 2nd and it was not signed all at once.  The last signer of the Declaration of Independence did not do so until January 1777!

Additionally, I enjoyed the quotes McCullough collected from letters between John Adams and his wife, Abigail.  They were truly in love and were pained to be have to be apart so often and sometimes for very long durations.  I find their relationships to be charming and certainly something you don't see too often these days.

What struck me at the end of the book was rediscovering (because I'm sure I'd known this before at some point) that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, the 4th of July.  People at the time thought that was too much of a coincidence - surely it was God's way of acknowledging the United States as a great nation.  Maybe they were right.

It was a lengthy book to read and it took me a while to get through it.  It was dry at times, but at other times it read well.  Like I said, McCullough (despite me previous suspicions) knows what he's doing and does it well.  I won't hesitate to read any more books by him.

Parents Behaving Badly

Parents Behaving Badly
Scott Gummer
211 pages
Publisher: Touchstone
Source: Goodreads giveaway!
★☆☆☆☆

Here's the main reason I didn't like this book: I find the topic of Little League Baseball to be quite boring.  So the vast majority of the novel did not hold my interest one bit.  I kept hoping maybe things would turn around and get interesting.

What's more, Parents Behaving Badly read, well, badly.  At the beginning of the book I had a hard time keeping straight which character was which.  Part of the problem is the author never really spent any time telling me who was who and the other part of the problem was they all had boring and generic names.  Anyway, I kept reading without trying to figure it out because I didn't really care.

The title suggests the parents in this book are going to be behaving badly.  But there wasn't much of that going on.  They thought a bit about cheating, but they thought about it passively and never actually considered going out and cheating.  That's not actually behaving badly so much as it is contemplating behaving badly.  Snore.  Then there was a little incident at the end of the book, but other than that, there wasn't much behaving badly going on that I noticed.

On the plus side, though it was a very, very minor part of the plot, I did have to admire the family for moving across the country when Grandma starting getting really forgetful.  Not too many families would do that that these days.

This book might be excellent for some people, and I'm sure there are people who would find this book hilarious (I giggled once or twice) and relatable, but overall, it just wasn't for me.  My copy is an ARC so I can't post it on PaperBackSwap.  If you think you'd like to read it, you can have my copy.  The first person to leave a comment gets it.

*Disclaimer: I won an advanced copy of this novel through a Goodreads giveaway.  Trust me, that fact did not influence my review in any way.

An Uninvited Ghost

An Uninvited Ghost
E.J. Copperman
293 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Copperman's publicist, Kaitlyn Kennedy - thank you!
★★★★★

Fabulous!  This is the second book in the Haunted Guesthouse series by E.J. Copperman.  After the first book, Night of the Living Deed, I was hooked.  After reading An Uninvited Ghost, I'm still hooked.  When's the third book coming out?

An Uninvited Ghost is something classic with a modern twist... it reminded me of those old whodunnit books where someone is murdered and everyone in the room must stay until the detective solves it.  Though, in this case, everyone had to stay in and around Alison Kerby's guesthouse while she and her PI ghost friends tried to solve the murder of a friendly old woman.  The modern twist?  This is all going on while a season of the reality show Down The Shore is being taped in the guesthouse.  Hello, drama!  Drama especially when one of the stars goes missing.

What's great about the Haunted Guesthouse mysteries are the characters.  They have distinct personalities and life goals (can a ghost have a life goal?) and they can all make me laugh.

Oh my gosh, the ending.  You will not believe the ending when you get to it!  It was a mystery to me the whole time, who could have been the murderer, but when you finally find out who it was, you will be shocked.  It was an ingenious turn of events, if you ask me.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend going and getting Night of the Living Deed.  Once you read it, you'll see what I mean and then you'll be all set to read An Uninvited Ghost.  An Uninvited Ghost will be released April 5, 2011.

*Disclaimer: Even though I was provided a complimentary copy of this novel by the publisher, that did not effect my review of it and the opinions in said review are expressly mine.

Cutting For Stone

Cutting For Stone
Abraham Verghese
658 pages
Publisher: Vintage
Source: Kroger impulse buy
★★★★★

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

So rarely do books make me cry, but this one threatened to a few times near the end, and then finally succeeded.  It wasn't a book I would have picked up for myself; the title didn't sound right to me and after reading the back I wasn't sure I would like it, but there was so much hype about how amazing this book is that I just had to give it a try, and sure enough, it was amazing.

In Ethiopia, identical twin brothers, Shiva and Marion, were born conjoined at the head.  After a violent birth, the story goes on to follow the brothers as they grow up, one is betrayed by the other, they grow apart, and then in the end, grow back together in a deep and serious way.

The theme of medicine is carried throughout the book.  I have no medical training, at all, so some of the vocabulary was lost on me, but over all didn't hinder my understanding of the book.  It was interesting to read about medicine in an African country as well as the differences between American hospitals.

The bond between twins was another theme.  As a twin myself I was interested to read for this aspect, though I am a fraternal twin and my brother and I don't have nearly the close bond that Marion and Shiva have.  Bigger than that, however, is the overwhelming theme of family.  It doesn't matter who gives birth to you, your family are those people who raise you and stand by you through thick and thin.

Full of rich characters and a sturdy plot, Cutting For Stone was a rare five star read for me.  On a side note, even though Tsige wasn't a major character in the novel, I would love to read a novel about her that takes place at the same time, including the loss of her baby and her travels to New York.  I think that would be a powerful story to tell.

How To Marry a Millionaire Vampire

How To Marry a Millionaire Vampire
Kerrelyn Sparks
313 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Source:  Free NookBook
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary of this novel here.

Finally, a free NookBook that didn't completely suck... er, no pun intended.  Three chapters in I said to my husband, "Hey, this book is actually really good!"  Shanna is put into a witness protection program after watching her roommate get killed in a restaurant shooting.  Now, years later, she has been discovered by the enemy and is being target.  Thankfully Roman, the friendly, wealthy, do-gooder vampire, is in the right place at the right time to save her and help her solve this mystery.

For me, the first half definitely flowed more smoothly than the second half, but throughout the whole thing I was laughing and clicking/swiping to the next page as fast as I could.  There was even a plot twist at the end involving Shanna's father!  I did notice a few similarities to Twilight, but that could also just be common traits of all vampires (ie: lifting heavy objects, the Vamp whining that he's a killer with no soul, etc.)  If you're looking for a an easy and entertaining read, try this one, though I am sad to say it is no longer free for the Nook.

Incubus

Incubus
Janet Elizabeth Jones
281 pages
Publisher: Harlequin
Source: Bought for myself at Borders
★★★★☆

An incubus is a male demon who has intercourse with sleeping women; that's definitely what goes on in this novel but I couldn't classify it as rape at all.  Basically what you've got is Meical (which I think is pronounced Michael, but looks like Medical without the "d" so that's what I was reading as I went along - haha!) who was a vampire.  He is given a secret herbal mixture to turn him into an Incubus and shortly thereafter saves the life of Caroline, who was supposed to be killed by some evil men due to her involvement in a child psychology case.  A real plot!

I don't normally review Harlequin novels, but this one was so different from any one I've ever read!  It had a real, honest to goodness intricate plot, lots of characters who were well developed, and none of that traditional Harlequin "He loves me, I love him, but I won't admit it, oh what the hell let's have sex."  Not that there's anything wrong with that, and there is sex in this novel, but it was so much more than your typical romance novel.  By the end I was thinking it was kind of like Twilight for adults, but I don't want that comparison to turn anyone off from reading it.

This is the first book I've read in the Harlequin Nocturne collection.  I'm getting sick of paranormal books on the whole, but this, despite the whole incubus subject, was a nice refreshing change from other Harlequins.  If I've peaked your interest, you can order it off my PaperBackSwap shelf, where I'm also running a special of three Harlequin/Silhouette books for one credit.

Presidential Challenge

Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents

I decided last month that I was going to take up a Presidential Challenge that I'd heard about somewhere on the Internet.  The challenge: read a biography of each president in the order they served.  I started off with George Washington by reading a biography written by Henry Cabot Lodge, another historical figure.  A few days ago I started reading John Adams by David McCullough and I realized I could have chosen a much better biography about George Washington, something like His Excellency by Joseph Ellis, where I could actually learn something new about Washington.  I'm not going to start over, but at some point I am going to go back and redo Washington.  Anyway, this will be a slow going challenge, it will probably take me a few years to complete it.  Right now I'm reading one chapter a day in John Adams just because I still want to devote my time to all the other books I have to read.  So you can look forward to a review of McCullough's book in a few weeks.  Stay tuned!

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
Sophie Kinsella
386 pages
Publisher: Dell Fiction
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★★

If it weren't for the time change last night (blast you "Spring Ahead!") and the fact that I had to get up early today for a work meeting, I would have stayed up late to finish this book.  I am in love with the Shopaholic series.  It reads as though a real person were telling you the story, not just some author written narrative; I think that's so refreshing!

In this second book in the Shopaholic series Becky follows here boyfriend Luke to New York City where he spends his time wheeling and dealing some business deals.  Meanwhile, Becky's world soon comes crashing down around her when a defamatory article is published about her.  She spends the rest of the novel wallowing a little bit and trying to get her life back together without Luke.

I cannot rave enough about how awesome of a writer Sophie Kinsella is.  Like I mentioned before, I love her writing style, as well as her rich characters which such distinct personalities and clever plot lines.  I can't wait to read the next books in this series.  And if you like chick-lit and you've never read a Shopaholic novel, you've got some issues.  You must go to the bookstore/library/anywhere and get a copy now!  (This book can be found on my PBS page if you're interested.)

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
343 pages
Publisher: Random House
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★☆

The last memoir I read, Eat Pray Love, didn't go so well and I was really hoping Reading Lolita in Tehran wouldn't turn out the same way.  Thankfully, it turned out be to quite enjoyable.  One of the main reasons I wanted to read this book was because I read Lolita last month and the title really made me think, "What would happen if you were a young woman in Iran reading a banned book?  Lolita, at that."

The memoir takes a look at Azar Nafisi's former life in Iran, where not only did she teach at a college, but also had a book club for some girls from her class where they would read and discuss such "controversial" and banned books such as Lolita, The Great Gatsby, as well as books by Henry James and Jane Austen.  I (obviously) love reading so I was excited to read a book about reading books, but what's more I was eager to read a book describing what it was like to live in Iran.

We see things about Iran and the Middle East on the news all the time, but you have to take it with a grain of salt.  What's it like to live there?  I think that's what I enjoyed most about this memoir, reading what it was like to live in Iran, go to work/school every day, despite bombings from Iraq.  Nafisi is very good at describing the situations and putting you right in there - though it is still hard to imagine what it's like to live in Tehran.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  Halfway through I was sure I was going to give it five stars, but because I felt like it dragged on a bit at the end it only got four.  But four stars is great and I definitely recommend this memoir for anyone looking for a little serious reading.

Reckless

Reckless
Andrew Gross
489 pages
Publisher: Harper
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary of this novel here.

I don't normally pick up books like this, I have to be in a rare mood to read a thriller, but something about the Goodreads description intrigued me to enter the giveaway and lo and behold, I won.  This book is apparently third in a series, but that fact had no impact on the storyline at all.  It read like it's own, independent novel and it was a nice change of pace from what I have been reading lately.

When a friend from investigator Ty Hauck's past is murdered, he finds himself trying to solve the case and is thus drawn into a much larger mystery involving the collapse of the economy.  Together with government agent Naomi Blum he travels the world to find out once and for all what's going on and to bring justice to his deceased friend.

The plot line was intricate and could be seen from several different points of views of various characters.  It read like a movie and was definitely a page-turner right through the bitter end.  Just when you think things are winding down -BAM!- they're not and I loved that.  What's more, you can tell Gross is a student of James Patterson because of the chapter length.  I love short chapters, they really keep a novel moving in my opinion.  Overall, glad to have won and read it.

Listen

Listen
Rene Gutteridge
254 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Source: Free NookBook
★★☆☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

This novel had enormous potential.   The small, suburban town of Marlo is rocked when someone starts anonymously posting peoples private conversations on the Internet.  People are in an uproar, fighting openly in public after their conversations are published, trying to figure out who posted them and how they're doing it.

Though the author did touch on it a bit, here's where the author missed her amazing potential.  These days we are hearing a lot about cyber bullying going on in middle and high schools.  The cyber bullying is actually causing America's youth to commit suicide, just like one of the characters in the novel. This is the route Gutteridge should have taken her novel on a whole, which sounded like it was written YA but was so focused on adult lives.  I feel like Gutteridge should have gone straight up YA and focused more on the taunting the high school girls were doing and delve more into their awful MySpace pages, which were barely touched on.  By focusing her novel on the YA aspect and cyber bullying, she could have written a powerful novel that might have had some impact on this American crisis.

And that's why this novel gets two stars from me.  I liked it, but I feel like the focus was all over the place and it could have been better honed.

The Courtship of Nellie Fisher Trilogy

The Parting, The Forbidden, The Longing
Beverly Lewis
345, 347, 347 pages respectively
Publisher: Bethany House
Source: The library and Books-A-Million
Average rating: ★★★1/2☆

I'm reviewing this trilogy all at once.  I read The Parting last fall and this past week found The Forbidden and The Longing in the last chance bins at Books-A-Million.  Score!  So I read the last two novels in the trilogy this week so I could review all three together.  I guess you could say Amish novels are a bit of a guilty pleasure to me...

The basic premise of the first two novels are that this little Amish community in the mid-1960s is torn apart by three different viewpoints.  There are those who wish to continue to follow the Old Order church as they have for generations, then there are those who have broken away.  Amongst this broken away group, there are those who simply want to read the bible and "be saved" and then there are those who wish to do that and integrate more modern technologies amongst themselves, including telephones and cars.  This is obviously causing much heated debate in the community.  Meanwhile, Nellie Mae Fisher's family has left the Old Order while she continues to attend Old Order worship services because she is courting a boy whose father will disown him and deny him his land inheritance.  Despite the fact that Nellie Mae has stayed with the Old Order, Caleb's father demands he stop courting Nellie Mae.  They must decide what to do.

In the third and final novel the whole thing comes to a conclusion.  It was repetitive and things didn't get really interesting until the last third or so of the book and then, in the epilogue, things wrapped up a little too neatly, it seemed.  Nellie Mae chose a husband and gave up her bake shop, preferring to bake for her husband only.  Why couldn't she have kept it?  People loved her baked good and it would have brought in a little extra money.

The thing that bothered me the most during this series was Caleb's inability to form his own opinions.  In the first two books he refused to consider any other point of view than the Old Order - his father's religion.  Then in the third book when his father turned to the New Order, Caleb in time also followed his father.  I can't help but wonder if Caleb ever had a mind of his own.

I've read a couple other novels by Beverly Lewis, though I can't recall the titles right now.  The strange thing is, of all the books I've read by Lewis, they're all have very similar plots and yet I keep picking them up!  I have another book by her that I also picked up with the other two that sound a little different, though.  When I get to it, I'll let you know!

Big Boned

Big Boned
Meg Cabot
280 pages
Publisher: Avon Trade
Source: PaperBackSwap.com
★★★★★

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

A very short review since I just reviewed Size 14 Is Not Fat Either a couple weeks ago and because Big Boned is third in the series: Like the other two Heather Wells novels, this book had me laughing the whole way through.  Each and every page was a treat!  Once again Heather faces another murder in her Death Dorm (excuse me, Residence Hall) and despite warnings from Cooper, she must get involved because the accused murderer is surely innocent.  Great characters, great plot, great ending.

I was so sad to see this trilogy end, though there are rumors around the Internet that Meg Cabot was contracted to write a fourth and fifth book and she had reportedly been writing them... in 2009.  Who knows if they will ever come to fruition?  Though I guarantee you, if they did I would be first in line to read them!

Lisey's Story

Lisey's Story
Stephen King
653 pages
Publisher: Pocket, 2006
Source: Border's going out of business sale
★★★☆☆

You can find the Goodreads summary here.

After reading the back cover of this novel I was excited to read it, especially since it's been awhile (far too long) since I've read a Stephen King book.  The concept was new to me, at least - an author had died leaving his wife, Lisey, to deal with crazy man who wants to essentially steal his unpublished works.  But the author, Scott Landon, had an imaginary place that he and his wife could physically go to, and it's there that Lisey will find the answers to help her survive.

The novel contained a lot of flashbacks, so many that at times it was hard to know where in the story I was.  In addition to that, it was a little repetitive and drawn out.  After getting to page five hundred tonight I decided to chug through the last one hundred fifty or so pages so that I could move on to a new book.

But on the plus side, the book had characters with real problems and the plot line on the whole was great.  The whole thing came togethers smoothly in the end when the crazy man is dealt with Lisey find her story and learns the whole truth about her husbands past.  On the whole, a decent read.