I tried to read some good rom com books this month, I like to read seasonally at times, so with Valentine’s day upon us, I thought that genre would be appropriate! It’s one of my favorite genes in general, just because it is entertaining to read most of the time hehe! Hope you find something interesting to you!
I had a lot of mixed feelings regarding the first “Maisie Dobbs” book. I felt like it was written well, but I just didn’t really enjoy reading through the story line. Maisie started off being a maid in the home of a London household, but was taken under the wing of the home’s employer. She gained education and opportunity under the care of Lady Rowan, and when WW1 broke out, she went to the front in France as a nurse. She grew a lot as a person through those events, and was able to return to London as a private investigator, eventually to open her own office. Maisie takes on a case that looks like infidelity, but turns into a mystery of a whole other sort, involving a farm that runs as a retreat for disfigured soldiers from the war. I think I was expecting this book to be a little happier than it turned out to be, it was very serious, and extremely sad at times. I am looking for a distraction when I read, so I think this one was just a little heavier than I was expecting, which led to my conflicting feelings about the story. I keep telling myself I need to start reading summaries before I read the actual book, so I won’t be caught off guard, but I think I enjoying going into books with an open mind without anyone else thoughts to muddle the plot for me hehe!
I am really enjoying reading through the Shopaholic series, I feel like the pace is so quick, I just fly through them. “Shopaholic Ties the Knot” was the next step, time to get married! All of these books have stressed me out a little bit, because if she would just quit putting things off and take care of those bills or whatever issue it is, things would be so much better for her haha! I am naturally not really a procrastinator, so to read about someone putting things off until the impossibly last moment just makes me feel a little crazy! This was a cute story though, she had two weddings being planned for her simultaneously and just was not able to pick one and upset that side of the family! A little more language in this one that the others that I have read, but I did like how everything tied up at the end…pun intended. 🙂
“Shopaholic on Honeymoon” was a little add on she wrote later to fill in the gaps between “Ties the Knot” and the sister story. A very short story, there are some peeks into what their honeymoon around the world looked like.
“Love on the Brain” hooked me with the setting being in Houston at NASA, and I’m always a fan of a girl in science…but this book had too many smutty scenes and language for me to recommend. The story line was interesting, they were trying to design a helmet for astronauts to wear that connected with their brains and enhanced their abilities while in space, which is a little far fetched, but it worked. Bee and Levi who were also supposedly “arch enemies” in college, got thrown together to work on this project together, so you can imagine how that turns out. There is a little sabotage and mystery involved, which was interesting, but what I didn’t care for was all of the derogatory remarks about men, white men in science in particular. There was just a lot of weird stuff in this one, and when I went back and read reviews after I read it, apparently her first book was identical to this one. So probably not the author for me!
“Hooked on You” was SO refreshing after reading “Love on the Brain.” Not one curse word in sight, super sweet, small town meet cute. And she has a series. I’ll take it! Riley leaves New York and returns to Maple Falls to help her Grandmother out after she broke her leg playing on the town softball team. She’s not happy about coming home, and has a lot of personal struggles from her mom leaving her when she was little. She ends up helping her Grandmother reorganize her yarn store, inspiring other to help Maple Falls with a face lift too while she’s there. Riley also gets to know an old friend from high school, Hayden, while she is home too. It was a little slow and corny at times, but it was nice to just read something wholesome that turned out happy for everyone involved.
I listened to “The XX Brain” this month, and my thoughts were basically that the first half of this book was like a textbooks involving WAY too many stats and quizzes, but then the second half was more practical information that I found useful and reassuring. My Grandmom had alzhiemers, and my Ma-Ma had dimensia, so just knowing that about my family genetics, and that women in general are more susceptible to brain disease as they age than men are, I’m interested in helping myself and my own brain as I age. It was very interesting to read about how your brain changes during pregnancy and mid life before and during menopause, and that there are many things you can do to help yourself. Most of that includes being an active individual and eating well, so there is much that is within your control when it comes to your brain’s health. That being said, maybe this book would be better used as a reference book, it might not have been the best to listen to. I found it helpful, but also a little laborious to get through.
At one point I told my cousin’s wife, Ashley, that I did not like “The Dead Romantics” and thought it was just so weird. But then I finished it, and completely changed my mind. Florence is a ghostwriter for an author, and gets a new editor, who just happens to be super good looking and dreamy, but won’t give her an extension on her book. She then has to return home after a sudden death in the family, and has a lot of family issues to resolve. Her family owns a funeral home, and Florence herself has some special capabilities to see ghosts. When she returns home, she runs into the ghost of her editor, which is so shocking to her, because he is supposed to be alive in New York. The story progresses, with some strange person to ghost interactions haha, but in the end, there was a twist I wasn’t expecting at all, so that was really fun the way the author worked it all out.
I saw this on Pinterest and just loved it so much, give me my dogs and books any day, add a nice long thunderstorm on top of it and my day is made haha!
That’s my February book review for you! If you’re interested in seeing what I read last month, you can click here or click on my Books tab above! If you want to follow me along on Goodreads, check out my profile! I keep track of the books I’m reading, what I’ve read and the reviews on books I’ve made there!
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