From the category archives:

Fiction

REVIEW: Rainwater by Sandra Brown

by Avid Reader on November 18, 2009

in Book Reviews, Fiction, Grade B Reviews

Rain­wa­ter (2009) by San­dra Brown is a his­tor­i­cal fic­tion novel, set in a tiny town in Texas dur­ing the Depres­sion. I real­ize what today is but this book will have to suf­fice. It’s the only book I’ve man­aged to fin­ish in the last two weeks. Mov­ing on.
Brown states that “Rain­wa­ter” is dif­fer­ent from any­thing she’s ever writ­ten before. […]

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THE SINFUL LIFE OF LUCY BURNS by Eliz­a­beth Leik­nes is a moral­ity tale mixed with social satire that speaks of the power of words, thoughts and deeds. The hero­ine, Lucy Burns, nar­rates the story and she doesn’t waste time catch­ing read­ers up. No. You’re pretty much sucked into Lucy’s extra­or­di­nary life and what a life it is.
Lucy Burns […]

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How Per­fect Is That by Sarah Bird (June 2008), pub­lished by Knopf, is a moral­ity tale about an ex-Austin soci­ety wife try­ing to hang on des­per­ately to the life she once had of money, power, influ­ence and pam­per­ing, plenty of pam­per­ing. Her “fall” down the social lad­der isn’t pretty and my sym­pa­thy for her diminished […]

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The Other Boleyn Girl (2003) by Philippa Gre­gory tells the tale of two sis­ters and their rivalry for the love of the King. One sis­ter uses beauty to land into the king’s bed while the other sis­ter uses her ambi­tion and virtue to become the Queen of Eng­land. Of course all of this would have […]

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Lord John and the Broth­er­hood of the Blade by Diana Gabal­don finds British solider, Lord John Grey try­ing to restore honor to his family’s good name that stems from a sev­en­teen year old scan­dal. When a page from his father’s miss­ing jour­nal turns up, it man­ages to stir up a hornet’s nest of trou­ble.
The story opens with the impend­ing nup­tials of Lord John’s mother, […]

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Flirt­ing in Cars by Alisa Kwit­ney is a smartly writ­ten con­tem­po­rary romance novel. Read excerpt here. Here is the plot descrip­tion:
An accom­plished jour­nal­ist, Zoë Goren can’t drive and she doesn’t cook. But that’s never been a prob­lem in Man­hat­tan, where the streets are filled with taxis and take­out restau­rants, and a busy sin­gle mother can find every­thing she […]

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Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz (2003) is the first book in the Odd Series.  Koontz is a writer whose work is often hard to clas­sify some­times. Some of the work he writes are straight up hor­ror sto­ries and some are not. 
Odd Thomas is a story in between where you have a blend of para­nor­mal aspects mixed with suspense. The story is nar­rated by the lead character […]

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From my keeper shelf we have One on One by Tabitha King, copy­right 1993. It’s a teenage romance with plenty of bas­ket­ball. The story is set in a fic­tional town in Maine called Nodd’s Ridge.  The two pro­tag­o­nists are Sam Styles and Deanie Gau­thier. Both are Super­star captain’s of their respec­tive girl and boy bas­ket­ball teams.
Sam comes from a good family, […]

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Such a Pretty Girl deals with an unpleas­ant sub­ject mat­ter: rape. Let me explain some­thing or give you a lit­tle his­tory about me. I’m a fan of crime shows like Cold Case Files ‚The First 48 Hours and Amer­i­can Jus­tice on A&E. I picked up Such a Pretty Girl off of an rec­om­men­da­tion by a book­seller. She had already warned me […]

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Are you in the mood for a good Geor­gian mys­tery? I plucked this title off the shelf with no prior knowl­edge of this author’s work. This pur­chase was strictly for the cover.  Besides, it looked like a good read, too and lucky me, it was a good read indeed. The Com­plaint of the Dove by Han­nah March is a won­der­ful buried trea­sure read.
The […]

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The Bronze Horse­man (2002) by Paul­lina Simons is one of those rare nov­els that leaves it’s mark on you. A novel fea­tur­ing a pow­er­ful lovestory set within a WWII back­drop. Cap­ti­vat­ing. Engross­ing. Touch­ing. Mov­ing. Mem­o­rable. All adjec­tives that accu­rately describe one of the best fic­tion nov­els I’ve had the plea­sure to read and rec­om­mend.
The story is thus:

Leningrad, 1941: The Euro­pean war seems far away […]

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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stew­art is one of my favorites com­fort reads. What I love about Mary Stew­art besides the great char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and the “mag­i­cal” romance is that her set­ting plays an impor­tant role as the plot or the char­ac­ters in the story. In typ­i­cal gothic fash­ion the heroine’s hus­band is sort of missing. […]

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The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown seems to evoke much dis­cus­sion on the explo­sive infor­ma­tion that Dan Brown explores that involves reli­gion and what we believe fun­da­men­tally as Chris­tians. After read­ing this book, I was left with a neu­tral feel­ing. While the con­spir­acy the­ory is def­i­nitely fod­der for dis­cus­sion, I found it enter­tain­ing stuff that shouldn’t be […]

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The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird is a buried trea­sure read. I read this book about maybe three or four years ago and at that time the book was sadly out of print. Now it’s avail­able again and if you haven’t read it, you should because it is a satire of the romance indus­try that is both […]

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I love Diana Nor­man. She can­not write fast enough for me. I’ve paid good money to get her back list as she is just an awe­some writer/storyteller. A Catch of Con­se­quence by Diana Nor­man was a riv­et­ing read for the first 1/3rd of the book and then the story kinda looses it’s steam towards the end for me. The story is […]

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