MaryFran's Library

Heartless by Elsie Silver is a good quick read.  The premise of this book is simply a single father who loves his child but is jaded toward women and the world in general.   He doesn't want a nanny but he knows that he needs one.   Enter the main character, the nanny.  The nanny has all the lines and all the comebacks.  This is a romantic tale, so the plot was totally expected. However, that is why we love romance novels, for the build up, the angst and then the blossoming love.  It's not the plot that draws us to a romance novel, but the journey to get there.   

The Sleepover by Keri Beevis is a novel that splits the story telling between the past and present.  The main character is a gal that is struggling to live her life.  She is haunted by events that happened in her childhood. She struggles with fears and worry.  She tries to avoid he town where the 'bad thing' happened yet he continues to be close to her friends who also lived through the unnamed nightmare.  The characters in the book are well defined and unique as you can see how tragedy and trauma affects each of them differently The present day parts of the story has the main character living in fear as unexplained things begin to happen.   It coincides with the release of the perpetrator of the crime from their past. .   The past segments of the book are shorter and never quite give enough information to know what was so terrible that it traumatized the characters so deeply.  Eventually, as the book is in it's final chapters the past event is revealed and as expected there is a resolution to all of the events, even with a twist or two that I actually wasn't expecting.

I picked up The Last Flight by Julie Brown on a whim. It was a free read on Kindle at the time that I read it.   Free reads can be hit or miss. However, this book was a total hit!   I was hooked from the first chapters!  I was rooting for the main character the whole way through the book. 

I picked up the book The Librarian by Valerie Keogh on a whim simply because I love libraries and had at one time wanted to be a librarian.  What could be better than a book about a librarian.  The title is a bit misleading in that regards..   While she may have been a librarian, it wasn't in the typical standard definition and the fact that the main character was a 'librarian' (more like curator in my world) it was honestly a minor detail of the story.   

The collection of short stories in Prim and Proper: Six tales of sexual Liberation by Merry V. Fellows is a great release of tension. The short stories are straight up hot causing our senses to be on edge while you read. These short concise vignettes into a sexual encounter are just what is needed to boost your mood!

The book Killer of the Flower Moon by David Grann came to my attention quite a while back.   I immediately placed a hold for the book online with my library and then I waited.  I honestly forgot what the book was even about by the time I received the email notification that the book was ready for me to download.  I dove right in without reviewing what the book was about.  Afterall, I knew I had been interested in it at some point and if the wait time was any indication, it was going to be a good read.

I picked up the book Pen Pal by J.T. Geissinger expecting a little romantic novel  that followed the same story arc that almost every romance novel follows.   The story started normally enough with the main character standing at the gravesite of her husband during the burial.  The sorrow and angst was normal and expected as was the introduction to the male counterpart.  The love story carried on and was going splendidly as it spiraled to the pinnacle of the novel.   And that is where the plot took a left turn.  The twist was totally unexpected.  It was written in such a way that it totally worked and made sense. However, the plot twist left me without the sappy romantic ending that I craved when I picked up a book that I expected to be a romance.  

The Good Patient by Alex Stone is one that I borrowed for free from Amazon and I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the plot.   The story is about a gal who is living her life to the best of her ability but is being held back by her history.   For a good part of the book the author alludes to the great terrible thing that her mother had done to her which caused her life to go awry and to cause her current issues.   As a reader, I was left wondering what this terrible thing was until it was finally revealed toward the end of the book.  The story was laid out in such a way that when the main character revealed the cause of her injuries, I still questioned it.   My issue with this book was the way it was written, not in terms of grammatically speaking, but in the format.  I typically don't mind and even like books that merge a past story and a present day story.   This one attempted to do that. But it got fuzzy because interspersed within the two time frames   the author added a different era of the main characters story.  It was initially easy to keep the two time frames separate as each chapter was labelled NOW or THEN, with the then indicating a time only a few months previous to the now.  In that way I was able to head into each chapter well informed.  The issue for me came when the author threw in the older history segments, which were notated by italics.   I would eagerly read the italic section, delving into a altogether different time frame.  When the italic section would be over, I would then have to jump back to the then or now but I struggled to know which it was, causing me to have to scroll backwards to find the beginning of the chapter.  It was annoying, but thankfully didn't ruin the book!

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware  looked interesting as I was searching for my next book to read.   In fairness, I wasn't totally disappointed with this book, it was a good read,but there were some issues that I had. The story chronicles four friends who have gone their separate ways but have an unbreakable tie that pulls them together as they work to hide the demons of their past.  The story begins when the friends all receive an SOS text message and even though they haven't seen each other for years, they all go running.  I was left wondering what bond would be that amazing, and the story left me wondering, for more than 3/4 of the book.   The story is good and it is well written.   I had no clue as to the ending and how it was going to turn out which I always like.  My only issue with the book is that the author alludes to this great big mysterious thing that holds these girls together but it takes more than half the book to reveal it.  It seemed almost as if the author didn't want to reveal the issue to keep us all reading.  All in all, it was a good read. 

I somehow had missed reading Silent Honor by Danielle Steel,even though the book was published more than 10 years ago.    I knew this book would be good when I realized that I would have to wait quite a few weeks before the book would be available for me to download at my library.  Once I got the book, I was not disappointed. This was a book that had me turning the pages as I lived the story along with the characters.  As is typical of books by his author, the characters emotions hit deep within me.  This bulk of this book takes place in the World War II era and specifically around a young Japanese girl/woman who has to learn to live with the issues created by her country of origin.  The fear and uncertainty that was prevalent in that historic era was evident in this book.   Silent Honor,  takes the reader into the camps of Japanese that popped up in America during the tumultuous time in our history.   And typical of Danielle Steel books, there is always love and love always prevails, which brings a smile to my face.