Takes One to Know One by Susan Isaacs

Takes One to Know One by Susan Isaacs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

SYNOPSIS---"Just a few years ago, Corie Geller was busting terrorists as an agent for the FBI. But at thirty-five, she traded in her badge for the stability of marriage and motherhood. Now Corie is married to the brilliant and remarkably handsome Judge Josh Geller and is the adoptive mother of his lovely 14-year-old daughter. Between cooking meals and playing chauffeur, Corie scouts Arabic fiction for a few literary agencies and, on Wednesdays, has lunch with her fellow Shorehaven freelancers at a so-so French restaurant. Life is, as they say, fine.
But at her weekly lunches, Corie senses that something's off. Pete Delaney, a milquetoast package designer, always shows up early, sits in the same spot (often with a different phone in hand), and keeps one eye on the Jeep he parks in the lot across the street. Corie intuitively feels that Pete is hiding something--and as someone who is accustomed to keeping her FBI past from her new neighbors, she should know. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just imagining things, desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence? She decides that the only way to find out is to dust off her FBI toolkit and take a deep dive into Pete Delaney's affairs.


Always sassy, smart, and wickedly witty, Susan Isaacs is at her formidable best in a novel that is both bitingly wry and ominously thrilling"

This book was the loooonnnggggest 288 pages (or so I've been led to believe)I have ever read. I see so many reviewers loved this book, and I wonder if we had read the same one or if my tastes are just so radically different/bland/boring. I thought I would never finish this book. It slogged along until I wanted to scream.

I am led to believe that this is book one of a new series (I am not positive though) so I can see why we needed so much back story, angst, repetitiveness, and the building of Corie's life (boring), letting us know she is a bored housewife now and did I say repetitive?

I MAY try the next book if there is such a thing because hopefully, the next book will not concentrate on chapters that go absolutely nowhere. The next edition will, probably, not have the minutiae that this one did. And we get the fact that Corie is now rich, Corie's husband is handsome, her best friend has good taste and that Ms. Issacs knows how to over-use the word 'narrative'.

It takes 3/4 of this book before anything actually happens -yes, some things happened during the story, but nothing that will keep you on the edge of your seat; if you know what I mean.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.


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Love on Lexington Avenue (Central Park Pact #2) by Lauren Layne

Love on Lexington Avenue by Lauren Layne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This second entry to the Central Park Pact was even better than the first one and I can't wait to see what the third book is going to be like!

This book is about the widow of a philanderer, his mistress, and his girlfriend. Yep, what a sleazeball! It is also about Claire's (the wife) desire to end her vanilla lifestyle, redo her brown-stone and have a one night fling. She just wants to try to remember how to flirt and to feel desirable.

On first glance when Scott the renovation expert comes calling things don't look like they are going to work out renovation wise but soon it becomes clear that not only is her renovations moving along nicely, so is her friendship with Scott -also her wingman in flirting and one night stands! And let me tell you that does NOT work out well at all!

There are a lot of very humorous moments n this book as well as some that may make you a tad weepy. Frankly, I think the fun and humor comes out on top, so don't worry too much about this book being overly angsty.

However, things do move along and at a good pace. The author really knows how to keep things moving and to keep the reader interested and wanting to turn those pages. I learned a few things about remodeling without this turning into a how-to book. And the HEA was just perfect (as well as the remodel!)

*ARC supplied by the publisher.



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Shelter from the Storm: A Fresh-Start Family Romance (North Country Amish #2) by Patricia Davids

Shelter from the Storm: A Fresh-Start Family Romance by Patricia Davids
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An Amish marriage of convenience
A new North Country Amish novel

Secretly pregnant and unwed, Gemma Lapp has a difficult choice—face her Amish community or raise her baby alone. But when a storm strands Gemma in the wilderness with her former crush, Jesse Crump, she knows her secret won’t be safe for long. Gemma can’t imagine trusting a man again…until Jesse proposes a marriage of convenience. Could their arrangement lead to love?



As usual, Patricia Davids hits the right notes with this new book. She happens to be an excellent author of Amish fiction/romance - she is 'teachy without being preachy'!

This was one of the most unusual stories I've read in the Amish genre but not untypical -a couple thrown into a dangerous situation that pushes them into the correct direction. A marriage that may or may not be of convenience, that naturally turns into something more. A life or death situation.

All of these above buttons are pushed with this novel, and I really ended up at the edge of my seat in parts. Yes, there are one or two inconsistencies-but this is an ARC and I m hoping that these will be changed upon publication.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.


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Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis: A Christmas novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Owe You One.
Celebrate Christmas with the ultimate Shopaholic! #1 New York Times bestselling author Sophie Kinsella is back with a new laugh-out-loud adventure featuring Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood).

Review:

It has been quite a while since I've read one of the Shopaholic books and it's safe for me to say that Becky has grown (somewhat). She still makes bad choices with her shopping, and now she is also making bad choices about how she appears to others. ( maybe she always has, but mainly I'm reading this as a 'standalone' instead of part of the series; it has been that long since I've read one of these)!

Becky may be flighty at times and worry too much about what others think of her, but she is a good mother, a warm person and a very caring friend daughter and sister.

She has a lot of cringe-worthy moments in this book, and at times the book seems to make little sense (for me it was the hamster scene). However, everything works out in the end.

I think one of the reasons I had some problems with this story-line is that I see too much of myself in Becky's character. I also shop for what I think I'll need in the future-store things away and then forget about them and do most of my shopping from the computer and get stuck with things that aren't quite right! Another problem I had was with her sister (half?step?) Jess, and her ridiculous (to me) demands on what is appropriate to spend your money on; after all, it's your cash and your business what you do with it.

A fun, funny, light and fast read that brings the spirit of Christmas to the fore.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.


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The Rise of Magicks (Chronicles of The One, #3) by Nora Roberts

The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis:"The first battle is already over, but the big fight for good and evil is yet to come: The young Fallon leads their army to Washington D.C., to drive the black magic out of the world. She is the chosen one to rebuild the world after the apocalypse and unite her inhabitants. There is a great burden on the young woman, because the family of her father's murderer seeks revenge on her and her sweetheart. But Fallon's mission is now easier than the interpretation of her feelings for Duncan, whose fate is inevitably tied to hers."

I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this last book in this trilogy way more than the first two. It was a reasonably good way to end this trilogy but not a fantastic way to end it. However, if you have already read the first two books, then this is a must-read for you.



https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34311452-year-one

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38236125-of-blood-and-bone



I had some problems with the repetitiveness that Nora seems to embrace lately. She does like to repeat over and over, what we not only have learned from the first two books, but she did this with passages from this particular book too. Unlike other reviewers, I feel that Ms. Roberts was merely filling up pages to get to a specific word count. I did not like the fact that these books use a language more like what she uses in her J.D.Robb series -which I call 'text speak.' She tends to lose the flow of her sentences when doing this, and it makes it a bit awkward for a reader who is not used to this way of speaking. Ms. Roberts leaves out things like determiners and grammatical articles and even some crucial verbs!

I still do think that this series is geared more for the YA audience than a purely adult one.

There are new character's to enjoy, fights galore, and deaths of some secondary character's that we've come to know. I do wonder why Fallon is not using all of this fantastic magic she absorbed when opening "The Book of Spells" and then jumped into "The Pit".

The last fight is interesting ( not exciting as such, but interesting) but a little lackluster for a trilogy like this

I loved Vivienne especially and a lot of the secondary and tertiary character's. This idea would have made an excellent long-running series which would have given the characters more time to grow and mature into their roles. I did have a bit of a difficult time with the large jumps in time. Fallon is an infant -poof-Fallon is 13-poof-Fallon is 20 (I think). An extended series would have given us time to see what all the fights were like, to understand more about Vivienne and the other alliances, to feel more about the romance, etc.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.


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Polite Society by Mahesh Rao

Polite Society by Mahesh Rao
My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Synopsis:

A modern retelling of Jane Austen's Emma with a touch of Crazy Rich Asians set in Delhi, in which the daughter of a wealthy Indian family aspires to match-make for her friends and family, only to find herself caught up in an unforeseen scandal--and an unexpected match of her own.
Beautiful, clever, and very slightly bored, Ania Khurana has Delhi wrapped around her finger. When Ania finds love for her spinster aunt, she realizes her potential as a force for good. 
For her next match, Ania sets her sights on Dimple: her newest, sweetest, and, sure, poorest friend. But her good intentions may be misdirected, and when her aunt's handsome new nephew arrives from America, the social tides in Delhi begin to shift. Surrounded by money old and new, navigating gossip, scheming, and an unforgettable cast of journalists, socialites, gurus, and heirs, Ania discovers that when you aim to please the human heart, things seldom go as planned. 
Using Jane Austen's Emma as a springboard, Polite Society takes us into the lives of a group of characters we never want to part with. Pairing stiletto-sharp observation and social comedy with moments of true tenderness, this delicious romp through the mansions of India's elite celebrates that there's no one route to perfect happiness.

Review:



I'm having a very difficult time writing this review as I don't really want to offend anyone...but the fact is that I am really wondering just how this book garnered so many high rated reviews?

First of all---Jane Austen is dead people, please let her rest in peace and stop trying to imitate her by rewriting Emma in the modern world...it just doesn't work.


There is only one passage that gave me pleasure while I was reading this book and that was at location 1776 at 49% of the book---Ania says and I quote "It's okay to toss a boring book after fifty pages." Well, I gave this book wayyy more than 50 pages and I just couldn't do it anymore.

If "Polite Society" hadn't such a strong essence of "Emma" I would not have been so distracted comparing the two books. If the characters had been just a little more likable (I actually hated Ania) I might have plodded on. I realize that Ania would finally change, but for me, the voyage just wasn't worth it. She was just an annoying, whiny, know-it-all that couldn't handle her own life, but unlike in "Emma", she just did it in such a nasty way.

This book tried too hard to make a literary book out of what should have been no more than Chick-lit; all about the uber-rich and how they treat those around them and how they take their riches for granted.

I'm surprised at myself that I allowed myself to read this much of this book.
Rao, Mahesh

*ARC supplied by the publisher.





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