The Mockingbird's Song (Amish Greenhouse Mystery #2) by Wanda E. Brunstetter

The Mockingbird's Song by Wanda E. Brunstetter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is both a sweet romance and an absorbing mystery. This book is the second book in the Amish Greenhouse series, which I did not know. I was able to read it as a stand-alone without much trouble, although I will admit that I am going to buy the first book just to clarify some issues.

Ms. Brunstetter has a way of writing that brings the Amish to light. On the other hand, her English characters seem to leave a little to be desired. They are almost a caricature of what most English people really are (at least in my opinion.)

There is both tremendous joy and a lot of sadness in this book. The spirituality in this book is not overwhelming for someone who may not be a believer, so I find that this book will appeal to just about everyone, no matter what their feelings are toward God.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something a little different, clean and wholesome and with a pretty good mystery.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and the author.


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SYNOPSIS: "Where Is the Hope in Grief for a Young Amish Widow?

Sylvia has been nearly paralyzed with grief and anxiety since the tragic death of her husband, father, and brother in a traffic accident. She tries to help in the family’s greenhouse while caring for her two young children, but she prefers not to have to deal with customers. Her mother’s own grief causes her to hover over her children and grandchildren, and Sylvia seeks a diversion. She takes up birdwatching and soon meets an Amish man who teaches her about local birds. But Sylvia’s mother doesn’t trust Dennis Weaver, and as the relationship sours, mysterious attacks on the greenhouse start up again."

Ask Me Anything by P.Z. Reizin

Ask Me Anything by P.Z. Reizin


 I think if I hadn't gotten this book as an ARC, I might not have stuck it out. The first quarter (or more) of the book was just truly annoying, slow, and dull. The chapters were interminably long, and that can be somewhat annoying. (I like to read till the end of a chapter before I go do something else and 1 hour and 21 minute long chapters make this nearly impossible!) Thank goodness this book only had nine!

Somewhere around the 40% mark, this book picked up, and things about artificial intelligence started to make more sense.

While it is a bit difficult to see how this is going to end up a romance, it does, and most satisfyingly.

All in all, I'm glad I stuck to it, and I would recommend this book to some of our more technologically inclined readers.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS: "From the author of Happiness for Humans, a romantic comedy for the technology age: a young woman unlucky in love gets a little help from the most unlikely of places to find her perfect match.
Wouldn't it be great if everyone had a team of smart machines to handle all the messy emotional stuff? When you consider how many quadrillions of hours of human drudgery have been eradicated by the invention of only the dishwasher, the washing machine and (ahem) the fridge freezer, is it absurd to imagine a scenario in which household appliances bring the same -- yes! -- genius to bear on the slow-motion car crash that is (for many young people) the romantic side of their lives? If they are content to leave their dishes, dirty linen and food refrigeration to smart technology, how much of a stretch is it for machines to take care of their emotional needs?Chloe and Daisy Parsloe only have each other, since Daisy's dad left for sunnier climes and a new family. But now Daisy is in her early thirties, she's not doing brilliantly at work, her love life is haphazard (to put it kindly) and her elderly mum seems to be losing her mind . . . Daisy is also the proud possessor of a smart fridge, which keeps trying to help Daisy sort out her life by sending her texts to tell her that she's out of milk, or that the pasta salad has gone out of date. What Daisy doesn't know is that her smart fridge, like her smart toothbrush, microwave, tv, fitness tracker, and laptop all want to help her smooth out her chaotic existence -- and help her mother, Mrs. Parsloe, stay independently living at home. Operation Daisy is about to make both the Parsloes' lives much, much happier."

The Mall by Megan McCafferty

The Mall by Megan McCafferty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This simple book is going to become one of my "comfort" reads -I kid you not! As a matter of fact, as soon as this book hits the shelves, it is going to become part of my library! What a freakin' fantastic walk down memory lane this was for me./ I loved every minute of it.

This book is geared toward YA as a historical (I think), but it is perfect for anyone who became a teen in the late 80's early 90's. Or even better, for older adults looking for the ideal quick break and a walk into the past.

This book, while humorous for the most part, does hit on some sensitive issues (divorce, friendships, virginity, and self-actualization).

*ARC supplied by the publisher and the author.


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SYNOPSIS: "New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall.
The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.
But you know what they say about the best laid plans...
Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall."

Risky Whiskey by Lucy Lakestone

Risky Whiskey by Lucy Lakestone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What more can an avid reader want than mayhem, murder, and booze? This book appealed to me very much and will be enjoyed by those of any age, but I think it will appeal to a younger crowd based on the type of cocktails served.

The action was well-timed, the romance is just hot enough to keep you reading, but without a ---shall we say a final climax? LOL! The mystery part was not that difficult to guess but tough enough to keep you guessing and reading.

I enjoyed this book so much and the little excerpt from the next book that I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS: "Eager to shake up her drinks and her life, mixologist Pepper Revelle jumps at an invitation to join the elite Bohemia Bartenders. Leader Neil thinks she'll be the perfect advance gal for his team at a colorful cocktail convention in her hometown of New Orleans, but the job turns out to be more bananas than a drunk monkey. Setting up the key tasting for their distiller client, she and Neil discover their whiskey has gone dangerously bad. But how? And was this shocking poisoning more than an accident?
As Pepper and Neil try to figure out what happened, keep the drinks flowing and help distiller Dash Reynolds survive the weekend, they find themselves the target of increasingly scary attacks. Maybe it's the danger, or maybe it's the drinks, but Pepper also can't help an inconvenient attraction to cocktail nerd Neil as they stir up trouble and try to figure out who's out to get them — before they're sliced and squeezed like a lemon twist in a Sazerac.
RISKY WHISKEY is the first book in the Bohemia Bartenders Mysteries, funny whodunits with a dash of romance set in a convivial collective of cocktail lovers, eccentrics and mixologists. These cozy culinary comedies contain a hint of heat, a splash of cursing and shots of laughter, served over hand-carved ice."

Bear Necessity by James Gould-Bourn (

Bear Necessity by James Gould-Bourn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't think that the opening paragraph of a synopsis was ever more apt than this one was.

I don't use this word often (maybe never), but this was a heartwarming and charming novel, and I'm just sorry it took me so long to read the ARC is received. My apologies to both the publisher and author for that!

This was also an entertaining novel and found me, at times, having some belly laughs over the predicaments that Danny got himself into. The cast of characters was marvelous> I couldn't find a better secondary cast if I tried! Somehow this whole book, in a way, reminded me of a Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner movie but without the naughty bits!

This book was a fast read, and it is just perfect for taking on vacation. There is no sex (not a whisper), but there is some 'language' all in context.

I am recommending this book to everyone I meet! I will also be purchasing my own copy, that is how good it was for me.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.
Thank you to both publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS:" A heartwarming, poignant, and charming debut novel for fans of Nick Hornby and The Rosie Project, about a father and son overcoming their grief in surprisingly inventive ways.

Danny’s life is falling apart. He’s become a single father to eleven-year-old Will—who hasn’t spoken since the death of his mother in a car crash a year earlier—and Danny has just been fired from his construction job. To make matters worse, he’s behind on the rent and his nasty landlord is threatening to break his legs if he doesn’t pay soon. Danny needs money, and fast.

After observing local street performers in a nearby park, Danny spends his last few dollars on a tattered panda costume, impulsively deciding to become a dancing bear. While performing one day, Danny spots his son in the park, and chases off the older boys who are taunting him. Will opens up for the first time since his mother’s death, unaware that the man in the panda costume is his father. Afraid of disclosing his true identity, Danny comforts his son. But will Danny lose Will’s trust once he reveals who he is? And will he be able to dance his way out of debt, or be beaten up before he has a chance?

Filled with a colorful cast of characters, Bear Necessity is a refreshingly unpretentious and ultimately uplifting story of a father and son reconnecting in the most unlikely of circumstances."

The Queen of Tuesday by Darin Strauss

The Queen of Tuesday by Darin Strauss

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 Stars rounded up.

I realize that this book is fiction, and most l likely, I am not of the age group that this book is recommended to. I am 63, so I practically grew up with Lucy and Ricky. The re-runs at least! So I was genuinely thrilled to be allowed to preview this book and voice my opinion.

Unfortunately, my opinion is that if you 'grew up' with Lucy stay away from this book or at least learn about what you are getting into first.

This book is mainly about sex -obsessing about it, talking about it, thinking about it, performing it. It is gritty, and in this book, unpleasant, at least for me.

So much artistic license was taken with this book, the mistakes in Mr. Strauss's research, having the main story about an affair that Mr. Strauss's grandfather had (this was most of the fictional part) and the coarseness of the writing, language, and the stalker/obsessor theme. The fact that Mr. Strauss tried to make this a literary masterpiece and, in my opinion, that he has woefully fallen short of the mark adds to my dissatisfaction with this novel.



I might suggest that you try taking this out from your local library if you choose to read The Queen of Tuesday.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS: From the award-winning, bestselling author of Chang & Eng and Half a Life, a new novel about Lucille Ball, a thrilling love story starring Hollywood’s first true media mogul, and an epic multi-layered look at America’s most fascinating era.
This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit—that the author’s grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other.
Lucille Ball—the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood—starred in America’s first big-time interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. And she more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille’s off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, in private she suffered. Her partner couldn’t stay faithful. She struggled to manage her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol.
The Queen of Tuesday—Strauss’s follow-up to the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Half a Life—mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew.

Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg

 Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book was not a captivating read, and the only reason I finished this book was to see why it was getting such fantastic reviews. You already know the murder, so the balance of the book is to find out how this murder affected everyone -even the most peripheral of characters. There are a LOT of characters, so be sure to have a scorecard handy!

This book was a fast read, and I can see this as being a popular book to take on vacation or the beach.
I guess it was just not for me.


I will say this right now---it amazes me to see how many positive reviews are written by people who have gotten this book as an ARC. Compare this to the reviews on Amazon from the people who have bought this book with their own hard-earned money...

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS: "Inspired by a true story, this haunting debut novel pieces together a chorus of voices to explore the aftermath of a college student's death.
On a cold day in 1997, student Sara Morgan was killed in the woods surrounding her liberal arts college in upstate New York. Her boyfriend, Blake Campbell, confessed, his plea of temporary insanity raising more questions than it answered.
In the wake of his acquittal, the case comes to haunt a strange and surprising network of community members, from the young woman who discovers Sara's body to the junior reporter who senses its connection to convicted local serial killer John Logan. Others are looking for retribution or explanation: Sara's half sister, stifled by her family's bereft silence about Blake, poses as a babysitter and seeks out her own form of justice, while the teenager Sara used to babysit starts writing to Logan in prison.
A propulsive, taut tale of voyeurism and obsession, Nothing Can Hurt You dares to examine gendered violence not as an anomaly, but as the very core of everyday life. Tracing the concentric circles of violence rippling out from Sara's murder, Nicole Maye Goldberg masterfully conducts an unforgettable chorus of disparate voices."

No Offense (Little Bridge Island, #2) by Meg Cabot

No Offense by Meg Cabot

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars rounded up.

This can be read alone, there is no reason to read the first book -I didn't.

I liked the story/mystery and disliked the romance. Go figure! Yes, the mystery was a good one IMO but I found the main character's to be somewhat lacking. the secondary characters were great but very typical to this genre. ex - Gay friend, old rich lady, old eccentric lady, shady youth, and rich teens/YA's, angsty daughter, single father with daughter. Nothing much new here really.

Molly was a bit of a bitch and overly PC, and I found Sheriff John to be spineless and overly PC. I guess as far as being politically correct, they are made for each other! In the first chapter Molly, the children's librarian is so PC that when having the kids decorate Gingerbread cookies, the cookies could not be female - you know the ones with a skirt, so as to not offend anyone. *headdesk,headdesk, eye-roll*

If you like uber PC books about librarians, then you will probably love this book. But I might think of getting it from the library.

I was so looking forward to this book, but it just felt like a YA with characters called adults.

*ARC supplied by the publisher and author.


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SYNOPSIS: Molly Montgomery couldn’t be more thrilled about starting her new life as head of Children’s Services at Little Bridge Island’s brand-new public library. Happy to have left her problematic ex behind on the mainland, her new life feels like heaven . . . at least until she finds a newborn baby in the library’s public restroom. Then suddenly she begins to wonder if life in Little Bridge isn’t exactly paradise.
But when Sheriff John Hartwell answers Molly’s 911 call, things begin to look up. He couldn’t be kinder (or better looking) and handles the baby—and the hunt for its missing mother—with far more sensitivity and understanding than Molly would have expected from someone who never reads fiction. Maybe there’s more to this tall, taciturn sheriff than meets the eye.
Recently divorced John Hartwell has been having trouble adjusting to single life as well as single parenthood. It doesn’t help that his teenaged daughter, Katie, hates Little Bridge Island and wants to move to the mainland to live with her mom.But something in the sympathetic, smiling eyes of Molly Montgomery gives John hope that things on Little Bridge might be looking up after all—for both himself and, maybe, Katie. But can two such different people ever find happiness together?

The Americans by Chitra Viraraghavan

The Americans by Chitra Viraraghavan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More of a series of vignettes or novellas than one full book. At times it is very difficult to keep everyone straight and how they may interact with each other. I never did understand just how this was all supposed to come together and felt that most of the stories had no endings and that left me feeling cheated.

This book is important because of how the author chooses to portray Americans. I find that to be very telling.


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SYNOPSIS: A POIGNANT AND UNIVERSAL STORY ABOUT THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE AND THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY Tara, a single Indian woman in her mid-thirties, travels from Chennai to America to look after her teenage niece while her sister Kamala is dealing with her autistic son's treatment and issues at school. But theirs is just one story of many. Expertly woven together, The Americans tells the stories of eleven Indians, whose lives span the country from Louisville to Chicago to Los Angeles to Portland, to Boston, all navigating life in a foreign land. And all of their stories connect back to Tara. For fans of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, The Americans is an eloquent and heart-warming debut from an exciting new voice that illuminates questions of race, ethnicity and point of origin, and explores the puzzles of identity, place and human connection.

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Surprisingly for me I very much enjoyed this book...well at least the second half I did. The first half was just a tad tedious for me.

Mr. Kwan does very well with his visual descriptions but does tend to go a little overboard with them and the expense of the characters themselves.

I would have liked a little more knowledge of the Asian families and I hope that one day Mr. Kwan does a comedic book like this one using full Asians.

*ARC supplied by publisher and author for review.


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SYNOPSIS:The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with a glittering tale of love and longing as a young woman finds herself torn between two worlds–the WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao, a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. Daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures