Month: November 2016

 The Brands Who Came for Christmas - Maggie ShayneThe Brands Who Came For Christmas” is a story as old as time. A story of an unplanned pregnancy, but Maggie Shayne gives it a twist that keeps you on the edge of your seat. 

Maya Brand was trying to earn the respect of the community. She didn’t run around and she went to church on Sunday. She was everything her scandalous family was not. What Maya wanted most was to be considered respectable. Tomorrow is Maya’s birthday, she will be thirty years and still a virgin. Then she looks up and to see a man enter her mother’s bar and her world turns upside down. Here is a man she has only dreamed of and he is looking straight at her.

   Cain Caleb Montgomery the third had been groomed from birth to become a Senator from the State of Oklahoma. His father was a Senator and his grandfather was a Senator. Caleb had never questioned that he would become a Senator as well, until during a planning session the group started talking about the perfect wife for him. She should be blond because blonds had a slight edge over brunettes and redheads and she should be smart but not better educated that he. Of course she would be pretty, but not too pretty because they didn’t want any backlash. At that, Caleb left the room without a word. He changed into jeans, borrowed the gardener’s old pickup and just started to drive. Fate in the form of a rainstorm and a flat tire stopped him in a little no name town in Oklahoma. 

Cain and Maya have one magic night before a phone call sends Cain rushing home. His father has had a stroke and by the time he is out of the hospital, Cain has convinced himself that he and Maya would never work.  Maya is convinced that Cain was just using her and she is better off without him when she goes into the doctor’s office. There, she discovers that forgetting Cain is going to be harder than she imagined and being respectable just became almost impossible.

   A fun story you won’t want to miss.

   Happy Reading, Linda 

Author – What’s in a name?

  Those of us who love to read have probably belonged to a book club. I have spent many an hour involved in a discussion of a most loved, maybe just liked, or couldn’t stand book. At one point I asked myself the question, “Do I want to continue to do this?” That question came after two or three of the “I can’t stand” books. 

the-thinkerI have come up with a new concept, study the author rather than the book. I started one book club with this thought in mind and it has been a lot of fun. My club has decided that a lot of authors write fantastic books that only get better as the author hones their skills. We have also decided that some of our favorite authors seem to be running out of ideas! When you read different stories by the same author it gives you a whole different outlook on their writing. 

Sherryl Woods is an author I like to read. Her story line is woven around small town life. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, but my town was not as interesting as Miss Woods’ towns. In her Chesapeake Shores books you feel like you get to know the whole town. The stories are all different but the small town feel is there. I would have loved to have a grandfather like Mick O’Brien, except when he was interfering in my love life. 

Robyn Carr is another one of those authors who introduce you to small town life. I searched my map trying to figure out the town in northern California she patterned the Virgin River Series after. I feel as if I know the whole town from her books and would move there in a minute if I could only find the town. Does that tell you I get too involved in the story line?  I love to read, it is like a disease that I hope no one finds a cure for.

   My favorite author of all time is Nora Roberts. She writes such varied story lines that you are sure to find something you like. One time it is a mystery that keeps you on the edge of your seat and the next one weaves the folk stories of Ireland into the story line. That doesn’t count her stories penned as J.D. Robb where she writes a futuristic detective story.  Roarke and Dallas are my favorite couple.

   I am going to visit a lady after Thanksgiving who wants me to organize a book club for her book store. How much fun will that be? So if you like the idea of a club that studies the author instead of the book, I may have a club for you. I will give you all the information as soon as we work out the details. 

   As always,

   Happy reading, Linda 

Review of “A Perfect Fit” by Heather Tullis

   Love has to be the most complicated emotion of all and In the first installment of the DiCarlo Brides series, Heather Tullis takes us on an emotional ride.

  In the book, “A Perfect Fit”

Heather Tullis - A Perfect FitCamellia DiCarlo, Cami for short, has led a charmed life. She and her sister Lana had a loving mother and father and the perfect family. Her mother died several years ago of a debilitating disease and her father had sat by her bedside, supporting her until the very end.

   Cami’s world has suddenly come crashing down with the burial of her father. She had just recently found out he had terminal cancer, a disease that would have killed him within months, if the pulmonary embolism hadn’t taken him first.

   Cami and Lana walk into the lawyer’s office expecting a very private reading of the will, but who are these other women? George Marlin DiCarlo’s estate consisted of a series of Resorts, Hotels  and Spas and he was worth billions. The thing Cami finds impossible to believe is that he also had four other daughters by four different women. How could he keep that kind of secret? Did her mother know?

   The will explains it all, they are each to receive one sixth of their father’s estate, provided they complete his terms. Since none of them besides Cami and Lana knew about the other, they are to take over the opening and running of his latest resort in the mountains of Colorado. They must occupy the home he has bought for them and live together for one year. George explains that he loves each of them equally. He hopes, by requiring them to spend the next year together, they will come to love each other, as friends at least, if not as sisters. 

   Cami feels betrayed. She and her father were so close; how could he not have told her? She then gets another shocker. After meeting a young man that fascinates her, she finds out her father is match making from the grave. 

   I loved this story with all the twist and turns.

Happy reading, Linda 

 

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