I'm still sick and mostly lying in my bed feeling grateful for medicine. I would have made a horrible pioneer because I couldn't go to the store and pick up medicine back in pioneer days. (Or make my husband.) So, if nothing I post today makes sense, I blame the meds. And thank you all for your get well wishes.
I read two books over the weekend, Show No Fear by Marliss Melton which was a romantic suspense that takes place in Colombia. Lucy is a CIA agent who has to go undercover with her old college flame (that she dumped) to try to save two other CIA agents who were kidnapped by a terrorist group. James is now a Navy Seal and tries to protect Lucy throughout the mission even though he realizes she is dealing with PTSD from her last mission that ended badly (and survivor's guilt for what happened to two of her friends eight years ago). The story is so fast-paced it took my breath away. The perilous situations seemed so real and the emotions were raw. Unfortunately, there were three brief sex scenes and some language, easy to skip over, but for my clean-reading friends, I can't recommend this one to you.
But then I read Not My Type: A Single Girl's Guide to Doing It All Wrong by Melanie Jacobson and I can heartily recommend this book to everyone. It is a romantic comedy that reminded me of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days movie, but with a twist. In Not My Type, she loses the guy on the first day. Haha. Pepper Spicer is nursing a broken heart after a broken engagement. She has to move back home because of all the wedding debt she accrued for a wedding that didn't happen and she's sharing a room with her seven year old sister. She has a dead-end job at a sandwich shop and she pretty much hates her life. Her parents challenge her to get out of her comfort zone and follow some of her dreams---like being a journalist. She lands a deal to be "Indie girl" a columnist who goes out on blind dates and then writes about them. There were definitely some funny and uncomfortable results. Okay, I laughed out loud at several spots and I really liked Pepper's character. This was a fun afternoon read.
Here's the back copy:
Twenty-three-year-old Pepper Spicer is not living the dream. She ended her engagement at the last minute because her fiancé -- a musician and soon-to-be reality TV star -- wanted her to sacrifice her own career ambitions for his.
Now she's stuck at home sharing a room with her little sister, trying to pay off massive debt for a wedding that didn't happen, and spending Friday nights Facebook-stalking everyone who has a better life. Her therapist father urges her to choose her career dreams and count her blessings by writing weekly thank you notes, but gratitude is a tall order when she botches an important job interview and has to settle for writing an undercover dating web-zine column -- the last thing in the world she wants to do. Still, as Pepper (byline: Indie Girl) chronicles her bizarre and hilarious blind dates, she gives her father's challenge a try and slowly finds herself leaving self-pity behind. Life takes a major upswing as Pepper's column hits the big time and she tastes the exhilarating thrill of success. But there's one tiny problem: the intensely hot man she's falling for is having issues with her job (again). Will Pepper trade her personal ambition for another chance at love?
What are you guys reading these days?
I'm an award-winning romantic suspense novelist, but in my free time I love to review books and my fave TV shows, as well as pass along great book deals, and eat Canadian chocolate---not necessarily in that order.
5 comments:
I just got through reading Krista Lynne Jensen's Of Grace and Chocolate. Ripped right through it. Before that one I read Heather Horrocks' Old Maid of Honor. Laughed right through that one. Now I'm starting Joyce DiPastena's Dangerous Favor. I gotta get my medieval fix every so often.
I've recently read the three zombie books by Charlie Higson, The Enemy, The Dead, and The Fear. They were fascinating descriptions of what might happen to children if all the adults over the age of fourteen were affected by a "sickness" that turned them into flesh-eating zombies. On the one hand, all three books ended on cliff-hangers, so I want to read more to find out what happens, but on the other hand, the second book was almost a prequel of the first, showing what happened to a different group of kids at almost the same time as the events of the first book. And then the third book showed the events of yet another group, again at almost the same time. The entire story was not advanced, and the cliffhangers from the first two books were not resolved, so that was kind of frustrating, and I'm not sure I want to read to the fourth book if it's going to be yet another branch-out instead of a continuation. But I'll see when it comes out later this year. There was quite a bit of violence against the zombies, no sex, and I can't remember any bad language, though there might have been one or two words.
I between those books, I've also been re-reading a series of mysteries set in Roman Britain, by Jane Finnis, and these are books I can heartily recommend to everybody! Aurelia Marcella is an innkeeper near Eburacum (York) in about 90 AD, and manages to solve various murders with the help of her lover, Imperial Investigator Quintus Antonius Delfinus, and her twin brother Lucius. The first book was originally called Get Out or Die, but there's now a new issue and the title has been changed to Shadows in the Night. There's also A Bitter Chill, Buried too Deep, and Danger in the Wind. I'd call them fast-paced and cheerful, almost cozy historical mysteries; not much violence, no sex, though it's implied that they sleep together, and only a few Roman oaths for swear words. I've just checked, and the books are available at the SLC Public Library in case anybody living near there wants to check them out.
Are you ready for this? I'm reading Moby Dick. (My son's teacher said he needed a reading partner, and I'm the only one who's willing to read it. 24 hours on the audiobook. Ughh.) I'm also reading Tom Sawyer. So, 2 classics I've never read. I like Tom Sawyer a lot.
Pepper Spicer? I guess it works for a comedy.
It must be fate. I hadn't heard of this book, and yours is the second good review I've read of it today :-)
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