Biblio Reviews

It was sometime in the last seven to ten years that I first read Jane Austen's Persuasion  (1818). It was during the summer, I think, after I fully acknowledged and accepted the charm and greatness of her stories.You would think that as an English major I would have been familiar and enthralled with her and her work, but truth be told, I had abstained from reading many of the "classics" which tend to be very Eurocentric.  In regards to Austen, in particular, I was required to read Pride and Prejudice (1813) for the first time my freshman year in college. The professor was certainly a fan of Austen and the novel and gave away everything. My professor, however, analyzed the novel for us to the point that I didn't even have to read it to write a major essay on it. In fact, the introductory paragraph to that essay remains one of my best and favorite to date. (I don't remember the details, just that the first sentence was beautifully phrased and encapsulated Austen...

I think I should approach cheap romances available on Amazon written by new-to-me authors with "Lowered Expectations" (cue music from said segment from In Living Color) . Had I taken that approach, I wouldn't have felt as cheated as I did after reading J. Sterling's 10 Years Later  (2015) which I expected to be a sentimental second-chance romance about first love lost and found after having read the sample chapters downloaded on my Kindle. 10 Years Later  started off promisingly enough with the alternating first person perspectives of Cammie (a radio producer) and Dalton (an undercover cop), high school sweethearts who lost contact after a fallout at the end of their senior year but who had been pining for each other ever since. Ten years later, their high school reunion provides them with the opportunity to reconnect. The story was interesting up to the point when they reconnected at their reunion. Everything after that point is irrelevant because there is NO PLO...

To the son, Evan is a superhero and to the mother, Evan is a guardian angel.  Evan Manning just knows that he wants to reclaim his career. All that's standing in his way is a lack of a fiancée or wife. No worries, though, because as luck would have it, the mother-son duo who he had rescued from a burning vehicle the year before--which cost him his career as a surgeon--have sought him out to offer their gratitude. What better way than for the mother to pose as Evan's fake fiancée to make him more appealing for a job that will again establish his stature in his profession? In return, the mother (Grace Matheson) gets a Cinderella-like life makeover in picturesque and communal Red River--which Evan desperately wants to escape! Third in the Red River series, The Doctor's Fake Fiancée (2014) is quite charming, particularly because of Grace's four-year-old son, Christopher. Evan, however, is the star of the show (to me). ...

Ravished (1992) is by far my favorite Amanda Quick novel. It might very well be my favorite romance novel since it, along Miranda Lee's  A Weekend to Remember  (1996), is the one I've re-read every year, sometimes multiple times a year. Both guarantee to satisfy my romance novel cravings every.single.time. An Aside: I've read many romance novels, and to be honest, after a while, they all blend into one another: I can't differentiate the details of one from another. Which is why I am in awe of those who can recall the details, titles, and authors of various romances as exemplified by Smart Bitches, Trashy Book's HaBO feature. In any case, of the the books I've read, in addition to the two previously mentioned, the only other romance novel whose details are etched in my memory and I think of fondly is Judith McNaught's Perfect (1994), though I've not read it in quite some time. One of the reasons I was drawn by these romances is their covers. By roma...

Adapted by Ian Edginton from Robert Muchamore’s popular teen-spy series,  The Recruit: The Graphic Novel  (2013) stars James Choke, a preteen on a path to delinquency who is placed in foster care after his obese mother suddenly dies. The opportunity to transform his life comes about when he is recruited to train and become a member of CHERUB, a covert intelligence organization for children. The Recruit  is the first graphic novel I read that was not based on a story already known by me. Marvel's graphic adaptation of  Pride and Prejudice  is the only other graphic novel I had previously read. Familiar with the story, my focus in reading the graphic version was on whether a comprehensive version of the novel was represented. I was less interested (or familiar) with whether the artwork or layout were of good quality and did justice to the characters and story. I imagine that's what comic book/graphic novel aficionados focus on. I went to an NCTE conference a c...

Slow to act, especially when anything is trending super hard, I finally read R.J. Palacio's  Wonder  (2013). I freaking love this story! It is uplifting, if a bit saccharine, and gives me hope in humans' capacity for good. In all, the story's message is simple: Be kind. At this point, many are familiar with the story of August "Auggie" Pullman, a ten year-old whose facial deformities despite numerous operations have lead to his isolation with the rest of the world. That is, until his parents decide that middle school is the ideal time to literally expose Auggie to the world in hopes of jumpstarting his interaction with it. Auggie, of course, is terrified. However, he faces his new world bravely. As expected, Auggie's peers (and a few adults) struggle to see Auggie beyond what's on the surface. With time and perseverance on the part of Auggie, especially, his schoolmates learn to see him for the beautiful and resilient wonder that he is. Narrated by...

Flirting with Felicity  (2015) by Gerri Russell plays out like a Hallmark Channel movie in my mind, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sweet and light with a good-hearted female protagonist, I found the book to be a surprisingly enjoyable read. It is the story of Felicity who inherits Seattle's landmark Bancroft Hotel where she works as the hotel chef. Thing is, her inherence was a surprise: She hadn't known that the elderly hotel resident she had befriended was really the famed billionaire owner of the hotel and founder of Bancroft Industries. Conflict and romance arise when Blake, the elderly man's nephew, swaggers into town to take over the Bancroft. What follows is Blake's attempt at compromising: Spend a day in the other's world and then decide who is more worthy of the hotel. The story develops into what felt like a sweet, romantic stroll in the development of Felicity and Blake's courtship. We learn of the challenges that have shaped them and...

More than a story about football, Carl Deuker's  Payback Time  (2010) is really a story about identity and growing up. It tells the story of Daniel "Mitch" True, a Lincoln High School journalist seeking to make a name for himself during his senior year. Enter Angel Marichal, an enigmatic and NFL-talented transfer who shies away from his much-deserved spotlight. The search to find out Angel's secrets is the mystery that propels Daniel's investigative work. Through the experience, Dan learns that reporting the truth has consequences. In the end, the mystery is really the secondary story, for the true takeaway is in Daniel's transformation from an overweight, unconfident nerd seeking to redefine himself by making a splash as a reporter to being a young, fitter, and confident man coming into his own, satisfied with being a work in progress. Nicknamed "Mitch," short for the Michelin Man during his freshman year because of his weight,  Daniel chooses t...

My avoidance of Jenny Hubbard's Paper Covers Rock  (2011) stemmed from my negative associations with John Knowles' A Separate Peace  (1959) , a required read from my tenth grade honors English class in high school. I never read the book: I didn't have to because the teacher basically did all the work by summarizing it for us each day. What I do remember is that I couldn't relate and so didn't care. A few years ago I tried to re-read it and found myself as equally uninterested. Last year, while I looked for interesting titles to add to my classroom library, I came across Paper Covers Rock.  It piqued my interest but not enough to make it a must-read. And so, it sat in my classroom library for months until a student chose it for her independent reading and wrote a response that propelled me to download it immediately on my Kindle. Set in 1982 North Carolina (though I'm not fully sure why),  Paper Covers Rock  has similarities to  A Separate Peace:...

I achieved my reading goal for 2014, though I did not achieve my Cannonball Read 6 Challenge: a half cannonball to read and review 26 books. I read and reviewed only 18 titles because who knew writing 26 reviews would be such a challenge?! Despite not meeting my Cannonball Read 6 challenge goal, I am happy with the progress I made with reading in 2014. One that I am most happy with is that I read more than just romance novels, though as you'll see in the final list, romance made up quite a bit of my reading. Among my most enjoyable reads of 2014 were enlightening nonfiction titles  Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality  and  Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men , along with a couple of engaging novels by British authors:  Me Before You  by Jojo Moyes and  The Rosie Project  by Graeme Simsion, both of which I didn't review. To keep the ball rolling, so t...