Books

Book 791: Fall Through Spring (Winter Ball #3) – Amy Lane

And this just goes to show what happens when you have to eat your words. At the end of my review for Summer Lessons, I said I wasn’t sure Dane and Clay needed their own story and Lane proved me wrong for the most part.

I still wonder how all of this happened when Mason and Terry were getting together, but I guess Dane did disappear for large swaths of the books. The one scene that really gets me though was when Skip called Clay out during a heart-to-heart when they were eating lunch with Mason. Clearly things were a lot further along at that point than it appeared in book two!

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Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

OMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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Books

Book 789: Summer Lessons (Winter Ball #2) – Amy Lane

After finishing Wolf Hall, I knew I was going to need a bit of a breather and where else to turn but the next book in a romance series I’d already started and the library just happened to have?

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first one, it had a lot more humor, but it also brought to light a few more things about Lane’s writing setting that I’m not so sure I’m a fan of. There’s just one aspect of these books that has forced me out of the story at key plot points and that is NEVER a good sign.

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Books

Book 787: Winter Ball (Winter Ball #1) – Amy Lane

Oh how the tides of turned, these days I’m like GIVE ME ALL THE MM Holiday Romances, whereas when I first read Lane’s Christmas Kitsch back in 2013 I was much more cautious and actively staying away from them. At last check as I write this, I have over 22 books tagged with holiday romance. HA!

I have no memory of that first book I read which mostly tells me that it wasn’t bad. Looking back over my review and my rating of three-stars just reiterates it was a middle of the road book with no major problems and I kind of feel that’s where this one ends up too: probably not the most memorable book, but nothing so egregiously wrong that I’ll remember it only for that.

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Books

Book 785: Lonely Hearts (Love Lessons #3) – Heidi Cullinan

What was missing from Heidi Cullinan’s Love Lessons series? A fake boyfriend romance, so of course that’s what she provided and I soaked up in the third installment Lonely Hearts.

Picking up immediately after Fever Pitch, Cullinan dives right into the story of Elijah, the jaded and toying with the lines of addiction and safe sex roommate of Aaron from the last book, and Baz, life of the party big man on campus, but hiding a soft inside with a heartbreaking backstory.

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