Books

Book 553: Dear Mr. Knightley – Katherine Reay

This book is what I was worried of when I found out these were categorized under clean romance and Christian fiction. It could’ve been A LOT worse, but it was just enough to start to put me off toward the end of the novel. That being said, I know there’s a HUGE market for both clean romance AND Christina fiction, so I can’t really fault it too much because it was just a little too preachy for me at some points. I’ll talk more about this later.

I’m still not sure where to categorize this for my own references. I think they’d be more accurately described as inspired by Austen rather than the traditional fan-fiction/fanfiction. Reay does a great job weaving in the stories and characters from Austen’s works but doesn’t necessarily use them as frameworks or even plot outlines. I’ll read the other’s books in her oeuvre that are Austen/Brontë connected because they’re such quick reads, but I’m not sure I’ll follow her into the future.

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Books

Book 551: The Austen Escape – Katherine Reay

I picked this up at the library after reading about it on Jane’s blog greenish bookshelf, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I do occasionally like a clean romance, but let’s face it I also enjoy some pretty trashy and raunchy novels/works. I also wasn’t 100% sure where this would rank on the romance scale with it often being categorized as Christina Fiction, but I did ultimately enjoy the book. I have also complained multiple times about the books where characters jump right in to sex and living together and the whole book happens in two months. So basically, I don’t know what I want in a romance novel. But seriously though, coat it in Austen or Brontë, no matter how tenuous, and I’ll be happy!

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Updates

April Recap 2018

It’s finally starting to feel like Spring again here in Boston. We really thought winter would never end and after the flooding last month we didn’t think the city would ever dry out either!

I’m still trying to figure out where April went, but with a big even at work, PAX East, finishing unpacking and the weather starting to clear up it’s no wonder it flew by.

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ARC, Books

Book 544: Jane Austen at Home – Lucy Worsley

With this, I’m crossing another review copy/ARC/galley off my list and with this I only have two trailing from last year and then on to the so many more I have from this year. I barely got it through before the one year mark. I got this back in July of 2017.* I’ve pretty much shut down unsolicited reviews until I get through them with the caveat that Jane Austen is a plus (I have two waiting) and authors I’ve previously read I actually have to think about it before I say no.

I requested this after I heard about the BBC series Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors, which I still haven’t watched, but thought it sounded interesting. I wanted to see this “new” take on Austen and her life and it was better than I thought it would be.

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Updates

March Recap 2018

That photo to the right pretty much sums up most of March for me.

We had more snow and rain this month than I swear we’ve had in all of last year. The worst part about it was that they were back to back nor’easters with three in three weeks and flooding happened within a mile of our house. If you can’t tell that photo is the ocean high enough up that we can’t make our usual walk around a big loop at Castle Island. There were other parts of the walkway that were flooded but that end bit was the most astounding – usually there’s 5-8 feet from the water to the top of the stone barriers which you can sort of see to the left. This is Head Island on Google Maps – we’re supposed to be able to walk all the way around Pleasure Bay.  Continue reading “March Recap 2018”