Jane Litte's Blog, page 10

REVIEW: The Wedding People by Alison Espach

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of co...

Open Thread for Readers for August 2024

Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general? Post about it here!

REVIEW: The Hidden Storyteller by Mandy Robotham

The war is over. But there are still secrets to be found amidst the ashes . . .

Hamburg, 1946

The war is over, and Germany is in ruins. Posted to an Allied-run Hamburg, reporter Georgie Young returns to the country she fled seven years prior – at the onset of the conflict – to find it unrecognisable.

Amongst the stark horrors of a bombed-out city crumbling under the weight of millions of displaced souls, she discovers pockets of warmth: a violinist playing amidst the wreckage, couples dancing ...

Review: Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque

From the acclaimed author of All Quiet on the Western Front comes Three Comrades, a harrowing novel that follows a group of friends as they cope with upheaval in Germany between World Wars I and II.
 
The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around the...

REVIEW: Fairest of the Fayre by Sheri Cobb South

Penelope Fayre, nineteen years old and the belle of the Season, knows she must marry money, but she’d hoped to find a man she could love for his personality as well as his purse. Now the Season is drawing to a close, and if such a man exists, he has been keeping himself well-hidden. Painfully aware of having failed her family, Penelope makes a bargain with herself: She will accept the next eligible offer she receives, but first, she’ll make the most of her freedom by stealing away to Bartholom...

REVIEW: Fall With Me by Becka Mack

Content warning: discussion of the past death of a child from an allergic reaction

Dear Becka Mack,

I loved Consider Me when it came out and have read and enjoyed the other books in the Playing For Keeps series to one degree or another, so I was happy to pick up Fall With Me.

Jaxon Riley is a player (in all senses of the word) traded to the Vancouver Vipers and “adopted” by teammates Carter, Emmett, Garrett and Adam. He’s been traded by various teams over the years and, based on his experience,...

REVIEW: Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy....

REVIEW: Murder at the White Palace : A Sparks & Bainbridge Mystery by Allison Montclair

In post-WWII London, the matchmakers of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are involved in yet another murder.

In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous—and never discussed—past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic fami...

REVIEW: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

Jockeying navigator clans guide spaceships through the Hollows: an area of space populated by the mysterious but deadly creatures known as Tanglers. When a Tangler escapes the Hollows for the first time in living memory, each clan must send a representative to help capture it—but the mission may be doomed and the hearts of two clan juniors may be in danger too.

Viet Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is a problem when the Rooster clan sends her on the mission against her will, for...

REVIEW: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

This entry, the eighth in the Lady Sherlock series, begins with Charlotte Holmes being interrogated in her London hotel room by recently unretired Chief Inspector John Talbot and his erstwhile protege Inspector Treadles. Treadles is ambivalent – he is an ally (and perhaps after a long period of ambivalence, a friend) of Charlotte/Sherlock, and so he’s less thrilled than he would normally be to be working again with the Chief Inspector.

Charlotte, as usual, seems to be calm and unperturbed by th...