Tara Chevrestt's Blog, page 77

Churchill’s Angels (Churchill's Angels #1) by Ruby Jackson

You look at this cover and you think it's about a woman flying and thus will have lots of flying scenes and such... In that aspect, this is a very disappointing read. The heroine of the story only flies four times and each time it warrants a mere paragraph or two (except the last one). She doesn't join the ATA until the last 50 pages.

I thought perhaps her being a mechanic in WAAF would offer some interesting aviation stuff. No, it doesn't. There are no details about her training, testing, the planes, nothing mechanical whatsoever. What could have been incredibly interesting and insightful was just hardly mentioned. We know she's in training and did bad or good on some test or another...and that's it.

It's mostly just a girl coming of age during WWII in a small town, and then on the bases, meeting people, dealing with grief and friends dying, worrying about her brothers fighting overseas, falling in love--though you couldn't really tell--and just managing to free herself from a very clingy mother

It's about a town in England and how they get bombed constantly by the Germans on their way to London. Blackouts, fires, death. Rationing.

To be frank, there's nothing to distinguish this novel from any other WWII story out there, and I've read way more detailed novels about the ATA.

It's entertaining though and the heroine is likable, but the writing falls a tad flat. It's missing emotion. It's not a narrative that made me feel one with the characters--like I'm in their heads. I could get into the story and curious about what happened next, but I didn't think about the story or people in it when I set the book down. It doesn't stay with me.

There was also lots of odd parts where I think I was supposed to laugh, but I honestly didn't get the joke. Charlie and his daughter Charlie...Charlie says if he shouts, he won't know who's going to answer him??? HUH? If he and his daughter are both named Charlie and he shouts "Charlie", then she'd answer. Why would he answer himself? I'm sorry, but this went way over my head.

So... I think this is a good novel for anyone who wants to read about England during WWII and doesn't want to get bogged down in historical details. But it's more life on the homefront than what the ATA was like.

Funny moment I did understand and laugh at:

Heroine: "I can drive, and strip an engine and I've worked on an aeroplane."
WAAF recruiter: "'An me and Princess Elizabeth went riding our 'orses at the weekend. Frightfully lovely it was, an' all."

I got this on Amazon Vine.

For Every Solution, a Problem by Kerstin Gier, Erik J Macki (Translation)

This is a cute, funny read with a lesson within the pages. I mean, really, people are always saying you should be happy with what you have and la la la la, but at the same time, shouldn't those same people be happy with who we are?

If that doesn't make sense, it will once you read this book.

Gerri has hit rock bottom. Her family is ashamed of her; they won't even tell people she writes books for a living. Her mother nags her constantly. She can do nothing right in her mother's eyes, can't wear the right clothes, date the right men, set a plate properly, cannot compare to her sisters... This mother is a piece of work. Seriously.

A new company has taken over Gerri's publisher and is replacing all her medical romances with vampires. She may be out of a job.

In a nutshell, this Gerri girl has just been a doormat for so long and she's tired of it. She makes the most of her last week on earth and plans to kill herself with 37 sleeping pills...but a very annoying friend accidentally hinders her...and OMG, these brutally honest letters are already on their way to everyone's mailboxes...and these letters confess things she wouldn't dare confess if she wasn't planning to off herself.

There are crazy family members--the really devout, the nags, the rich, the belittlers. There are annoying friends, the repeaters, the ones with kids, the deluded. There are former online dates, the liar and Mr. 12 or 13 inch... I absolutely loved the heroine's sarcastic wit. There's a romance but it's def not the sole focus and comes rather late in the game.There's really a lot going on here. Summing it up is impossible. I will say I find it well written, engaging, humorous, and as I said above, there's a lesson. 

Quit trying to please others and just please yourself. You'll just go crazy otherwise.

Frankly I think the whole "write everyone a letter before I die and just get this out in the open" was a superb idea. The letters were some of the funniest parts. My only quibbles with this story are...1. The characters fell kind of flat, one dimensional. That could be something to do with translation though. There was a serious lack of emotion at times. 2. I would have preferred to the mother/daughter relationship resolved. I don't feel there was a resolution there at all. The mother was still downright nasty in the end. I was hoping that would change. I'd have liked the heroine to stand up to her the way she did her father. I felt some things needed saying.

Favorite part: And what on earth is this sentence supposed to mean: "Her breasts rose and fell breathlessly." Breathless breasts? HELLO?

I got this via Amazon Vine.

Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1) by Mark Chisnell

I was drawn to this because of two things: 1. If Dragon Tattoo’s Mikael Blomkvist and the Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen could have a love-child, she’d probably be a lot like Sam Blackett... and 2. The fact the woman on the cover is wielding a sword. It all just screams kick-ass heroine. Though strength comes in many forms, I totally need a sword-fighting female every now and then.


We have a young woman who wants to make it as a journalist...and she thinks she finally has that story that will put her on the map, get her in Nat Geo. She's accompanying three men to a legendary mountain called Powder Burn, where they will be the first ones to snowboard it. History being made. One month trekking and backpacking and fighting high altitude and snowstorms.

But she gets more than she bargained for when the team runs into two strange men wielding an equally strange sword.

This is flat out an adventure, a thrill ride. There's soldiers, lies, secrets, arguments, death, shooting, blizzards...wow.

And Sam starts a romance and is faced with some tough decisions. Help a man or not help a man? Leave someone behind? Tell a story or not? There's also tension with one of the boarders. I like this chick. I like how she thinks and sticks up for herself... "...a good smack is the only thing that some people understand.."

It was entertaining, no doubt. BUT...and here are my quibbles:

-I didn't find it all believable. I mean, really, three people on a snowboard?

-There's a serious lack of emotion.

-It needs another round of edits. I got an ARC on Netgalley, but it was placed on that site after the book was published so I wonder if the finished copy has these errors...there were enough to really irritate me, such as "Why are the Demagistani's so anxious..." and "I think they've been fighting the Demagistani's."

I loathe apostrophe abuse. I have no idea why there are apostrophes there. What do the Demagistanis own? That is how it should be spelled.

I also spotted things like family are and family have...and forbad instead of forbade. There was an error on every page. Again, these MAY have been fixed later.

-The ending did not satisfactorily explain everything. I was confused and wondering about many things. It just didn't tie up very well for me. Like, these people claim they will not harm others, not even to regain their country from a Taliban-like group of people...yet they have an army that runs around with rifles and shoots at suspected CIA agents??? Um...like, ok. So the army isn't Buddhist and can run around shoot people for you, right? You just can't shoot them yourself...but why not send this army to get your country back?

Things just didn't make sense to me. However, it's a good yarn and despite the fact I have to say the cover is misleading--this chick doesn't really wield a sword though she does utilize a rifle--it is enjoyable.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion: A Novel by Fannie Flagg

I have so many good things to say about this...I'm just going to skim over the plotline real quick...


Sookie is almost 60 years old, with the mother from hell. While she wasn't physically abused, she was emotionally and mentally put down all her life. She's always been pressured into being the perfect Simmons, into going to this school, doing this or that, and now her life revolves around taking care of the old ungrateful hag.

And one day she finds out she was never a Simmons at all, so what was all that crap?

She goes on a quest to find the truth and in the process, find herself. Who is she really? And hey, it's never too late to find yourself, to throw off family and society shackles and be YOU.

The store goes back and forth between present-day Sookie and a World War II story surrounding Fransi, a Polish girl who not only runs an all-girls filling station for a while, but becomes a WASP, Women's Air Service Pilots. And I love my women in aviation in books!!! There's just enough about the WASP to educate anyone not familiar with them.

This book didn't disappoint. I laughed uproariously many times, shook my head at others, and even found myself dabbing my eyes at one point.

I think it's important for a book to either 1. Make me laugh. 2. Make me think hard about something or have  a moral. or 3. Teach me something. Otherwise, why read it? You can have your fluff. I'll take something with a bit more substance, thank you.

LOL moment (one of many): The flight instructor who for reasons I won't reveal had to stay seated in the plane after landing until he was privately ensconced, place and all, in a hangar. OMG!!! Too funny!

Theme that spoke to me a deeper level: I'm just going to borrow a quote from the story 'cause it says it so much better than I can. "Being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome."

Something I learned: In the forties, Texaco had a White Patrol, a group of nurses who drove around in a white Chevrolet and inspected all the gas stations' bathrooms. A White Cross of Cleanliness was awarded to those worthy and clean enough. Phillip's followed with Highway Hostesses, the same thing, but in cream-colored vehicles with green fenders and 66 on the doors. I found these old tidbits fascinating.

Conclusion: A book well-worth your time. Loved every bit of it.

My Ever-Growing TBR Pile 10/26/2013

Spotted on NG and on my wishlist: The Girl in the Yellow Vest by Loretta Hill. I haven't read the first two yet, but I have one of them in paperback. Just gotta get the review required ones out of the way first. I love that her books are women in male-dominated fields.


Emily Woods counts cracks for a living. Concrete cracks. So when her long-term boyfriend dumps her, she decides it’s time for a change of scenery. Her best friend, Will, suggests joining his construction team in Queensland. Working next door to the Great Barrier Reef seems like just the sort of adventure she needs to reboot her life…until she realises that Will is not the person she thought he was.

Charlotte Templeton is frustrated with the lack of respect FIFO workers have for her seaside resort. But picking a fight with their tyrannical project manager, Mark Crawford, seems to lead to more complications than resolutions. The man is too pompous, too rude, and too damned good looking.

As both women strive to protect their dreams and achieve their goals, they discover that secrets will come out, loyalty often hurts, and sometimes the perfect man is the wrong one.

***
*Check Amazon to see if the following two are still free. I believe I downloaded these Wednesday, so no telling.* FREEBIES on Kindle this last week that caught my attention: Better Days to Come by Jenny Telfer Chaplin. Glasgow, 1820.
With her mother dead and her father a hopeless drunk, Etta Gorton slaves away every day in a factory to feed her younger siblings.

Forced to stand on her own two feet she has grown up fiercely independent.

So she finds it hard to fit in with a Scotland that sees women as subservient to men.

In a moment of anger she declares she will belong to ‘no man’. And this angry outburst leads to her being stalked and assaulted by one of the men she challenged.

Disgusted with her body and left with the growing shame of an unwanted pregnancy she is tempted to end it all by jumping into the River Clyde.

But as she gazes into the water she catches a glimpse of Better Days to Come…

Can Etta push past the limitations of her sex to create a new life for herself?

Or is she too far ahead of her time?
***
And this one: The Lost Hearts by Maya Wood. The year 1937 hasn’t been very kind to Alexis Scott. A bookish, Harvard anthropology student, she’s dodged mass scrutiny by hiding in the Boston Society of Natural History for the last seven years. Sure, she’s been lonely. But at least life in the margins is familiar, even comfortable. And what about Philip? Handsome, charming, obscenely rich, he’s the only man who’s ever accepted her eccentricities, even if she can’t quite figure him out. These are the convincing inflections of uncertainty as Alexis boards the Oceanic, a transatlantic ship that will take her to the remote island of New Guinea where she is to locate a lost tribe.
On the island, Alexis hires a guide to lead her through the nearly impenetrable jungle of New Guinea. Trevor McFadden isn’t exactly the ideal travel companion she needs on this expedition. He might be attractive in a nail-biting, visceral kind of way, but he’s short-tempered, coarse, and frequently cruel. So why does he get under her skin? Trevor pushes, and Alexis pushes back as they navigate the sodden terrain of the southern Highlands, replete with humorous cultural gaffes, first contact with insulated tribes, treacherous encounters with wildlife, and sinister characters.

As harrowing as it is poignant, The Lost Hearts is a tale of romance and perseverance in the face of self-doubt. It’s a story for anyone who’s ever been given the chance to live up to their wildest dreams.

***On my wishlist is the following trilogy about three triplets, all pilots:

Born to Fly, Logan's Lady, and Loving Carlie by Becky Barker. I spotted these on Amazon.


Sharla Prescott is a pilot dedicated to her profession. She doesn't want any man telling her she has to curtail her career to be a wife and lover. When she meets Reed Connors, a man who appreciates her independent nature and has no desire to change her ways, things get very steamy very quickly. Neither of them is interested in a serious, long-term commitment. But when they face death together suddenly there are no more rules and nothing will ever be the same again...

Logan Bradford was everything Dee Prescott wanted in a man. He was a successful, independent rancher, a virile, sensitive lover and a true romantic. They shared a brief, passionate affair until Dee told him of her commitment to the family's air charter service. He walked away and left her emotionally wounded.

She didn't think she could ever forgive him, but then she learned his tragic secret. His actions suddenly made sense, and she realized he needed her more than she'd thought possible. Dee vowed to help him overcome his past and show him that with a love like theirs...the sky's the limit.

Carlie is a pilot for her family's air charter service based on their Virginia plantation. She's wildly attracted to her ex-brother-in-law, but her painful teenage marriage with his brother left her wounded and wary.

Michael Trehearn loved Carlie long before he introduced her to his big brother. It tore him apart when they married and hurt him even more to learn of his brother's abusive behavior. Years later, he hires on with the Prescott's Air Charter service to win her back. First, he needs to convince her it's safe to love again, and that he can be trusted with her heart.

An Incurable Insanity Exotic Tour. Giveaway & Recipe!

On Tour with Prism Book Tours
“Chai?”

“Huh? Yes please with just a pinch of sugar. Thanks!” He took the cup from her hands, careful not to touch her fingers. - An Incurable Insanity

A cup of this refreshing brew served piping hot, awakens the senses and drives the blues away.

Indian tea or Chai pronounced Ch-aay, is black tea prepared with milk, perhaps to disguise the bitterness of the tea and herbal additives (basil, cinnamon, liquorice,pepper, cloves, star anise) which are considered medicinal. Additives such as cardamom, ginger and mint add a pleasant flavor while also having considerable medicinal value as per traditional Indian medicine called Ayurveda.

Ginger: This aromatic, pungent and spicy root is has a long tradition of being very effective in alleviating symptoms of gastrointestinal distress. In herbal medicine, ginger is regarded as an excellent carminative (a substance which promotes the elimination of intestinal gas) and intestinal spasmolytic (a substance which relaxes and soothes the intestinal tract). Modern scientific research has revealed that ginger possesses numerous therapeutic properties including antioxidant effects, an ability to inhibit the formation of inflammatory compounds, and direct anti-inflammatory effects. It is used in Asian stir fry and many vegetable and fruit dishes. It is also used in making ginger tea.
Adrak wali chai (Ginger tea) 

“Madam here’s your adrak wali special chai!” he announced, presenting her with a steaming cup of the pungent ginger-flavored brew, his fingers deliberately brushing hers this time.- An Incurable Insanity.

Water – 1 cupFresh Ginger – 1 inch piece grated (depends on how much flavor you like)Black (Orange Pekoe) Loose leaf Tea – 1 teaspoonSugar – to taste
Procedure:Boil water with ginger in a pan. Let it boil until you get the perfect aroma of ginger. Add sugar and tea and bring to boil. Add milk, bring to boil. Reduce heat and let simmer 1-2 minutes. Strain the tea and serve hot.
Join the #Talk daily on Simi's Facebook as she walks us through the beautiful backdrop to her amazing book... 

An Incurable Insanity

by Simi K Rao

Paperback, eBook, 376 pages

Published October 8, 2013 by Tate Publishing

Her heart fluttered when she heard the sound of the key turn in the lock. She quickly adjusted her maroon silk sari with the yellow border, the one that had caught his eye, and waited eagerly for his footsteps.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... Yes, exactly seven steps before he stopped, hesitated for a few moments, then removed his shoes one by one and arranged them neatly side by side on the shoe rack.

She smiled. He had been mindful of taking his shoes off every day now. "I am not used to it, but I will if you want me to. It's probably a good thing to do anyway."

As he settled down, he would pick up the TV remote and, without looking at her, would say in his smooth baritone, "So how did you spend your day, anything interesting?"

Shaan Ahuja found himself bowing to tradition and agreeing to an arranged marriage to the beautiful Ruhi Sharma. He went through the motions but had no intention of carrying through on his vows. His last foray into matters of the heart with an American girl had left him scarred and unwilling to try again. Thoroughly disillusioned and disgruntled he wasted no time in making his intentions clear to Ruhi on their wedding night. But, he was completely unprepared for what his new wife had in mind.

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* Excerpt *
Simi K. Rao was born in India and has been living in the United States for several years. The inspiration for An Incurable Insanity came from what she has seen transpire among and within the immigrant community. Some of the experiences included are her own; some have been garnered from friends and casual conversations with acquaintances...
I am a physician–and to many I may appear serious and solitary. But once people get to know me better, they often think that I am frank, down to earth, with quite a quirky sense of humor. And that is what I bring to my writing—read and you shall see.

I was born in the dead center of India, but had the privilege of spending time both in the north and south. Therefore I have been able to sample and absorb to some extent the vastly diverse cultures and languages of both these regions (the very quality that imparts tremendous richness to our country’s heritage,) —a phenomenon perhaps not seen anywhere else in the world.



After immigrating to the United States in my early twenties and spending several years in this country, whenever I travel back to my homeland now, I find that I appreciate my roots a lot more. Still there is so much to see and learn, that a lifetime won’t suffice.



A Casual Fling with the Keyboard Goodreads * Facebook * Twitter


Giveaway:



$100 Gift Card to Amazon

5 eCopies of An Incurable Insanity



October 18 - November 11, 2013. International giveaway. Must be able to download winnings. Must be 18 to enter. See Rafflecopter for additional restrictions.



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Starstruck in Seattle by Juliet Madison

The problem with wowing your audience with an amazing book is your readers will expect that kind of writing and story from you all the time. Having loved Fast Forward and liked I Dream of Johnny, I was a tad disappointed with this one. I liked it, but not near as much.

As Ms. Madison has been dubbed the "Queen of RoMagic Comedy"...I expected to laugh out loud more than once. I did with Fast Foward, numerous times. I didn't find anything funny about this one though. It's cute, don't get me wrong; just doesn't have a big impact on me. It won't stay with me.

In a nutshell: a small-time actress has a huge crush on a big-time co-star, but he's a bit of a lady's man... Is her star-crush blinding her to other possibilities? An angel comes down to try to fix things by tugging on her ear and chewing her fingernails.

The angel business was cute. She even has an aPhone. (Angel phone).

I appreciated the theme/moral. It's good food for thought. Especially here:

"...you will know you are with your soulmate when you can simply be yourself. Your soulmate will bring the best out in you. They will enhance the beauty and uniqueness already there."

I don't normally have quibbles with novellas. Sometimes it's all I have time for. BUT I think the whole Angel thing could have been expanded some and it could have become funnier as a result.

I received this via Netgalley.

Strong is Sexy Heroine of the Week: Janel Canton

Book: A First Love Never Dies
Author: Margaret Taylor
Heroine: Janel Canton


 Janel Canton is Strong and Sexy for several reasons. First and foremost is her ability to survive on wits alone. All through High School, Janel was bullied mercilessly by her peers. She was taunted and beaten at every turn but managed to survive with her wits intact and joined the Government right after graduation. As an analyst her first assignment was to correlate and catalogue the number of women disappearing in the U.S. She discovered a pattern but was too good at her job and ended up being kidnapped from Earth and sold in the Flesh Markets of the Jaikalor Consortium.
She escaped and again survived the transition from owned property to free woman on her wits alone. Since then, she’s worked her way up to command a Long Hauler for the group known as Spi-Corp and along with some of her fellow Captains has created a Space Railroad of sorts that ferries rescued Human women wherever they wish to go in the Great and Grand Universe.
Blurb: Janel Canton must be pregnant by the time Fleet Commander Pearson Acto catches up to her again and only one man will do for that. Her one true love, sexy Montana Sheriff Jake Reeves. But returning to Earth she finds he's still mourning his dead wife and has become very comfortable in the small-town life. Will introducing him to reality of the Universe be enough for him to move on to a new life?

Sheriff Jake Reeves never thought the nerdy girl he and his cronies picked on in High School would someday become a star ship captain capable of holding her own in just about any situation. But when he meets up with Janel again at their 20 year reunion, that's exactly what he finds! Gone is the nerdy little mouse that never fought back. In it's place, is a rough and tumble, no holds barred, drop-dead gorgeous woman who he's going to have one hell of a time not falling in love with...
Excerpt:They entered one of the far holds and she managed to shock him yet again. It looked like any of the other cargo areas he’d seen so far, but she walked over and pressed a hidden button. The farthest wall melted, fizzling away right in front of his eyes. Behind it was a group of women, four in all, seated around a table. They looked up, eyes going wide with fear until Janel spoke. “Easy girls, this is the man I was telling you about.”

They visibly relaxed and a tall, lanky blonde offered him a tentative smile. “Hi.”

She was beautiful, by any standards, and he could certainly see why the Consortium would have wanted her. At least 5’10”, the woman had high cheekbones, soft, porcelain white youthful skin and bright green eyes. 

He looked over the rest of the group. Two of the others were brunettes, tall like the first and the fourth was a creamy skinned African American. Janel took the initiative and made the introductions.

“Jake, this is Terry, Jenna, Sally and Alexia,” she said, indicating each in turn.

Terry was the blonde, Jenna and Sally the brunettes, leaving the African American, Alexia. The four women gave him tentative waves and he turned to Janel. “Where did they come from?”

She smiled, moving into the newly revealed room. She began picking up scattered bits of clothing from the floor. “They boarded in Penom,” she said, bundling the tattered remains under one arm as she went. “My sister ship, the Urmish rescued them from a caravan near the Tenturan system. They couldn’t make Alcantian space for any plausible reason, so,” she let the indication hang in the air. She stepped back to the side wall. “You girls get some rest. You’ll be safe soon.”

Now, everything made sense. Why she hadn’t been able to stay on Earth, why she’d been forced to bring him along, beyond just the healing of his shoulder!

“You had to meet them, didn’t you?”

She smiled and nodded slowly. “Yes. The Urmish had to continue on and the only time we could meet in Penom without raising any eyebrows, was when we did.”

She pressed the button on the wall and the holograph reappeared. Janel wrapped the bundle tighter under her arm and headed out of the hold. “I wanted you to see them Jake because I have a favor to ask.”

He stopped, turning her to face him as he spoke. “You want me to see the safely to Earth right?”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “No, the Alcantian’s will do that. What I want from you is to help them once you get home to find their families and re-acclimate to Earth.”

“But can’t you just wipe their memories? Like you would have done to me?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not the way we typically do things. I want them to remember, they need to remember. They’ve had enough alterations done already. Help them, when you get back, come up with plausible explanations for their disappearances. Give them back the lives that were taken if you can. If you can’t, help them to build new ones.”

With that said, she turned and walked away, leaving him standing there. He didn’t follow. He needed a moment to assimilate it all.

Janel was turning out to be an entirely different person than he’d originally thought. Despite her words of a couple of days ago, she wasn’t bitter in the slightest about her youth. No, she was a much stronger, much better person than he’d given her credit for. She was risking her life, and from the sounds of it, her very soul to help women like the ones he’d just seen. Maybe not with every cargo run she made, but certainly when it counted the most.

He wondered if he’d have had the strength to survive what she had. Would he have been able to cope? Been able to deal with having his mind fucked with, having his entire life erased? He’d had a good, happy one – at least until Stella’s death – and the thought of losing those memories, losing those happy times made him shudder.

Janel’s early years hadn’t been so pleasant. No thanks to him, mind you, but still, she had wanted it back; had fought so hard against the alterations to her personality that it had only taken his face to break through it.His face…

Wow…that was a big chunk of humility to swallow! She’d said it was only a close resemblance, but still, it was a pill that thumped its way down his throat instead of sliding smoothly.



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Growing to Love That Unlikable Character: A Guest Post With Lacey Wolfe

Please welcome one of my favorite ladies, Lacey Wolfe, as she talks about her new release and the challenge of writing a heroine she knew people wouldn't like so much. But, hey, if you can write a heroine people hate so passionately, you know they've been sucked into the story... Thanks for sharing this with us, Lacey.
Thank you, Tara, for having me on your blog today. It’s been a few weeks now since my latest release Growing Love went live on eBookshelves. Of course, I’ve peeked at some reviews. So far a majority of them have said the same thing: they dislike Diane, the heroine of the story, but love Matt who is the hero.
Now, you might be thinking this would be devastating to me, but really, it isn’t. I wrote her and spent many, many hours with her! I had to stay true to her character. If someone has read my series from the start, then they met Diane in a previous book Not Just Friends . While I tried to soften Diane up as the book went along and hopefully explain why she is the way she is, I couldn’t just make her a different person altogether. That would’ve been inconsistent between books. And when Diane shows up again in another story as a side character, yup, she’ll still be Diane. Sigh, I feel bad for the woman who tries to date Diane’s brother Cody.
Why has Diane been unlikable? She’s done a few questionable things in her past and in this story she’s got to redeem herself. And she’s trying her hardest before her son is born. As the writer, I am really hoping that Diane has done this in the readers' eyes before they reach the end.
 Personally, I found Diane a very strong character. She fights for things a lot. She knows what she wants. And she sure as heck is not going to be walked all over. She isn’t afraid to give a man an ultimatum either. But when Diane loves, she loves with everything in her.Tell me, have you ever read a character who absolutely annoyed you, but at the same time you understood and liked?
About Growing Love Resigned to raising her baby without the father, Diane has everything figured out—a substitute dad in place, a support system ready, and a new home to move into—at least until the day he knocks on her door.Matt tried to let Diane go, tried to forget that she was carrying his child, but an ultrasound picture brings his walls tumbling down. He can’t stay away any longer. But he hasn’t always been perfect. Diane and he share a past full of deceit and lies and now they have only nine months to undo it all and become responsible adults. It’s not only about them anymore.
With complications in her pregnancy, Diane is forced to move back to Brookfield to be under the care of her family. All she has to do is keep her feelings for Matt in check and she can stick to her original plan—raise the baby with Tom.But it seems Matt has a few choice words about that…
Buy LinksAmazon | Nook | All Romance | KoboI love connecting with my readers. You can find all the links to connect with me on my website:

www.laceywolfe.com

Banquet of Lies by Michelle Diener

This has to be my favorite Diener book and it's the third one I've read. I still have more to go...and I sincerely hope there is a sequel to this, perhaps a series. I sense Duke Wittaker may have a story. What an intriguing man.

But...let's talk about this one. I love the heroine. She doesn't crumble to pieces after witnessing her father's murder. No... Instead, she takes top-secret correspondence and attempts to find the man she needs to deliver it to, all the while posing as a chef, fighting with a pompous butler, falling for the lord of the house, and trying to keep an eye on her former home to find "the shadow" who killed him.

OH--and did I mention she demanded wages equal to a man's? LOVE it!

The story reads very much as a cat-and-mouse thing, as she is constantly running from the bad guys and scampering here and there to find answers, always with someone on her tail...but it's suspenseful with the most intriguing cast of characters from the nearly starving Mavis to the maid that looks like a viking to the whores she meets up with in prison. There's never a dull moment.

I'd like to add that a woman saves the day. *smirks*

The writing is fabulous, not overwordy or hard to follow. Though there's a large cast of characters, the reader doesn't feel overwhelmed with them. That's hard to do. I am left with some questions. How did she collect her stuff before heading to her cooking position? What became of the butler? But I must say, I loved getting lost in this story.

The romance is slow--which is should be. I get tired of these insta-love stories. This was a refreshing change, and I adored the hero, something else that was well done. No alpha male/jackass.

Favorite quote: "Never trust a womanhater, Lord Aldridge. There is something wrong with a person who hates half the human race."

I received this from Edelweiss.