Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was my book club’s selection for January and I was pretty excited to read it. With a World War II setting, Asian cultures, and forbidden love, I assumed it would be right up my alley. Well, you know what they say about assumptions… The novel opens with 50-something Henry Lee passing a crowd gathering outside a long-shuttered hotel in Seattle, the Panama Hotel. In the basement, the hotel’s new owners discovered hundreds of suitcases’ worth […]
Unexpectedly delightful
Like many of the books I read these days, I first heard of I Capture the Castle (1948) by Dodie Smith from a Cannonball Review (maybe Malin’s?). And I’m so glad I read it. It reminded me of a book with a big chunk of Anne of Green Gables mixed with a little Pride and Prejudice. It’s amazing that this book has just been sitting around, available, for over sixty years, and I had no idea. It’s similar to how I felt when I first […]
More love and hate and chocolate in the City of Lights
Sarah Lin hates Patrick Chevalier. She hates his golden good looks, his charming manner, the way he seems to be able to create magic with his bare hands and does absolutely everything flawlessly, without seeming to expend even the slightest bit of effort. She hates him because every time he brushes past her, or winks at her, or jokingly flirts with her, her heart beats faster and she has trouble breathing. He is her boss, and he is godlike, and he would never even look […]
Love and hate and chocolate in the City of Lights
3.5 stars Disclaimer! I was granted an ARC of this book by Kensington Books via Netgalley in return for a fair and honest review. Summer Corey hates Paris. It’s a city where she was frequently abandoned to be raised by ever changing nannies while her parents were globe trotting or negotiating international business deals, and it’s where she felt miserable, alone and outcast in boarding school from the age of thirteen. Having been forced back from her self-imposed exile, teaching on a small Pacific island, because her […]
There’s a big ol’ angel war brewing in New York
This is book 6 in the series, and as such, not the best place to start reading. If you’re really interested in the series, start at the beginning with Angels’ Blood. During a terrifying five minute time period, birds and angels start plummeting from the sky, leaving almost half of the archangel Raphael’s forces incapacitated. Shortly after, his consort, the Guild Hunter Elena, discovers a mysterious and highly infectious disease that impossibly enough only targets vampires. All over the world, other archangels are developing new and […]
I Pledge Allegiants
The now standard (twice is a standard, right?) disclaimer applies: as this is review of the third book in a trilogy, I’ll probably be talking about the first two. “Divergent is the next big thing in YA fiction!” they told me. “Go read something with another kickass female protagonist once you’re done with The Hunger Games! ” they encouraged. Let’s face it, even from the beginning this was just Veronica Roth smashing The Giver into the sorting hat and calling the resulting mess a trilogy. In Divergent, we’re introduced to […]