Chloe’s Lunar New Year. by Lily Lamotte
I was hungry when I read two recent picture books about food (and family). Did this influence my taste in the books? No, because when I am hungry, I tend not to like a book, but I did the two I read. The second book (the first was a tasty treat about dim sum) was Chloe’s Lunar New Year. Here we leave the hustle and bustle of a restaurant behind and Lily Lamotte takes us into the family home. Here, Chloe is excited for the […]
Duke, Actually by Jenny Holiday
CBR14 Bingo: Holiday (a Christmas romance written by an author called Holiday – boom!) Maximillian “Max” von Hansburg, popularly known in the tabloids worldwide as “the Depraved Duke”, is in fact, merely a baron. He is the eldest son and heir to the Duke of Aquilla, however, and he doesn’t really mind his playboy reputation very much. While in New York to fulfill family obligations and meet a prospective bride that his parents might approve of, he decides to have some fun instead and contacts […]
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
I feel like The Alchemist was a ship that I missed when it first sailed many years ago- it was such a sensation that tabloids showed all sorts of famous people (Bill Clinton!) reading it and it was optioned for an (as yet unmade) film. So here I am, reading it only 30 years late. The Alchemist is a very slim novel, just over 150 generously spaced pages. It follows Santiago, a shepherd boy from Andalusia who follows his dream of finding treasure under the […]
A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
I’m the sort of person who loves ridiculous holiday romcoms and wishes they contained more romantic content. A Merry Little Meet Cute should have been aces for me: a steamy plus-size holiday rom-com about an adult film star who is semi-accidentally cast as a lead in a family-friendly Christmas movie, and the former bad-boy pop star co-star she falls in love with. This has potential! The basic plot builds on that potential. We have Bee Hobbes, a successful career as a plus-size adult film star […]
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham
CBR Bingo 14 – Holiday This book was on the shelf on my AirBnb this past week when I really needed something, not very taxing, to read and my books were failing me. I read this on vacation so if I liked it more than I might otherwise, blame that. I picked this up, had no clue what it was going to be about, and loved every stupid second of it. The novel begins with a just expert consulting group group spying on a man […]
Hello, Tree by Alistair Heim
cbr14bingo Holiday Level 1 & 2 Ho Ho Ho! And big barrel of trouble! Fox in this rhyming Christmas tail, um…tale is a modern-day Grinch. Only after his heart grew, but he is stealing… (No, really! It makes sense really, just read this picture book!) Hello, Tree by Alistair Heim is a holiday book through and through. It has holiday images on the cover, the story is a rhyming text about all the wonderful holiday things seen in the town. The text itself is terribly […]
