THE FOUR WINDS by Kristin Hannah - READ IN February 2021 - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

GR's says:   Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression.

Lindsay says: The Great Depression. I knew very little about this time in our history prior to reading this book. This novel provides an intimate look into what it was like for farmers to live through this uncertain and devastating time. Farmers forced to sell or give up land to survive. People and animals starving to death. Dust storms demolishing farms and homes. The intensity of the atmosphere within these pages had me completely engrossed and feeling as though I was right there with the characters. The author does a phenomenal job pulling the reader deep into this harrowing and heartbreaking time. My heart ached while reading.

Ceecee says:  This is an amazing book which is so well written that the descriptions almost make you taste the dust, feel the searing heat on your back and ache in your bones with tiredness. The characters are excellent, I love the growing bond between Elsa and Rosa who becomes the mother Elsa never has as her own is a callous cold fish and how firebrand Loreda takes up the mantle of these ‘Joan of Arc’ heroes. The storytelling is firmly set in its historical context and this poignant, emotional and soaring tale seems especially relevant as we fight a different battle against the ravages of the Covid 19 pandemic. The story is shocking in places, the treatment of the dust bowl migrant workers shakes you to the core, it’s certainly a tear jerker but it also makes you angry at the prejudice and the card stacking against them. The novel is unrelenting and brutally hard, the dust bowl is a Saharan hell on earth and existence in California is hand to mouth soul crushing poverty. However, it’s also a story of deep love and that’s the message I will take from this superbly told story.

Marilyn says: The Four Winds could be described as sad and even depressing. Throughout the story, though, there remained a glimmer of hope, strength and resilience that denied it to be labeled that way for me. The characters were strong, faced hard choices but never lost their courage, hope or love for one another.

28 SUMMERS by Elin Hildebrand - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ - READ IN February 2021

 

GR's Says:  By the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Summer of '69: Their secret love affair has lasted for decades -- but this could be the summer that changes everything.

When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

Jake is willing to make the compromises necessary to explore the possibility of a relationship. Promising instead, same time, next year, no matter what.

28 Summers is a tumultuous story you can’t help but get swept up in and a perfect read I highly recommend it.

 If you can't get past the moral aspect for a fiction book your experience may not be the same. I jumped that hurdle and then dove right into this one and I really enjoyed it.

I laughed I cried and I just loved this book.  ♥

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Feels Like Falling by Kristy Woodson Harvey - Read in .... January 2021 ❤❤❤❤

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Goodreads says: =

It's summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin' is easy. Unless, that is, you've just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy. Diana Harrington's summer isn't off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house with only a worn-out Impala for a bed. Lucky for her, Gray has an empty guest house and a very guilty conscience. With Gray's kindness, Diana's tide begins to turn. But when her first love returns, every secret from her past seems to resurface all at once. And, as Gray begins to blaze a new trail, she discovers, with Diana's help, that what she envisioned as her perfect life may not be what she wants at all

*The Bookish Libra* says=

Grey Howard is going through a messy and seemingly never ending divorce where her ex-husband, even though he cheated on her, is still trying to take half of the company she has built from the ground up as part of the divorce settlement.  Gray refuses to cave so they’re basically at a stand-off, with their 8-year-old son, Wagner, caught in the middle.  Our second protagonist, Diana Harrington, is also going through a messy breakup and, because her deadbeat of an ex gambled away all her money, is also currently living in her car.  When the two women cross paths and Gray accidentally gets Diana fired from her job, they have no idea that their lives are about to become intertwined in ways they never could have anticipated from that first meeting.

Both Diana and Gray are smart and resourceful women who are going through a rough patch and who are used to being completely independent.  What they start to learn the better they get to know each other, however, is that it’s okay to lean on others sometimes. You don’t always have to go it alone.  The friendship and the sense of sisterhood that grew between Diana and Gray throughout the book kept a smile on my face the entire time I was reading.

I also adored the secondary characters that made up the rest of Gray’s found family.  Her best friend Marcy and her gem of an assistant, Trey, really rounded out Gray’s support system and I loved that they pulled Diana in with warm and welcoming arms as well.  The banter between this foursome had me chuckling to myself every time they appeared on the page together.

There are also some weightier topics in Feels Like Falling.  There are some real family issues with sisters who have gone off the rails, mother-daughter issues, plus those dramatic breakups I already touched on. Harvey gives a very realistic portrait of just how messy and complicated life can be sometimes, which makes that support group of Gray’s (and now Diana’s as well) all the more important.

For those who love a bit of romance, Feels Like Falling has that too. There’s a fun summer fling that’s maybe more than a fling, and there’s also my favorite romance trope, a second chance romance.  Both romances are very well written and felt completely authentic, and yes, I was rooting for them

THE SCHOLAR by Dervla McTiernan - ❤❤❤❤ - Read in January 2021

“The Scholar” by Dervla McTiernan is the second book in the DS Cormac Reilly series, 

Goodreads Says:

When DS Cormac Reilly’s girlfriend Emma stumbles across the victim of a hit and run early one morning, he is first on the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID, that of Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland’s most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy – it has funded Emma’s own ground-breaking research. The investigation into Carline’s death promises to be high profile and high pressure.

As Cormac investigates, evidence mounts that the death is linked to a Darcy laboratory and, increasingly, to Emma herself. Cormac is sure she couldn’t be involved, but how well does he really know her? After all, this isn’t the first time Emma’s been accused of murder...

 I also appreciated how Cormac wrestled with being protective of Emma while trying to solve the case. He mulled over whether his relationship with her could cause a bias in his investigation. Again, this felt real and believable.

An enjoyable book and I look forward to the next book in the series.

CAMINO ISLAND #2 by John Grisham ♥♥♥♥♥

 

♥♥♥♥♥  (Camino Island #2) by John Grisham (Goodreads Author)

 Welcome back to Camino Island, where anything can happen—even a murder in the midst of a hurricane, which might prove to be the perfect crime . . .

Just as Bruce Cable’s Bay Books is preparing for the return of bestselling author Mercer Mann, Hurricane Leo veers from its predicted course and heads straight for the island. Florida’s governor orders a mandatory evacuation, and most residents board up their houses and flee to the mainland, but Bruce decides to stay and ride out the storm.

The hurricane is devastating: homes and condos are leveled, hotels and storefronts ruined, streets flooded, and a dozen people lose their lives. One of the apparent victims is Nelson Kerr, a friend of Bruce’s and an author of thrillers. But the nature of Nelson’s injuries suggests that the storm wasn’t the cause of his death: He has suffered several suspicious blows to the head.

Who would want Nelson dead? The local police are overwhelmed in the aftermath of the storm and ill equipped to handle the case. Bruce begins to wonder if the shady characters in Nelson’s novels might be more real than fictional. And somewhere on Nelson’s computer is the manuscript of his new novel. Could the key to the case be right there—in black and white? As Bruce starts to investigate, what he discovers between the lines is more shocking than any of Nelson’s plot twists—and far more dangerous. 

This is not a legal thriller, but a murder mystery set on Camino Island. It is the second book in this series. 

Lisa says:  John Grisham knocks it out of the park once again. CAMINO WINDS is a perfect read. The writing is seamless, the characters are intriguing and the story is riveting.  I particularly liked Bruce Cable’s intriguing character and the repartee he had with his friends. I appreciated the effort Bruce’s and his friends took to ensure that the cops treated Nelson’s death as a murder and not just as a result of the Hurricane.  

THE LOST AND FOUND BOOKSHOP by Susan Wiggs ♥♥♥♥

 

♥♥♥♥     In this thought-provoking, wise and emotionally rich novel, New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs explores the meaning of happiness, trust, and faith in oneself as she asks the question, "If you had to start over, what would you do and who would you be?"

Goodreads Says: There is a book for everything . . .

Somewhere in the vast Library of the Universe, as Natalie thought of it, there was a book that embodied exactly the things she was worrying about.

In the wake of a shocking tragedy, Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming but financially strapped bookshop in San Francisco. She also becomes caretaker for her ailing grandfather Andrew, her only living relative—not counting her scoundrel father.

But the gruff, deeply kind Andrew has begun displaying signs of decline. Natalie thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted living facility to ensure the care he needs. To pay for it, she plans to close the bookstore and sell the derelict but valuable building on historic Perdita Street, which is in need of constant fixing. There’s only one problem–Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to sell. Natalie adores her grandfather; she’ll do whatever it takes to make his final years happy. Besides, she loves the store and its books provide welcome solace for her overwhelming grief.

After she moves into the small studio apartment above the shop, Natalie carries out her grandfather’s request and hires contractor Peach Gallagher to do the necessary and ongoing repairs. His young daughter, Dorothy, also becomes a regular at the store, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works.

To Natalie’s surprise, her sorrow begins to dissipate as her life becomes an unexpected journey of new connections, discoveries and revelations, from unearthing artifacts hidden in the bookshop’s walls, to discovering the truth about her family, her future, and her own heart.

An uplifting story for all book lovers!  For all of us who love books and bookstores. Filled with loveable characters, unexpected discoveries, new friendships and romantic possibilities, I loved the story. 

YOU CAN'T CATCH ME - Catherine ♥♥♥♥

 

Goodreads Says:  A riveting new novel of suspense about a disgraced young journalist caught up in a grifter’s game, and the trail of identically named victims she uncovers, from the instant bestselling author of I’ll Never Tell and The Good Liar.

Assumed identities. A con game. Unwitting victims.

After being fired from her investigative journalism job for plagiarism, Jessica Williams is looking for a break from the constant press coverage. She decides to escape for a week to a resort in Mexico boasting no connections to the outside world. While waiting at the airport for her flight, she encounters a woman with the exact same name, who she dubs Jessica Two. Drawn together by the coincidence, they play a game of twenty questions to see what other similarities they share, and exchange contact information.

A week later, Jessica returns home and discover that large cash withdrawals have been made from her bank account. Security footage from the bank confirms her suspicions—Jessica Two has stolen her money. She goes to the police, only to be told that the crime is a low priority. Frustrated, she meets up with a trusted old friend, Liam, who is an investigator. When the two Google “Jessica Williams,” they get thousands of hits—Jessica was the most popular girl’s name in 1990 and Williams is almost as ubiquitous as Smith. Convinced that this isn’t the first time this scam has been run, Jessica is determined to catch the imposter, and writes a Facebook post hoping to chase down some of Jessica Two’s other victims. When she gets a number of responses, she sets a plan in motion to catch the thief, encountering a string of identically named victims along the way.

Then, the threatening messages start arriving.

Filled with incredible twists and turns, You Can’t Catch Me is a tantalizing, character-driven exploration of how far people will go to get revenge. 

 This is a book about a woman who meets another woman with the same name and has all her money stolen.  is one of the best games of deception, revenge and cat and mouse game with some of the best twists I have read in awhile. Ok, I do have to admit maybe a little tiny bit on the far fetch side at times if you don't find weaving that into your story as entertaining!