A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Winter Storms is the conclusion of the Winter Street trilogy.  You can read the review for Winter Street here and the one for Winter Stroll here . It's several months after the previous installment when this novel picks up with the Quinn family's trials, dramas, and tribulations.  Rather than cover several days in December as the previous novels did, this installment picks up in the Spring and then takes us through the Summer, Fall, and into the Winter holiday with the Quinn family.  And while the family will eventually be reunited and put back together, life (and death) have a way of undoing this.  So without much further ado, let's dive back into the Quinn family drama. Finally Patrick is released from prison much to the relief of Jennifer, their boys, and the whole family.  However, now the family must deal with Jennifer's pill addiction which was fortunately stumbled upon by Kevin and Patrick.  Unfortunately Jennifer's drug dealer was Norah, ...

Winter Stroll is the second installment of Elin Hilderbrand's Winter Street trilogy.  I reviewed the first installment previously on the blog, and you can click here to read it.   Winter Stroll was released last year, and I'm just now getting around to reading it.  Which is fine because the third and final book in the trilogy was released this fall, so I can read that soon.  Keep an eye out for that review because it will be coming up in a few weeks.   I have been reading and reading and reading some more.  I only have one class this semester, so there is more time for my own reading.  As it stands, I'm about three books behind in my review writing (sorry).  And since we're coming up on the end of the year in a couple months, we'll have to start thinking about staff picks from the past year around here.  The 2016 Staff Picks will run starting after the first of the year.  So just a little programming notes for you to look forwar...

I'm a sucker for a Hallmark Christmas movie.  Okay, really, I'm a sucker for any Christmas/romantic comedy type TV movie (ion TV channel also has their own Christmas movies and Lifetime TV channel does as well... don't ask me how I know this; I just do).  However, I don't normally read Christmas themed novels.   Winter Street might be the first one for me.  But it's an Elin Hilderbrand novel, and we all know I love her books.  This is the sixth novel by Hilderbrand that I've read and the fifth that will be reviewed here on the blog.  Previously I've read and reviewed The Matchmaker , Silver Girl , Beautiful Day , The Island , and The Castaways .  You can click the links to read those reviews.  I've enjoyed them all, and I do recommend you try them out.  I've also read Summerland , but I didn't review it.  For some reason, I just didn't like that one so much.  But I have a lot to say about Winter Street . At its core, like some ...

The Matchmaker is the fifth book by Elin Hilderbrand that I've read and reviewed here on the blog.  I enjoy her books--they have a tendency to grab hold of the reader fairly quickly, and this one is no different.  If you click here , here , here , and here , you can read the previous Hilderbrand book reviews posted to this blog.  I could tell where this story was headed pretty much from the first complaints of "not feeling right" by one of the characters.  But when I tell characters to do something, they never listen to me, so this one kept putting off going to the doctor, which was really annoying.  Like there were several days when she couldn't get out of bed because that's how much pain she was in, and she still wouldn't go!  Then after three straight days in bed, her (grown) daughter says to her father, should we take mommy to the hospital?  And the father's all, oh, give it another day.  Dude.  This is why your wife stepped out on you...

I actually read this book near the end of January, but I didn't get around to posting the review until now.  So technically this should be back dated to January, but blogger won't let me do that (at least I don't think it will).  I've previously read and reviewed three other Elin Hilderbrand novels: Beautiful Day , The Island , and The Castaways .  Click the titles to go to those reviews.  I also read Hilderbrand's Summerland --it was okay; I skipped a small chunk in the middle though. Silver Girl , written in the wake of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal (and probably inspired in part by the scandal), has a ripped from the headlines quality.  Rather than focusing on the perpetrator of the massive fraud--in this case it was a $50 billion scheme--or those who lost their life savings, it focuses on the wife of the man who bilked thousands of people out of billions of dollars.  This is the story of the aftermath of devastation wrought on the wife's li...

So Beautiful Day is the third book by Elin Hilderbrand that I've read.  Previously I read The Castaways  and The Island , both of which were reviewed here on the blog (click the book titles to go to those reviews).  After I finished The Family by David Laskin, I got sucked in to Beautiful Day .  And sucked in is a pretty accurate description because the book was pretty hard to put down while I was reading it.  The common thread that runs through all of Elin Hilderbrand's books is setting; they are all set on Nantucket Island.  I must say that I rather enjoy the island setting. The Carmichael and Graham families are gathering on Nantucket Island to celebrate the nuptial weekend of Jenna Carmichael, the adored baby of the Carmichael family, and Stuart, the eldest of four brothers Graham.  These families bring with them more than their fair share of drama and tension.  Hanging over all of this is the intensely felt absence of Beth, the much bel...

Have you ever gone through a spell where you just don't feel like reading?  For a while there I was reading and reviewing like the world was about to end (which it was supposed to at 6 p.m. Saturday or so I'm told) and then I hit a wall.  I went through several books that I started and didn't finish.  Then I decided to reserve a bunch, and, in the meantime, I borrowed a few from another library in an attempt to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck.  Now most of the books I reserved have come in, and there's a pile of books to read at home.  Hopefully the dry spell is over. The Island by Elin Hilderbrand is one of the last books I read before the reader's block started, and I just never got around to typing up the review.  It's the second Hilderbrand book that I've read. The rotating third person perspective gives the reader insight into the inner lives' of the characters and their past heartbreaks.  The island life and setting draws the...

Ed was at work trying to figure out "what happened," but Andrea already knew what happened. She had made a promise and then not upheld it. God had waited years and years, but he had come back for Tess. from page 148 I had previously begun the book Goldengrove by Francine Prose; it's about a girl whose sister drowns and how the girl deals with her grief over the sister's death. However, I started it over Thanksgiving and then got distracted that weekend. Meanwhile, Hold Still by Nina LaCour came in for me, and we all know what that one's about and that I read it because the previous post reviews that novel. I then read The Castaways and in the forthcoming review you shall hear what this one's about, but in a nutshell, it is about death and grief, and therefore, I decided to take a vacation from death and grief and in short order returned Goldengrove to the library unfinished and reserved some other titles. The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand is set on ...