A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

As Sure As The Sun is Anna McPartlin's third novel.  And I am only reading it now.  I don't know how this happened, but back when the library first got this novel, I never read it!  I couldn't believe it!  I've read all of McPartlin's other novels and reviewed them here on the blog.  If you want to read those reviews, you can click on the Anna McPartlin tag at the bottom of this post to find them. When Harri faints (again) the morning of her (second attempt at) wedding her fiance and love of her life, James, he leaves her because he can't deal.  Then Harri's parents reluctantly drop a bomb of a family secret tragedy on Harri and her twin brother, George: they're not her parents and George isn't her twin brother.  When George's twin sister died at birth, Harri was 'adopted' six weeks later.  By 'adopted', I mean, Harri's parents basically subbed in the younger baby girl for their own baby girl and, no, pretty sure this was...

Eligible: A modern re-telling of Pride and Prejudice is Curtis Sittenfeld's fifth novel; however, it is the first Sittenfeld novel that I've read.   Eligible is part of a series of modern re-tellings of Jane Austen's works; previously Emma , Sense and Sensibility , and Northanger Abbey have all been updated and re-told by such well known authors as Alexander McCall Smith and Val McDermid.  I haven't read any of the other modern re-tellings--but I may give them a try.  Of all the Jane Austen adaptations, Pride and Prejudice is the one I love best and with which I'm most familiar.  By now you all know of my fondness for Jane Austen adaptations and British period dramas. For various reasons from the first chapter I was not sure whether I would finish this novel or not.  But at some point a switch flipped, and I was all in with the story.  It's a fast read due to short (sometimes very short) chapters.  The story has been transplanted from the Englis...

Last week I reviewed What Strange Creatures by Emily Arsenault.  This week I'm reviewing the same author's fifth novel, The Evening Spider .  I've read and reviewed all of the authors novels so far, and there's a sixth coming next year.  This novel has some supernatural overtones which is a departure from her previous novels. Initially I was really on the fence with this one. Its depiction of a 'hysterical woman,' who is really a woman who doesn't conform to the contemporary social norms of her time, and as a result is committed to an asylum in the 1880's for the convenience of her husband, is a story that is disturbing and difficult for me to read.  This story line is coupled with the foreboding and foreshadowing in the present time story line that implies that the modern day woman may be headed the same way.  However, as it turns out the former woman is committed for far more sinister reasons than her non-conformity to social norms of the day. In...

I'm catching up on some of my reading.  I caught up on Anna McPartlin's novels, and now I'm catching up on Emily Arsenault's novels.   What Strange Creatures is the fourth novel by Emily Arsenault, and I have reviewed her three previous novels on the blog here , here , and here .  I really enjoyed the tone and narrator character of this novel.   What Strange Creatures seems a little wittier and grittier than Arsenault's previous novels.  It was a quick read, and it was hard to put down. When Theresa's brother Jeff's girlfriend Kim fails to return after a weekend away, Theresa begins a bumbling investigation, tracking down the woman's roommate, ex-boyfriend, and former professor to suss out leads regarding Kim's whereabouts.  Initially Theresa's primary motivation is find out when Kim will return because Theresa would 'like to be relieved of dog sitting duties' after agreeing to dog sit Kim's dog for the weekend.  Subsequently Th...