amanda_readingnwritinglife's Reviews (180)

This novella was really good. We learn that the dog walker has brought one of the dogs back and found out that the dog's owner is dead. She calls the police, they come and interview her, and we find out that things are exactly as they seem for the homeowner and the dog walker. It was a great story and I loved it.

This book was surprisingly good. I guess I didn't have high hopes for it once I found out it was a single dad trope, but really I didn't know what to expect. It was really good.
There is a little girl who writes a letter to santa to see if Santa is real. The letter goes to a writer at a magazine who answers the mail to Santa. Only, it's June, so she gets sucked into the letter and wants to help the little girl. The girl (Birdie) is 10 and her mother has been dead for 4 years. Sadie gets the letter and immediately falls in love with the little girl and just wants to help her. Sadie gets sucked in and love ensues once she meets Birdie's dad. This was heartwarming and I really liked it.

Leigh is convinced that her mother became a bird when she committed suicide. First, there is, of course, discussion of suicide and depression and different kinds of therapy.
Okay, so what is this about?
Well, at the beginning, when Leigh's mother is committing suicide at their house, Leigh is kissing her best friend for the first time. This really causes her some serious issues as she begins to figure out how to deal with her mother's death. Leigh has never met her mother's parents, but now she wants to go visit. Her dad takes her there and that's where we spend most of the book. This is a magic adventure through the past and present. My favorite part are the colors. Leigh sees the world in colors. Her emotions are all colors and it's also a cute thing she has with her best friend. They ask each other "what color?" all the time just to kind of ask how they're feeling.
This book was great, and it wasn't just filled with sadness like I was expecting when her mother died right at the beginning. This was just a wonderful exploration of grief and I loved it.

This is book #2, but I loved it much more than the first one. I almost didn't read this one because I felt the first book was a little slow and maybe hard for me to follow who all the characters were and what everyone was doing.

However, this book was not only a good mystery that I didn't figure out until the very end, but it made me laugh out loud multiple times. If you've read this book and didn't at least smile when they first found out there was a man named Nelson Snelson, then I don't know what's wrong with you. I not only laughed out loud about it, but even later I told my teenage son about it and laughed about it again. That whole interaction just shows Lady Hardcastle and Flo's relationship perfectly. It is just so good.

If you're here and you haven't read the first book, go read it. Basically, Lady Hardcastle is a widow and her ladies maid, Flo, is her best friend. The two of them have travelled the world and pretty much worked as spies as they travelled. Now they are settling down in mostly one place, but still helping the police solve crimes. Just so good!!

My mother picked this book for me because I asked for her favorite book so I could read it for mother's day and discuss with her.

This is the novella that introduces us to Mac McRyan who went to law school then hard pivoted to become a police officer. He's now a brand new detective dealing with his first case and handling personal issues with his wife at the same time.

This was really good and set the stage for way more books. I'm definitely going to continue reading this series. And I'm calling my mother to tell her thanks for the recommendation! :)

I read this book because I'm following a list about 100 books to read. I didn't know what to expect when I started this book except I knew it involved magic. I was blown away by how much I liked this book. I had to do a lot of driving and I couldn't wait to get in the car and start listening again. It was just so good.
Amari is looking for her brother who has disappeared. Things aren't going great at school for Amari, and she gets expelled from school and doesn't really know what to do next because all she can think about is finding her brother. She gets an unexpected visitor one night and realizes that magic is real, that she's being accepted into a magic school to try out for admittance, and that her brother is some kind of superstar in this world.
She goes all in because she's hoping that she'll get some answers about his disappearance. I'm not going to say more because I don't want to give anything away, but things don't go the way she expects, and wonderful writing and storytelling ensue. I recommend this book for anyone and everyone.

This was a novella, I know, but it really made me want more. I loved both Cam and Johnny and how they did such a great job with communication. I feel like a lot of romance novels uses the trope where the heroes don't really talk and some minor miscommunication keeps everything from working out until they start talking. That didn't happen in this book, and it was just a really cute love story. I'm fully invested in Rainbow Cove now and can't wait for the next book.

This was such a good mystery book. About halfway through, they start solving a serial killer case and I'm wondering what's going to happen next since we're only halfway through. :)
It definitely delivered. I know this is book one, but there is a novella that introduces us to Mac McRyan, and I think it really helped set this book up. Anyway, this book is about Mac and his partner being assigned a murder of a news anchor. They link her with a senator and quickly arrests him for the murder. But maybe they don't have all the facts. There is also a serial killer on the loose and possibly one person who is behind all of it.
This was just really good, and I'm glad my mother suggested it, and now I'm adding the rest of the series to my list.

This is the 3rd book I've read by Lauren Layne, and this one was by far my least favorite. I liked the road trip and her family, but that was about it. I really disliked that they wouldn't ever just have a discussion about what happened when they were teenagers. I really disliked that she kept having to chase him and go to him. Even when she was talking to her sister at the end, her sister was telling her that she had to go to him and tell him how she felt even though she had literally gone there and told him she wanted them to try again and that she loved him, and he still told her to leave. Then her sister told her to go back over there, and I was just frustrated by it. I'm going to hope that this was just an anomaly and I will keep her in my author list and keep reading more from her.

I know it has nothing to do with the book itself, but the male narrator in the audiobook did a horrible job with the accents. He would've been better to just give them a neutral accent because he clearly can't do a normal southern accent without it sounding like a caricature of a southern accent.

Well, I don't know what to say about this book. You can see from the cover that the author's mother disappeared as a child. What we find out is that her mother was kidnapped as a 3 year old, and she had no memory of it at all. She actually doesn't remember anything before the kidnapping. She was 3 years old when she was adopted, and she has no memory of the time before that.

This book sounds really interesting. The concept sounds like it would be great, and the overall story of the childhood of her mother was really interesting. However, the pacing and the descriptions took away from the story for me. I am not very artistic, and I don't like reading long descriptions of things in books. I know that it just my opinion, and other people really appreciate this part of a novel. I just happen to not like it. That is the only thing that kept this from being a 5 star book for me.

I can't go into everything I wanted to talk about with this book because it gives away all the mysteries that she is solving as you go through the story, so I'll just say, it's a heartbreaking story of secrecy and shame and family dynamics that just made me sad after I finished reading.