Princess of the Silver Woods is the third and final installment in Jessica Day George’s princess series. All three of the books in this series told knits the main characters from the first novel together with some traditional fairy tales. (I’m gonna have to give you some backstory, otherwise this review won’t make a whole lot of sense)

The first novel, Princess of the Midnight Ball, told the story of the 12 dancing princesses, a fairly well known fairy tale about twelve princesses who are cursed to dance every night with evil princes who cannot go into the world during the day for one reason or another. It focused mostly on the eldest princess, Rose and Galen, though there was a fabulous witchhunt included The second novel was titled Princess of Glass, and as you might guess, it told the story of Cinderella, with a twist. It revolved around Princess Poppy and Prince Christian. This novel mixed Robin Hood and Red Riding Hood together in a way that was unexpected, but interesting and revolved around the youngest of the twelve princesses, Princess Petunia.

All of the princesses are named after flowers. Rose, Lily, Poppy, Daisy, Jonquil, Hyacinth, Orchid, Pansy, Iris, Violet, Lilac, and Petunia (Not in that order, but those are their names. The princesses (and their romantic interests/eventual husbands) were fairly well formed characters and likable, but as another reviewer of the original book said, the other eleven princesses “blend into a forgettable bouquet of names”,and never really get fleshed out. This may be inevitable given the number of characters that were included in these stories.

I’m done with backstory for now. Having not read the first two books in a while, I think it might have helped, so I gave it to you to give you some context for this novel. Without reading the other two books, this one would not have made a lick of sense to me. I would have been completely lost, despite the charms of this book.

The story opens with the Princes of Under Stone arguing with their King because, boo hoo, they have no brides, even though Daddy promised. We then move to Westfalin, where Princess Petunia is being robbed by the Wolves of the Westfalin, who are humans wearing wolf masks, while traveling to visit a Russakan Countess whom she met on her travels. Well, Petunia is not one to be robbed for what little jewelry she has as the youngest princess in a modest kingdom, so she pulls a loaded pistol out of her knitting basket and pointed it at the robbers, who then end up kidnapping her, not realizing that she’s a princess, because she learned their leaders name.

It turns out the leader of the robbers is actually an earl named Oliver who was displaced in the Analousian war who is stealing the money and jewelry in order to feed and clothe his people. He’s the same age as our princess in this story at 16. Upon learning who the princess is, his mother convinces him to walk the girl to where she needed to go, which happens to be right into the home of the mother of the new King of Under Stone. George kind of repeats some of the information about the characters over and over again. Basically, the end fight against the princes was a repeat of the first book, minus the magic wool.

The book was enjoyable, but very simplistic. It took me maybe five hours to read all the way through. Of course, everyone makes it out okay, and Oliver gets his earldom back. I am content with the book, despite its simplicity and overabundance of characters. However, I would not read it if you haven’t read the first two books.

Erika Swyler’s The Book of Speculation has a very strange name, and an ineffective book cover, but it definitely left me speculating about everything that went on in throughout this insane novel.

First and foremost, this book is about Simon Watson, who is a researcher to the core. When he receives a book with his grandmother’s name inscribed in it from an unknown bookseller, he dives deep into the mysteries that are inside it as he tries to figure out what might be wrong with his family that leads to the women in his family drowning.

You see, the Watson family is full of what the circus folk call “swimmers,” which means that they can hold their breath for long periods of time and are unable to drown. Simon can go 10 minutes underwater without breathing, and says that his sister Enola is better at it than he is.

It doesn’t help for Simon that days after receiving this novel, he loses his job due to budget cuts at the library where he and his friend Alice work. This mystery in the book envelopes nearly everyone that Simon and Enola know.

Honestly, I found this book interesting, but Simon drove me a little bit crazy. My favorite characters were Alice and Doyle, who I felt were more authentic as people than Simon or Enola were. Maybe it was just that Simon asked for more information about Doyle and Alice than we were given about him. Enola had potential to be an incredibly interesting character, but instead she felt like a runaway brat who Simon didn’t trust with actual information. It was not my favorite book because of the lack of character growth, but the plot was really interesting.

I personally loved the “flashbacks” that we got into the lives of Amos and his fellow circus people, and I think that those were the strongest part of the novel. The characters were vibrant and sensible, and there was magic that wasn’t automatically something you were supposed to be terrified of.

I’m giving this book a three star review because of this. If you’re more interested in plot than characters, this may be a great read for you. The book review on the cover by Sara Gruen, who is the author of Water for Elephants, which I’d recommend if you liked this book but wanted more character development.

However, if this book sounds interesting to you, it releases today (June 23, 2015) at major retailers near you! You can find other people’s reviews and discussions on Goodreads here!

I enjoyed this book, but felt that the relationship between Thaddeus and Remy was incredibly rushed. This may be part of the issue, but as a firm non-believer in love at first sight, I felt like the novel needed a lot more relationship building and character development in order to make the true love part of the curse fit. Other than that, it was a decent novel.

Will come back to this review later, I swear.
Realistic characters & plotline, would have worked better in an earlier time period/with any technology being used in the story. I loved that Charley (main character) called the farmers on their racism and sexism. I just wish the author had let Ralph Angel have just a little luck, or some common sense. He got most of the way through an engineering degree, what happened there?

I enjoyed this book. However, I have one nitpicky detail to talk about, and that is that the summary didn't even mention that there was terminal illness in this book. As the daughter of someone currently undergoing breast cancer treatment, this is not a book I would have chosen to read at this point. That being said, it was well written and realistic to the point that it had me in tears at several points during the story. Josie and Bel were both very interesting, different characters, and I'm glad to have seen through their perspectives.

Halloween is coming to Tinker’s Cove, Maine, and local reporter Lucy Stone is covering the town’s annual Giant Pumpkin Fest for The Pennysaver. There’s the pumpkin-boat regatta, the children’s Halloween party, the pumpkin weigh-in…even a contest where home-built catapults hurl pumpkins at an old Dodge! But not everything goes quite as planned…

Lucy’s getting very annoyed that her husband Bill and his friend Evan have been working seemingly nonstop on their potentially prize-winning pumpkin catapult. But when the day of the big contest arrives, Evan is nowhere to be found…until a catapulted pumpkin busts open the trunk of the Dodge. Amid the pumpkin gore is a very deceased Evan, bashed in the head and placed in the trunk by someone long before the contest started.

Bill is on the hook for the Halloween homicide—he was the last one to see Evan—so Lucy knows she’s got some serious sleuthing to do. The crime’s trail seems to always circle back to Country Cousins, the town’s once-quaint general store that’s now become a big Internet player. Though the store’s founder, Old Sam Miller, is long gone, his son Tom and grandson Trey now run the hugely successful company. But whispered rumors say things aren’t going well, and Lucy finds that this case may have something to do with an unsolved, decades-old Miller family mystery…

With each new lead pointing her in a different direction, Lucy sees that time is quickly running out. If she wants to spook the real killer, she’ll have to step into an old ghost story…

Candy Corn Murder is the 22nd novel in the Lucy Stone Mystery series by Leslie Meier, but it really didn’t feel like a novel that deep into a series. I have never read any of the other Lucy Stone novels, but this book spent almost the first half of the story telling us how life in their small town was lived, which I feel like should have been covered in the other novels, so there wasn’t so much of an info dump in this one.

I had several problems with this novel that led me to almost quit reading several times. My first problem was that the “old ghost story” mentioned in the summary was totally given away in the first chapter, and as soon as you meet the murderer, it’s really obvious. This made the second mystery significantly less of a mystery. My second main problem was that almost every single one of the secondary characters was two-dimensional - Lucy’s daughter was a feminist with bad taste in men, “Ev” was a smelly mooch, Corny was very into attractive men, and all of her neighbors had their own small part to play. The teacher was shrewish and new-age-y, Lucy’s boss at The Pennysaver was only dedicated to a good story, not to anyone’s feelings, etc. This bugged me to no end, because I could always tell what was going to happen when she spoke to any of her coworkers or friends about anything.

The only thing that really kept me reading through this novel (other than my Goodreads reading challenge that I am woefully behind on) was the theme of helping people get away from situations of domestic abuse. Other than that, I really did not care for this novel, which is why I’ve rated it 2 stars.

From bestselling author Kristin von Kreisler comes a poignant, uplifting novel of one woman's journey to healing, and the surprising soul mate that helps guide her there. Lila Elliot knows she's lucky. A shooting rampage at her office left several colleagues dead and others seriously wounded. Lila's injuries will heal in time. Yet though she gratefully retreats to her best friend's house to recuperate, Lila can't quite move past her fear and anger. Being drafted into caring for Grace--a shaggy, formerly abused golden retriever--only adds to her stress. Lila has been terrified of dogs since childhood. But Grace, like Lila, needs time and space to recover.

Grace keeps her distance, sensing Lila's wariness, and only perks up for Adam, the neighbor who rescued her. Though struggling to make sense of her recent tragedy, Lila, an accomplished artist, begins to see beauty in Grace's wisps of fur and haunted eyes. As Adam points out, Grace, too, has suffered through no fault of her own. And in helping Grace to trust, Lila is being gently nudged toward the courage she needs to do the same.

Rich in warmth and humor, An Unexpected Grace is a story of compassion and connection, and of finding that what truly makes us whole again may be the love we give away.

I picked An Unexpected Grace on Netgalley cause it seemed like it might be a good read, and truly it was. It's one of the only books that focuses around dogs where the dog doesn't end up dead in the end. I wished there'd been a real answer about what caused the shooting, despite all of Lila's searching. They never went to see the girlfriend, and never really got anywhere with that part of the story - yes, Lila started healing because of Grace, but she never got the answer that she so desperately wanted. As a reader, I certainly wanted to know.
I also wanted to see more of Adam and Lila building an actual relationship that we got an itty bitty glimpse of in the end. I just wanted more, in all aspects of the book.

Given as an ARC from Netgalley.

When documentary filmmaker Rob Carrey flies back to New York from a shoot in South Africa to salvage his relationship with his lover Caroline Smythe, he unexpectedly finds himself called back to his former boarding school following a heartbreaking tragedy. Despite having long ago buried the memories of the brutal year he spent at the elite Fenton School in Connecticut as a postgraduate rower, Carrey finds that those days now return to haunt him.The Fenton School Boat Club’s top rowing team, called the God Four, is legendary. But the price that they pay for a shot at glory will scar each member of Carrey’s team far into adulthood.

Conner Payne, the Massachusetts blue-blood; Jumbo, the good natured giant; John Wadsworth the preppy lawyer-to-be; Ruth Anderson, the Yale-bound coxswain; and Rob Carrey, the scholarship athlete from Niccalsetti, New York — all of them are forever bound to one another by the terrible cost of victory. Over one tumultuous week, Rob Carrey will learn that he cannot leave the past in his wake.

Overall, Flat Water Tuesday was interesting, but it didn’t really catch my attention. I really enjoyed the parts about rowing, how their friendships worked together, but those parts never truly connected to the parts about Rob Carrey’s life, and it felt like there was no ending. I wanted a good thirty pages. What happened with Carrey in the end? I’m guessing he left Carolyn, but what else?

Felt unfinished to me, thus the three star rating.

Read the full review here!

Rick Stanton was a promising professional baseball player with dreams of playing in the major leagues and starting a family with his young wife, Francesca, when World War II changed everything. Rick returns from the war with his body broken and his dreams shattered. But it was not just body and spirit he sacrificed for the war. He and Francesca volunteered their beloved dog, Pax, for the Army’s K-9 Corp, not knowing if they’d ever see him again.

Keller Nicholson is the soldier who fought the war with Pax by his side, and the two have the kind of profound bond that can only be forged in war. Pax is the closest Keller has to a sense of family, and he can’t bear the thought of returning him to the Stantons. But Rick and Francesca refuse to give him up. Instead, an arrangement is made: Keller will work as Rick’s live-in aide. And thus an unlikely family is formed, with steadfast Pax at the center. As they try to build a new life out of the ashes, Keller and Francesca struggle to ignore their growing attraction to each other, and Rick, believing that he can no longer give Francesca what she needs and wants, quietly plans a way out.

All three of them need healing. All three of them are lost. And in Susan Wilson's A Man of His Own, Pax, with his unconditional love and unwavering loyalty, may be the only one who can guide them home.

I saw this on Netgalley, and saw that Garth Stein, the author of The Art of Racing In The Rain, recommended it, so what had been a possible choice became a definite one. Believing that this book would be horribly sad, I decided to put reading it off until I had enough time to just cry over it for several hours.

However, it really wasn’t as sad as I expected it to be, though there were definitely some very sad moments. It’s hard to see people have as little hope as Rick did after he returned from the war, but I was glad to read the epilogue.

I didn’t particularly care for Rick, though I can imagine that being a shadow of the man he once had been, and by what he saw as his own fault, it would make it difficult to find hope within the walls of his sickroom. I found myself praying for him to find hope, and I’m glad he finally found some, at least enough to spur the

I think my favorite character was Keller, and his relationship with Pax was absolutely wonderful. I loved that despite everything that happened to him throughout his childhood, he kept going and never gave up on himself or the others around him. I also liked that he was always pushing Rick to not give up on himself, even when it was clear that that would be the easiest option.

My rating for this book would be 3.5 stars. It was a good book, but it didn’t really grab me the way The Art of Racing In The Rain did, and that’s what I was looking for. It’s a very solid read, and I’m glad I read it.