2016 July Books

[hestergray.livejournal.com]

I decided to post this now instead of waiting until the end of the quarter.

Save the Date by Mary Kay Andrews 2/5
Cara is a florist in Savannah, Georgia.  Business is booming, and yet she's struggling financially.  I don't really understand why.  Maybe just because of rent and bills and paying her assistant, so she doesn't have enough left over to pay back her dad.  Anyway, another florist comes to town and tries to bring Cara's business down.  Everything goes wrong for her, except that she meets a good-looking carpenter named Jack.  Then she gets mad at him, and he doesn't understand why.  I don't understand why either.  Their conflict made no sense to me.  Besides the weak conflict, I thought the characters sometimes used slang that felt really out of place.  Also, is Savannah a small town?  They kept referencing how it's a small town and everyone knows everyone else.  I looked it up - it has a population of almost 150,000.  That's not my idea of a small town.  Overall, for light listening, it was okay.  I enjoyed hearing about the weddings for which Cara was doing the flowers.

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter 5/5
Everything Lin-Manuel Miranda touches turns to gold.  Listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, and if you like it, read this book.

If you're skeptical about a hip-hop musical, I recommend watching this video first.  It's the video that I watched first, and it got me hooked to listen to more.

Undeniably Yours by Becky Wade 3/5
I was in the mood for a nice Christian fiction romance story.  At first, my search turned up historical Christian romance.  You know, like all those pioneer books.  I realized I wanted something modern, so I changed my search tactic.  I landed on this book, the first in a series about the Porter family.  It was exactly what I was looking for.

Meg Cole's father has recently passed away, and she has inherited the family oil business and a huge fortune.  She's not interested in being in the oil business, but she's trying her best.  She also wants to get rid of her father's other business venture, a thoroughbred horse farm.  Bo Porter is the good-looking cowboy who runs the horse farm.  He doesn't want her to close it down.  They try to ignore their mutual attraction, especially because he is her employee, but of course, they can't!  It's predictable, kind of cheesy, and the main characters are nearly perfect in every way, but I still liked it.  I liked that it was a romantic story about people who just happen to be Christians.  It wasn't about any characters trying to convert other characters, or the author trying to convert the reader.  The characters think about God, and pray, and attend church, and it's all just woven into their everyday lives.

Meant to be Mine by Becky Wade 3/5
I got so hooked on that first book that I read the second one in the series right away.  It was also cute, fun, and predictable.  This one is about Ty Porter (Bo's brother), and how he married Celia in Las Vegas after a whirlwind romance.  They had known each other in high school, and she had always liked him, but he had his sights on another girl from his home town.  The morning after their wedding, Ty tells Celia that this was a mistake, and he's in love with someone else.  Celia storms out determined never to speak to him again.  But of course they do speak again a few years later.  He finds her and discovers the daughter she never told him about.  Then they spend the rest of the book being mad at each other, and being attracted to each other, and learning to forgive each other.  The premise is far-fetched, with the Vegas wedding and the daughter, but you know.  It's just a book.  It had elements that always seem to pop up in books like this: someone has lots of money that they can use to solve all kinds of problems; and when someone is looking for a job, they stumble upon the absolutely perfect opportunity just when they need it.  Just like real life!  :P

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard 2/5
The sequel to Red Queen. Red Queen started out great and then dragged to the end.  This one dragged for most of the book, and then got more interesting at the end.  The basic plot is that the society is divided between people with silver blood and people with red blood.  The Silvers each have a special ability.  Mare Barrow is a Red, but as seen in the first book, she suddenly displays an ability that only Silvers should have.  In this sequel, she finds out that there are more people like her, red blood, but with special abilities.  So this becomes another YA story of a teenage girl who must lead a revolution against a tyrannical government.  That happens all the time.  The ending of this book makes me want to find out what happens, but overall, I don't have high hopes for liking this series.  The third book comes out next year.  And a fourth book the year after that.  There are also two prequels out now.  That all seems unnecessary to me because it's not THAT good.

Something funny about how the authors writes - she puts in a lot of sentences that are structured like this:
"What we might find in the skies above, white fog or orange-winged airjets, I do not know."
"How my brother can protect me,... I do not know."
"What the crates once held, I can't say."
"But how long I'll be with them, I don't know."
"But what lies beyond them, I can't say."
"What it means, I don't know."
It just feels like a weird way to word things.  If there were only a couple sentences like this, I wouldn't have noticed, but she uses it all the time.  These are only some examples.

Comments

[moredetails.livejournal.com]

I feel like Mary Kay Andrews is getting really bad about her reasons for couples having troubles. The more recent books have had such ridiculous situations that we're supposed to believe would make two people crazy about each other consider breaking up for good. Of course, these people usually have barely met and it's hard to understand what their attraction is besides physical, so I suppose any little thing could break them up. :P

Anyway, I actually have a soft spot for Save the Date just because it really inspired me to hear about the whole floral business, and I remember listening to it on a sunny New Year's Day on my way up to Seattle. I really enjoy MKA but yeah...the romance part of her books is typically very eyerolling. The career of the lead character is what I find more fun to read about.

I realized while reading this entry that I was mixing up (or combining?) Red Queen and Ruby Red. When I started reading Ruby Red, I thought the red/silver blood was going to be part of it. Then I must've forgotten all about that until you mentioned it here.

[hestergray.livejournal.com]

I was listening to Save the Date mostly at work, so maybe that had an effect! Haha. I wanted to talk some sense into Cara, like, "Just drop it! Don't you know you're in a romantic story and you're going to live happily ever after?! What's the big deal with him buying the building? He just solved all your problems!"

Oh yes, all these red books! :)

[moredetails.livejournal.com]

Yeah, how about "thank you," Cara!! The fact that she reacts just angrily instead of at least a little torn is ridiculous.

[moredetails.livejournal.com]

Oh and I love your observation about the author writing "backwards" sentences. You're right--it's one thing to say it like that on a couple of occasions, but to keep doing it is just dorky! You'd think the editor might catch that and tell her to tone it down. Why the editor did not mention it, I do not know.

[hestergray.livejournal.com]

The editor was probably like, "I feel like there's something wrong here, but what it is, I can't say."