Donna Ball

awful, in a ridiculous way -- or is that ridiculous in an awful way?

Faith moons over Ken, who she met randomly when she fell off a ladder & into his arms -- as one does -- but is convinced they'll never be together because ten years ago she accidentally fell into a scandalous-albeit-sexless relationship with a mobster in the middle of her stint as the most famous model evah, and that makes her evil and slutty? so she can't end up with Ken-the-preacher?

I don't know. It's kinda hilarious and show more kinda tragic. Faith is all hung up on the skeletons in her closet (which !!spoiler!! are not real skeletons at all but a full-length sable coat and some very nice lingerie) and Ken is all hung up on how he smelled some marijuana smoke in 'Nam? or something? There is no actual problem here, is what I'm saying, but they act like it's a serious problem so it takes them two hundred pages to get over nothing.

People actually think like this.
Makes me kinda sad. show less

The overwhelming impression this book gives is of arrogance. The werewolf species is portrayed as so smug in their conviction that they are far superior to humans, that they are barely likeable. I really didn’t care for any of them or what might happen to them. A little of this would have gone a long way, but the author goes overboard with it. If they are so superior, then why are they in constant hiding? Why do they bother to take human shape at all if it’s such a poor substitute for a show more wolf’s form? It makes no sense.

But I guess this build up was necessary to make Denis’s eventual alliance and relationship with Tessa seem all the more fantastic and improbable. After Denis’s plot to kill the queen (Alexander’s wife) fails (he set up Tessa to shoot them but she deliberately missed), they are both sent to Alaska. Despite her fear of him and his loathing for her, they take care of each other. He hunts for her and she once freed him from a steel trap. Eventually, they discover a cave in which to shelter. It is remarkably deep and within its twisting labyrinth, they discover remains of an ancient werewolf society. Far older than anything connected with human history. They live there and eventually they have sex while he is in human form. She has a brat.

From overweening guilt, Alexander is driven to search for Tessa and Denis in Alaska. He finds them and fights with Denis while both are in wolf form. Despite being a weaker man and a lesser fighter, Alexander defeats Denis and kills him. Tessa follows not long after.

They take the brat – who is a forbidden hybrid – back to civilization with them. There is some kind of controversy about her and wanting to destroy the pack, but it wasn’t very clear. The story was told at the very beginning of the novel and then brought up again at the very end, with this whole long saga in between, so it was hard to follow. Still, I’m going to read the sequel, if only to see how Alexander’s son goes on from here. Apparently, his love for humans is somewhere in between his father’s and his uncle’s. show less

A Year on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball has been on my Kindle for some time so it definitely counts toward the ROOTs. And the Alpha Kit led me to finding a book with a Y, a somewhat unusual letter it seems.

However I ended up reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed this story of three friends who walk away from their comfortable suburban lives to buy an old farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. They commit to a year and face all sorts of obstacles from the house, the farm and their children. But show more they also discover the simple joys of life in the country along with a community. I am looking forward to exploring the rest of the series. show less

I originally picked up this book because I really like ladybugs but there was almost nothing about them in the story. Oh well. Otherwise, it is story about 3 friends who decide to purchase an old mansion and live together instead of in their separate homes. They decide to try it out for one year and see how well it works. Their attempts to fix up this place leads to lots of unexpected issues that these suburban ladies certainly were not prepared to deal with. Although I found the story show more somewhat meandering, in the end, I did enjoy it. However I am not sure I enjoyed it enough to read other books in the series. I will have to look at the reviews and think about it. show less