The Wedding Stoppers by Mariam Cristina is a very enjoyable romance with an intriguing premise. Cherry and Vincent work for a company that stops weddings by providing information that either the bride or the groom needs to know before committing. Cherry and Vincent usually appear at the wedding as a couple and stop the wedding during the ceremony. As the book begins, they have just stopped a wedding and run into Nick, Cherry’s best friend from childhood, with his fiancée Abigail. Cherry and Vincent are invited to be in Nick and Abigail’s wedding which involves a month in Miami Beach. Cherry knows from Nick that Abigail cheated on him two years ago and she decides to stop this wedding. She pressures Vincent to help and they end up at Abigail’s family mansion in Miami Beach. There are many complications, lots of family drama and the added problem of Vincent being in love with Cherry who seems to still have feelings for Nick. The chapters in the book alternate between Cherry and Vincent, each chapter from their point of view. The story takes surprising turns but eventually things work out happily.

The book is well written and is fun to read.

Puzzles She Packed by Jodie Morgan was a very short story, part of a cozy mystery series set in Silver Springs, VT. I felt as if I had landed in the middle of a situation that I didn’t understand. Laura Evans seems to have moved from a job she didn’t like in Boston, to a small town in VT to manage a cafe in the General Store. People are mentioned as if the reader would already know them so I suppose there are other books before this one. Laura’s grandmother seems to have visited the town over the years and has good friends there. Laura finds a vintage cookie jar with a clue from her grandmother in it just as Izzy, the self-appointed town welcoming committee, arrives and he offers to help her find the other clues.

The descriptions of the various places they visit around town and the people Laura meets are beautifully written. I could see the town and the people clearly. Very little happens but it is somehow a pleasing little story.

Dying to Live Here by Shelley Marsh is a cozy mystery set in the Jacksonville, FL area, near the beach and Intercoastaal Waterway. Emma and Laura have been best friends since college and Laura is pressuring Emma to move to her HOA community from the condo Emma lives in with her dog, Hopper. Emma was married briefly after college but has been single for years.

As Laura takes Emma to see a house about to go on the market at night, Laura opens the door with a borrowed key and falls over the bloody, dead body of the former HOA president. The police appear almost instantly and Laura becomes the prime suspect. Laura is the current HOA president and she didn’t get along with Rose, the dead woman, who was the former HOA president. They call a lawyer neighbor for help and he, Sam, takes Laura on as a client.

The story progresses as Laura, Emma and Sam search for the actual killer. The people living in the community seemed to have too much money and time and spent a lot of time going out to lunch or drinking. Emma and Sam were immediately taken with each other for no apparent reason and Emma became jealous of his female investigator Taylor on sight. There was a lot of drama and scandal. Emma and Laura took more risks than any thinking woman should but everything worked out and the real killer was caught.

Shelley Marsh is a good writer but I couldn’t relate to the characters.

The Jolt by Alex Woolf is a really engaging book. It was a hard book to put down because I kept wanting to see what would happen next. Susie Dangerfield is a young woman in England who drives friends and relatives away with her unfiltered comments. She is on a train as the book opens, on her way to try to patch up a friendship with her friend who is also her boss. She strikes up a conversation with an attractive but unkempt young man who ultimately moves elsewhere after her direct comments on his appearance. He inadvertently takes the crystal she had shown him. Suddenly the train seems to speed up when it should be slowing down and there is a terrific jolt and Susie feels like she has hit a wall. The young man, Ryan Coolbear, has been put off by Susie’s directness but attracted by her at the same time. As the train speeded up, he clutched the crystal he’d taken and thought he might be about to die. Susie wakes up on the train, a little disoriented as she remembers a jolt but she’s soon at her stop. Her friend isn’t home so she returns to London and is amazed to find evidence in her apartment of someone else also living there. After a bit, the door opens and the young man, Ryan, from the train enters. It turns out it’s a year later than when they met on the train and the rest of the book is about their search to figure out what happened to them and why they are together. It’s well written, fast moving and constantly interesting. I will definitely be looking up show more Alex Woolf’s other books. show less

Faking to Falling by Cassidy Berg is a very enjoyable book. The premise is appealing - best friends for eight years who don’t want to jeopardize their friendship by facing up to the fact that they’re actually in love. Samantha Cunningham who voices audiobooks for a living and Fisher Lawson who investigates fraud cases for an insurance company are facing attending seven weddings in a few months without a date. They decide to pretend that they are a couple to stop the pressure they are getting from their families and friends at all the weddings. Of course their actual feelings for each other get in the way of the pretense and they second guess their way through all seven weddings. They live in New York City and the wedding venues are all different. Most of their friends and families seem to be at most of the weddings so you get to know everyone involved. There is a lot of angst and upset and it’s a bit longer than it needs to be but it’s fun.

Manufacturing a Duchess by Tracy Wise is a very enjoyable Regency novel, combining an interesting story line with a strong heroine. Aurora Hardcastle has lots of money but no social status while Alec Raeburn, Tenth Duke of Selkirk is a widower who has a Scottish dukedom and a young daughter but no money. Aurora is staying with a friend from finishing school named Millicent Wentworth in London for the Season, to find a titled husband. Millicent (Missie) is looking for a rich husband because her father has squandered the family money. Aurora’s father, who has a successful cloth manufacturing business is paying the Wentworths to bring Aurora out. Alec’s cousin Finn is also a Scottish duke but is wealthy. The sensible outcome would be for wealthy Aurora to marry poor Alec and for rich Finn to marry Missie but both men are entranced by Missie’s beauty and both women are attracted to the Duke’s appearance. When the four of them first meet each other at the Zoo in the Tower of London, Alec’s daughter Marjorie is with them. Aurora and Marjorie hit it off right away.

Everyone is unhappy with the mercenary aspect of the marriage market. Marrying for money, whether you have money or need money, leads to a lot of inner turmoil. The characters are well-drawn and believable, the plot has numerous twists and turns and the ending is very happy and satisfying. It’s a delightful book and I hope Tracy Wise is planning to write more novels.

The Persimmon Man by Brian Rosta is a beautiful book! Cal Mercer, an Assistant Principal in Florida, is a recent widower who desperately needs to make a fresh start. Before she died, his wife Allison, had thought they should travel to Kyoto, Japan. Cal comes across an advertisement for a cultural ambassador in Yagi, Japan, near Kyoto and ends up there despite not speaking Japanese or knowing what will be expected of him.

Yagi is a small agricultural village that is losing population. The coop-manager Shogo wants to turn that around and Cal, Shogo and a tech savvy young woman Mina decide to use the traditional Persimmon Festival to draw in more people and give Yagi new life. The Deputy Mayor Nakamura is the only villain in the book and he threatens to reduce funding for Yagi unless there are 6,422 people at the festival, up from 4,281.

The writing is wonderful. Brian Rosta brings Yagi and the people to life. You care about every character. When they succeed beyond their wildest dreams, it’s so joyful and hopeful you just don’t want the book to end.

Marina Mews by DL Mitchell is a well-written mystery, third in the Coral Shores Veterinary Mystery series. Emily Benton is a veterinarian in the small Florida town of Coral Shores. She runs a clinic with her best friend from high school, Anthony. She discovers the dead body of Billy the owner of the dive shop on a walk with Elvis, a dog she rescued that now belongs to her brother Duncan’s family. Duncan is the local police chief and Mike, one of the other cops, is Emily’s boyfriend. Emily has a history of investigating crimes on her own with Anthony which angers her brother and worries her boyfriend.

It’s a slow-moving book with a lot of information about running a veterinary practice and about animals. The solution to the murder is fairly predictable and the characters seem to be set from the first two books. It’s a pleasant story but seems to be following a formula. Elvis is a main character in all the books. This book would appeal to dog and cat lovers which might make up for the lack of real suspense in the mystery.

Where Hope Begins by Candee Fick is the first book in her new series, Cafe on Hope and Main. It’s a wonderful book of faith, family and romance with very appealing characters. Lauren Graham has worked as a waitress for the Dawson family in Dawson’s Diner in a small town outside Denver, CO for years. The Dawsons have become her family since her own family has splintered and moved away. The Dawson’s son Joel has just graduated early from business school and has come home to help his father straighten out the diner’s finances before he finds a job in a corporation. His father has a massive heart attack and Joel is forced to take over the diner while his father recovers. He’s angry and arrogant but rather quickly comes to appreciate Lauren’s presence and help.

The book deals with the problems they face with the diner and with their growing feelings for each other. Candee Fick has written a real page turner - I didn’t want to put the book down. You come away with a real understanding of what’s involved in running a diner and of what’s really important in life. I loved the way the characters had all learned to pray their way through their problems. It’s a book filled with hope and I look forward to the next book in the series.

Even After This by Deborah Clack was an intense story about Meredith, a woman who lost her husband and two small children in a tragic car accident. As she finally starts on the road back to living a full life, she goes to Colorado from Texas to look at property there. She meets a movie star, Harlan Holcombe, who is also broken. They navigate the long, difficult process toward a life together. It’s a bittersweet novel because Meredith has lost so much and Harlan is dealing with a young daughter and angry exwife. There are many obstacles, mostly emotional, before they reach a happy ending. The novel is well-written and a page turner. I’m looking forward to the second book in this series.

His Last Christmas Gift by Debra Borchert is a wonderful book, well-written and heartwarming. Claire Didier, widowed for a year, is a swimsuit designer with an obsession to create a swimsuit that is also a life preserver. In the first few pages of the book, her latest creation is such a disaster that she is fired. Then she finds a photo of a young boy who looks exactly like her husband, David, in one of his jackets and realizes that he had a son, Luca, in France whom she knew nothing about. Despite the fact that she is extremely upset and angry, she feels she needs to warn his mother Sophie about a possible genetic heart defect that David died of and that he may have passed on to Luca.

David was a sommelier and traveled to France twice a year. David and Claire had met and married in France but she has refused to go back with him for over twenty years and has also refused to have children because she was afraid that she might be like her terrible mother.

She goes to France to find Sophie and Luca and discovers that Sophie has also died, leaving Luca with her brother Gilbert. The novel progresses through Claire’s discoveries about herself, David, his relationship with Sophie, her mother, Gilbert and how much she can love Luca. The Christmas markets in Colmar, France are brought to life and I especially loved the descriptions of the church where she found a kindly priest and then the nun next door. This is a book I’d like to reread!

The Cider Maker’s Secret by Matilda Lockwood is the story of Elizabeth Whitcombe, a widow with an apple orchard in England in 1763, dealing with so many government regulations that it’s almost impossible to keep the orchard. Nathaniel Carter, a man from Virginia in the American colonies, appears on her land, wanting to help her. She doesn’t trust any man, she has responsibility for her niece Phoebe who has a crippled foot and William, a younger boy who seems to have no family.

I would have given the book a higher rating but I had trouble understanding all the intricacies of making cider and the timing of events in the story. Everyone in the book seemed tormented by events of the past and all the current problems. Elizabeth is an uncomfortable heroine, too feminist and strong - very prickly. Nathaniel was a likable hero but I never figured out what his past problems really entailed. The rules of the Crown about making and selling cider were very confusing and took up too much of the story.

Pride, Prejudice and Perplexing Ploys by A.M Barnich is an impenetrable mystery that moves so slowly and ponderously that I gave up and skimmed the book. I had hoped to figure out what all the fuss was about but it was beyond me. I have no idea what the dark secrets that Mr. Bennet was dealing with were. When I read a book that is patterned on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I expect to find that, at least, the characters live where they do in Pride and Prejudice. In this book they are all bunched together in Meryton, Longbourn seems to be in Meryton and no one seems concerned that Longbourn is entailed and will pass to Mr. Collins on Mr. Bennetts death. I found the book unsatisfying.

Something Resembling Love by Elizabeth Standish is a heavy novel, with very conflicted characters. Jane, a scientist studying soil and Peter, a post-doc studying cancer are uncomfortable people to begin with. Jane has a life threatening disease that has made her decide against ever having children. Peter is a nerdy, insecure man who has trouble making decisions. Between the disease details, the scientific explanations of their work and the gratuitous sexual descriptions, it was a tough read. The ending was unsatisfying.

You Had Me at Waffles. By Tracy Wright is a very likable sequel to her Love at First Flight. Emily Levine and Adam Kostas are the best friends of the two main characters in Love at First Flight, Sophie and Daniel. They were responsible for getting Sophie and Daniel together through a honeymoon promotion at a tropical resort although they didn’t know each other.

Adam is a pilot for SkyLux, based in Toronto, and Emily works for the Niagara Tourism Board, based in Niagara Falls. They met through Sophie and Daniel and the four of them have started a Brunch Club, partly because Emily has three waffle irons. Emily is resistant to Adam’s charm because she doesn’t trust it. He’s afraid of commitment. The novel is about how they worked through that. It is a bit slow-moving but charming. You feel you really know the four characters well and they are an appealing group.

The Ump - a novella by Bob Merz was ultimately a disappointment. The premise that mild-mannered, super helpful lawyer James Grossman could turn into a tyrant simply by putting on an umpire’s uniform was intriguing. However his tyrant side was so over the top that it’s hard to believe that he would have been allowed to ump more than one game. The writing style is overly descriptive and the action is very slow. The resolution between the two sides of James Grossman is so trite that I felt cheated.

A Bridesmaid’s Guide to Murder by Abigail Scott is a wonderful book. Emelia Walsh is a hired bridesmaid for reasons that become clear as the story unfolds. She is at a wedding in Vermont and almost from the moment she arrives, things begin to go downhill. She solves all kinds of problems, from spills on dresses to calming people down to making sure that everything goes smoothly. But when one of the wedding party is murdered, and Detective John Sutton begins his investigation, sparks fly between Emmy and John as she gets in his way. I didn’t want the book to end and am delighted that it is the first in a series. I only hope that Abigail Scott is a fast writer because I can’t wait to read her next book.

Dancing in the Aisle by Rochelle Melander and Harold Eppley is a wonderful book! I was drawn by the title because I have gotten so much joy from a young autistic girl who used to dance in a side aisle of our church during the organ postlude. She was at one with the music and it was beautiful to watch.

This book is a collection of devotions based on watching children experience different things in life and learning something important from their approach, often something we’ve forgotten as we have grown older.

Each devotion has a passage from Scripture, a meaningful meditation and some questions for reflection. It is a perfect book to use in a small group study. It provides endless opportunity for discussion. I feel blessed to have been one of the readers at LibraryThing chosen to review it.

The Marriage Audit by Ashley Broussard is a very readable book about a young couple, Sophia and Beau LeBlanc, on the verge of divorce after drifting apart following Sophia’s miscarriage. They hesitate to sign the divorce papers and their lawyer suggests a one day marriage audit, not to judge each other but to provide clarity about why they have come to the point of divorce. Most of the book takes place during the day of the audit, in the counselor’s office, with interludes between the twelve questions that provide flashbacks to different times in their relationship that help explain their current feelings.

Sophia and Beau are both attractive and likeable but I was left with an empty feeling about them. They seemed to think that everything about their marriage depended on themselves. They had no faith in anything beyond themselves. The book is well written and I read it straight through in spite of my misgivings about their lack of faith.

Love at First Flight: The Story of Sophie and Daniel (Love: Some Assembly Required) by Tracy Wright is a happy, delightful novel about Sophie Lin and Daniel Carter, two very likeable people who are entered in a contest for a honeymoon package at an expensive resort in the Maldives. They win the contest but have never met each other and have completely opposite personalities. You know where the plot is going from the beginning but it’s page-turning fun the whole way. The only negative I found in the book was the author’s constant description of the characters smirking. Smirking to me is very negative and every one of the many, many times the word appeared made me feel like I had stubbed my toe. That aside, I loved the book and look forward to her sequel about Emily and Adam.

The lengthy title of the book, Lydia Wickham’s Northern Peril: Darcy and Wickham’s Rapprochement.: A Pride and Prejudice Variation: The Elizabeth Bennet Series Book 5 by Gill Mather should have given me a clue about what the book would be like. Having loved Pride and Prejudice as a teenager, I have read many variations and they rarely live up to the original.

I didn’t realize that this book was the fifth in a series so there were references in the book that I didn’t understand. It was a mystery, but I was very disappointed that there was no romantic plot to speak of since most variations do have some romance in them.

Lydia Bennet Wickham has been accused of forging a will so that she would inherit the entire fortune of a wealthy woman. The woman, Fanny Roberts, had become fond of Lydia and her husband while they were staying with her but had died after a fall from a horse while hunting. A relative of her late husband’s who expected to be the heir had brought the accusation against Lydia and she is in jail when the story opens.

All the characters from Pride and Prejudice appear on the scene plus many, many others. It is a slow-moving account of how the situation progresses with lots of details about legal matters and how life was in the time period. Since it is the fifth book in the series, there must be an audience for the series so it may just not be for me. It was well-written, just way too long.

Montana Healing by Timothy Jensen was a light short story that talked a lot about healing. Nancy, a widow, and her daughter Brooklyn left New York City to return to Montana where Nancy had grown up to spend time with her father Jacob on his dog rescue ranch. She is an author who has hit a writing block. Her cousin Samantha arrives from a harrowing experience at the vet clinic where she works to find healing as well. The main event of the book is a fund raiser for the rescue dogs that involves the whole town. The book never explains in any detail about what happened to Nancy’s husband or what happened after Jacob’s first wife left. Where was Nancy’s mother in the story? John, a local store owner, appeared early in the book and seemed to be a possible love interest for Nancy but then Matt, the animal control fellow, seemed to be a more likely candidate. Suddenly at the end of the book, John is back and Matt disappeared. The book needs more coherence and some editing. Samantha is Nancy’s cousin in places and her niece in other places. There was a surprising amount of repetition in such a short book.

The Summer We Ran by Audrey Ingram is well-written and a page turner. The book tells the story of Tess Murphy and Grant Alexander running against each other in 2021 to become governor of Virginia with flashbacks to their teenage romance in 1996. Grant was a boarding school rich boy and Tess was the daughter of the single mom chef hired for the summer at the estate next to Grant’s parents’ estate. They have both hidden the events of that summer from everyone for 25 years. Having kept the secrets from their spouses becomes a real problem as their campaigns progress. The reader sees both the current day situation and the teenage romance from both Tess’ and Grant’s viewpoint as things escalate during the campaign. It’s very engaging but I couldn’t stop wondering why Tess and Grant would ever have thought they could run a political campaign with so many dark secrets just waiting to be uncovered. By the end of the book I had run out of patience with both of them.

Duch by JB Miller began with an interesting premise - that Princess Diana hadn’t actually died in a car accident in Paris. The book takes place in present day Paris, almost 30 years to the day after the accident. A woman in her 60’s, dressed in white, jumps off the bridge by the memorial to Diana into the Seine River. As she is rescued, she says, “Je suis Diana,” and is taken to the hospital. A young American social media personage, Fox Chandler, latches onto the story and catapults “Diana Inconnue,” Diana Unknown into the news and the book takes off from there. No one, including Diana Inconnue, is sure who she is but many people want to believe she is really Princess Di. The British Royal family is bothered by the whole uproar and the reader follows the reactions of each - King Charles, Camilla, William and Kate, Megan and Harry. JB Miller captures the various voices of everyone involved in what seems like an eyewitness approach that really works. It’s an interesting book that proceeds to a satisfying conclusion but it may be just a little long.

Constant Love by Tracie Peterson was a page-turning read. The book is set in 1887 on a ranch near Cheyenne, WY. Charlotte is a young woman who who has been in love with her brother’s best friend, Micah, since she was four years old. Her father is trying to marry her off to a lawyer in town and she angrily tells him she’ll never speak to him again if he forces her to marry a man she doesn’t love. Devastating blizzards strike and her father and brother are frozen to death searching for their animals. Micah and his father go to search for them and find them. Micah goes back to get a wagon but his father is dead by the time he and Charlotte’s mother return. They are all devastated and the book chronicles the different ways they deal with their overwhelming losses and ultimately find peace and happiness again. Their journey is bumpy and the nasty lawyer, Lewis Bradley, doesn’t want to give up marrying Charlotte, even against her will. There is a lot of tension in the book but, having read other books by Tracie Peterson, I knew things would work out well in the end and they did. It is a very enjoyable book with a lot of twists and turns but one of the best things about the book is the characters’ strong Christian faith.

A Hot Chocolate for Two by Renee Gendron is delightful. It’s a short story, the second in a series, Megan the Matchmaker’s Brilliant Blind Dates. Nicole works in an office with Megan who is very good at setting up successful blind dates for women coworkers who think they don’t want or have time for a man in their lives. Megan talks Nicole into meeting Jonathan, who has recently moved back to their city, for a hot chocolate and a walk in the park. It’s the kind of book that makes you happy for Nicole and Jonathan as they get to know and appreciate each other through various amusing adventures in the park at Christmas time. It reminded me of the early dates my husband and I had walking around New York City 58 years ago.

Love Notes, edited by Heather Christie is a collection of very short stories, activities, puzzles, pages for journaling and quotes - about love in all forms. With about forty contributors, the quality of the writing is uneven. It may be because I am 80 and have been happily married for 57 years that I liked the stories at the end of the book best - by Katie McCollow, Ellen O’Neil, Michael Owens and Suzanne Christie, all of which were about long marriages. Many of the other stories seemed to be about chaos, leaving me feeling sad.

The Lindens by Barney Jeffries is a wonderful book! I loved the idea of a book that followed the lives of the people who lived in a particular house over 150 years and was delighted to win a copy on LibraryThing to read and review. Barney Jeffries did a masterful job of bringing both the house and the various inhabitants to life. Each era felt true to its time and the people were so real that I felt that I knew them. The interweaving of their lives was a delight. It’s a book that demands to be reread because it would be even more enjoyable the second time through when you would already know how each person fits into the overall history. The large house in the English countryside was built by Arnold Cann in 1885 the last entry was in 2035 - an amazing tour de force!

A Love Worth Waiting For by Lara Van Hulzen is a delight. I didn’t want to put it down on the one hand but I didn’t want to finish it too quickly on the other hand.

The heroine Sadie Woods runs an antique store with her aunt JoJo in Nearlake, ID. Her aunt is recovering from cancer and the two of them are facing financial problems. Sadie walks into the store to find a broken back window. When the Deputy Sheriff, James Larsen, arrives to investigate, the plot line is set. He’s a retired NFL player who was a football star in the local high school who Sadie had a crush on. He’s now a widower with a 15 year old daughter, Maddie. He had noticed her in high school and now he’s taken with her.

The twists and turns of the story are believable, well-written and touching. It’s a wonderful escape from a culture that has become coarse and superficial into a community of caring people who know what’s important and lasting. This is Book 1 in the Nearlake series and I’m looking forward to the next one!

A Coffee for Two by Renée Gendron is a delightful novella essentially taking place in a coffee shop in one evening. Arianna and Sebastian are fixed up by people in their respective offices and Arianna was reluctant to agree to the blind date. I found her easy to relate to - she works with numbers and does cross stitch for relaxation as I do. Arianna and Sebastian are both very appealing, the coffee shop becomes a crazy, but happy, place as the evening goes on and the book left me with a warm feeling.

This book is part of a series - Megan’s brilliant blind dates