Category Archives: Book Reviews

“Last One Home” is a stand-alone novel by Debbie Macomber. Most of the books I have read by Ms. Macomber are parts of long-standing series, so it was a treat to read this book.

The story is about three sisters, though the story focuses mostly on Cassie. Cassie is the rebellious one. She ran away from home thirteen years before – abandoning her family to make a new life with her boyfriend and the baby they are expecting. Life turns rough – really rough for her and her daughter and she is trying desperately to find her way home again.

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My knowledge of the fashion industry frankly is limited to watching a few seasons of “Project Runway”, the entirety of “Ugly Betty” and both reading the book and watching the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.” Before choosing this book, “The Knockout”, I wondered if I would glean much from reading it. My trepidation was completely unfounded as the book is as much about office politics as it is fashion and, unfortunately for me and for most of us, office politics are present in most industries.

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When I first started reading “In the Shadow of Winter”, I was struck by the beautiful descriptive prose of the story. It was almost as if I were reading poetry rather than a novel. Then the plot caught me in its grasp and I found that the book was as much as mystery as it was a romance.

The story is about Eleanor Phillips, a young woman who is struggling to keep her Cotswold family home after the deprivations of World War II. She has lost her mother long since and her father more recently. Her engagement to the man she loved was abruptly broken years before. She has picked up her broken pieces and is trying to make a home and living for herself and the young boy she has taken in during the war years.

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I just finished reading the third and what was the final book in the Bottom Dollar Series by Karen Gillespie. I am hopeful that Ms. Gillespie is planning on adding new books to her series based on some comments and a contest on her website.

“Dollar Daze” is a fun and funny book that deals primarily with romance in the older set. There are sweet parts, very sad, silly, and even laugh out loud parts. We get to see Mavis and Birdie vying for the same man, Mrs. Tobias being set up with someone oh, so different from her late husband, and finally we get to touch base with Elizabeth and Timothy now that their sweet bundle of joy is born and doing what most sweet bundles of joy do – deprive Mommy and Daddy of sleep and take over their lives.

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“The One That Got Away” is an excellent debut novel by Bethany Chase. I was extremely surprised to find that the author did not have an existing back list of books as the plot, characters, and the dialog of the book were so smooth and well polished that I expected it was from long experience. As that is not the case, I was blown away by the skills shown by this new author.

The book is set in Austin, TX and as someone who lived in Austin for many years, the story sucked me right in and put me in places that I knew very well. Another expectation? I felt sure that Ms. Chase was from Austin but apparently, she actually does excellent research and has a great hand at putting the right references in the right places to make the book feel like home to me.

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