Reading List by Jayne for Summer
Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive
A rollicking, big-hearted story of long-lost love, friendship, and a life well-lived, set at a Florida retirement resort for queer women, on the last day of resident Hannah Cardin’s life—perfect for readers of Less and The Wedding People.
It’s 2067 and Florida is partially underwater, but even that can’t bring down the residents of Palm Meridian Retirement Resort, a utopian home for queer women who want to revel in their twilight years. Inside, Hula-Hoopers shimmy across the grass, fiercely competitive book clubs nearly come to blows, and the roller-ski team races up and down the winding paths. Everywhere you look, these women are living large.
Hannah Cardin has spent ten happy years under these tropical, technicolor skies, but after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, she has decided that tomorrow morning she will close her eyes for the very last time. Tonight, however, Hannah and her raucous band of friends are throwing one hell of an end-of-life party. And with less than twenty-four hours left, Hannah is holding out for one final, impossible thing…
Amongst the guest list is Sophie, the love of Hannah’s life. They haven’t spoken since their devastating breakup over forty years ago, but today, Hannah is hoping for the chance to give her greatest love one last try.
As Hannah anxiously awaits Sophie’s arrival, her mind casts back over the highs and lows of her kaleidoscopic life. But when a shocking secret from the past is revealed, Hannah must reconsider if she can say goodbye after all.
Spanning the course of a single day and seventy-odd years, and bursting with irresistible hope, humor, and wisdom, this one-of-a-kind novel celebrates the unexpected moments that make us feel the most alive.
Review
I’m getting older and thought that a book about 70 somethings in a retirement home bravely living large and facing old age would be affirming. Instead I’m afraid I find this book a little depressing – maybe because of the seemingly frantic effort to be upbeat in the face of what Hannah plans. Too much effort after a while.
The book starts well but I kept losing interest in the chapters focusing on the past and the more of these that showed up, the slower the pace of the book seemed to be. I like parts of it but just not enough to keep going. DNF
AmazonBNKoboAREGoogle Play Store
A Proposal to Die by Molly Harper
A fast-paced, witty, and delightful new mystery about a marriage proposal planner whose biggest job yet is threatened by a dead body (or two).
Jessamine Bricker loves a plan. Contingency plans and pros-and-cons lists are her love language, and because of that, her proposal planning business is thriving. But with rent costs rising at her office building, Jess jumps at the chance to plan a proposal between her snobby high school classmate, Diana, and her very wealthy boyfriend, Trenton Tillard…the Fourth.
Roped into joining Diana’s ”pre-bridal” retreat at the exclusive Golden Ash resort, Jess hopes to fade into the background, get some work done, and maybe find some time to unwind. Their first day is anything but relaxing: Diana is furious about the mountain spa’s lack of cell phone reception, the couple next door argues constantly, and Jess swears she just saw a drug deal go down. To top it all off, she’s warned to stay out of the woods by the gruff and sexy chef, Dean Osbourne. Is this a retreat or a horror movie?
As Jess tries to do her job while placating the bride-to-be and her increasingly over-the-top demands, she spends more and more time with the resort owners, finding herself much more in tune with the laid-back Osbourne family than her social climbing “boss.” Between a meditation garden-related drowning and Jess’s discovery of a body in a sauna, it’s clear that deadly secrets abound at the Golden Ash. Now it’s up to Jess to unravel the mysteries here in the mountains—before all her plans are cancelled…permanently.
Review
I love contemporary Molly Harper books. Her Kentucky Bluegrass series is darling. The Southern Eclectic series set in Georgia is hilarious. I was all set to see how much I was going to love seeing what she’d do with a murder mystery book. The short answer is that this is not working for me at all.
Many things confused me straight from the start. Jess is hard at work as the book opens ensuring that her clients are thrilled with the proposal Jess has worked so hard to craft. Great, that’s her job. Then her phone rings with what could be business and she … blocks the call? What, does she not have some way for potential clients to leave her a message? So she can do more business. Then she gets confronted in the parking lot by a potential client and Jess appears to be reluctant to take on a client who could pay her eye watering amounts of money? To do her job. Huh?
I also didn’t realize that Insta and social media and “brands” were going to be front and center. Maybe I’m just too old to give a damn about this stuff but yeah, I don’t and don’t care to read about it or about custom colors of dead microscopic organisms. Plus where is the Harper humor I love? So no, this one is not for me and I will not be finishing it. DNF
AmazonBNKoboAREGoogle Play Store
The Art of Vanishing: A Novel by Morgan Pager
Something magical is happening inside this museum. . . .
Jean’s life is the same day in and day out. Frozen in time by his painter father, the legendary Henri Matisse, Jean observes the ebb and flow of museum guests as they take in the works of his father and other masters like Renoir, Picasso, and Modigliani. But his world takes a mesmerizing turn when Claire, a new museum employee, enters his life.
Night after night, Claire moves through the gallery where Jean’s painting hangs, mopping the floors, talking softly to herself to stem her loneliness, and gazing admiringly at the masterpieces above. The alluring man in the corner of the Matisse—is he watching her? Why does she feel a deepening pull to him, like he can see her truest self, her most profound secrets? Did he just move?
In an extraordinary twist of fate, Claire discovers she can step through the frame of Jean’s painting and into a bygone era, a lush, verdant snapshot of family life in France in the throes of the First World War. She and Jean begin a seemingly impossible affair, falling in love against the backdrop of the gallery’s other paintings come to life—glittering parties, exhilarating horse races, and windswept beach bluffs—which they can move through together and where Claire is seemingly the only outside visitor, alone in possession of this gift.
But as their happiness is threatened by challenges both inside and outside the museum, Claire and Jean find themselves in a fight to preserve the love they’ve hardly dared to dream of. Will their extraordinary connection defy the confines of reality, or will the forces conspiring against them shatter their carefully curated happiness?
Review
I was utterly charmed by the description of this book. The reality was a let down. I struggled to stay interested as it had so much telling rather than showing. But as one character was literally stuck in a painting when the other was present, I shouldn’t be surprised. The dialog was flat and boring and when Claire first appears and Jean instantly knows that she’s “special” I think I actually groaned. Listening to Claire talk to herself in an empty museum room was painful. The pair of them come across as mid-teens, sneaking glances at each other and wondering if s/he likes me. I also don’t want to read anything about Covid. Sorry but this one is not working for me. DNF.
AmazonBNKoboAREGoogle Play Store
Destination Weddings and Other Disasters: A Spicy Enemies to Lovers Adventure Rom Com (Belize Dreams Book 2) by M.C. Vaughan
A hospitality pro reluctantly agrees to plan her mom’s beach wedding with help from her crush-worthy high school bully in this witty, spicy enemies-to-lovers romance.
Sun, sea, sand…and her high school nemesis.
This destination wedding is about to take a detour.
There are millions of men in Los Angeles, and somehow Julia Stone’s mother just got engaged to the worst possible option. Not that there’s anything wrong with her future stepfather. It’s his son who’s the problem. Event planner Carson Miller is six-plus feet of lean muscle and irresistible charm, and ten years ago he made Julia’s life hell.
Paired with Carson to organize the last-minute Belize wedding, Julia doesn’t intend to let him off the hook for past bad behavior. If only there weren’t surprising new feelings in the mix, like undeniable heat…
Carson claims he made mistakes; he’s a different person than he was back then. Julia’s response: prove it. Now, in between wedding planning, zip-lining and exploring waterfalls, they’re having fun falling hard and wondering if this paradise can last once the party’s over…
From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…
Review
I loved last year’s “Romancing Miss Stone” and was thrilled to be offered an arc for the next book in the series. Not gonna lie – enemies to lovers is not my favorite trope but … see sentence one. I was hoping that I’d get something more along the lines of the first book.
I made it more than halfway through this one but even before I stopped, I was having trouble. As another reviewer says, we know from the start that Carson is basically head over heels in love – or lust – with Julia and has been for years. Meanwhile Julia had feelings for Carson but initially thinks of him as that bully who ruined her teenage years. This pretty much gets resolved early on. Part of me likes that this didn’t get dragged out and yet, what’s left if such a major plot issue is more or less resolved? Nevertheless, I pushed on.
There’s plenty of lust and ogling. Lots and lots of ogling and thinking naughty thoughts and jealousy – mainly from Carson when any other man looks at Julia. She is obsessed with what Carson is wearing or not wearing as well as feeling left out of her family’s major life events. The wedding planning allows lots of descriptions of how amazing Belize seems to be so yay for that.
But the scene at an evening beach music concert when suddenly Julia locks lips with Carson and then does a 180, sprinting away and worried that half of the country was watching her and that she’ll be the major person in the next week’s local news cycle baffled me. When Carson hurries after her, we get treated to Julia moaning about her lack of relationship potential in the face of hot Carson telling her she’s hot, too. Sorry but Julia sounds like she’s still sixteen. And suddenly, I’d reached the end of my patience with this story.
I wanted more fun as in the first book. Instead there’s too much wedding planning, too much Julia whingeing and more lusting than romance. Sadly this one is a DNF for me.
AmazonBNKoboAREGoogle Play Store
Endling by Maria Reva
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick biologist who lives out of her mobile lab. She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to give up, settle down, and start a family. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides uninfluenced by feminism and modernity.
Nastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.
Review
This book is, I think, supposed to be a denunciation of the Ukrainian Bride Industry as well as a plea to save endangered species, and commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It pains me to DNF this one as all these are important issues and the snail aspect is charming and meaningful but that’s what I’m going to do. I feel bad for not being able to keep going as I know the author is working with heavy (real life) stuff that is deeply personal but I’m just not in love with any of it other than the snails and there’s far too little of him/them. Nastia is described as keeping her face blank and not emotionally engaging with any of the bachelors and that’s unfortunately how I feel about most of these characters. They’re all just blank to me. I don’t think reading any further – okay, I lie, I did flip to the end and still don’t get it – will help. I truly wish the book luck.
AmazonBNKoboAREGoogle Play Store
I’ve DNF’d more books than I’ve finished this year, so I sympathize. I think all the books we get now set in retirement communities just prove how special the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club books are.
@Jenreads: I think I’m actually doing better with my Finish:DNF ratio this year but when a book that I’m anticipating or that looks really cute or meaningful doesn’t work for me, it’s painful. I go into books hoping to enjoy them. I hear you about “me too” settings/characters.
Drats on all the unfinished books, Jayne, but I can certainly identify. I had high hopes for the recent Sarina Bowen book but put it aside after less than a page.
Here are some books that I did enjoy recently ~
The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy Book 1) by Antonia Hodgson
Copper Script by KJ Charles
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Healers’ Road by S.E. Robertson
The Measure by Nikki Erlick
The 5th Gender: A Tinkered Stars Mystery by G. L. Carriger
@Kareni:
Sadly, sometimes you just know.
I’m surprised you didn’t call this your DNF list, LOL.
@Janine: I think I labeled another one with that a while ago.
Well this is unfortunate. There are several titles I was interested in, but it’s too hot to figure out if they’d work for me. There’s always tomorrow. Thanks, Jayne. Kareni, you bright, positive spark, you. Thanks for the recommendations.
You are quite welcome, Darlynne. I hope that one or more of those titles might speak to you!
@Kareni: I’m sorry you couldn’t get into the latest Sarina Bowen! I read the first page again to try figure out your objection. Initially thought, yeah took me awhile to get used to the name Jethro, but then I wondered if it was the present tense. I enjoy reading present tense, but I can be quite an odd egg! (And yes, I’m another one on the Kareni bandwagon – you are a gem!)
@Eliza: I’m afraid I couldn’t read a book with a Jethro main character and not spend the entire time with Jethro Bodine in my head.
Thank you for the kind words, @Eliza! Present tense doesn’t bother me, so I doubt it was that. And, while I hear you on Jethro Bodine, @Jayne, I don’t think it was that either! Sometimes something simply doesn’t grab me. I might try it again at some point …or maybe not. Did you enjoy the book, @Eliza? Feel free to reply in the Open Thread if you prefer.
@Kareni: You know, I *did* enjoy the book, but I can’t recall anything about it except that it was real enemies-to-lovers. Even after reading the first half-dozen pages, nothing else came back. But Sarina Bowen is such a reliable author for me, that I’ll read any m/m she writes.
@Eliza: I generally enjoy her books, too, m/m and f/m. My favorites happen to sit in the latter camp ~ The Year We Fell Down and Blonde Date. Both have lots of conversation between the leads which is something I value.