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This Chick Read: Grace Note (Cake #7) by J. Bengtsson

Grace is the seventh child in the McCallister family. Famous for the musical talent of two of her older brothers, but mostly famous because of the kidnapping of one of those same brothers. Jake McCallister found his freedom by killing his abductor and abuser. That kidnapping changed the lives of every person in her family, and despite her young age, Grace, too was affected. When Grace is in high school she happens upon Rory, a street kid who survives by making money playing drums on some old paint cans and buckets. In him she sees her soulmate, but also someone like her brother who might need saving. Separated by circumstances they meet again seven months later and their adolescent love blooms. Until his past catches up to them and he disappears for five years.

Grace and Rory’s story was told in two different time frames. The first reads like a very hot young adult novel. All chemistry and feelings, but not a lot of depth. Rory was hiding a huge secret and terrified that anyone would find out. Grace, growing up in her dysfunctional yet loving family, knew all about secrets and was playing the long game hoping he’d eventually trust her enough to reveal his. Unfortunately he disappears for five years. I’ve always thought J. Bengtsson does a really good job at writing young love that is realistic and this portion of the novel felt true to that style, which she’s done in several of her novels. It felt real, I was sold on the story, and loved young Grace and Rory. The transitions from the characters younger storyline to the current timeline just wasn’t as interesting to me. I knew the end result would be them as adults but that timeline just lacked the urgency and finesse that she wrote into their younger selves.

I also need to talk about the darkness in this novel. All of the novels in this series go through dark moments because of what happened to Jake as a child. Each sibling deals with trauma, self reflection, etc. in individual ways. Usually the person they are paired with helps them overcome and not move on, but feel better about where everyone is in their lives. This story felt different for me because Rory had his own trauma too. It was really a dark novel, which affected how much I may or may not have liked the story. Not to say there weren’t moments of laughter and fun. The McCallister crew is really very funny. The scenes that included them included a lot of joy and mushy emotions, I just wish that there had been a little lightheartedness included between Grace and Rory too. Their romance was all urgency and darkness.

Now, saying all of that, it was not a bad novel at all. It was good. It just wasn’t my favorite novel of J. Bengtsson’s in this series. There are others I like better. However, it’s not one to be skipped. All of these novels add to the overall story and as the last sibling in the crew, this novel felt like a good conclusion. I’ve read that the parental units are getting their own romance, which I will definitely be reading immediately. They are a truly unique couple and knowing where they end up and how they helped their children through all the trauma, will give their characters an added depth. I can’t wait! ❤️❤️❤️❣️

Click this link to purchase this book!* Grace Note

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This Chick Read: Technically Yours by Denise Williams

Pearl Harris has been burnt by love too many times. Now she leads with her head and not her heart and she’s risen through the ranks at her new company OurCode. Cord Matthews fell for Pearl years ago when they worked together at a Tech company he owned. He fell in love but Pearl didn’t take a risk on them and took a job across the country. Now, years later, their paths cross and both of them are leary of getting involved. Pearl is still not letting her heart make decisions for her and Cord is gun-shy when it comes to relationships, but that chemistry is still sizzling.

It was really easy to drop into this story and connect with both Pearl and Cord. I liked both of their characters a lot and could certainly understand why they felt like they did about love and relationships. I did get distracted by the back and forth between real time and their past. Just when I’d finally get into the emotional dynamics of Pearl in the current day the chapter would end and I’d have to try to connect and understand the past Pearl. I’ll admit flashbacks are not my favorite things to read and I did struggle with that aspect of this novel.

The thing I loved the most about our heroine, Pearl, is that she knew what she wanted and she was very focused on getting it. Specifically when it came to her career. A lot of time was spent informing the reader about how responsible, direct, and awesome Pearl was at her job. I love a strong heroine, but I kind of feel like a little too much time was spent with Pearl’s indecision about Cord. It didn’t fit with who she was in her business life. I wish she had figured herself out a little sooner because I became impatient with her emotional see-saw.

Needless to say, I felt pretty indifferent to our main character which made it hard to root for Pearl and Cord in their romance. Did I root for her to get the job? Absolutely! I just wasn’t sure she was the right person for Cord. He was ready to go all in from the get go and Pearl’s indecisiveness spoiled the romance for me. ❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* Technically Yours

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Gentleman’s Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women #4) by Evie Dunmore

Introverted spinster, Catriona Campbell fights for women in the Suffrage Movement, is writing an academic novel, and helps her father run their ailing estate. When he asks her to introduce his colleague from the Middle East into the academic world at Oxford she doesn’t miss a beat until she realizes he’s the stranger who saw her swim naked in the Scottish loch on their estate. Claiming the need to examine some ancient artifacts from his country, Elias is in England under false pretenses and realizes the quickest way to get close to the items he needs to return to his homeland is to become close to Catriona, but she’s been burned by love before.

I love, love, love this series. The characters are always so interesting and this time in history is fascinating. I love the Suffrage Movement as a backdrop to our heroine’s lives and the struggles women in that point in history have had to suffer through to make our lives better today. It really makes the story come alive. Catriona and Elias’s story included those historical moments, but the fact that he was from the Middle East and not of the ton created another roadblock to their being together and added to my enjoyment of the novel. The way his culture was written into the story and why he was in England, gave depth to his character but also the overall story arc. I truly couldn’t put this book down.

The romance in this story was titillating, forbidden, and romantic. Catriona and Elias had so many things working against them that it seemed as if they wouldn’t find their happily ever after. Of course, in romance novels, we always get the ending that we want and it did happen, but not without these two interesting characters being put through their own trials and tribulations, facing their hopes, fears, and dreams. I can’t think of a thing I’d change to make this story better. It was heart-warming, heart-rending, and the ending was oh so joyful. I believe this is the last book in the series because the author gave us an epilogue that included all of the female leads from this series. I’m bummed, but at the same time I’m looking forward to what this talented author will write next. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Gentleman’s Gambit

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Dead Letter Days (Haven’s Rock #.5) by Kelley Armstrong

A prequel to the off-shoot of the Casey Duncan series, Dead Letter Days takes place when Casey and Eric are at a lodge with the other townspeople from Rockton as they are waiting for their new town, Haven’s Rock, to be built. Someone in their group plants fake dead bodies in the woods around the lodge as a joke because Casey has stumbled across quite a few dead bodies in her time as an investigator, but in this case the mystery she stumbles upon is for a cold case of a missing person. As she and Eric investigate, Eric learns some things about his past that he’ll need to make a decision on so that he can move forward with a clean slate in his new life.

This short novella was unusual in that it didn’t actually involve any dead bodies and was missing the eeriness of some of the Rockton mysteries. In fact, they mystery Casey and Eric ended up solving gave these characters a small bit of peace. I enjoyed the different feel of this novel. Despite the things Eric finds out about his past, which cause him a bit of distress, it seems like a happy time for these characters and the mood in the writing reflected that. It was a nice change.

There isn’t too much to say about this because it was only about 100 pages and I don’t want to give any details away, but I enjoyed this short story. What I learned about the characters set’s the reader up for the first novel in the next series and I’m looking forward to seeing how these characters grow into their new place. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase this book!* Dead Letter Days

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I’m behind when my 82 year old mother has beat me to reading a book. The Midnight Library has been on my kindle for months and I’ve just been waiting for the right mood to jump into this bit of fiction. The synopsis never grabbed me, but I’ve not heard one person say that they didn’t enjoy reading this book.

Nora Seed is having a rough day in a tough life filled with regrets. Today her cat has died, she’s lost her job, her old bandmate yelled at her on the street, and her brother and best friend are ignoring her calls. Each addition to this lousy day makes the despair grow until she doesn’t see a reason for living. When she opens her eyes to her favorite librarian from her grade school library, Mrs. Elm explains that she’s in the Midnight Library where her alternate lives in other dimensions lie in the books on the shelves. All she has to do is find the right life and choose to live it and she will give up her root life and move forward as if it’s never been lived. This concept of “other” Nora’s living out the different choices she may have made is a pretty cool concept and one that made for great storytelling, so I can see why this book has received so much attention.

As I read this book I was enmeshed in each life of Nora’s, learning as Nora did that past regrets don’t necessarily mean that if she’d chose that path her life would’ve been any happier. In fact, her biggest regrets turned out to be not so great. As Nora sifts through her alternate lives she learns many things but the biggest is that the grass is not always greener if you’d chosen a different path than the one that she actually did take. I found this concept to be so easy to relate to and actually kind of comforting. No one likes to think that they would’ve been happier if they’d just made that different choice ten years ago. Maybe because this specific lesson rang true for me particularly, it is the one thing that I can remember out of the many lessons Matt Haig was teaching to Nora in this book. For me, it was the most important.

I have seen comparisons to It’s a Wonderful Life and when I was telling my husband the plot that is the exact thing he said to me. I’ll have to believe him since I’ve never seen the whole movie, but Nora did run the gamut from despair to hope and then happiness, realizing she did actually want to live just as Jimmy Stewart did in that famous movie. Regardless of that similarity, the final moments of hope and happiness after feeling the lows of despair made this novel a keeper and I could see returning to it for that life’s lesson when my own life might need the reminder. Not that I was at that low point, but the reminder doesn’t hurt and I think I’ll be keeping this book around for those moments in the future when reading Nora’s story reminds me to look further than the moment I’m in and grasp those small moments of happiness and connection that make life worth living. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Midnight Library

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

Nine years ago they lost one of their own. Now, the remaining seven friends meet up at Bea’s home in the mountains for a weekend of regaining their friendship and reminiscing about the past. Only someone is playing cruel tricks on the guests and when they get snowed in, those eerie pranks turn dangerous.

Nalini Singh is famous for her romantic fantasy novels but this is her second foray into the mystery genre. It hit all of the thriller/mystery notes. Eerie mansion in the mountains, mysterious death of their friend Bea, the psychological unwinding of her sister Darcie, romantic entanglements, and yes, even death. Unlike Ms. Singh’s first foray into the genre, this novel moved at a quicker pace. The main protagonist, Luna is the sleuth the reader relies on to take them through the plot and we see each action through her eyes. However, Luna is also suffering from a disease that is taking away her eyesight so she doesn’t trust some of the things she is seeing. Her suffering causing her to hallucinate or at least cause some mental hijinks that gives this story an even more eerie feel.

There were so many relationship entanglements that at first I had trouble keeping up. As I turned the pages those entanglements became a bit more clear and I was able to focus solely on the plot and not who did what with whom nine years ago making it easier to get wrapped up in the eeriness of the setting and the thriller dynamics that were in play. This was truly a fun book to read and had the feel of an old Nancy Drew mystery, although our heroine was a bit older and wasn’t quite so wholesome.

I think fan’s of Nalini Singh’s other novels would feel very satisfied with the change in genre’s and the cast of characters. This was a really interesting read that held my attention through every page. I’ll admit that I did guess the mystery but it took me a little bit to do that and I enjoyed the process of eliminating my suspects. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* There Should Have Been Eight

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy #1) by Nora Roberts

Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her father, who was adopted at birth, had a twin brother. His twin owned a magnificent home in Maine that he left to her when she died, the caveat being that she’d need to live in it for three years before inheriting. After finding her fianceé in bed with her cousin, Sonya didn’t have any problem with starting fresh in Maine. When Sonya arrives in Maine and meets Trey, the youngest lawyer in the firm that handled her uncle’s will, he admits to her that the manor is just a little bit haunted and sure enough Sonya hears music, finds her things moved around, and the kitchen magically cleaned. She also finds a painting by her uncle of his bride who died on their wedding day, and starts having dreams of other brides who died as well.

I always enjoy Nora Roberts writing. She is so consistent and her pace is easy to read and comforting to read. This novel, Inheritance, was just as enjoyable as many I’ve read in the past but there was something that stuck with me after I was done reading. Maybe it was the ghostly tales, or the romance between Sonya and Trey? I’m not sure, but I thought about this book for a long while after I was finished and really wished that I’d read it when books 2 and 3 were available for me to dive into immediately. Regardless of that lack, I so enjoyed this novel!

Who doesn’t want to inherit a fabulous old manor and a little bit of cash? Especially after breaking off a relationship with a deadbeat fianceé? Sonya was up for the challenge but she is a realist and needed her best friend with magical Louisiana roots to become her roommate and help her get to know her new ghostly friends.. and enemies. Sonya’s adventures while getting to know who each of these ghosts were added to the fun of reading this story as each reveal added another piece to the puzzle. Her attraction to Trey who basically grew up in that manor visiting her uncle made this book even more attractive to me. Handsome hero, mysterious inheritance, getting to know your new family? Check, check, and check! This book kept ticking all of my boxes.

If you’re a fan of Nora Roberts, then you are going to love this book. I think most anyone will find this an enjoyable read but there are always those one or two who don’t like popular stories just to be difficult. Maybe even those difficult readers will like this book. I thought it was a lot of fun, had a great romance, but even more importantly the story about Sonya and her family was the heart of the story. I really couldn’t put it down once I picked this one up. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest.

Click this link to purchase this book!* Inheritance

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick’s Audio Review: The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren

Felicity “Fizzy” Chen is a bestselling romance author but she’s feeling dissatisfied with her life. When she’s asked to give a commencement speech she realizes that although she has felt desire, she’s never actually been in love. Connor Prince is a documentary filmmaker and father to an adorable little girl, doesn’t have time for romantic love. When his boss tells him that he needs to come up with a concept for a reality dating show he meets Fizzy and thinks it would be awesome to help her find her true love. She rejects his pitch, but thinks it would be fun to string him along with ridiculous demands. When he agrees to them, she agrees to film the show. Of course, it’s not the bachelors that she falls for, is it?

What a fun novel! Fizzy’s demands includes bachelors who fill romance novel archetypes; vampire, nerd, the one who got away, etc. These 8 bachelors made for great reading, but it was really Fizzy and Connor’s romance that created the heat in this book. Connor, with his British accent, dark good looks, and DILF/lumberjack/nerd qualities. Connor’s narrator was Jonathon Cole who nailed that British charm, and Fizzy’s crazy- kookiness was narrated by Cindy Kay who I must now look up, she was that talented. I loved the back and forth chapters so that we could get in each of our main characters brains. I really relied on that insight in those later chapters when the reality show plot was wrapping up.

Even though this is a stand alone novel, it’s really the second book to The Soulmate Equation. River Peña’s technology for finding your perfect match is used to see if the audience chooses Fizzy’s match, and he and Jess are important side characters as Fizzy’s best friend. Every romance novel needs a best friend who provides sage advice and Jess is that person (as is her daughter Juno!) to Fizzy. There is one particular scene when Fizzy is babysitting Juno and gets pinned down by her questions about Connor that I found particularly funny and gave Fizzy pause to think about her feelings. It was a clever scene that rang true. Kids say the darndest things, right?

This book was funny, emotional, sizzling hot, and dreamy. I just loved every bit of it and I know I’ll be reading it again soon. Right after I read The Soulmate Equation. That book was awesome too!

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase this book!* The True Love Experiment

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Next-Door Nemesis by Alexa Martin

After her rant in public goes viral, Collins Carter moves back home to Ohio and into her childhood bedroom in the subdivision where her parents live. As if that isn’t bad enough, she runs into her high school frenemy Nate Adams at the neighborhood coffee shop and they immediately draw sparks. When he hands her an HOA violation and threatens her parents garden the gloves are off. Collins decides to run for HOA president against Nate and the fight is on.

Collins Carter is over the top, dramatic, and the person you want on your side in a fight. I think Nate figures this out pretty quickly when she challenges him over everything. As they argued (and argued, and argued) their past was revealed and you could tell how hurt Collins was over her ex-best friend ghosting her when they were kids. Despite that, I was watching the page numbers wondering how long it would take before her witchy friendliness turned them from frenemies back to friends. It took a touch too long but when it did happen I finally settled into the plot. I love sassy heroines but Collins was next level!

Nate couldn’t have been any more the opposite of Collins. He was a khaki wearing, straight laced, steady, calm man. Actually, very similar to her own father now that I think of it. They complimented each other well and once they got over their hurt with each other they suited each other. I kind of wished he was a little more heroic maybe, but there wasn’t anything wrong with a normal guy as a hero. She carried all the attitude in that pairing that’s for sure.

I thought this was a fun, quick read, pretty similar to other novels by this author. I can think of a few that touched my heart a little bit more but this was an entertaining weekend read! ❤️❤️❤️❣️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!!* Next-Door Nemesis

Copyright 2023 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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It’s Monday, what are you reading? (11/13/23)

I like to listen to books I’ve read before because I can easily catch up to the plot if my attention strays from what I’m listening to. One of the books I just finished was an audiobook. I had read the book not too long ago and was looking forward to re-capturing what I liked about the story and maybe hearing a few things that I missed when reading it. What I forgot about was that I really don’t like this narrator. She’s alright with the female voices but she does not have a talent for doing male voices and it’s so distracting. I think I forget about how I feel until I go to listen to a book in this series again and then kick myself over wasting the credit. Regardless, the story is actually very good. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

JUST FINISHED

Yeah, not a huge fan of this narrator but am a very big fan of the author. This series has done a great job of growing the main character Eileen, a brand new vampire who still has ties to the human world but has also quickly come to grips with being a spook. Listening to an audiobook always gives me a glimpse of a few things that I miss when reading a book. I love finding those little moments!

JUST STARTED

I have been on a big Jill Shalvis kick lately so I was excited to receive an advance reader copy of her newest book out next month. I haven’t read more than a few pages but I know that I will get the comfort, from the heart, romance that she so consistently delivers. I can’t wait to read this one!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and your Monday is off to a great start.

Deb

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