A Secret Wish

Three women share the same birthday, and all three make their birthday wishes. One hopes for true love, one to be a mother, and one to get her family back. In Barbara Freethy's A Secret Wish, some dreams come true in ways you don't expect.

Liz is 30, recently dumped, and watches her birthday cupcake sail over the edge of the roof where she has gone to celebrate quietly by herself. She loses the cupcake when she is startled by the appearance of a man named John, who proceeds to take her on a night on the town. Over their hours together, Liz finds herself confiding in him, telling him things she won't - or can't - tell anyone else. But when the night ends, what will happen next?

Thirty-five-year-old Angie is horrified that her family throws her a surprise birthday party. When her husband presents her with an envelope, she hopes it contains an appointment for a round of fertility treatments that will end their childless state. But it's for a cruise, and, in a fit of pique, Angie runs off. She encounters two young sisters, and as she tries to help them out, she finds herself caring about them.

And then there is Carole, turning 40 at a big hotel bash thrown by her politician husband, whom she later spots in a compromising position with a hot young blonde. Like Angie, Carole deals with the news by leaving her party. But whereas Angie wanted to escape her family, Carole runs to hers: she sees her mother for the first time in two years.

Each woman has her wish, and each is desperate for it to come true. As Liz explains to John, "I want what everyone else has. Excitement, passion, all that crazy mad-about-you stuff. I want to fall in love." They each fight for their wish to come true, and that's why you will enjoy this brisk read. Liz, Angie and Carole are well sketched characters, and Barbara Freethy lets us see their good and bad points.

A Secret Wish is a nice, simple story that will take you an hour or two to read. There are no sex scenes, although at least two of the women engage in some romance. It's a nice little novella.

Published by Amazon Digital Services and available on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

Stuck with You

Sometimes you need a quick, frothy story that lets you take a break from life. You know you won't remember it once you finish it, and you're pretty sure you aren't meant to delve too deeply into it, but while you're in it, you have fun.

Such is Stuck with You, by Trish Jensen. This is a seriously silly book, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. You are intended to read it, enjoy it, and then pass it on to the next reader. If you enjoy the love scenes, all the better.

Paige Hart and Ross Bennett are stuck in hospital quarantine together, victims of a courthouse bombing. Both lawyers, they were on opposite sides of a case, and Paige despises Ross' specialization of divorce law. They are quarantined because of possible exposure to Horny Monk Disease.

I am not kidding you.

No doubt you are shocked to find out that sparks fly in the hospital, beginning with Ross' choice of apparel.

She'd had to suppress a squawk of irritation when she'd seen that his choice of clothing consisted mainly of running shorts and T-shirts. Plain old flip-flops on his feet completed his look.

He could have done her the favor of covering up his legs. She didn't need the distraction of his leg muscles flexing with every move he made. And when he needed to bend over, he could at least be polite enough not to do it with his back turned toward her. A position that displayed the contours of his butt in mouth-watering detail. 

So, yeah. You will not be taxed mentally when you read this one.

But it's fun. Along with Paige and Ross' quarantine, we meet their doctor, Rachel, and Paige's brother, Nick, who have a Romantic History. (Yes, if you look closely, you've got a Ross and a Rachel. A shout out to Friends, perhaps?) Even though you know full well how this will end, there are some humorous moments. At one point, Ross and Nick commiserate over their lady friends' inability to commit.

Stuck with You isn't going to stretch your thinking or challenge you. There is some decently written Rocking the Headboard, and the characters are cute. In fact, that's the word to sum up this book: cute.

Published by Bell Bridge Books and available on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

The Replacement Wife

I can't help it, I loved this book. I loved it so much that I brought it with me to my son's high school band concert and read it there (don't tell). I loved it so much that I delayed teaching my 1st period students, just so I could find out what happens to Camille, Edward, Elise and Angie.

THAT is how much I loved The Replacement Wife, by Eileen Goudge.

I loved it in spite of it not being one bit like I thought it was going to be.

I rarely read much about a book before reading it, because I like to be surprised. I knew the basic synopsis of The Replacement Wife - Camille is in her early forties, married to her doctor husband, Edward, and has a matchmaking business. When her cancer comes back, she decides to match up Edward with his second wife, believing that in doing so, she secures care for her children and husband. So I kind of thought that this might be a humorous romantic comedy of sorts.

I was wrong.

The Replacement Wife is the study of a marriage and what it's like to be a single woman pushing forty. It is chock full of engrossing characters who make you want them to be happy, even as you know it will be immensely difficult for them. It's a book that makes you think about what you want for your loved ones after you die, and it makes you question what is selfless and what is selfish.

When Camille discovers that the cancer has returned and is Stage IV, she eschews treatment and instead decides to focus on helping Edward. She believes she must do this, because her own mother passed away when Camille was fourteen, leaving her to take care of her younger sister in the face of an airline pilot, absent father. Camille does not want the loneliness, fear and uncertainty that she experienced to happen to her fourteen-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son, so she convinces Edward to let her find him a wife.

Edward is not amused. He balks and resists, but ultimately agrees in an attempt to make Camille's waning months pleasant for her. She first tries to fix him up with Kat, a sexy, successful news anchor who has been very unlucky in love. Kat even tries to come on to Edward, knowing full well about Camille and her dying wish, but Edward gently rebuffs her. It's on to Elise, a divorceé teacher who also believes herself snake bit because her first husband cheated on her. Then there is Angie, the owner of a small catering company, who provides food for Camille's meet and greet socials, but whom Camille is convinced has no interest in love and marriage. Angie vies for Edward's affections on her own, albeit unintentionally at first.

Which one will Edward choose? Or will he choose at all? And what will happen to Camille? How will she manage this shift in their marriage, even if it is her idea?

Eileen Goudge tells the story from the different points of view, but we spend the most time in Camille's and Edward's heads. I found myself not liking Camille all that much. I started rooting for Edward to get together with one of the women just because I thought Camille was selfish and, quite frankly, stupid. Yes, I understand why she's doing this, but it made her off-putting to me. But Edward. I so wanted him to be happy, with whomever he believed could make him - his wife or one of the women.

As for the three contenders, they were nicely developed characters. I rooted for Angie, if only because she was the most fully realized of the group, and there was just something about her that I liked. Her relationship with Edward starts as friendship, when he discovers he can confide in her. I liked that about her. But as I said, I sympathized with Edward a lot. His frustration with this situation affected me.

He thought back to summer days when the kids were small, Kyra and Zach chubby little figures in orange life vests digging for sand crabs or collecting seashells in paper cups. Before cancer had come crashing in, like a rogue wave smashing a sand castle, to lay ruin to their carefree existence.

Before he'd come to feel unwanted by his own wife.

He knew it wasn't because she'd stopped loving him. Still, it hurt each time she turned away from him in bed, too tired or sick to make love. He couldn't recall the last time he'd felt the light touch of her hand on his thigh or heard her voice murmur seductively in his ear. He missed that. Yearned for it. Even so, he might have found a way to deal with his frustration if not for this crazy scheme of hers. What wife who truly loved her husband would willingly relinquish him to another woman, whatever the circumstances?

What wife, indeed.

The Replacement Wife is chock full of things to discuss, making it an excellent book club selection. I just loved it.



Published by Open Road and available on Amazon.com.
Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

The Next Best Thing

There is something about the way Kristan Higgins writes that appeals to me. The stories, the people, the craftsmanship - I just love 'em. I come away wishing I lived in those small New England towns, convinced that I could be friends with her characters.

So it is with The Next Best Thing. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I will state straight away that this is not my favorite of Higgins' books. Lucy Mirabelli, the 30-year-old widow around whom the book turns, is the reason. She's just not all that likeable, I guess. Or at least she isn't for about three-fourths of the book.

Lucy and her husband, Jimmy, were married a little over eight months when he died. As if the loss isn't tragic enough, Lucy has to contend with the "Black Widows" - her mother and two aunts, all three of whom were left widowed when they were young wives. Like Lucy, none remarried, but unlike Lucy, none were interested in doing so. Lucy, however, thinks it's time to pursue marriage and family. Unlike Jimmy, however, she plans to look for someone safe. Someone she can be fond of, without losing herself completely.

Meanwhile, there is her brother-in-law, Ethan, who introduced her to Jimmy in the first place. It is clear that Ethan cares about Lucy, and she about him, in her own way. But Lucy's problem is that everything must be her way. She tells us that this is because she's a widow, and unless you've been in her position, you have no idea how she feels. And she's right about that. I did not lost a husband in my mid-twenties, and I don't know how it feels. But I do know that Lucy's self-focus is off-putting at best. How she has any friends, much less a fairly devoted one in Parker, who happens to be the mother of Ethan's son, is beyond me.

In fact, Parker urges Lucy to date Ethan, and she also pinpoints the reason behind Lucy's reluctance to do so.

She gives me a wry smile. "Well, one could say that you do love Ethan already. The big question must be, what if you didn't love him as much as Jimmy?"

Hearing it said out loud like that, right here in the kitchen with the sun shining in the windows, my African violets blooming on the windowsill ... it's a slap in the heart. "I really don't want to talk about this, Parker," I whisper.

Parker sighs. "Okay. I'm sorry." She pauses, and I swallow against the pebble, knowing she 's not finished. I'm correct. "But Lucy, you're never going to know unless you give him a shot, are you? And if you don't, you'll end up with some loser who leaves you cold. Is that what you want?"

You wouldn't think it would be, but Lucy seems to be aiming just for that. She wants comfort and predictability. Safety. No threat of an early death. As Lucy observes, love ran her over and left her bleeding in the road. She doesn't want that again, and the potential to get hurt by Ethan is just too much to bear.

But Ethan isn't going anywhere. And when he asks Lucy to give him a chance, it is heartbreaking and beautiful. In fact, Ethan is the reason I like this book as much as I do. He becomes a real person, someone I understood, empathized with and cheered for. If it makes Ethan happy to be with Lucy, then I hope it works out. For him. Hopefully, in the process, she loosens up a little.

The Next Best Thing has an obvious ending, but the way we get there is not obvious at all, and that's another reason why I adore Kristan Higgins. She respects her characters and her stories too much to shortcut them. If Lucy is going on a tortured chase for love and stability, then that's what it will take.

I've got a few more Higgins novels on my TBR pile, and I can't wait to read them.

Published by Harlequin and available on Amazon.com.

I purchased my own copy.

Just a Wish Away

When you are twelve-years-old and believe that you've already met the man of your dreams, where do you go? What do you do? Wait? Commit? Flee?

This is the conundrum facing Alexa in Barbara Freethy's novel, Just a Wish Away. Alexa spends her summers in Sand Harbor Beach, a tiny vacation haven on the coast of Washington state. She lives for the time she spends there, where she connects with her father's family and, more importantly, Braden, her best friend and summer pal. Only Alexa wants more than summer friendship. When the two find a blue bottle, half buried in the sand, they imagine that a genie springs from it, and they make a wish. Alexa's is for Braden to love her.

Fifteen years later, Alexa returns to Sand Harbor, a rare trip back in the ensuing years since she was twelve. Her parents divorced after the wish was made, and her mother moved her east. Braden stayed behind, but not for long. At twenty, he married and enlisted in the Army. Alexa quickly discovers that Braden is out of the Army and out of his marriage.

At first, Braden takes a backseat to the reason Alexa is back in town: her Aunt Phoebe was injured during a break-in at her antiques shop, and Alexa has come to help out her aunt. Who broke into the shop? What were they looking for? And is it possible that a 15-year-old suicide is linked to the crime?

As Alexa, and, quickly joining her, Braden, investigate, they look back on their romance as 12-year-olds and the adults they became. Braden needs to get over his divorce and make peace with what the Army did to him, while Alexa needs to discover that not all men abandon their families, as her father did. Along the way, the two attempt to reconnect with the dreams they had as kids.

"Stop questioning my choice of career. Accounting can be very interesting. Figuring out where the money came from and where it went can be just as big a mystery as anything else."

"It's just not you, Alexa. You were never about math and numbers. You told stories, you collected sea glass, you wanted to be a glassmaker."

She was surprised and touched that he remembered that. "Childhood dreams, Braden. When I grew up, I needed a job that was stable and that paid well. I wanted to add up, to make sense, and there was a comfort to working with numbers. There weren't as many variables." She sounded incredibly boring, she realized, but at least she wasn't drowning in a world of chaos anymore. 

Honestly, a little bit of chaos would help this book quite a bit. There is no real conflict. We know Alexa and Braden will come together, and we even can predict how it will happen. Who broke into Aunt Phoebe's shop? Do we really care? Sadly, not a whole lot. Barbara Freethy displays her hand too much. We are too privy to these people, so there is no question as to how this story will end.

It's not bad, though. It is mildly entertaining, and the love scenes aren't awful. There aren't enough of them, but that's another matter. The problem with Just a Wish Away is that it's just kind of boring.

Published by Barbara Freethy and available on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

Promise Me a Rainbow

This book - Promise Me a Rainbow, by Cheryl Reavis - is just so enjoyable and addicting that I didn't want it to end. It's a romance, but it isn't an easy romance. I felt like I knew the people in it, and that's what makes a good book good, right?

Set in Wilmington, North Carolina, Promise Me a Rainbow is about Catherine Holben, a recently divorced 32-year-old teacher whose students are pregnant girls whom the school system wants to keep in school, and Joe D'Amaro, a 38-year-old widower with three kids and a struggling construction business that he co-owns with his brother, Michael. Catherine and Joe meet cute; actually, there is considerable sadness behind their meeting, but it's still kind of adorable. Catherine buys a pair of gnomes, Daisy and Eric, a mother cradling a child. They hold particular significance for her because the reason behind Catherine's divorce was that she and her husband could not have children. After the exhaustion of fertility treatments, she simply was told that there was no reason behind her infertility; both she and her husband should be able to procreate, but they just couldn't.

During the checkout process, the shop owner asks Catherine if she can keep her contact info on file; the gnomes were sold by a man who needed the money. Catherine agrees, and before she knows it - and after a difficult conversation with her ex-husband - Catherine meets Fritz D'Amaro, Joe's seven-year-old daughter, who tracks down Catherine (Fritz and Joe actually had been in the stairwell outside of Catherine's apartment as Jonathan and Catherine concluded their emotional confrontation, and Fritz remembers how to get back) and asks to visit the gnomes. Catherine calls Joe ... and we're off.

But Joe and Catherine are people with complicated histories and turbulent emotional cores. Joe is drawn to Catherine's calmness, but he is perceptive enough to know that beneath her seemingly even temperament lies the potential for fire. But he is reluctant. His wife has been dead for five years, and he has three children, an older teenage daughter, Della, and son, Charlie, along with Fritz. Della is another problem, as she resolutely resists any romance for her father.

Catherine, meanwhile, has to process Jonathan's desertion. She isn't sure she wants to be attracted to Joe, but she is. In the early stages of their relationship, she realizes that he's quite handsome. He's steady and strong, and when he holds her, he holds her - physically, emotionally, completely.

But Joe conceals something. His brother Michael's wife, Margaret, continues to pursue him, despite his clear rejection of her. Her attraction to him causes him no end of troubles, the least of which comes from Della.

He put his face in his hands. He was so tired. Life was so simple to Michael. If one was faced with the possibility of some kind of relationship, all one had to do was "check it out." Michael didn't see the consequences of that simplistic approach any more than he'd seen the consequences of marrying a hungry woman like Margaret. Joe didn't want his life any more unsettled than it already was. Della had always rebelled against even the idea of someone taking her mother's place. He was sure that it was Della who resurrected the old photograph of him and Lisa and put it back on the mantel, just as he was sure that it had been done for Catherine's benefit. God knows he had enough to worry about with Fritz. He didn't want to have to deal with Della, too, particularly when there was no real reason for her to be concerned. Catherine Holben had given no indication that she was interested in anything other than Fritz and, unless he took the initiative, he'd never have to see her again. Even if he took Fritz to visit the gnomes, he could do it without seeing Catherine. It wasn't too late. He could hold back, and she would be out of his life. Then he could just go on as he had before.

They resist each other, Joe and Catherine, but their attraction to each other is intense and deep. Just as Joe prefers to avoid another complication in his already over-complicated life, so Catherine would like to forget about Joe.

Her panic had nothing to do with the cookout per se. It had to do with Joe D'Amaro. Her recovery from her recent emotional trauma was now no doubt complete. He was on her mind; she couldn't keep from wondering about him and his children and the dead wife of whom he didn't speak. And it scared her to death.

She spent the rest of the weekend mentally making excuses not go to, only to have them all wiped out by the reassertion of the poignant image of Fritz D'Amaro's little face.

"I've done something stupid," she told Pat Bauer before her math class on Monday. She hadn't meant to say anything because it was only a cookout and because she thought Pat wasn't feeling well.

"Oh, good," Pat said. "I was really getting tired of being the only one."

They come together because of the gnomes and Fritz, but nothing afterwards is easy, and that's what makes Promise Me a Rainbow so delightful. We know Joe and Catherine belong together, but we also know that these two have to clean up their messy emotional states and, in Joe's case, their families.

If you're looking for some sexy times, there are a few. The love scenes are not graphic in terms of the physical act, they are in terms of the emotional. Joe and Catherine enjoy some pillow talk, but as with everything about these two, it isn't typical or easy.

Promise Me a Rainbow is as entertaining and lovely a read as I've had in a while. Please give this sweet little book a chance. It is a pleasant, enjoyable surprise.


Published by Bell Bridge Books and available on Amazon.com.
Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

Thumped

Oh, Megan McCafferty. How dare you end this two-book series now? I demand that you write a third. Chumped? Dumped? Humped?


Thumped picks up eight and a half months after Bumped ended. Harmony has returned to Goodside, the religious compound that she called home prior to decamping to Otherside to find her identical twin sister, Melody. Harmony didn't leave alone, however; she is pregnant with twin girls. Meanwhile, back in Otherside, Melody, thanks to ALTERR (Artificial Living Tissue Engineered for Reproducing Reproduction), is "mocked up." ALTERR is a fake womb that simulates pregnancy so realistically that it fools even doctors. Babies show up on an ultrasound, even though Melody isn't pregnant. But she's pretending to be, and helping her out is Jondoe, the true Baby Daddy of Harmony's twins and the faux Baby Daddy of Melody's.

With me so far? It really isn't as confusing as it sounds.

Also along is Zen, Melody's soulmate, who wants to wage war against in what he calls The Mission: "protesting against the culture of reproductive profiteering." Zen, for all of his zealotry, is a likable boy, and Melody struggles with the intensity of her feelings for him. They are both virgins, in Melody's case not for a lack of trying and heavy marketing of her womb, and Zen more due to a dogged determination that his sperm not be used against him.

The message of Thumped echoes that of Bumped. We are in danger of living in a world where teen pregnancy, which already elevates some girls to celebrity status, will consume us to the point that we, like Melody's parents, Ash and Ty, are willing to whore out our children to procreate. As Melody observes,

Our whole world has gone ... baby crazy. ... That's what we're dealing with here. Not bumps or pregs or deliveries. Or whatever other euphemism you want to use to distance yourself from the truth. We're making babies. We're creating people. And we're having meaningless sex to do it! And yet we pretend like it's no big deal. We pretend we aren't in the business of buying and selling human beings.

Part of Melody's enlightenment as to the terrible nature of "pregging" is due to the Jaydens, the couple paying for the twins she supposedly is carrying. Melody is drawn to them. Her gut instinct is that they would make great parents, and she truly would like to help them out in that regard. But Melody is not the one who is pregnant, and Harmony is back with her husband, Ram, in Goodside.

This is a fantastic satire of what we have become and the potential of what we could be, if we continue to prize celebrity over actual accomplishment. Parts of this are guffawingly funny, and parts might meld your cold hard heart just a little. When Ram makes a life changing announcement, I admit that I didn't know whether to applaud him or laugh at the silliness of the reactions he received. Again, we buy into a celebrity culture based on nothing but toothpicks in the sand.

My biggest complaint about Thumped is its ease. What made Bumped so intriguing is that it asked us to examine that side of us that buys People magazine and reads articles about Jamie Lynn Spears' teen pregnancy (color me guilty) or watches reality television about teen mothers. As a high school teacher, I see so many girls get pregnant during the very years they should be free from that enormous responsibility, so Bumped gave me a lot to think about and consider. Thumped is not as challenging. The "bad guys" are much easier to spot, and the debate is more clear cut. There isn't a lot of controversy or conflict here as far as the book's message. Oh, sure, Melody and Harmony find themselves in a pickle, and the men in their lives alternately assist and provoke them, but there is no mystery as to what Megan McCafferty wants us to take away from her novel. I think I miss that.

Still, though, Thumped is a good follow-up to its predecessor. Melody and Harmony's voices are strong. We can see the confused teenaged girls in them. What is the right thing to do? What do we owe our parents? What do we owe God? And what do we owe ourselves? Melody confronts this with poignancy. She knows she's too young to be a mother, but this is her last chance before the virus renders her infertile.

And that is why I want a third book. Part of me would like the romance of a happy ending. There is a cure! Melody can have a baby when she's older! The Jaydens can have a baby! Harmony can have a baby! Teenage girls can go back to being teenage girls! Teenage boys no longer have to compete against each other for Most Desirable Sperm!

But McCafferty has said that this is it. She always envisioned two books, Bumped and Thumped, and the story is over. Even so, she leaves us with a topic worth of thought and discussion. Let's not disappoint her, shall we?



Published by Balzer + Bray and available on Amazon.com.