While I am not always a fan of his stories set in Scotland, I did enjoy this one. Isabel sets out to get a present for her husband for Valentine’s Day but in the process becomes entangled in a situation which looks like she will either need to renege on a promise or fail to help someone who is truly in need. But leave it to the philosopher in her to work out the right answer.

This was an interesting look at Russian life set in the early 1900’s. Though one sister is unhappily married, another will marry a man she does not love just to be married, one sister is in college and worried about the future, and a brother who is gambling away their home, they all share the belief that life would be better in the city than in the country and there is a circulating feeling that life may be, should be better in the future. A good read.

This was an OK romance book; not too sappy and portrayed the female central character as strong and independent. But there were just too many characters and unnecessary short sub-plots. For example, one of the side characters is losing and then does loose his mother to brain cancer. How can you make this a sub plot? And because the side characters were not well developed it took me a while to remember who everyone was.

Now that I’m done, I can say it; What the heck was this? A person who was an editor and writer once told me that readers have to be able to like, empathize, or at least understand a character in order to be able to enjoy a book. In this book NONE of the characters are likeable, and what’s more they are all verbally abusive to one another; mother to child, child to father, sister to sister. Set in India, the mother keeps her teenage daughters locked in their rooms for most of their lives, supposedly to keep them safe, but then says things to them like “Your days are numbered” and “I wish you were dead”. And the book starts off with one of the daughters being approached by a man in town, and there is this whole back and forth between the two where he goes after her, then she goes after him, then he drives her home and……nothing. Nothing more is said about the relationship or what happened. I could not wait for this book to be done and then felt like I needed to wash.

The trouble I had with this book is that I did it as an audiobook. There were just too many characters, and sometimes the characters were referred to differently depending upon who was speaking about them. Add to that the challenges of the language of 1826 and I was not able to enjoy the book or really follow what was going on.

This might very well be the best book I read all summer. It combines two of the genres that I love, fantasy and horror. I am a Stephen King fan, and as I read this, I could hear him commenting “Well done”. A 9-year-old boy who is socially isolated becomes a central part of a series of horrific events, during which he is befriended by an 11-year-old girl who lives near him. But she and her family seem to understand what is happening and provide him with protection. And on top of all this wonderful action, the writer provides the perfect narrative with just the right amount of emotion and description. If you like these two genres, you’ve got to try this!

A fun academic mystery in a beautiful location. Great cast of characters to spend a little time with in the summer.

This is a good old fashioned detective story where women were “dames” and were “notin but trouble”. The language is fun and the central character is the grounding influence here as everyone else in the story is either crazy or a killer…..and one is both.

In this story about women who go missing and then have their dead images appear in paintings, Isles does an excellent job in developing the characters and their connections to one another. And this is important because the subject matter here is often harsh and without this development of characters, it would simply be a brutal story. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and liked the ending.

This book is the true embodiment of the romantic comedy, but when you first begin it, that is not what you will see. It is well done and is set in Maui, so there is nothing not to love. A nice summer fun read.