Wow! This is one of the most enjoyable books I have read all summer. I did this as a audio book, which I highly recommend as it allows the reader to really bring the characters to life. The story begins with a young black woman who lives with her elderly grandmother. The young woman is just beginning to enjoy all the beauty of the world around her, with all the hopes that that brings. Her grandmother is afraid of dying before she is sure Jody is taken care of by being married. So Jody reluctantly get married to someone she does not love, and thus begins her journey for happiness. This is s must read!

Maybe because I had read another collection of short stories just before this one that I really enjoyed; I think this book fell flat. There were a couple of moments for some of the stories,, but for the most part, I was just wanting them to be over.

The was a very interesting look at some examples of people who have decided to go off into the wild to survive by themselves, for the most part wholly unprepared, and how they fared. Spoiler alert…it does not end well for any of them. In particular the book focuses on a young college graduate from Virginia who has issues with his parents and leaves home with no word to go and live alone in Alaska and live off the land. Even knowing how it ends, it’s an interesting story to follow.

This collection of short stories reminds me of Agatha Christie. It’s a book of who-done-it’s where the answer is right in front of you, but you probably won’t wee it until it is pointed out. And I love the way Rumpole, a barrister in England, affectionately refers to his wife as “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. A fun and enjoyable read.

This book begins with a man’s family gathered around his grave as he is buried. And while it is a sad and difficult tale, it is told so wonderfully that you want to keep going. It tells of his struggles with his wives, his brother, his brother, and even his hobby of painting. His only solace is the memory of his father and his childhood. I would definitely recommend this book. It is beautifully told.

This book is a story about a young Irish girl who loses her family and has to come to America to live with her uncle who works on a horse farm. While she easily adjusts to life on a horse farm, she has trouble with people being nice to her and wanting to help her; these are things she has never been exposed to. Most of all, she has trouble with her feelings for the farm’s owner. Enough said!

This is a wonderful compilation of short stories, many of which are told from an interesting and unexpected point of view. They will open your eyes and make you think, but mostly they will make you laugh out loud. If you are looking for something enjoyable or a pick-me-up, this is the book for you!

It says, on the front cover of this book, that it is a novel. If it is, then it just barely is. It reads more like a group of short stories with the same characters. It lacks the cohesiveness. And even from section to section, there is rarely any resolution of closure to the situation discussed. In one of the first stories, the children and their mother are all hiding from the father when he comes in. but he does not go looking for them, and just sits down. He children and the mother wait for a while and that’s where the section ends. I had to go back and reread the end as I thought I missed something. And, unfortunately I did not really enjoy the stories either.

On the one hand, this book is sort a feel good book, with everyone living happily ever after. On the other hand, it deals superficially with real issues and is highly repetitive, continually rehashing and redescribing incidents and people’s feelings. So maybe it’s OK, but only for depressed people with memory issues.

I picked out this book not realizing what it was. I normally steer clear of vampire books, but his one was not that bad. Two thirds of the book was about the lead up to how Pandora became a vampire and was more historical than anything else, which made the whole book tolerable.