Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1)

Vision in White by Nora Roberts
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cheeeeeese. That has a double meaning. The main character in this book is a slightly neurotic wedding photographer who is also emotionally abused and manipulated by her extremely neurotic mother, and is kept company by her mousy new boyfriend. I didn't care much for her or her cavity sweet boyfriend. This book was not my cup of tea. These are the types of books that make me hate contemporary romances. I like conversations in a book, but this was too much. No prose, no purpose on my shelf.

View all my reviews

Always You

Always You by Kirsty Moseley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I feel generous giving this book two stars, but if it had been properly edited by a publisher, it might have received a higher rating.

Terribly overdramatic, poorly written, poorly researched story. I suppose every author starts with something and we live in a time of self published books, but this is the kind of junk that leaks into the ebook world and people haphazardly buy for $.99 and feel it was a waste. I know that's incredibly harsh, but I honestly think it could have been good if it had gone through the proper publishing channels.

I just finished reading a phenomenal book, Winter of the World by Ken Follet. He's a Welsh author writing not only about his home country, but Germany, Russia, and the United States. The lesson here? An author really ought to do their homework if they truly want to be a respected author.

View all my reviews

The Inn at Angel Island

The Inn at Angel Island by Thomas Kinkade
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

By the ratings, I thought this would be a nice, pleasant, easy read. It was easy all right, but not pleasant. It was so incredibly boring. So simple, so mindless and was written at what felt like a second grade level. The dialogue was shallow and lacked effort or meaning, utterly uninspiring.

I am in no way dissing this because it's Christian, I read a fair amount of Christian fiction, but never anything this dull. And that's the thing, Christian fiction doesn't have to be a wet blanket, just read any MaryLu Tyndall book!

View all my reviews

Fallen In Love (Fallen #3.5)

Fallen In Love by Lauren Kate
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meh. This is why .5 version novella's aren't a good idea. It wasn't very good, I only liked Miles and Shelby's story as it seemed like the most realistic and could be a story on it's own. Even then it wasn't that great.

My guess is that this book was published for a few extra dollars for the author and to tide fans over until the next book comes out. Meh.

View all my reviews

Friends or Lovers

Friends or Lovers by Rory Ridley-Duff

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Hmm, what a bold, brazen, strange read. This book seems to have an agenda with a fictional front.

The author clearly has an interest in workplace gender relations as it's also stated in his "about the author" section. I must say, I found this book to be offensive, do people really behave as the characters of this book do? Is this meant to be fiction based on firsthand knowledge or seriously over the top fantastical fiction? If the knowledge this author states he has, I'm thinking it's really supposed to be the former. If it truly was the latter, then I may have been able to like it a bit more.

Firstly, I had a very difficult time getting past the fact that it was a male author writing from a woman's point of view. I think he made the main character, Penny Leyton, a sex crazed, feminist, lonely, selfish, vain, yet weak woman. Yes, all of those in one. She was a very conflicting character to me. She acts as if she's god's gift to man by staring them down inducing them to shag her. At work she thinks her male boss, subordinate and equals alike are attracted to her and vice versa she fantasizes about them. It's either she has some serious insecurities or she's a sex addict. The whole married but shag whoever fancies you and have no faith to your spouse story-line was extremely aggravating.

By the end of the book you realize that Penny has learned much about herself but obviously she never puts faith into a lasting relationship, it's all about what feels good in the here and now. Tacky in my opinion. No, I do not feel I got to know the character by the end of the book, it didn't feel like anything was truly resolved. Seriously though, most of this went over my head. I have never worked in a large office so I haven't a first clue if everyone flirts and shags each other as much as he's trying to state they do in this book.

I won this book from Goodreads First-Reads giveaway. I'd be more than happy to pass this book onto someone else who would have an interest in reading about relationships in a horny London office.

View all my reviews

Extras (Uglies #4)

Extras by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Here's my review of how I think Aya, the main character would tell it:

This is a dizzy making story of Aya, a wanna-be kicker (one who spreads gossip and trends) and wants a high face ranking in her city by kicking a mind blowing story about a secret click called the Sly Girls. When Aya hangs with these adrenaline kicking girls, they discover a fear making secret that Aya knows if she story-kicks, her face ranking will finally be in the top thousand.

With the help of the icy-most-famous-making name in the world here to help, Tally Youngblood, Aya and her friends learn how fright making kicking this story will be.

Okay, that's about all the fake making talk I can make! LOL! This story was rather lame compared to the other three books. This is why an author should say the word trilogy and stick to it. The talk was perpetually annoying.

I did crack up at what I take to be the authors attempt at portraying how our world could be in several hundred years...think Facebook and Wall-E.

View all my reviews

Distant Shores

Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't like giving bad reviews to authors I like and it isn't really fair to necessarily give her writing a low rating, it's just that I didn't like the story. Let's just say if I were in the main characters shoes (Elizabeth Shore) the story would be completely different than what I just read. I would not have tolerated what she did when it happened many years ago, I simply would not have been where she is at this point in her life. I cannot relate.

I'm not giving up on Hannah, I just can't read stories like this, they absolutely infuriate me!

P.S. I refuse to call this book a romance.

View all my reviews

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millenium #1)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


There was very little I liked about this book. I'm not a big murder/mystery fan anyway and especially not when it degrades women. In my opinion, the author (though now deceased) seemed to have a low opinion of women in this book. Between loose women, weak women and women with power who "purr like cats" in the limelight, I wanted to toss the book away. Women were beaten, abused and mind screwed. Puh-lease!

Little and big inconsistencies bothered me too. How about the fact that there were two main stories that ended up having little to do with each other in the end. And how about the fact that it was entirely too predictable?! Ugh.

I can respect that people love this kind of story but I personally don't get it. I'm not even sure why I finished the book. I don't have too hard of a time abandoning books but maybe I was hoping there would be a great revelation at the end. Nope. I could care less to read the next book in the "Millenium" series to see what's next.

View all my reviews

Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Mm, mm, mm, what to say about this book. May contain possible spoilers...

After I finished the book I read some other reviews and noticed a lot of people call it a series of short stories tied together by the books namesake, Olive Kitteridge.

Olive is an old woman who is either the main character in several chapters (short stories) or a sideline supporting character in some others. Olive is a crotchety old woman who snaps at her sweet tempered husband, is a distant mother to her son, and a force-to-be-reckoned-with citizen in her small town of Crosby, Maine. Overall I think Olive, while crotchety, is a woman who doesn't know how to communicate the softness that does exist in her heart.

I found the book to be depressing and moody. Everything from anorexia, hostage situations, marital affairs, suicide contemplation, divorce, death, etc. is touched on in this book. Olive, as I mentioned, seems to be somehow involved in each of these whether it happens to her or she is mentioned in or witness to it. The characters are all facing somber times in their lives be it the young and broken hearted or the old and broken hearted.

I do give it to the author that she writes about the ugly in people's lives and on some levels you can relate. But you also find yourself looking away as quite possibly any human would in the face of an awkward, depressing situation of a stranger (be honest with yourself on that statment).

I cannot recommend this book for three main reasons:

1) It's depressing (I do not like depressing books!). You'd have to be in the right mood to read it.

2) I had a hard time keeping up with skipping back and forth between present time and past memories, thinking I had missed a page.

3) Did I mention it's depressing?

View all my reviews