So, first up, "Off the Menu" by Stacey Ballis. I was really looking forward to this one since she's a friend of Jen Lancaster, and Jen said it was really good. It was not. What a disappointment. The book is about Alana, a 39 year old single woman who has a great job working for a celebrity chef who is a bit of a pain. He takes advantage of her good nature and calls on her at inconvenient times, etc. She's also been frustrated with the dating scene and hopes not to be spending her 40th birthday alone. She meets the perfect man online through a dating service, and right off the bat they fall madly in love and everything's great, except for her obnoxious over-demanding boss. Then she gets offered the perfect job, only it can't pay her as much as she's used to making and she wants to buy her parents a winter house in Florida. Seriously? That dictates your job choices? Whether or not you can afford to buy your parents a winter house? Are you kidding me? Anyway, it was just ridiculous. I wanted to have Alana live *my* life for a month and see what it's really like to have stuff suck.
"The King's Grace" by Anne Easter Smith was another disappointment. It would have been good if it had been half as long and maybe if she'd not used the same words over and over and over again. The book is about Grace, who is King Edward VI's bastard daughter (who may have actually existed, but nothing is really known about her). Grace becomes Queen Elizabeth's companion after Edward dies and Elizabeth goes into sanctuary to escape Richard III. Later, Grace becomes involved in the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy. All in all it wasn't a bad book, it was just way too long.
"By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead" by Julie Anne Peters blew me away. It was really good. It's a YA book about a girl named Daelyn, who has tried several times to commit suicide and failed. She's determined to make it stick this time, with the help of a website called through the light. Just as she's made a commitment and set a date, she meets a strange guy named Santana who won't leave her alone despite her rebuffs. Turns out Santana has cancer and might die, and is fighting to live. Daelyn wishes she could trade places with him. It was very sad, I cried at the end, which was great.
"The Women of the Cousin's War" by Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin, and Michael K. Jones was an interesting look at the fascinating women behind the War of the Roses. Jacquetta was Elizabeth Woodville's mother, and accused of being a witch and using spells to bind King Edward VI to her daughter. Elizabeth married Edward after only knowing him a short time and used her new position as Queen to raise up her large family to high positions, incurring the wrath of many high up nobles in the realm who felt cheated. And then Margaret Beaufort, mother to King Henry VII, who spent her whole life fighting for her son's interests and finally got him on the throne. In an era where men were the leaders, these women certainly had something amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment