The Trouble with Trilogies

Posted in Bookish Thoughts by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I have a problem with trilogies. But not just trilogies.

Sequels, series, you name it. Anything that’s to be continued is just trouble for me right now.

Why?

Because after a certain point, I just don’t care. If I have to wait a year to find out what happens next, most of the time, I simply won’t still be interested enough to bother with it.

Why are there so many trilogies in the YA fiction world now? Why is it practically the norm to turn every potentially good story into a series? Whatever happened to a beginning, middle and end all in one book?

I loved The Diviners by Libba Bray. I preordered book 2, which was supposed to be out this summer. Lo and behold, the release has been delayed until 2015. Guess what? By the time Lair of Dreams comes out, I don’t know that I’ll feel like bothering any more. Sure, I loved the characters and the setting of the first book. The plot was different and interesting and made me want to know more. But I was also mostly satisfied with how it ended, and in fact my only quibble about the book was the fact that it was clearly building up to an ongoing story, even though the main plot of The Diviners did have a pretty great wrap-up.

Another example: I just DNF’d a book that concludes a YA trilogy that I’d enjoyed so far, by an author whose writing I admire very much. But yeah… I read the first two books, and I liked them a lot. But time has gone by, and I don’t feel a burning need to know more about the story, and when I read the first couple of chapters, I realized I’d be totally fine with not reading the book. Just. Didn’t. Care.

So what’s this mini-rant all about? I guess I’m just fed up with stories being stretched into three (or more) books when they could be told in one. The trilogy I just walked away from could have made one really good book, and I can think of a few others where the same would be true. Is it just publishers wanting to sell more books? Does a series have a glamor to it that a stand-alone doesn’t?

Look, I do read series. Take Outlander or A Song of Ice and Fire, for instance. These books are huge, and the worlds they contain are vast, and each book is an event. Or, for example, some of the great ongoing urban fantasy series, such as the Dresden Files books or the Mercy Thompson series. Each book in these is a new chapter, a new adventure, in a carefully created world that continues to grow and expand. I love all of the above — and will keep reading them until the authors are done, or until an asteroid wipes out life on Earth, or something equally cataclysmic occurs.

The problem with so many of the series out there, particularly (but not exclusively) in YA, is that a lot of them feel like filler. With many of the YA trilogies I’ve read over the years, the story is stretched and padded and chopped in order to make three books out of a story that, with some good editing and tightening up, could have been one great book. I’m tired of the “to be continued” ending that exists just to keep us coming back for more (or, to put it more cynically, exists just to keep us taking out our credit cards).

Not that my complaint is about the money, really: It’s about the storytelling. Tell me a great story, make me care, introduce me to amazing characters, and have a compelling story arc. With an ending.

Like I said, some series are great and deserve every page and every volume. But sadly, there are a lot that miss the mark by a long shot.

So, yeah, today I walked way from book 3 in a trilogy that I actually thought had a pretty good start.

If it’s been a year and I haven’t thought about the earlier books in all that time, even if I liked them when I read them, then chances are when the big finale finally rolls around, I won’t be around for it. Because I just won’t care any more.

Just something to think about.

9May2014

Five Reasons Why You Should Read I Shall Be Near To You… ASAP!

Posted in Bookish Thoughts by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My spotlight book this week is I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe. Earlier this week, my wonderful guest reviewer Mary shared her thoughts on this beautiful novel. (Click here for Mary’s review.) Later on, I’ll be featuring a Q&A with the author. For today, I’m here to tell you why you NEED to read this book!

Here are my top five reasons why this may be the book for you:

1) Strong female character: Simply put, Rosetta Wakefield is one awesome woman. A young bride who decides that she will not sit home while the man she loves marches off to war, Rosetta takes her future into her own hands. Ignoring family disapproval and potential shame, not waiting for her husband’s agreement, Rosetta sets a course for herself and doesn’t look back. She joins the Union army, drills with the troops, pushes past overwhelming fear, and marches into battle — and simply won’t take no for an answer. Sure, there are fictional fantasy characters who use fancy martial arts, or stakes, or bows and arrows to face down bad guys. But Rosetta is a real-world heroine, based on historical records, who arms herself with her mind and her will to fight, steels herself with her love for her husband, and dares everything in order to achieve her own ends.

2) Bringing history to life: If you’re like me, you learned about the Civil War, about the battles of Bull Run and Antietam, in history class during middle school or high school. Maybe you had to learn the details, or write an essay on the strategic importance of certain battles. Maybe you had to memorize the dates or the names of the generals. Boring, right? Put all that aside, and read I Shall Be Near To You. I don’t think I’ve read another book that brings the battlefield’s sights, sounds, and smells to life quite so viscerally. As seen through Rosetta’s eyes, war truly is hell. It’s bloody and confusing and terrifying, consisting of little more than marching into almost certain death because that’s what the troops have been ordered to do. There’s no place to hide, no refuge, and no rhyme or reason to the chaos and horror.

3) An intense, passionate love story: Rosetta and Jeremiah are childhood sweethearts whose love is sincere, deep, and committed. Rosetta can’t be anywhere but by Jeremiah’s side, and despite his worries about what’s proper and safe for his wife, Jeremiah loves Rosetta too much to send her away. Their stolen moments are deeply emotional, deeply sexual, and absolutely pure in their mutual love and devotion.

4) Nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts details: What would enlisted troops eat in between battles? Where did the food come from? Or more essential questions: How could a woman hide in plain sight among an army of men? What about bathroom needs and other bodily functions? Ever notice how some of those “sweeping”, “epic” romances or historical novels gloss over the less-pleasant realities of day-to-day life? It’s all gowns and swords and drama… but not here. In I Shall Be Near To You, Rosetta’s adventure is believable because it is so deeply grounded in real life. Yes, there are obstacles. Yes, there are all sorts of things that Rosetta has to figure out in order to manage in a male environment without detection. The author gives us enough to make us feel just how much Rosetta has to overcome in order to achieve her goals — and just how much she has to sacrifice and put up with in order to stay by Jeremiah’s side.

5) Writing that’s just right: Rosetta is a young woman with some education but not a lot, raised on a farm and taught the essentials, but she’s never been a fine, sophisticated lady — and her speech is pitch-perfect in reflecting just who she is. Speaking plainly but not without her own sense of poetry, Rosetta is forthright to the point of almost impropriety, speaking out when nice young girls should demur to their men or their mothers-in-law or to practically anyone else. Rosetta speaks in colloquialisms, but it’s not overdone or cloying. Instead, her narration tells us just who she is simply by the words she uses and how she describes her life, her dreams, and the man she loves. It’s not fancy, but it consistently rings true, and Rosetta conveys such a depth of emotions in her plain words that it’s like being hit by a lightning bolt at times.

That’s five. Need more?

At just over 300 pages, I Shall Be Near To You tells a tightly crafted tale that wastes no energy and never goes astray. I walked away from this book with a greater understanding of love and loss, the terrors of warfare, and the simple joys of being with the right person and sharing a dream.

It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. Read this book.

9May2014

Flashback Friday: The Feast of Love

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is a weekly tradition started here at Bookshelf Fantasies, focusing on showing some love for the older books in our lives and on our shelves. If you’d like to join in, just pick a book published at least five years ago, post your Flashback Friday pick on your blog, and let us all know about that special book from your reading past and why it matters to you. Don’t forget to link up!

This week on Flashback Friday:

The Feast of Love

The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
(published 2000)

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Late one night, Charlie Baxter wakes with a start from a bad dream and decides to take a walk through his Ann Arbor neighborhood. After catching sight of two lovers entangled together on the fifty-yard line of the football field, he comes upon Bradley W. Smith, a friend and a fellow insomniac, who convinces Charlie to listen to the first of many tales that will become a luminous narrative of love in its sublime, agonizing, and eternal complexity.

We meet Kathryn, Bradley’s first wife, who leaves her husband for another woman, and Diana, Bradley’s second wife, whose cold, secretive nature makes her more suitable as a mistress than as a spouse. We meet Chloé and Oscar, whose dreams for their future together are more traditional than their multiple body piercings and wild public displays of affection might suggest. We meet Esther and Harry Ginsberg, Bradley’s neighbors, whose love for their lost son persists despite his hatred of them. Bradley, ex-husband, employer, and friend, on his journey toward conjugual happiness. The community of souls found in The Feast of Love is unforgettable – as is the perfect symphony their harmonized voices create.

The Feast of Love is one of those books that I might not have discovered were it not for a book group (now defunct, may it rest in peace) composed of a really interesting mix of folks with lots of different preferences and reading habits. I don’t remember who picked this one, but I do remember that it was one of the most outstanding book group picks over the course of the three or four years that the group was active.

In The Feast of Love, the stories of the different couples weave together with a lovely, odd rhythm that’s almost dreamlike in the telling. It took me a while to unravel whose story this really was, but that didn’t matter. Over the course of this beautiful book, the characters come to life, and it’s a community of sorts that’s built by slowly unveiling the unexpected connections between them all.

The writing is wonderful, and the love stories, both triumphant and tragic, are unforgettable.

What flashback book is on your mind this week?

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join in the Flashback Friday fun:

Grab the Flashback Friday button
Post your own Flashback Friday entry on your blog (and mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the host of the meme, if you please!)
Leave your link in the comments below
Check out other FF posts… and discover some terrific hidden gems to add to your TBR piles!

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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

Why is August 9th circled in red on my calendar???

Here’s why:

Thank you, Starz, for giving Outlander fans the great news!

8May2014

Thursday Quotables: The Break-Up Artist

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel
(published April 29, 2014)

Why do none of the movies girls at my school love have happy endings? One half of the couple either dies or moves away. But they can’t get enough of those films. Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Atonement, The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, every other Nicholas Sparks film known to man. My classmates want a relationship, yet they idolize movies where couples never wind up happy. I don’t get it.

You and me both…

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

7May2014

Guest Review: I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Please join me in welcoming my wonderful friend Mary, who consistently recommends superb books to me. Mary is the one who first encouraged me to read I Shall Be Near To You, and so I thought it only fitting to invite her to write a review.

***Guest Review: I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe***

***Reviewed by Mary***

“His arms pull me tight against his chest and I bury my face in his shoulder. He shakes and it is dark enough I can still say I ain’t ever seen him cry. My heart goes to cracking wide open, but at least I am alive to feel it. I am a different kind of woman now, a wife who knows what this war really is. At least I am part of this war, part of the things Jeremiah’s done here, things that will always be hiding somewhere in his heart.”

New York, 1862. Rosetta marries her childhood sweetheart just before he leaves to enlist with the Union Army. Jeremiah is naive and optimistic about the war, thinking he’ll be gone a short while and return with money enough for them to buy their own farm. Even so, Rosetta doesn’t want him to go. Without Jeremiah, she has to play the role of wife, cooking, mending, making soap, when she’d rather be outside tending the animals or helping with the harvest. Rosetta is stubborn and spirited, and it isn’t long before she hacks off her braid, dresses in Jeremiah’s old clothes and follows her husband to war.

Rosetta is a force, a fighting wife, a woman brave enough to follow her husband into hell. Their love is both fierce and tender, and their connection to one another endures long stretches of boredom, constant hunger, and short bursts of battle-born terror. Neither of them truly understood what war would be, and the author, with well-placed poetic imagery and necessary grit, conveys the realities of a soldier’s life.

“I aim careful in the dying light and fire two rounds…the first don’t hit a thing, but the second shot makes a space in the line advancing. Something heavy settles in my belly when the stain blooms on that soldier’s chest, the hole in the line, the tear in the fabric of some other family.”

Rosetta’s voice is strong and straightforward; her struggles and fears are authentic and entirely relatable. The supporting characters are well-drawn, compelling, easy to get attached to. There is just the right amount of historic detail to capture the essence of the time period without inundating the reader with “research.” The way the story is told, the structure and pacing, seems effortless (though I am sure it wasn’t), and thankfully, there is no epilogue to stitch up every last detail. In short, this is as close to perfect as it can get. If you love historical fiction – if you love great fiction – read this book. But read it slowly. Savour your time with these unforgettable characters and their heart-wrenching story.

And…when you read the last page, close the book and still find yourself unable to let go of the story, read these interesting links:

The title of the book was inspired by a real letter from Union soldier Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah. Read it here.

The author’s playlist. Music can strike an emotional chord with me, and I love that the author included the songs she listened to while writing. These echo the mood of the book so well. Make sure you listen to “My Father’s Father” when you have finished the book. So, so moving.

An interview with the author. I love hearing about the process of getting this book revised and published. It was obviously a labor of love.

The original photo from the cover.Were you, like me, curious about the soldier pictured on the front of the novel? I wanted to see his (her?) whole face, and I was surprised to discover that the soldier was actually a Confederate.

A Savage Day in American History. A little more information about the Battle of Antietam.

About the reviewer:

Mary Mary is a life-long reader and self-professed book-nerd. She carries a book with her wherever she goes, and if she isn’t reading, she’s either sleeping or dead.

Want to read more of Mary’s reviews? You can find her here on Goodreads — just tell her Bookshelf Fantasies sent you!

Stay tuned:

I Shall Be Near To You is my spotlight book this week, and there are more related blog posts to come!

7May2014

Book Review: The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel

The Break-Up Artist

Synopsis:

Some sixteen-year-olds babysit for extra cash. Some work at the Gap. Becca Williamson breaks up couples.

After watching her sister get left at the altar, Becca knows the true damage that comes when people utter the dreaded L-word. For just $100 via paypal, she can trick and manipulate any couple into smithereens. With relationship zombies overrunning her school, and treating single girls like second class citizens, business is unfortunately booming. Even her best friend Val has resorted to outright lies to snag a boyfriend.

One night, she receives a mysterious offer to break up the homecoming king and queen, the one zombie couple to rule them all: Steve and Huxley. They are a JFK and Jackie O in training, masters of sweeping faux-mantic gestures, but if Becca can split them up, then school will be safe again for singletons. To succeed, she’ll have to plan her most elaborate scheme to date and wiggle her way back into her former BFF Huxley’s life – not to mention start a few rumors, sabotage some cell phones, break into a car, and fend off the inappropriate feelings she’s having about Val’s new boyfriend. All while avoiding a past victim out to expose her true identity.

No one said being the Break-Up Artist was easy.

This YA novel is refreshingly straight-forward: Becca is a girl on a mission. In a school where (paraphrasing here) “you wouldn’t understand, you’ve never had a boyfriend” is the ultimate put-down, it’s no wonder that girls like Becca suffer mightily. Seemingly unbreakable best-friendships are tossed aside the second one friend gets a boyfriend. It doesn’t seem to matter who he is, so long as there’s someone to walk down the hallway with and make googly eyes at. Wouldn’t it absolutely drive you bonkers if every conversation you were subjected to began with “My boyfriend says…” or “Last night, my boyfriend and I…”?

Becca is especially bitter when it comes to so-called true love. Heck, she even claims that Romeo and Juliet were never truly in love — just a couple of hormonal teens who probably would have gotten tired of each other if they’d spent more than a week together. She’s seen her closest friend from middle school, Huxley, transform herself from a really great friend to the queen of the school, with no time to spare for her former (lesser) friends now that she’s dating a supremely popular boy and has reached the pinnacle of the school social heap. Becca has also seen the suffering her sister has endured ever since getting dumped on her wedding day. What’s more, she looks at her parents and sees two people who just live in the same house with not a shred of romance between them. So what’s so great about relationships?

To top it all off, her best friend Val, after years of wanting a boyfriend, finally has one… even though she had to pretend to share his love of movies in order to get him to notice her. Now they make out in hallways and only have eyes for each other, except for when they take pity on Becca, invite her to come out with them, and then get so caught up in each other that they ignore her completely. Val is ecstatic, Becca is dubious… and Becca is conflicted, because Val’s boyfriend seems to have more in common with Becca, and he has the dreamiest eyes! Ugh, Becca, run away! No boy is worth the pain that will fall down on your head if you — wait! Don’t kiss him! Argh. Bad moves galore.

Here’s the thing: Becca’s judgment is, shall we say, not so sound? She starts her business as the Break-Up Artist to make a little money, yes, but more so out of a sense of righteous indignation over the fate of the singletons in her school. Operating via email and video chat (in disguise), Becca’s clients are her schoolmates, often the friends left behind for the sake of a relationship with a cute boy. It’s a sad state of affairs, and in Becca’s view, almost none of these relationships are real. The truth she continually discovers is that girls stick with jerky boyfriends because even a jerky boyfriend is better than no boyfriend. It’s truly a disheartening state of affairs.

So Becca meddles, not that ingeniously, in my humble opinion, and when it hits the fan — as it was bound to — Becca faces the loss of every friend at school and complete and utter humiliation. So was it worth it? Well, yes and no. Becca does suffer social disaster, but comes to realize some hard truths as well: Not every relationship, no matter how corny or over the top, is doomed to fail. Some teen couples may actually love each other. Some people really can figure things out on their own, without being pried apart by the Break-Up Artist. And maybe what looks like a lack of romance on the part of her parents is really just Becca’s introduction to what a normal, health, mature relationship might look like, once the initial thrill and hormonal rush give way to true affection and devotion.

So, my big picture thoughts about The Break-Up Artist?

On the plus side, the writing is full of quips and zingers that kept me amused and engaged. Here are a few top choices:

I reread the email about five more times. The words don’t change, but each time they seep in more. I deal with low profile relationships, ones that don’t case major seismic shifts in the tectonic plates of gossip our school rests upon. Huxley and Steve are the San Andreas Fault of relationships. (Wow, I guess our current unit on geology is more fascinating than I thought.)

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Everything Ezra says needs cheesy background music and sparkles. I wonder if his mom read him greeting cards as a baby.

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It’s weird when you find out your suspicions are correct. I knew from a young age that the tooth fairy wasn’t real. But I still felt a pang of disappointment when my dad woke me up cramming a dollar under my pillow. It’s not always fun being right.

On the down side, there were quite a few elements that made shake my head or take a step back. Becca’s voice didn’t feel especially authentic — she seemed more to me like a writer’s idea of how a teen girl might think, as opposed to a real girl, if that makes sense. Some of the word and phrasing choices struck me as odd, like the term “singleton” or even referring to herself and friends as being “single”. Maybe they don’t have boyfriends, but I’m not convinced that they’d define themselves using those words.

The emphasis on having a boyfriend at all costs is overdone. The message here is that this is NOT a good way to live life… but it’s a pretty muddled message, based on Becca’s actions and her interactions with Huxley and Val. It’s not a bad thing to have a boyfriend, so maybe the book might have been more convincing if we saw even one couple in the high school following some sort of middle path, rather than becoming instant, extreme relationship zombies.

The author is careful to keep Becca balanced just on the right side of the line dividing a good person making unwise choices from a bad person doing bad things. Becca does act unwisely, perhaps for what she considers good reasons, but people do get hurt, and she makes foolish choices galore. Yes, her worldview has been skewed by her experiences with her former friends and by sister’s ordeal, but that’s not really a valid excuse for what she does. And, let me just add, Becca’s schemes are a bit lame. She breaks up a couple by planting a fake wedding binder in the boy’s locker so he’ll freak out over his girlfriend’s supposed wedding obsession — but who would believe this, really? All of the break-up moves Becca pulls off seem like plans that could only work in fiction or in the movies. Real people just wouldn’t be fooled.

Bottom line? The Break-Up Artist is a fun, fast read, but with some tonal flaws, a main character who can be hard to get behind, and some plot points that strain plausibility way beyond the breaking point. The quippiness is fun and I enjoyed a lot about the writing, but the plot itself could have used some big tweaks in order to resemble anything like real high school life.

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The details:

Title: The Break-Up Artist
Author: Philip Siegel
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication date: April 29, 2014
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Young adult fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Harlequin Teen via NetGalley

6May2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: Just One Night

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).

Try not to squeal too loudly over this one!:

Just One Night by Gayle Forman
(An e-novella, to be released May 29, 2014)

Synopsis via Goodreads:

After spending one life-changing day in Paris with laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter, sheltered American good girl Allyson “Lulu” Healey discovered her new lover had disappeared without a trace. Just One Day followed Allyson’s quest to reunite with Willem; Just One Year chronicled the pair’s year apart from Willem’s perspective. Now, back together at last, this delectable e-novella reveals the couple’s final chapter.

Anyone who read Just One Day* and Just One Year* will need no convincing — we will finally (gasp!) find out what happened after that kiss! I may have jumped up and down just a teensy bit when I heard about this e-novella…

*If you want to read my reviews of the two novels mentioned here…

… click here for Just One Day
… click here for Just One Year

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

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5May2014

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Book Covers I’d Frame As Pieces of Art

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Top Ten Book Covers I’d Frame As Pieces of Art. I’ve done other top 10 lists with favorite covers (and even one with scary covers) — so I’ll try to come up with 10 “work of art” book covers without repeating myself… too much.

1) The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

2) Mokoka’i by Alan Brennert

3) Impossible by Nancy Werlin

4) The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

5) Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore

6) Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich
(I haven’t read the book, but I do love the cover!)

7) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (original edition with Tolkien’s cover art)

8) Any of the new series of covers for Susanna Kearsley books, especially:

9) The covers from any of the Fables series volumes, especially:

10) The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan
(Two different covers, and I like them both!)

If you want to see one of my earlier posts about favorite covers, check it out here. (Only 2 repeats! Not bad…)

What’s on your list this week? Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out our regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday. Happy reading!

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5May2014

The Monday Agenda 5/5/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Last week, I declared I Shall Be Near To You to be my spotlight book of the week — one that I wanted to read slowly and give myself time to savor.

So how did it go?

In short, I adored it.

I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe is a beautiful, powerful book about an unforgettable young woman.

I’ll be featuring this book a few times in the coming week, with a review, a guest post, and possibly more. Stay tuned!.

The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegal: I didn’t get a chance to start this YA novel until this past weekend. I’m about halfway through, and I’m thoroughly entertained at this point.

The kiddo and I started Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede this week, and so far, it rocks! Where has this author been all my life? Clearly, I’ve been missing out.

Fresh Catch:

Books, books, books galore! I treated myself to a few books this week, thanks to strategic use of Amazon credits and a gift card! My catch of the week includes two beautiful hardcover books that I’d previously read as ARCs, plus a couple of others I’d had a hankering for:

84, Charing Cross Road

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

Savage Girl In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright, #3) Then and Always: A Novel

I have two books that I’ve been wanting to get to for a couple of weeks now:

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

In The Age of Love and Chocolate by Gabrielle Zevin

And if I have time after these two, my next choice will be Then and Always by Dani Atkins.

And also in the works:

The Outlander Book Club’s re-read of An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon continues! Coming up this week: Chapters 79 – 83. Want to join in? Contact me and I’ll provide all the details!