REVIEW: The Deal by Elle Kennedy

 

OUR REVIEW:

I'm not gonna lie, I could've sworn we reviewed this for the blog a kazillion years ago when we were very active in our blogging? But I have yet to find it in our archives, and I just reread it, so now we'll have it for the future. This novel is the epitome of New Adult Romance. You have two hot college aged characters who not only find each other, but are beginning to figure out some things about themselves. It's sexy and fun and not too heartbreaking, with a fairly easy recovery (Kennedy does not make us wait too long for that make up). The banter and secondary characters are fun and you can breeze through this novel in no time at all. There are some serious issues that are broached throughout the novel, but they aren't necessarily the focus.

I'm absolutely certain that this series is exploding because of the TV series and having read it and watched it, I can see why. While they're not exactly the same, the changes work and I'm eager to see how they modify the rest of the books in the series.

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SYNOPSIS:

She's about to make a deal with the college bad boy... Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice...even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date. ...and it's going to be oh so good!

All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.

REVIEW: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

 

OUR REVIEW:

I've been reading The Covenant of Water in drips and drabs over the last year and my goal was to finish it before the end of the year. Success! This novel was a beast! It spans almost 100 years and many generations of family in India as they try to circumvent The Condition. It's thorough in its exploration of each generation and their fears, love, grief, and joy. As the times change, we see how the family adapts and explores the boundaries of their lives and loves. While there are side jaunts here and there, the main focus is the enduring love and capacity for love in a family that experiences loss and love again and again and again. Well worth the time I put into it. 

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SYNOPSIS:

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

REVIEW: If Not You by Ellen O'Clover

 

OUR REVIEW:

Ellen O'Clover is a new to me author and I'm so glad I tried her latest novel, If Not You. I typically enjoy my romances to have a dual narrator because I'm always fascinated by the other main character's perspective on things, I didn't feel like I was missing anything by there not being one in this novel. Mattie's perspective on their ongoing feud was enough to keep me engaged and interested (though I would've loved to know what Campbell was thinking). It's through her eyes, insecurities, past, and present that we come to understand the hows and whys to their beef. While a lot of the novel is focused on them battling it out to win a huge contract for their team and business, much of what we learn is that the source of Mattie's pain and insecurity has to do with her upbringing (doesn't it nearly always?!) and those wounds were deep and long lasting. Through a series of unexpected events, Campbell and Mattie make a seemingly impossible thing happen and both of them discover that a future with each other and a future filled with love isn't impossible. A solid 4 star read for me.

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SYNOPSIS:

Five years of history. Four weeks on the road. Two rival copywriters learning love is the hardest sell of all.

Mattie French has always known how to tell a good story. It’s why she stopped at nothing to land her dream career as a copywriter at a scrappy independent advertising agency. In fact, if it weren’t for one person, Mattie would probably be the most-talked-about rising star in town.

Campbell Porter is a senior copywriter at Chicago’s slickest agency. Absurdly talented, incredibly aware of it, and the bane of Mattie’s existence since they were interns together, Campbell is always just…there, with his golden-boy smirk and the familiar gaze that never fails to taunt her across a crowded room.

Mattie would love nothing more than to avoid Campbell forever. But when their agencies are pitted against each other to compete for a luxury resort account, it’s her chance to prove she can beat him—and earn the promotion she covets.

During the month of travel required for the pitch, Mattie and Campbell are thrown together as fierce competitors and, slowly, as unexpected witnesses to each other’s hidden wounds and softest parts. As their trip barrels toward its final pitch, Mattie is forced to confront the increasingly obvious the story she’s crafted for her and Campbell over the years might need a new ending.

REVIEW: ExtraCurricular by Rachel Lynn Solomon

 

OUR REVIEW:

I read Extracurricular in between some heavier, denser novels and it was a great reprieve from all the seriousness I was reading. I remember feeling instantly curious about Ramona and Nick from the first chapters and that engagement level remained throughout. I was using this novel as a palette cleanser from the other things but it ended up being the novel that I couldn't. My only quibble is the fact that he's her professor and they got involved while he was her professor. I'd like to believe in real life that that doesn't happen but I know that's a naive wish. Other than that, this novel was an easy read that offered a satisfying ending. 4 stars. 

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SYNOPSIS:

When a former pop star enrolls in college, the last thing she expects is A-plus chemistry with her psychology professor in this sexy and tender romance from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Lynn Solomon.

Ramona Wilder has spent her whole life in the spotlight. After a hit kids’ TV show, she transitioned into music, singing in arenas around the world and becoming an icon for millions of teenage girls. Now at age twenty-six, exhausted by the inhumane lack of privacy, she’s done—with all of it. She wants a chance at normal, whatever that might mean for her. And she’s starting with college.

Professor Nick Navarro is recently divorced but determinedly optimistic, allowing himself a very reasonable ten minutes per day to wallow. When his department calls a meeting about a celebrity enrollment, he plans to treat whoever it is like any other student. Except when Ramona blazes into class and causes an uproar, the typically easygoing professor is rattled, maybe for the first time in his career.

Ramona loves the way she flusters him, taking every opportunity to push Nick’s buttons, though what she really wants is to unbutton them completely. When a crisis brings them closer outside of class, they begin a tentative friendship amid an undeniable attraction. But Ramona can’t be so easily finished with her old life, and they’ll both have to confront their pasts if they want a chance at something real.

REVIEW: The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff

 

OUR REVIEW:

Upon reflection, I really cannot tell you why I'd rank this novel anything lower than a perfect score. It's still lingering with me weeks after I've read it, just like her first novel did. The Burning Side plunges you into a tumultuous time in April and Leo's lives and the lives of her family. It explores the utter grief of a failed marriage, the grief of the long, slow goodbye of someone living with Alzheimer's, and the small joys that are peppered in between. The stories of Leo and April and Deb are told in present day and flashback and all three of them have a voice in the telling of their stories, which I greatly appreciate. There are a ton of lines that just complete resonated with me (see my goodreads account) and rang so true that I actually wrote them down in my journal. I'm so glad I read this and am eagerly awaiting whatever she writes next. 

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SYNOPSIS:

From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging.

When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.

As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.

A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.