Novelas Romanticas Gratis

I'm a sucker for novels about bookshops. Add in Paris and a few love stories, and this was the book to read leading up to Valentine's Day.  The Little Bookshop on the Seine  was a fun read--the perfect kind to take you away from the cold nights and gloomy days of a Midwest winter. Sarah Smith is a young bookshop owner in the charming town of Ashford. She's absolutely in love with books and reading, and spends all of her days and nights wrapped in her bookish life.  And that's the problem. Business has been slow, and she's a bit worried. She's been corresponding with Sophie, a bookshop  owner in Paris. They've got a firm friendship, and one day Sophie calls Sarah with a proposition: they swap shops for six months. Sophie wants to escape a heartbreak, and Sarah needs some adventure.  Lickety-split, Sarah is arriving in Paris, and steps into the bookshop with all sorts of rose-colored ideas of what life will be like managing the bookshop for the next six ...

Another novel that was high on my can't wait to read list. I picked it up from the bookstore and was a bit surprised at the length-419 pages. It's a hefty paperback. It wasn't a book that I could zip through, either. It took me a few weeks to dig in and finish it. I'm on the fence about it; I think I'm in the middle of loving it and not loving it.  I think, upon reflection, that I was expecting more of a Fannie Flagg-esque story, and this was not at all a Fannie Flagg flavored story. It starts with the sudden death of Henny Broek. She's happily thinking of Michael, the love of her life. He's back in town, and she just spent the day with him. She absentmindedly steps onto the road and is hit by a truck. Instantly dead. Henny is only 33, and can't believe she's dead.  The story unfolds as Henny hangs around, watching her friends and her family cope with her sudden death. Henny has no idea why she's still around, but decides after a few days that ma...

I've been curious about the idea of hygge--a Danish way of being that puts creating and living a comfortable, cozy life at the top of your priority list. This may seem very simplistic, and it is, mostly. What's not simple is wrapping your brain around it and changing your life enough that you feel pretty hygge all the time. And just for your reference, it's pronounced "hoo-gah".  I've found myself saying it over and over lately, in order to retrain my brain to think the pronunciation correctly and stop it from thinking "hi-gee".   The author, Stephanie Pedersen, takes hygge and adds an American spin on it. I haven't read any other hygge books, so I can't say how different, if at all, it is regarding the Danish practice of hygge. But I think I can say with a lot of confidence that Americans seem terribly busy, busy, busy and distracted. We seem to constantly be scrambling to get things done, and are so busy cramming our days with so much, we...

What would you do if you only had 90 days to live? How would you handle it? Denial? Rage? Give up? Or, as Jennifer Cole does, refuse to take the medicines the doctor prescribes, and decide to mark the days off the calendar?  Well, Jennifer does more than that. She realizes this is her one final chance to let three people who shaped her life know exactly what they did to her. Those people are: her older sister Isabelle, her ex-husband Andy, and her ex-boyfriend, Harry.  Isabelle  --the pretty one (Jennifer is the smart one) who cruelly snatched Jennifer's college boyfriend away from her, and lives a happily married life with two perfect daughters, and never has anything nice to say to Jennifer.  Andy, her ex-husband, who left her for another woman (the horrid Elizabeth) after Jennifer's third miscarriage, is a complete toad. Jennifer thought they had a happy marriage, and his announcement that he had been having an affair and was leaving her were low blows. Even ...

I saw this little paperback at B&N a month or so ago and thought it looked like a fun little book to read. And it was! It took me longer to read it, even thought it's just over 200 pages. I finally picked it back up a few days ago and spent some time finishing it. Silly as it may sound, I think I needed to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate the message. Camille is 38, a married woman with a young son, living and working in Paris. She's unhappy with her career, her relationships with her husband and son are strained, and she's at the end of her rope. A broken down car during a rainstorm changes her life in ways she just could never imagine.  Camille takes shelter in a nearby home, and while waiting for help, begins talking to Claude, who tells her he's a routinologist and if she agrees to follow his instructions, he can help her change her life for the better. With nothing to lose, Camille agrees, and begins her journey to happiness by following Claude's...