Novelas Romanticas Gratis

  I had to put the books I've been reading on hold this last week so I could read Heather Gudenkauf's latest--I had a 10 day check out from the library so I couldn't dither! It wasn't hard to do, because this novel grabbed me from the first few pages and I quickly became completely invested in the characters and the plot. Wylie Lark is a true crime writer, and she's come to Burden, Iowa to stay in an isolated farmhouse to finish her latest book. A big blizzard is heading quickly towards town, and Wylie heads to the farmhouse to huddle up and wait out the storm.  Twenty years before, young Josie Doyle and her friend Becky were spending a last summer night together out at Josie's parent's farm. It was hot and hard to sleep. The girls slip out to jump on the trampoline outside, and hear gunshots in the house. Running towards the house, the girls quickly realize their mistake and turn around to flee into the cornfields.  Josie makes it into the field to hide, bu...

  I'm absolutely thrilled I was able to actually read all of my February TBR books. It seems like a long time since I've been able to meet my monthly reading goal. The Survivors was my last read, and I powered through it the past few days. Once I got past the first hundred pages, it wasn't hard to stick with it until the very last shocking reveal. You should know I've read three of Jane Harper's novels, and her first novel, The Dry , remains one of my favorite books to recommend to readers. I read it and realized I was reading something amazing. Jane Harper's ability to create a setting that becomes a character in her thrillers is something that sets her novels apart. Nature--whether it's a summer of drought and dust, or a forest where the rainy season keeps it wet and miserable for weeks--or, in the case of The Survivors--a small beach town in Tasmania where the ocean dictates every day life; nature is always big, present, and demanding.  The Survivors ta...

  I eagerly awaited the publication date of this novel and quickly bought my own copy so I could enjoy it at my own pace and not worry about returning it to the library. It's a good thing I did, because it took me almost three weeks in February before I finally started reading it. I picked it up and started reading it last weekend after deciding the two books I was already reading just didn't fit my weekend reading vibe.  This is my second World War 2 novel this month, which is definitely a record for me. Any novel that has a bookstore or a library in it is one I have to read, so I couldn't wait another month to dig into the story of Odile Souchet in Paris during World War 2, and young Lily living in Montana in 1985. How do the two of them have anything in common? Well, Odile lives right next door to Lily and her family in the small town of Froid. Odile is reserved, always dressed to the nines, and is still, after forty years, described as "the war bride". Her hus...

  Christmas cozy mysteries are a fairly new addition to my December reading, but they have quickly become favorites. This mystery, the third in the Salem B&B   M ystery series, can be read on its own. I haven't read the first two, but I will probably go back and read them; mostly because I enjoyed this mystery and the characters. If you're interested in the first two in the series, they are Mrs. Morris and the Ghost , and Mrs. Morris and the Witch. What drew me to this mystery: it takes place in Salem, MA, and there's a ghost involved. Mrs. Morris is Charlene, a recent transplant from Chicago. She's bought an old mansion and turned it into a B&B. That mansion has a ghost named Jack: a handsome ghost who only Charlene can see and talk to. There's a bit of flirty behavior going on between Charlene and Jack, but, well...kind of hard to see a future with a ghostly guy. Charlene moved to Salem to start fresh after her husband's untimely death. Now it's t...

  I took a break from reading my haunting reads this month for a sweet romance between a children's librarian and a sheriff. It was what I needed to kick off vacation week! It's a staycation, of course. But I've got things to do around the house, and a big stack of books to read all week. I'm excited for a much needed break, and a little bit of solitude. I'll be working really hard to not give into my desire for a key lime pie, thanks to this book!  Molly Montgomery is the new children's librarian in Little Bridge Island, Florida. A pretty sweet tourist spot that is beautiful, surrounded by the ocean, and small town enough that everyone knows everyone's business. Molly loves her job, and one day finds an abandoned newborn in the women's bathroom. Not the usual librarian duties, for sure. The Sheriff arrives, and sparks fly immediately. John Hartwell is handsome and swoon worthy, even if he does clash a bit with Molly. Who's baby is this? Another case...

  Shocking, I know--I finished two books in one weekend. Now I can't wait to dig into the other books I've got lined up for the rest of October. This novel continues the magical theme I have going for October. It's definitely getting darker out earlier, and now when I get up early to hit the gym, it's still dark when I leave the gym--and I do miss that sunrise on the drive home.  I first saw this novel pop up on Goodreads. I looked at what people had to say, and while I was interested, I wasn't running out to grab it. I was perusing the new release tables at B&N and saw it there, and decided I had to read it. I'm so glad I paid attention--usually when a book keeps popping up around me, I take it as a sign that I should read it. I wasn't disappointed in this magical suspense novel.  Dan Whitman is attending a high school party at a rented home when he falls to his death and a fire erupts, burning down the house and causing all the kids to flee in terror....

  I absolutely loved this book. It delivers a pretty simple message. We are so preoccupied with the "what ifs" and the "If onlys" that we sometimes forget to look at the lives we have and understand the gift they are-and continue to be as our lives unfold. Unfold in a way that should continually amaze us, but instead sends us sometimes into unhappy places. Has us trying to live a life that will make others happy, and not really make us happy.  This is Nora Seed. She's thirty-five, single, and works in a music store. She's depressed a lot and takes anti-depressants to get through her days. Her parents are dead and her older brother is very distant. The final straw is finding her cat dead. She realizes her life is empty of love and really anyone caring about her, so she decides she's done and drinks a bottle of wine and take a bunch of pills.  End of story, right? Kind of gloomy, you think? Nope. Nora wakes up in an amazing place: a library. It's a lib...

I haven't read a YA novel for a very long time. Quite honestly, I'm afraid if I start diving into YA, I'll go down a rabbit hole and never come out again! Same goes for children's fiction, too. Sometimes thinking about everything I want to read overwhelms me and I panic and hyperventilate. I kid you not.  Sometimes, however, the book universe magic happens, and I'm given the opportunity to read a novel that ends up being so utterly charming and lovable it actually changes the course of my reading plans for the rest of the year. In a bizarre, whirly-gig 2020, what's another shift in my universe? So yes, I'll be incorporating YA into the remainder of my 2020 reading choices.  Dating Makes Perfect had me from the first few pages. I can't say that about a lot of books. Most of the time I have to read about 50 or so pages before I get invested in a story-but Winnie and her family are so engaging I was sucked in immediately. Winnie's older twin sisters are...

Heather Webber has written more than twenty-five novels-most of them are cozy mysteries and light romances. However, she has found her sweet spot in her previous novel Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe , and her newest novel, South of the Buttonwood Tree. I can't say it strongly enough how much I enjoy novels imbued with magical realism.  This is not a sequel, but a stand alone novel about Blue Bishop and the people she calls family. Set in the small town of Buttonwood, Alabama, Blue is a children's author and illustrator, and has a series of books about a bunny that have made her famous. However, her family name has made her infamous in her hometown. Blue and her sister, Persy are the only two left in the Bishop family; her brothers all died tragically and under unhappy circumstances, her father left the family and died; her mother Twyla willed herself to death after losing her sons and husband. Growing up with little money, the family did what it could to survive-ofte...

My last read of January. I finished it at about 2:30 this morning, after falling asleep by 9 PM and then being WIDE awake in the middle of the night. Apparently I'd had enough sleep.  I suspect I'll be on the downslide by about 10 AM this morning. Just in time for my second round of coffee.  This was a quick read, and I wasn't quite sure where it was headed as I was reading about Maeve and her new life in a small town. It felt like the author wasn't quite sure which themes she wanted to focus on and I just figured it would all shake out. After all was said and done, I was happy with where the author was going and satisfied with the whole shebang.  Maeve has just lost her job as a sports journalist (and not a very good one, as she says), and her semi-famous baseball playing boyfriend has just humiliated her with a YouTube video of him smooching on another woman. Broke, she moves back in with her parents, and contemplates her mess of a life. Everything changes whe...

I've said it a million times, and I'll say it again: cover art sucks me in every time. The woman on this cover pulls off a look that I could have never, ever pulled off! It sets the tone for the story of Alice Weiss, a newcomer to New York City in 1965.   Alice arrives in NYC from Youngstown, Ohio, old camera in hand, ready to dive into her love of photography. She hopes to find a job as a photographer, but quickly realizes her portfolio of photos is unimpressive in a city known for high fashion. An old family friend hooks Alice up with an interview for secretary to a new editor in chief at Cosmopolitan magazine: Helen Gurley Brown.  Alice takes the job, since it's the only one she's been offered, and it's steady employment. The world she enters is pretty fast paced, and HGB is not your typical executive. As the new-and first-woman editor for Cosmopolitan, she's got quite a few different ideas about what a woman's magazine needs to be, and she's meeting ...

I needed to read a Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel for my book group on Tuesday, and what is usually a super easy pick for me turned out to be not so easy! I tried a couple of different novels before I picked this up at my library on Friday. It turned out to be a pretty darn good read, and my introduction to author Richard Kadrey.  Kadrey writes the Sandman Slim series, which are urban fantasy and very popular. I've looked at that series many times over the past few years, but never actually picked one up. Now I'm more inclined to do so, after reading Dead Set . It is not part of the Sandman Slim series, and is a stand alone fantasy novel--something that's getting harder and harder to find. If you're a reader of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, you know that the majority of writers craft a trilogy or a series instead of single novels, and that can be frustrating. Sometimes you just want to read a story that ends with the last page, and leaves you satisfied with the conclusion. I'm bad about s...

I finished this novel early this week, but wanted to take a little time to think about it--and then the week hit, and holy heck it was a busy one! Now it's Friday evening, and before I make a cocktail and have date night with my boyfriend, I'm going to tell you about this unexpectedly sweet novel about friendship and trees.  May Attaway is a forty year old single woman who still lives in the home she grew up in; her father lives downstairs, and she has the top half of the house. She's part of the grounds crew at the local university, and she's  an expert at cultivating trees and plants. She's a bit of an introvert in that she goes to work, spends a minimal amount of time in conversation every day, then goes home. Her friends? Well, she doesn't really have any close friends.  A surprise gift from the university (a month of paid time off) has May ruminating on how to spend that time. She begins noticing people all around her who have friendships: the two elderly l...

I was pretty excited to get my hands on this novel. I'm always geared up to read about libraries, bookstores...anything to do with books. This was a gentle novel that I'm glad I read before I dip into The Trial of Lizzie Borden. I needed a little light before I hit the heavy.  Martha is a middle-aged librarian in a small English town near the sea. She lives alone after caring for her aging parents for years. In caring for them, she lost her chance at marriage and having a family of her own. She's always saying yes to people who ask her for favors. So much so that her home is filled with all sorts of projects she's taken on  and never seems to complete: hemming pants, fixing a paper mache dragon; and yes, even doing someone's laundry. Add to that all the boxes of her parent's belongings that she still needs to sort through. All that clutter has cluttered her mind. The man who runs her library (from an office in a neighboring town) has turned her down multiple tim...

Anyone who scoffs at the notion of reading a graphic novel simply hasn't read one. They are just as powerful and impactful as a book that's full of words, page after page. Roz Chast had me reliving some painful parental moments in her graphic novel, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? We all hope our parents live long lives, and that we have time to get to know them as people when we grow up and become adults ourselves. But as our parents age, and live longer than their parents and grandparents did, we're faced with increasing angst as parents who always were strong, independent, sharp, and ruled the household become frail and forgetful.  Roz Chast outlines that very situation. For her, it's even more difficult, as she's an only child who doesn't live near her parents. And her parents are a handful. Elizabeth and George have been married for decades; her mother is a force, while her father is quiet. They do everything together. They've lived in ...

I had this novel on my TBR list because I've got a reading group meeting Tuesday to discuss it for our September read. It's a novel I've seen many times on the shelves at my local B&N; I even stocked it on paperback tables, but never wanted to read it. This was my opportunity to do so--and wow, this is not a novel for the faint of heart.  Told in two voices: Clara, a young upper class woman in 1929, and Izzy, a young teen  in contemporary times living with her foster parents. Clara Cartwright is in love with Bruno, a handsome immigrant who came to America to start a new life. Her father, a total asshole (sorry, but he is just horrible!) and her unfeeling mother insist she marry someone that matches her station. When she says no, her father has the police take her to an insane asylum, saying she's crazy. And from there, Clara's life takes just one horrible spiral down after another. At first, she's in a somewhat nice place, but still held against her will and...

I continue my quest to read novels set in libraries and bookstores with Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern. I've worked hard this week to dive into this novel, and I'm kind of "meh" on it, which is a big surprise to me; but then again, the novel wasn't what I expected, either. This seems to be my theme this summer-reading books that surprise me.  The novel starts off with Kit talking about how she met her husband, Cal in college. This completely threw me for a loop, and I kept putting the book down, not really very interested in her relationship with Cal. What does this have to do with a library, I wondered? But I kept going. Mostly Kit's backstory explains why she is a librarian in little Riverton, NH--a place far from where she comes from.  Aha! The library. Set in the small dying industrial town of Riverton, NH, the Carnegie library is one of the few places left in town that is actually open. There is a core group of faithful patrons, a pi...

Ah, relationships.  Relationships in our twenties.  Fun times.  Some of us are still with that person we met in our younger years, and have had a lifetime of commitment, ups and downs, and more to come.  Some of us are just fresh in a relationship, and still figuring things out.  I think we all look back and examine  past relationships under a microscope, wondering how they shaped us, how they led us to where we are now, and the person we eventually found and loved. This novel, by first time author Leslie Cohen, reminded me of all of that relationship "stuff" that can drive us all crazy, but we can't help ourselves, sometimes.   Eve and Ben attended Columbia College together, and were only vaguely aware of each other in a large group of friends and friends of friends.  Eve's relationship with Jesse is a bit of a mess, and while it causes some angst, it's what Eve expects in a relationship, and she's not comfortable without it. Plus, Jess...

I like Anna Kendrick.  I first became aware of her watching Twilight, as Bella's friend at her new high school.  Didn't think much of it; it was a small part. Next thing I know, she's appearing alongside George Clooney in Up in the Air; that garners her an Oscar nomination.  What?!  Then I see she can sing and upon further investigation, was on Broadway at age twelve and nominated for a Tony.  Holy crap.  And she's barely thirty years old. May I also mention her twitter comments are hilarious?  Anna's memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody , is funny, self-deprecating, and full of all the angst and guessing we all go through when we're just starting out in life and have no clue who we are and what we want.  She was always a tiny person and looked years younger than she actually was; this proved to be both an advantage when it came to casting, and a disadvantage when it came to casting.  She loves being on stage, and theater is her first love; acting ...