"Top Gun" Started It All

It is very rare that I read rom-coms and "The Theory of Happily Ever After" reminded me why that is. The book is about a young woman named Maggie, who was recently dumped by her fiance, and is now having trouble getting out of the funk she has spiraled into. Her two best friends, unbeknownst to her, sign her up to speak on a singles cruise to help her snap out of her mood. Maggie is an accomplished book writer and a scientist of happiness, and now she feels unqualified to speak on happiness and the perfect life when she is far from happy and her life has spiraled out of control. Onboard the cruise ship she will be forced to break out of her shell, and maybe forgive and forget her ex, and in the process maybe just find love again. Does that plot sound unique? The answer to that is, no. You can call from a mile away what this book is going to bring. Some adolescent like behavior is what is in store from the main character who wants to whine and wallow in the fact her life...

I love a historical fiction book set in the west and with handsome cowboys, and adventure around every turn, "The Accidental Guardian" has it all. Set in Nevada in the late fall of 1867 the book opens on two sisters, Deb and Gwen travelling to California with a wagon train. The wagon train gets attacked early one morning leaving the sisters and two children as the only survivors, all alone and stranded in the wilderness. They are saved by a knight riding in on a noble steed, or more like a handsome, lonely, cowboy named Trace on a horse named Black, and a pet wolf. This cowboy had been out in the mountains all alone for years after a wagon train he had headed west on, when he was 15, was attacked and left him as the only survivor. Trace holds one dark secret close to his heart, and he is out for vengeance, but now he must protect Deb, Gwen and the children first and foremost, with the outlaws who attacked the train still on the loose and winter closing in. With Trace lacki...

It's not too often I honestly don't want to walk away from a book to do my everyday things, but with "A Borrowed Dream" that is exactly what happened. Their were just too many things I wanted to see resolved, so I ended up taking a lot of breaks throughout my day to get the answers to my questions. Between laundry, dinners, and the many requests for a sippy cup to be refilled I found the time to finish the book in record time. Amanda Cabot works wonders with any book she writes. I read the first book in this series, and it was great and this second installment did not dissapoint. It follows a young woman named Catherine, a widowed father named Aaron, and his daughter, Hannah. (I bet you don't know who's going to end up together.) ;) Aaron comes to town with a trunk full of secrets, and Catherine can sort of see through that and yet, she is slowly falling in love. I loved the aspects of mystery, romance, danger, and adventure that were written into the ...

"You shouldn't let the voices of your past or present define who you are. Let God do that. And He says you're precious. So think of yourself that way, Mercy." The amount of forgivness in this book is amazing! "A Chance at Forever" is about a young woman ironically named, Mercy and a young man named Aaron. During Mercy's childhood Aaron used to be her biggest tormentor, but he is now claiming to be a changed man and wants to establish himself back into the local community, after moving away, to make up for all the wrongs he had done in the past. Mercy can not seem to look past the man Aaron used to be and she still struggles with the pain he brought upon her as a child. Will Mercy be able to forgive her past tormentor? Will she even grow to love him after all he has done? Their are multiple side stories throughout the book and they all revolve around forgivness and past hurts.  "A Chance at Forever" really brings to light an issue that ev...

It took me awhile to get through "Judah's Scepter and the Sacred Stone", but I feel like that was because the amount of detail the author put into the book. I was expecting the book to be more focused on the couple, and while I would have loved that, I also really enjoyed all the history I was learning. I learned more about their religous customes back then, and some of the pagean rituals that I had never heard of. I feel as if the author thoroughly knows the topic they write on and they did a fabulous job portraying the time and history they were writing about. This is not a book that you can call the author's next move. I had a few times where I was quite surprised by the outcome of events in the story. The only complaint I have was that we never really see how the death of Teia's father and siblings affected her in the long run. It just seems she found out and kept going on with life. I also wish we would have had a bit more romance, but all in all an e...

"Keturah" is a beautiful book that deals with some of the gritty situations of the time, and shows how a woman can overcome and rise up even after she has been told she is not good enough. The year is 1772 and the book opens in England with Keturah learning of her recently deceased father's failing financial situation. Keturah and her two younger sisters must travel to Nevis, in the West Indies, where their father owned a once very successful sugar plantation, to see if they can turn their financial situation around. Keturah is a widow who was once married to a brutal tyrant, and now she has trouble accepting any help from men, since she has been hurt by them so many times. Keturah will face many trials in the book, but the biggest one of all may just be to open up her heart again, and give herself the chance to be loved the way that God intended. This was my first book I had ever read by Lisa T. Bergren, and I think I may have found a new favorite author. This is th...

I am 22 years old and I truly enjoyed this YA novel. I usually dread reading YA novels, just because the main characters are usually too whiney, and way too much drama usually goes down, but Leslea Wahl did a wonderful job creating a relatable main character, and she was very sparce with the drama, which I enjoyed. Josie, the main character, is truly a girl after my own heart. She is clumsy, a lover of musicals, and old movies which definitely made her a relatable main character for me. I loved the references to old movies, and plays and I proudly understood them all. Maybe these references will motivate some of this new generation to look up some of these classics. The romance in the book was very well written, and believable and it made me relive my high school dream of having a summer romance in a quiet little beach town. (That tends to be a popular theme in YA books.) If you want to read an uplifting book, with a bit of mystery, romance, and a clumsy, relatable main char...