Publisher: Ballantine Books

Review: Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly

Review: Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls follows three young women from the very beginning of WWII, they are in very different situations, and following them was both tough, terrifying and strangely wonderful. While Lilac Girls is a fiction novel, some of the story is based on a real person, and the letters she sent to people during WWII. I found the story to be incredibly well written, and showing the different points of views of the three main characters in an extraordinary way. One young woman was sent to a concentration camp, with her mother and her sister. Another young woman – who had almost finished her education to become a doctor, and she starts her work in a concentration camp. The third young woman […]

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Review: Just Fall – Nina Sadowsky

Review: Just Fall – Nina Sadowsky

Just Fall is a dark, mysterious psychological thriller where the characters go to extreme lengths to hide what horrors they are capable of. Just Fall is a well done psychological thriller where the layers of the story, and the layers of the characters are slowly unpeeled, until only the dark, ugly horror is left for the world to see. Told in several different points of views, and from both the past and the present, the story unfolds in a way that makes it hard to put the book down. At the beginning, it read as something between a love story and a horror story, where one of the main characters, Ellie, is observed by an external narrator who is speculating […]

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Review: A Girl’s Guide to Moving On – Debbie Macomber

Review: A Girl’s Guide to Moving On – Debbie Macomber

A Girl’s Guide to Moving On is a sweet, tender and sometimes sad story about hope. And about love. And how to move on after a divorce. Picking ones life back up and fit the pieces together after a divorce can be harder than it seems, and for both Nichole and Leanne, the new beginning was emotionally difficult. A Girl’s Guide to Moving On started with the two of them needing something to help them get back into the world once more, and so they made a list of things they should do. Let go, help others to help themselves, love themselves so they could love others as well. The relationship between Nichole and Leanne was the most honest and […]

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Review: Cursed by Ice – Jacquelyn Frank

Review: Cursed by Ice – Jacquelyn Frank

Cursed by Ice is better than Cursed by Fire, but it still didn’t totally make me weak in the knees. My Cursed by Ice review: In Cursed by Ice, I got to know the second of the immortal brothers, Garreth, who still freezes every evening at dusk until the beginning of dawn. With his brother Deathan, he is fighting to overtake a new city, and turn all the inhabitants into worshippers of Weysa. There are some pretty good fights, a dragon, and a strong woman who is soulbound to a dragon that helps her fight to save her city. It turns out she’s a slave, though, and that her sisters are kept away from her to make sure she will […]

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Review: Cursed by Fire – Jacquelyn Frank

Review: Cursed by Fire – Jacquelyn Frank

The overall plot and storyline in Cursed by Fire were quite good, but I found the writing to be stilted, and the characters not fully three dimensional. My Cursed by Fire review: Dethan was the tortured hero, punished by the gods for having gone against them by drinking from the fountain of immortality. Selinda a princess, stuck with a fiancé who only wanted what was best for himself, not for the good of the village, and with no love for his princess. While this is a much-used trope, it can still be done very well, if the story and the characters manage to truly capture my interest and make my feelings involved as well. However, I didn’t really feel that […]

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Review: The Wicked Widow Meets her Match (Regency Rogues #6) – Stefanie Sloane

Review: The Wicked Widow Meets her Match (Regency Rogues #6) – Stefanie Sloane

*I received a free ARC of The Wicked Widow Meets her Match from Ballantine Books via Edelweiss in exchange of an honest review* The Wicked Widow Meets her Match is a delightful historical romance that dares to bend the gender roles, where true love is hard to believe, and a horrible band of criminals has to be fought and dismantled! Grace is a close to perfect historical romance heroine, because she is strong, resilient and intelligent. And while her life has been very hard, she has not hardened her heart in protection. Being married off to a horrible man to whom her father lost her in a card game, Grace had all possible reasons to be hard, so seeing a […]

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Review: Under the Wide and Starry Night – Nancy Horan

Review: Under the Wide and Starry Night – Nancy Horan

*I received a free ARC of Under the Wide and Starry Night from Random House Publishing – Ballantine via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review* Under the Wide and Starry Night is a beautiful love story, quite unconventional in many ways since Fanny is twelve years older than Louis, and when they meet in France, she is married but estranged from her husband. Both Louis and Fanny have lived pretty tough lives so far, and they both really need some peace and quiet, and someone to love them unconditionally. From the opening, the reader is traveling along-side Fanny and her three children, first to Antwerp, then to Paris, and after a tragedy strikes she, Belle and Sammy go to […]

Posted 13 February, 2014 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 18 Comments
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Review: Starry Night – Debbie Macomber

Review: Starry Night – Debbie Macomber

*I received a free ARC of Starry Night from Random House Publishing / Ballantine via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review* Starry Night is a breathtakingly beautiful story about Carrie and Finn. At the surface, there couldn’t be two more different people than these two. Finn is a secluded author who has never given an interview, and no one knows exactly who he is, or where to find him. Carrie is a journalist for the society pages in the Chicago Sun, but her boss promises her a different job if she can come back with Finn’s interview. After trying hard to find out where Finn is living, and deciding to forgo Thanksgiving with her family in order to make […]

Posted 8 November, 2013 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 16 Comments
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Review: The Demon Lover (Fairwick Chronicles #1) – Juliet Dark

Review: The Demon Lover (Fairwick Chronicles #1) – Juliet Dark

*I received a free ARC of The Demon Lover from Random House / Ballantine Books via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review* When Callie decides to take the job she is offered in Fairwick, little does she know just how much her life will change. She is amazed at their folklore department, and the library at the college is more than she could ever dream of. She sees herself writing more books as well as teaching students who are interested in gothic literature and fairy tales. The Demon Lover starts out with Callie arriving for her interview, and how she isn’t sure if she wants the job or not. However, the Honeysuckle house makes her change her mind very […]

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Review: Stolen – Shiloh Walker

Review: Stolen – Shiloh Walker

*I received a free ARC of Stolen Random House via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review* Stolen really, really freaked me out! It had me from the first sentence, and I gripped my kindle for most of the time I was reading. What I liked the most is that in all the creepiness, there was still both romance and humor present most of the time. Yes, it’s actually possible, and it was masterfully done in this novel. Very exciting, quite thrilling and more than a little creepy. Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address Subscribe Join 6,926 other subscribers

Posted 14 October, 2012 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 0 Comments
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