Review #88: Dolls Behaving Badly by Cinthia Ritchie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Woody Allen has said,

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have.

Carla Richards, who is in her late 30s, is one such woman, who had to learn this fact of happiness from a giant woman who was the guest in Oprah's talk show and by following the giant's advice to maintain a diary. Well wonder who Carla is? Carla is the main protagonist in Cinthia Ritchie's novel, Dolls Behaving Badly. The name is quirky and has a really interesting meaning to it name. Cinthia Ritchie has pen down this tale in the form of Carla's diary entry, hence the book's pace is quite good.

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Review #81: & Sons by David Gilbert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


John Robert Wooden, a retired American basketball coach, quoted about "fathers" as:

“Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating...too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.”

David Gilbert, is one such American author, who has spun an incredible tale which explores the whole dimension of a father-son relationship in an all new angle, in his latest release, & Sons .

Synopsis:
Told from the first person narrative, Philip Topping unfolds a story about the life and times of his favorite author, A.N. Dyer, who also happens to be his father's best friend. The Manhattan funeral of Charles Henry Topping would have been a minor affair but for the identity of the eulogist: reclusive author A.N. Dyer, whose novel Ampersand stands as a classic of teenage angst. Now Andrew Newbold Dyer takes stock of his own life, the people he’s hurt and the novel that will endure as his legacy. He realizes he must reunite with his three sons before it’s too late. Eldest son Richard is a screenwriter in Californian exile. In the middle is Jamie, who has spent his life capturing the sorrow that surrounds him. And last is Andy, now a pupil at the boarding school that inspired Ampersand. It is only when the hidden purpose of the reunion comes to light do the sons realize what’s at stake – for their father, themselves and three generations of Dyers.

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Review #57: Girl in a Spin by Clodagh Murphy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A funny quote about being the "IT" Party Girl:
Working out is my partying
Protein shakes are my beer
Pre-workouts are my shots
The pump is my buzz
And the pain the next morning
Is my
Hangover

Is true that life is damn hard for any rootless, party girl who doesn't give a shit about anything in the world and is it really shameful to aim for nice little domestic life with a sweet-old husband?

Jenny Hannigan is the definition of a true party girl- dinners means no home-cook meals, party means getting terribly hung-over and love means breaking millions of hearts. But after a long time, Jenny is in love and is keeping the identity of her soul mate so close to herself! But what happens if the frenemy gets married before the most happening girl of college? Well Jenny's story starts right in the middle of a marriage where people are sugar-mouthing the newlyweds whereas Jenny is sulking and hating the whole environment sitting in a corner.

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Review #41: Life is Sweet by Elizabeth Bass

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.”

-Janet Evanovich, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Yes once in a while, we do need a birthday cake kind of novel to ease off our mind which gets often heavy while reading those impressionistic and articulate literary novels. Life is Sweet by Elizabeth Bass has all the ingredients to be your perfect birthday cake. Melodramatic- check, cheesy characters- check, predictable ending making us all teary eyed- check, over-the-top chemistry- check, girl problems- check.

Synopsis:
“If you wait for a cake to be given to you so you will be happy- then you will be happy when someone gives you a cake. But if you buy a cake (or bake one) for yourself so you will be happy, you have found the way of happiness.” -C. Joy Bell C, author and also known for her cake-love.
That's what Rebecca Hudson used to do- bake cupcakes, whenever life threw her lemons. Rebecca Hudson is former TV star, who is now the owner of a bakery, and her cupcakes are quite popular in her town, Leesburg. She had a great set of girl-friends and a very friendly ex-husband and sometimes, occasionally she used to get bugged by her fans. One fine day she sees a man, who is old enough to be her father, across her bakery, who happens to be homeless and penniless. Feeling sympathetic,

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Review #38: Sweet Nothings by Janis Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Bauvard, the author, has once said about desserts as;

“Love is the cake under the icing. The immature lick it clean and throw the rest away; adults scrape off the top and eat it dry.”

Janis Thomas, an American author has crafted an incredibly delicious tale about a mid-aged woman who's life turns upside down when her husband of eighteen years, in her new book, Sweet Nothings. Yeah that woman's life terribly goes wrong after her husband leaves her, but she makes it up by changing herself and the approach of facing her problem- now, that's what we call bravery!


Synopsis:
Ruby is a 43-year old woman with two kids- a 16-year old daughter and a 14-year old son, and also she runs a bakery of her own. One fine morning, Ruby's husband, Walter, leaves her for another 40-year old woman from his office, named Cheryl. Feeling devastated, Ruby, moves on with her life and to support her two children, she takes up a job as a baking instructor, and also gets a complete makeover. Eventually she develops a crush on her family mortgage broker named Jacob Salt, who according to her was the Baked Alaska in her already des-serted life. But Ruby never had a crush on anybody else even when she met her husband, or never had any idea how to flirt with another man apart from her husband, or neither had the slightest idea of how to "kiss" someone else abruptly and impulsively. With all these overwhelming feelings, Ruby is once again discovering her new-found freedom and her blissful period of "being single again".

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Review #36: A Changing Marriage by Susan Kietzman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After reading A Changing Marriage by Susan Kietzman, I can't stop myself from quoting Mignon McLaughlin's famous words about "marriage", who was an American journalist and author.

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."

Hopefully if Karen Spears and Bob Parsons had followed this quote blindly, then their marriage wouldn't have been called A Changing Marriage in Susan Kietzman's new book.

Synopsis:
Karen Spears and Bob Parsons fell in love in the first time when they were in college and soon they become the most happening and most envious couple in the whole campus due to their honesty and true love for each other. Bob proposed on his very last year in the college and thus after Karen's graduation they get married in their hometown and began their new life together. However after the birth of their two children and Bob's constant urge to climb the corporate ladder made them drift apart from each other. And eventually they forgot about all the vows they had written down for each other on their marriage day, and finally they forgot to love each other at all. Read this book for sure to find out how they survive in their failing marriage or whether they survive it at all.

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Review #35: The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


We often catch ourselves day-dreaming of that idyllic life up in some quiet countryside, spending our days either by farming in the gardens or reading by the brook- an ideal getaway away from the bustling of the city life! An English author, named, Rosy Thornton, has once again allowed us to think about our guilty pleasure of getting away from our bustling life once and for all. The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton is a poignant combination of happy solitude away in some French countryside up in the mountains to sad, and monotonous life away in England. Also Thornton's magnificent tapestry of silk and love have managed to spin this tale into something rich and highly remarkable.

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Review #23: The Affair by Gill Paul

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald's remarkable words:

“A love affair is like a short story--it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning was easy, the middle might drag, invaded by commonplace, but the end, instead of being decisive and well knit with that element of revelatory surprise as a well-written story should be, it usually dissipated in a succession of messy and humiliating anticlimaxes.”

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's affair was one of the world’s most notorious and most talked about affair in its history. We fell with them, we cried with them, we resented with them, we hated with them, we envied with them, we burned with jealousy with them, we felt everything whatever La Taylor and Richard was feeling, because their affair was strikingly caught behind every paparazzi’s lenses to present to the world and theirs was the affair which shake each and everyone in this planet.

Gill Paul, an English historical fiction writer, has penned her new novel, The Affair based on real-life incidents and events during the year 1963 on the very sets of Cleopatra movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, in Rome. It's not only a love story, but also involves around a dark-mystery and the underworld of Italian drug-mafias.

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Review #19: The Violet Hour by Katherine Hill

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Katherine Owen, an international best-selling author has quoted about infidelity as:

“There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for.”

Katherine Hill, an American author, who's debut book, The Violet Hour, focuses on the subject of infidelity and mid-life crisis in a couple's married life. Honestly, after reading the book, I felt like, OMG! What the hell! The synopsis says something, whereas the story speaks about something else. Reading the synopsis, it sounded like, it’s about the story of an adult man and woman, who after taking the road to divorce, how their life unfolds, instead, the whole book, takes us on a roller-coaster ride of every past events occurred in the lives of the primary characters, surrounding the funeral of the woman's father.


Synopsis:
Cassandra and Abe Green are married for a very long time and also they got married while they were very young. On a sailing trip over the San Francisco Bay, Cassandra confesses about her extra-marital affair to Abe, hearing which Abe jumps off their yacht in the middle of the bay away from his wife and blissful married life. Soon the story fast forwards to 8years in the future and focuses on Elizabeth, who is Cassandra and Abe's daughter who is a Harvard medical graduate and is in a relationship with a wanna-be actor, Kyle, who are visiting Elizabeth's grandfather's 80th birthday in Washington. But soon, her grandfather dies by falling off from a ladder and the whole focus of the book shifts to the funeral and this event changed the course of each and every one's life attending the funeral. Abe, a doctor, also gets close to his wife, with whom he was on no-talking terms, Elizabeth grows cold over her boyfriend, Kyle, Cassandra gets to know herself more better, who happen to be quite promiscuous woman, even when she was young.

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Review #3: The Truth About You by Susan Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Karl Taro Greenfeld, a Japanese author has quoted remarkably about "relationships “as:

“The harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.”

Susan Lewis, an English author from Bristol, has spin a wondrous tale about a simple family who are trying hard to love each other equally or more appropriately, coming into terms to live with each other with love, share and care, in her new novel, The Truth About You.


Synopsis:
Lainey Hollingsworth, married to the bestseller author, Tom Hollingsworth, is the mother of two teenagers and step-mom to one son. She is the pillar who holds her household and also taking full care of her adoptive and Dementia-stricken father. For ages she had an elusive relationship with her own mother, the reason being not letting Lainey know about the identity of her biological father, who happened to be an Italian man, and now her mother is dead, and Lainey is trying every ends to get a clue about her buried past. But as she makes the plans to have a trip to Touro, where she was born in Italy, things fell apart in her happy-to-go-household, when she receives a text which says "Ask your husband about Julia". And that leaves Lainey uncertain of her bright future with her husband. So what happens next is left for you guys to find about it!

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