Category: Recommendsday

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: July Quick Reviews

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The Bodyguard by Katherine Centre

I’d been waiting a while for this one to come out in the UK so I was excited to read it – it’s another famous person and normal person type romance, this time the hero is a film star and the heroine is a personal protection agent aka a bodyguard. She’s hired to protect him from a potential stalker and finds herself in Texas after he goes back to his family ranch to see his sick mum. I wasn’t quite sure what Jack saw in Hannah – and vice versa, but I’ve had that issue with a couple of books recently – so it may be that I’ve just been spoilt by so many really good romances. Anyway, I know that lots of other people have loved this and I liked it enough that I’m still going to be looking out for Center’s latest book, which also just came out here!

My Turn to Make Tea by Monica Dickens

This follows the trials and tribulations of a junior reporter at a local paper in the late 19040s and early 1950s. Poppy’s main issue is not her inexperience but her gender. Her colleagues in the office don’t really think women belong in the newsroom, and her landlady views her with suspicion as well. This is based on Monica Dicken’s own experiences at a provincial newspaper and it has some really witty moments and it is interesting to see how life has changed but – probably because it’s semi autobiographical – not a lot actually happens in terms of an overarching plot. Nice but not spectacular.

You with a View by Jessica Joyce*

This is a new release from this month – and while I didn’t love it, I’m giving it a quick mention because I know that road trip romances are really popular and although I’ve read better ones recently (Mrs Nash’s Ashes for example) if they’re your favourite trope, you’ll probably want to read this. Our heroine is Noelle who has recently lost her grandmother, who she was very close to. In her gran’s paperwork she finds some letters that suggest her grandma had a love affair before her grandfather. Noelle sets out to find out what happened by posting a video including a photo of her gran and the mystery man on Tiktok. And it turns out the man is Paul – still around and who offers to take her on the roadtrip he and her grandma had planned to take together as their honeymoon. Only trouble is Paul wants his grandson to come too – and that grandson turns out to be Noelle’s high school nemesis. I loved this as a premise – but didn’t love the execution. I don’t think there was enough insight into the heroine to understand her properly and their super competitive relationship didn’t feel like a great basis for something long term. But I know that competitive relationships are something that don’t really work for me very well – see also pranking as a love language – but are something that other people really love.

And that’s your lot from me this month. It’s been a very publishing-set books heavy month – with three Books of the Week being romances set in the industry (The Seven Year Slip, Business or Pleasure and The Neighbor Favor) plus a recommendsday. The other BotWs were Acts of Violet and Come as You Are, and I also finally wrote that Marriages of Convenience post I’ve been threatening for actual years!

Happy Humpday everyone.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Marriages of Convenience

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I was surprised when I was writing the series post about The Fitzhugh trilogy to discover that I haven’t written a Recommendsday post about marriages of convenience – so today I’m writing that wrong!

So obviously the first books in this trope that I discovered were the Georgette Heyers – namely A Convenient Marriage and April Lady. Of the two I think April Lady is my favourite because I love the denouement the best – with Nell trying to fix everything without Cardross finding out – whereas Horry in Convenient Marriage is just a bit too foolhardy for me. In more recent historical romances we have Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare which features a battle-scarred hero rebuilding his life after coming back from war and a heroine who is on her own in the world who marry each other because he needs an heir and she needs security. Then there is The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne which overcame my dislike of comedy Scottish accents in the dialogue and a tonne of melodrama with a smart heroine and a tortured bad boy hero. I can’t believe it’s seven years since I read it though!

Let’s jump to contemporary romance where you find marriages of convenience less often than you find the fake relationship – because there aren’t a lot of reasons why you might have to marry someone in the present day. But there are a few – former BotW Roomies by Christina Lauren, featuring a heroine who has come unmoored professionally and marries a musician on an expired visa so he can get his big break on Broadway. Then there is Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams, in her Bromance Book club series – which has another marriage for a visa, this time between the daughter of a Russian journalist with powerful enemies and a Russian Ice Hockey player. It does have a lot of tropes in it all mashed together – but it’s fun.

And finally, as it was the Fitzhugh books that made me write this, I would be wrong not to mention Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas – but you can go and read the aforementioned series post if you want to know more about that. It’s worth it though.

Happy Humpday!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in publishing

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As well as one of us is famous romances, the other theme of this summer’s romances (or at least the ones that I’ve read) seems to be romances where people work in publishing. So after the Neigbor Favor this week, The Seven Year Slip the week before, and Business or Pleasure the one before that (!) here are a few more books where at least one of the main characters works in publishing. I’m going to start with romances because hey that’s the trend, but there are also a couple of books in other genres I want to mention too.

Lets start with the obvious one on the romance front- which may also be the one which started the trend (or at least accelerated it) Emily Henry’s Book Lovers. I did a post about it last year when it came out, so you can read that for more details, but it sees a high powered literary agent find herself on holiday at the same place as her work nemesis only to discover that they might have more in common than they think.

Business or Pleasure features a disillusioned ghost writer – and if you haven’t already, Ashley Poston’s (as in Seven Year Slip) previous novel, the Dead Romantics also featured a ghostwriter – this time one with a deadline she can’t make and a family emergency she can’t avoid. And as you might remember when I was writing about Seven Year Slip, it’s playing with ghosts – ghost writer and actual ghosts get it! And a late entry because I finished it this week – Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, which is about two coworkers at a publishing company who really, really hate each other and are fighting for the same promotion. Now I have some caveats: I have a few issues with it but in the end they actually weren’t about what I was expecting – which was that their work rivalry would push my buttons for unprofessional pranks, but it actually didn’t because they didn’t sabotage each other. Lucinda does freak out a lot though and that did get on my nerves a bit so your mileage may vary – Goodreads tells me most people adore it and it’s also been turned into a film!

On to crime now and I’ve mentioned Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland books – aka The Magpie Murders and The Moonflower Murders a few times now (and I’m still hoping for a third book) and there’s also the Hawthorne series of even more meta mysteries from Horowitz. But there’s also Judith Flanders’ A Murder of Magpies. I read it back in 2015 back in the early days of this blog, when I was also reviewing for Novelicious – and wrote about it there rather than here so I’ll give you a quick review. Our detective is Sam, an editor at a London publishing house who thinks her biggest problem is that the new manuscript from her star author is unpublishable – until a police officer turns up asking about a parcel addressed to her. It’s not quite as cosy as the cover might make you expect but it is totally engrossing and has a clever and inventive solution (albeit one that this humanities grad had to read a couple of times). There is a great cast of supporting characters being set up for the series. I read it back when it was released – and there are now four in the series so I may have to get hold of some of the others as I had completely forgotten about how much I’d enjoyed it until I started checking my lists for this post!

I’m absolutely positive that I’ve forgotten something that I should have included, but hopefully it’ll come back to me at somepoint.

Happy Humpday everyone!

books, books on offer

Recommendsday: Kindle Offers

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It’s that time of the month again, but this time it’s a tricky one as we have prime day offers going on on the ‘Zon so it’s a bit of a lottery which of these are going to last all month… but I have to say it is a really good month for deals on the recent releases.

It’s Wimbledon, so it’s maybe apt that Carrie Soto is Back is 99p at the moment – it’s also out in paperback now if you want a physical copy of the former BotW. Ali Hazelwood’s Love on the Brain came out last summer and is 99p – I assume to encourage people to buy the new one. One of my favourite not-new books of the year (oops, that’s a spoiler!) Nora Goes Off Script is 99p, again because I assume the new one is out. Once More With Feeling is also 99p which is a total bargain for Elissa Sussman’s latest and one of my favourites of the year so far. Incredibly recent BotW Mrs Nash’s Ashes is also 99p as is Fake Dates and Mooncakes. And let’s not leave of Jenn McKinlay’s Summer Reading – also 99p

I have You and Me on Vacation waiting to be read – but if you’ve read some of Emily Henry’s others – like Happy Place and Book Lovers, then fill in a gap! Also waiting to be read is the new Sarah Morgan, Summer Wedding, which is 99p. I’ve read a couple of Sarah Adam’s romances and found them too New Adult for me – but I know they’re super popular so the fact that the latest Practice Makes Perfect is 99p will be good news for them. In historical detective novels, the latest in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series Dear Little Corpses is £1.99.

I read it a long time ago now, but Nick Spalding’s Bricking It is £1 – as are a bunch of his other books (some are also in Kindle Unlimited). Also from quite a long time ago but on offer is Libby Page’s The Lido, while Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham is £1.99. And in non fiction Caitlin Doherty’s From Here to Eternity is 99p as is former BotW The Traitor King, which is really, really worth a read.

If you’re collecting series, the Bridgerton-adjacent The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown is 99p as is the non-Bridgerton Julia Quinn The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy. In other things you can find on Netflix, if you’ve watched their Wham documentary, Andrew Ridgely’s memoir Wham! George and Me is 99p.

This month’s Peter Wimsey is the brilliant Murder Must Advertise, complete with one of the best cricket matches in a book and a fascinating look at the advertising business in the 1930s. There are a couple of M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin books on offer including one od the most recent ones – Agatha Raisin Down the Hatch and there are some Hamish MacBeth’s too – including Death of a Bore. In classic stuff, there’s a Jeeves and Wooster omnibus for 99p, as is The Color Purple, which was one of my A Level set texts back in the day. Amy Lea’s Exes and Ohs is 99p,

I bought David Sedaris’s Happy Go Lucky while writing this post, as well as Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop. And if that’s not enough books for you, I don’t know what is.

Happy Humpday everyone!

Book of the Week, books, books on offer, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: The Seven Year Slip

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Back to summer romances this week – and for the second week in a row, it’s a new release!

In Ashley Piston’s last book, The Dead Romantics (also a BotW) she was doing a spin on a romance with a ghost. This time it’s a romance with a time travel-y element. What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the plot: Clementine is trying to get through the aftermath of the worst day of her life and try and rebuild in a way that means she can’t get hurt again. She’s living in her late aunt’s apartment and trying to keep her working life as a book publicist on track. But one day she comes home and finds a stranger in her kitchen. Her aunt warned her that the apartment was a pinch in time and it turns out he’s from seven years in the past. Ian is charming and he cooks and they get on really well – but how can they ever get around that time thing?

I read this in less than 24 hours and really enjoyed it. I have a few minor quibbles – putting them in the least spoiler-y way possible it basically boils down to: I’m not sure that Clementine and Iwan actually spent enough time together across the course of the book. If it’s a romance I needed more of them together, and if it’s more woman’s fiction I needed a better resolution to Clementine’s own life dilemma/crossroads. BUT this only started to bother me once the book was over and I started thinking about it to review it. While I was actually reading it I was completely swept along by it. So on that basis it’s a really enjoyable read – and makes sort-of-time-travel really work for me. I would happily have read another 100 pages if it meant my issues above got more closure. And I liked the little glimpses of some old friends from Dead Romantics too. Another one that is great for the beach/sun lounger.

I got my copy via NetGalley – but you can definitely get it in the shows because I saw it in Foyles:

And if you’re not going into a bookstore it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Quick Reviews

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As I said on Sunday, I’ve already written about so many books this month that I don’t have much left to tell you about. But I’ve managed to write a few sentences about a couple more books from the June pile for you!

Jean Tours a Hospital by Doreen Swinburne

I’m starting with something completely left field that I’m not expecting any of you will ever read. This was one of my purchases at Book Conference last summer and as the title suggests is a career book encouraging girls into nursing for a profession. It’s not a great work of literature, but it is a fascinating look at what nursing was like in the 1950s – lots of cleaning, nothing disposable, lots of people on bedrest and not a drop of blood insight on Jean’s tour! Of course nursing is for girls and doctoring is for boys and there is the usual suggestion that if you’re a good girl you might get to marry a doctor but there’s also some interesting (for the time) ideas from the Matron about nursing becoming a degree subject. Not a masterpiece, but fun half hour for what I paid for it!

Final Acts ed Martin Edwards

This is another collection of classic crime short stories all set in or around theatres. I know I mention the BLCC stuff a lot – but usually in the context of the novels (see last week’s BotW for example) because I find the short story collections can be a bit patchy. But this one is a good one, with some big names you’ll recognise including Dorothy L Sayers doing a not Wimsey story and Ngaio Marsh Alleyn short, and some smaller names you may have read full length novels from like Christianna Brand. I do like a theatre-set story (be it murder mysteries or romances) so maybe that biased me, but it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment so worth a look.

Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*

This is a contemporary romance set in Nashville about a woman working at a struggling wedding magazine who has to work with a social media star on a video series that they hope will secure the magazine’s future. I read the previous book from these authors (borrowed it from the library) and liked the premise but thought that there was too much going on and that the romantic element was unsatisfying because all the options had issues. So I read this to see how the authors managed to redeem Claire – who was the villain of the piece in the last book. And the answer is: they didn’t really. And therein lies the problem. If you haven’t read the previous book, you spend a lot of the time wondering how bad she could really have been – and then when you find out what she did, I assume you lose any sympathy you have left for her – if you’ve managed to keep any with the “oh I’m so poor” thing, whilst living in a flat of her own and driving an expensive car. But, on the plus side – this has less plot elements and there is only one romantic option and he seems like an OK kind of guy – it’s just the heroine that’s the problem. So all in all, I think this is probably a sign that these authors are not for me. But it may work better for other people as these things often do and so I mention it anyway.

And that’s your lot. As I said on Monday, we have half year review posts coming, but a quick reminder of the Books of the Month from June: A Calamity of Mannerings, The True Love Experiment, Mrs Nash’s Ashes and Twice Around the Clock. And don’t forget there was also a new Summer Romance round up and Romances with heroes with kids too if you need a reminder of why I had so few options for this month’s quick reviews!

books, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Romances with heroes with children

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Well after writing my post about great dads in literature and with last week’s BotW featuring a a divorced dad, I thought I’d make this week’s Recommendsday some more romances featuring heroes with kids. I did originally call this single dad romances – but single parent usually implies that they’re not getting any help from the other parent at all, and that’s not always the case on this list.

One of the reasons I widened the scope of this post was that I started thinking “which is the Tessa Dare book with the doll funerals, because that’s a great one” and then when I reminded myself of the plot of The Governess Game I remembered that Chase is their guardian not their dad. Anyway the heroine is the governess trying to tame the wild orphans and it’s got great dialogue, forced proximity, the aforementioned doll funerals and a great romantic ending.

If you want your dad with kids to come as part of a big, melodramatic historical romance that’s pretty Old School (but not rapey like the Old School romances tended to be) then try Kerrigan Byrne’s The Highlander, where you have Great Big Giant Super Strong Scottish Laird paired with an English governess with a secret. It’s not 100 percent my novel – because it’s so dramatic and quite violent, but I know that there are a lot of people who really, really love this series. Also in books that I didn’t love but that other people have is the book zero in Eloisa James’s Wilds of Lindow Castle series – My Last Duchess. It has a Cinderella-y runaway plot with a hero with eight kids and a heroine with one and a potential wicked stepmother. This was actually published after the first few books in the series, so if you’d read those you already knew the couple and maybe gave it a bit of a pass on some of the bits that I didn’t like -I can see lots and lots of 4 plus star reviews.

Lets finish with historical romances with another one of my favourites: To Sir Philip, With Love – from the Bridgerton series. This is Eloise’s story and I really, really love it. Eloise has been writing letters to the widower of her cousin for years and then when things in London get too much for herself she finds herself on her way to marry him. Except that neither of them are what the other expects. I’ve said before that I don’t know how they’re going to work this for the Netflix series, so we’ll see how they pull that off given the way they’ve been adjusting the timelines.

To contemporary romances now, and I’m starting with a novella – Melissa Blue’s Grumpy Jake. Yes, it was a book of the week, but that was two and a half years ago, so it’s allowed. Bailey is a teacher, Jake the Rake is the single dad who has dated most of the single members of staff and whose kid has just hit her class. It’s lots of fun. Then there’s Happy Singles Day by Anne Marie Walker. It’s a sweet, fluffy holiday romance with a widowed hero with a B&B he’s not running and the professional organiser who visits for an out of season holiday.

Also a previous BotW, there is Jill Shalvis’s Forever and a Day from her Lucky Harbor series. It’s a small town contemporary with an overworked single dad and a former career girl reassessing her future, then this might well scratch that itch. The Lucky Harbor books come in groups of three – and this is the last of its trio, so if you’ve read any of the other two you’ve had glimpses of this in those before you get to this happy ending. In Rachel Lynn Soloman’s Weather Girl, Russell has a 12 year old daughter, and one of the reasons why he’s hesitant about relationships is because he doesn’t want to disrupt her life any more. This isn’t however the centre of the plot – which is a fake relationship type thing to try and get another couple back together to help the hero and heroine’s careers.

And that’s your lot for today – happy Humpday!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Kindle Offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and that means Kindle offer time – and it’s actually quite a good crop this month, I mean I bought a few when I was writing this as well as spotting a lot of old friends!

One of my favourite reads of the year so far The Three Dahlias is 99p, I think because it’s just come out in paperback – and we’re not far away from the sequel arriving now either. Also arriving in the not too distant future is the new book from Ashley Poston – the last one Dead Romantics (a former BotW) is 99p too. I mentioned The Cazalet series only the other week when I was talking about World War Two set novels and this is your chance to read the series because the first one, The Light Years, is 99p. Fingers crossed that the others follow!

A couple of the buzzy recent (or recentish) romances are 99p as well – A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. My mileage with magic varies, so I’ve downloaded the samples of these, with the intention of trying to read them before the month is up. I may or may not succeed with that! The new Alexandria Bellefleur is 99p too – The Fiancée Farce – which is in a new series (I think) for her.

In the Taylor Jenkins Reid universe, Malibu Rising is 99p, I assume to coincide with Carrie Soto‘s arrival in paperback. Magpie Murders is 99p again (or maybe it’s still) because the TV series is about – if you haven’t read it, it really is very good and so is the sequel, and I really hope that we get another one. I read Great Circle earlier this year – I found it a bit of a slog until (at least) the half way point, but then it picked up, but as you know I often struggle with award nominated stuff, so if you’re better at that sort of thing than me, you may love it and 99p for 600+ pages is a bargain.

I read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees well before I started this blog, but I keep meaning to reread it because it has just been adapted for the stage and had a run at Almeida theatre – which I suspect may go into the West End at some point. Dissolution, the first of the Matthew Shardlake novels is 99p – I keep meaning to read some more of these Tudor-set mysteries, I definitely have at least one on the Kindle…

In the Discworld, Guards! Guards! is £1.99 – I’ve been relistening to the City Watch series over the last few weeks because there is a new audiobook version with Jon Culshaw and it really is a treat. And obviously it has Errol in it. I’m nearly done with my relisten to all of the Peter Wimsey novels (and it’s been really good) and one of my favourites is the 99p offer this month – the seaside-set Have His Carcase, which is one of the ones with Harriet Vane. We’re still waiting for a date for series three of Bridgerton, but if you need a Julia Quinn fix, The Sum of All Kisses, from her Smythe-Smith series is 99p This one is a forced proximity, enemies to lovers romance. If you’re building your Georgette Heyer collection, Sprig Muslin is 99p and it’s one of the lesser spotted favourites – older heroine who has been left on the shelf but who has been secretly in love with someone for years. Another of my favourites, These Old Shades, is £1.52 but in the weird out of copyright editions and it’s sequel Devil’s Cub is £1.99 in a normal edition..

I bought a couple of books while writing this – the aforementioned Alexandria Bellefleur, plus Jane Ridley’s George V biography.

Happy reading everyone!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: May Quick reviews

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Only one new release in this month’s quick reviews after a couple of months of all new stuff. Which is interesting as I read a lot of new stuff last month, but I’ve already talked about most of the bits of it that I wanted to. Anyway, to the reviews

Summer Read by Jenn McKinlay**

Cover of Summer Reading set against a beachy background

I mentioned this on release day, and as you know I mostly read Jenn McKinlay’s cozy crimes, but the premise for this summer romance was very appealing – a return to a childhood home for the heroine who is at a bit of a crossroads in her professional life, and a newly arrived on the island hero who is searching for the keys to his family history. It’s sometimes a bit of a tough sell for a book to have a lead character who hates reading – after all we’re all readers because we’re reading it and so it can be hard to sympathise – but I think McKinlay does a good job of explaining Sam’s dyslexia and the issues that it causes for her. I’ll add that I’m not neuro-divergent – so I can’t speak to how accurate the depiction is, and obviously different people will have different experiences, but it all felt pretty plausible. I had a few minor quibbles – mostly around the fact that everything is very black and white and there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions going on at times in the romantic relationships. There’s also quite a lot of plot strands and that means even though the book is quite long, none of them really feel as completely explored as they could. But I enjoyed it and read it in two days so that says something too. I suspect it will work perfectly for people who are looking for something to read on their sun lounger – it’s a beachy summer read with a summery setting.

Proper English by KJ Charles

This is an Edwardian Murder mystery romance, set at a remote country house during a shooting party. Pat is a shooting champion, although she sometimes faces trouble from men who don’t like women being allowed to use guns. The party is at brother’s best friend’s house, where along with Jimmy’s family she meets Fenella – who deeply inconveniently is Jimmy’s new fiancée… I enjoyed it a lot and now need to read the other book that crosses over with this. I picked my paperback up in a second hand buying spree a couple of months back – a rare occasion when I’ve seen a physical copy of an early KJ Charles!

Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie

And finally for this month we have a Jennifer Crusie from the early 2000s. This is a fake relationship type set-up that sees Tess agree to pretend to be her ex’s fiancée for a business trip in order to help his career. In many ways this romance is quite of its time and I was never quite convinced that the hero and heroine belonged together (and even less so if it was a Democrat and Republican in our current political climate) but I do like filling in the gaps in author’s back catalogue and the snark and banter in this is great. This is a lot of fun to read if you don’t think about it too hard – and I read it in one sitting if that helps at all!

Anyway, that’s your lot, but just in case you missed them, the Books of the Week in May were Death of a Lady, To Love and Be Wise, Grave Expectations and Fake Dates and Mooncakes, and we’ve had Recommendsday posts on World War Two set novels, George III and (relatively) recent non-fiction.

Happy Reading!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: World War Two-set novels

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After having such a lovely time reading Mrs Porter Calling last week, this week’s Recommendsday features some more World War Two-set books that will give you a similar feel. And I had to think long and hard about it – because so many books that sprang to mind at first were Great War books – and that’s a whole other post!

I’m going to start with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series, even though I’ve already written a Series I Love post about them. They start in the 1930s, so if you just want the war period you could just start at book two – The Light Years. I mean I don’t recommend it because you won’t get the full impact of it all but you could if you want to. The Emmy Lake books are first person and just follow Emmy and these have a much wider group they follow, but in terms of the mixture of warmth and tears, they are right up there.

Next up: Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn. It has more sex than Emmy Lake, but if you want the Home Front, it has that – people trying to carry on in the most dangerous and uncertain times. It has that sense of normal rules being suspended because the world might be about to end and people doing things that they wouldn’t normally have done.

It’s set in 1946, but Jojo Moyes Ship of Brides is all about the wartime brides heading over to their unknown futures with the soldiers they have married. There are no massive surprises (or at least I don’t remember any big twists, but it’s been a decade!) but you really get to know the women on the boat and care about what happens to them.

If you want mysteries set in this period, may I please nudge you again at Maisie Dobbs. There are lots of bad series set inWW2 (no I won’t name them here) but once this series actually gets to the Second World War (at Book 13 – In This Grave Hour) it is one of the best.

It’s much older and the first section is much grimmer, but I want to give an extra mention to Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. I’ve mentioned it before but you follow Jean from her life as an English woman living in Malaysia, through her capture by the Japanese and the death march she was put on to her post war new beginning thanks to an inheritance. I like the Alice section best because it is a strong woman paying something forward, but I know that that may be unusual. It is a little of its time, but I’ve loved it for so long I find it hard to be rational about it.

Happy Wednesday!