22 | February | 2014 | Rebeccabookreview

So the inspiration for this blog is partially due to my mom and to my husband Kris. For 2013 I had made a goal to read 50 books and I ended up reading 60. So for 2014 I challenged myself to once again read 60 books. And I also encouraged my mom to challenge herself with her quilting and set a goal for the year on how many projects she would like to accomplish. In order to track her progress through the year with her goal, I suggested creating a quilting blog. My husband Kris then encouraged me to start my own blog and write about the books I read and related topics. In case you are interested, you can read my mom’s quilting blog here: http://joanne94w.wordpress.com/

In setting our goals for the year, we decided to pick one Saturday a month that we would set aside to work on our goals together. While it is a day meant for accomplishments, it is also one of the few relaxing days my mom and I get. We try to make healthy and nutritious meals in our effort to be healthier this year. I usually exercise a little bit to help towards this goal as well. And while we did not do it today, we also sometimes spend time cleaning out parts of the basement downstairs since that is one of mom’s goals this year.

Most of her time is spent quilting and most of my time is spent reading. We put on movies that we enjoy and I get to spend time all day with my kitty Toni. All in all it is a fabulous day that I find myself looking forward to every month. Especially during tax season, there doesn’t seem to be any extra time to read and that seems to wear me down easily. As my mom says, on these goal days we are “feeding our souls with our hobbies.” I find this to be very true, when I don’t have enough free time to fit in any reading it seems to hurt my soul a bit. Reading and escaping to that fictional world helps me to deal with the stresses I have to deal with in life. I guess it helps me find my center and find peace.

Reading has always been a big part of my life. I have been a bookworm ever since I was small and that’s definitely been no secret. I got scolded almost every day in history class in my junior year of high school because my teacher always caught me reading instead of taking notes on the lecture. I’ve been teased continually that I always have my nose in a book. I even read in a movie theater while I wait for the movie to start sometimes. I worked in a library all through high school and on breaks from college, which I think only fueled my addiction to books. I carry one or more books with me at all times. I’m pretty much the definition of a bookworm.

So today was goal day and I finished book #10 for this year and started book #11. My mom is working on a cool quilt in some kind of snail pattern but it ends up looking like cats with entwined tails. Overall so far its been a great day 🙂 And Toni of course is the princess of the day!!

The tenth book I finished in 2014 was Where the Heart Leads by Stephanie Laurens. I finished this book on 2/22/14 (today). This book actually is the link between 2 series of books by Laurens. The first is discussed in a couple of my earlier posts, the Cynster family series. And the second is the series chronicling the detective cases of a Mr. Barnaby Adair (the hero in Where the Heart Leads). This is the first in the series of the Casebooks of Barnaby Adair. I rated this book 4 stars out of a scale of 5.

This book is about Penelope Ashford and Barnaby Adair. Penelope runs the Foundling House, which is a schoolhouse for orphans from the poorer areas of London. Some of her charges have disappeared and she enlists Adair’s help to try and recover them. Penelope’s sharp intelligence in this story makes it hard not to fall in love with her, and for a man like Barnaby Adair, Penelope’s unconventional nature makes her the perfect match for the son of an earl who solves mysteries in his spare time. The issue, however, is that Penelope has declared herself never to be married as she believes it would mean giving up all sense of her independence. As the two fall deeper and deeper in love with each other though, Penelope comes to see that marriage to the right man doesn’t mean a loss of independence but the gaining of love and support from a partner who can share in your happiness, your trials, and everything in between.

The mystery involved in the story was very good as well. Barnaby and Penelope work together with a police detective (Stokes) and a milliner’s shopkeeper (Griselda) to solve the mystery of the missing boys. In the process the four of them become good friends despite the difference in their stations. For those of you who don’t know, a milliner is a term for a hatmaker. This is obviously very popular in England as the English just lover their fancy hats:

To learn more about millinery, you can read about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatmaking

So anyways, Griselda and Stokes are actually a cute sub-story included in this novel as they are the stars of their own budding romance.The combination of the main love story, the substory, and the mystery kept any piece of the story from being too slow or dry. Was a great historical romance! Overall this was a very good story and kept the reader interested throughout. I would highly recommend!

Link to author website: http://www.stephanielaurens.com/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Heart-Leads-Casebook-Barnaby/dp/0061243388/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393084573&sr=8-1&keywords=where+the+heart+leads