2016 Book #30 – The Winemakers by Jan Moran

Posted in Book reviews, Fiction, Historical fiction by rebeccabook17

Title: The Winemakers: A Novel of Wine and Secrets
Author: Jan Moran
Date finished: 4/5/16
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: April 5, 2016
Pages in book: 369
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE:I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

1956: When Caterina Rosetta inherits a cottage in the countryside of Italy from a grandmother she’s never known, she discovers a long-buried family secret — a secret so devastating, it threatens the future of everything her mother has worked for. Many years before, her mother’s hard-won dreams of staking her family’s claim in the vineyards of California came to fruition; but as an old murder comes to light, and Caterina uncovers a tragic secret that may destroy the man she loves, she realizes her happiness will depend on revealing the truth of her mother’s buried past.From author Jan Moran comes The Winemakers, a sweeping, romantic novel that will hold you in its grasp until the last delicious sip.

My rating: 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. This book tells the story of the Rosetta family: Caterina, her mother Ava, and her new daughter Marisa. This book reminded me a lot of Kristen Harnisch’s The Vintner’s Daughter, which I LOVED. For anyone who likes this book you should also read hers, or vice versa. The family owns a winery in Napa, California and has well respected wines that rival those in Europe. The book mostly takes place in 1956, though there are some flashbacks to 1928 and 1929 when Ava came to America. One of the things that particularly struck me about this book was the emphasis on lack of women’s rights during both of those time periods. Caterina has a baby out of wedlock and many times is told directly to her face that she’s a whore and should be ashamed of herself. Which I think is both sad that someone would speak to her that way and also just odd considering how far we’ve come away from that in today’s day and age. I would have to say it is definitely not uncommon to know several people who were either unwed when they had a child or are still unwed with a child. Society has been almost forced to accept this as a norm, so it was just interesting to see how unaccepted it was in a different time period.
Anyways, there were multiple things going on in this book. There was the budding but tragic romance between Caterina and Marisa’s father. There was the family drama that caused Ava to come to America all those years ago, which resurfaces when Caterina’s grandmother dies and leaves her a house in Italy in her will. There was the drama between Ava and Caterina over Marisa. And finally there was the struggle to save the winery (and their home) after disaster strikes. All in all there were multiple plot points all intertwined, which made for a very exciting read. I honestly couldn’t put this one down, I technically started it Sunday night late (around 10:30pm) and then couldn’t stop reading it on Monday and ended up finishing it at 12:30 am Monday morning.
Overall I really enjoyed this book a lot. The conversations were slightly stilted at times and somewhat awkward at others but it didn’t effect my enjoyment of the book. Also I thought the ending came up a bit quick and honestly I thought it was a little odd. I’m glad it had a (**spoiler**) happy ending but it just took me back a little bit that the challenge the couple had to overcome at the end was so.. different from other books I’ve read. Things I enjoyed about the book though included the description of the scenery in Italy, which was excellent, and the narratives about the wine-making process were informative and interesting. Great book and a great read, I think this one is going to be a popular one for 2016 summer.

The bottom line: Really really liked this book! I couldn’t put it down, the story line was riveting. Conversations seemed a tad stilted to me but other than that it was just a great book! I would definitely recommend!

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

4Apr2016

2016 Book #29 – Change of Scene by Mary Kay Andrews

Posted in 2016, Book reviews, Fiction, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2016 checklist, Reading Challenges, Women's fiction by rebeccabook17

Title: Change of Scene: A 100 Page Novella
Author: Mary Kay Andrews
Date finished: 4/3/16
Genre: Women’s fiction
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: April 5, 2016
Pages in book: 144
Stand alone or series: Prequel to Beach Town
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

This 100 page prequel novella to Mary Kay Andrews’s bestselling novel Beach Town is sure to delight fans and new readers alike.
Greer Hennessy is a movie location scout whose latest project has literally gone up in flames. After an avocado field accidentally catches fire on the set of her new movie, she is out of a job and practically run out of town. With her feisty grandmother Dearie, a Golden Age starlet who still has a lot of vigor left in her, complicating her life, Greer needs a bit of a rest. But Greer’s own mother then drops a bombshell on her that will change Greer’s life completely, and raise questions about her own father that she can’t ignore. In desperate need of a second chance, can Greer find what she’s looking for in the one last job she can get: a movie called BEACH TOWN? But first, she needs to find the perfect spot…

My rating: 3.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. Also, this book will count towards my “PopSugar 2016 Checklist” reading challenge, marking off the “a book and its prequel” square. Technically I’m marking off 1/2 the square since I haven’t read Beach Town yet but I own it so I am hoping to read it whenever I have a spare moment in my reading schedule. Definitely before the end of the year. Anyways this novella is about Greer Hennessy, who is a location scout for the film industry. At the beginning of the novella, her job goes up in smoke and then she has trouble finding any more work. During this time, she finds out that her mother is sick and spends time caring for her as well as trying to find a new nursing home for her grandmother, who was kicked out of the last home for breaking a handful of rules. Luckily, Greer’s friend CeeJay has recently started dating a film producer who wants Greer to be the location scout for his next project, Beach Town.
Overall this was a good novella. The author did a good job of setting up the stage for the next book, Beach Town. The reader becomes invested in the story and in Greer’s character. If I didn’t already have a JAM packed reading schedule, I would be reading Beach Town next! I want to find out what happens next. And not having read Beach Town I can’t be sure, but I think that this novella adds a good amount of background and context to Greer’s character and her motivations in the next book. I would recommend this for any one who has read or is planning to read Beach Town. I bet these two would be great reads for the beach!

The bottom line: This was a good novella, it caught my interest and got me invested in the characters. I wish I could read Beach Town next, but hopefully will read it soon.

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

3Apr2016

2016 Book #28 – A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams

Posted in Book reviews, Fiction, Historical fiction by rebeccabook17

Title: A Certain Age
Author: Beatriz Williams
Date finished: 4/3/16
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: June 28, 2016
Pages in book: 324
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: BookBrowse NOTE: I received this book for free from BookBrowse in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

The bestselling author of A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.
As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young paramour, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. An intense and deeply honorable man, Octavian is devoted to the beautiful socialite of a certain age and wants to marry her. While times are changing and she does adore the Boy, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question, and there is no need; she has an understanding with Sylvo, her generous and well-respected philanderer husband.
But their relationship subtly shifts when her bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the sweet younger daughter of a newly wealthy inventor. Engaging a longstanding family tradition, Theresa enlists the Boy to act as her brother’s cavalier, presenting the family’s diamond rose ring to Ox’s intended, Miss Sophie Fortescue—and to check into the background of the little-known Fortescue family. When Octavian meets Sophie, he falls under the spell of the pretty ingénue, even as he uncovers a shocking family secret. As the love triangle of Theresa, Octavian, and Sophie progresses, it transforms into a saga of divided loyalties, dangerous revelations, and surprising twists that will lead to a shocking transgression . . . and eventually force Theresa to make a bittersweet choice.
Full of the glamour, wit and delicious twists that are the hallmarks of Beatriz Williams’ fiction and alternating between Sophie’s spirited voice and Theresa’s vibrant timbre, A Certain Age is a beguiling reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set against the sweeping decadence of Gatsby’s New York.

My rating: 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. I read a few of Beatriz Williams’ other books last year (Along the Infinite Sea and Tiny Little Thing) and I just loved them so when I saw that her new book was available on Book Browse I hoped that I would be selected to receive a copy, and my prayers were answered! First I have to say that I just love the cover of this book, its glitz and glamour and it really calls out to readers. The girl on the cover I think is Sophie, she is described at one of the parties in the books wearing a dress similar to the one on the cover. This book has a varied cast of characters but mostly centers around Theresa Marshall, her brother “Ox” (Jay), his fiancee Sophie Fortescue, and Theresa’s lover Octavian (“the Boy”). Theresa’s character reminded me a lot of Babe from Swans of Fifth Avenue and Tiny from Tiny Little Thing and I really connected with her character the most. After Jay becomes engaged to Sophie, Theresa asks Octavian to dig into Sophie’s family just to make sure there aren’t any huge skeletons that would mar the family name. Unfortunately this opens a can of worms that will end up drastically changing all of their lives.
Overall I really liked this book. The author did an amazing job of transporting the reader; her description of the scene at the horse track was so well done I felt like I was there with Theresa and Octavian. Honestly I could almost smell the horses. The characters were also very complex and interesting. I really felt bad for Theresa through most of the story. She may have been a difficult person but she was so in love with Octavian and I could just feel her sadness emanating from the book when Octavian started to fall for Sophie. The story line was riveting and had a couple of good twists and turns. I didn’t want to put the book down, the story really just draws the reader in. I’m not really sure yet how I feel about the ending. I think that it fit with the story line and it was a touching ending but it left me feeling a little empty I think. I actually feel very similar to how I felt about the ending of Along the Infinite Sea, I’m left feeling a little adrift. Really good story though and a great book. This is definitely going to be a summer must read!

The bottom line: This was a really great book! There were some great twists and turns and I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the ending but I couldn’t put it down! I would definitely recommend!!

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

1Apr2016

2016 Status Update: March

Posted in 2016, Book Riot Read Harder Reading Challenge 2016, For the love of books, Penguin Random House: Challenge Your Shelf A-Z Challenge, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2016 checklist by rebeccabook17

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YES! It is almost April, the end of tax season is in sight! March was an interesting month for me since I have been working more hours and therefore would have less time for reading. Combine that with the fact that I have requested WAY more than I can possibly manage to read on the various ARC sites, and I instituted a new “sleep budget” policy where I’m only allowed to sleep a maximum of 6 hours a night. That lasted right up until I got sick (probably from lack of sleep). My friend at work (my day job) keep telling me to just stop requesting the books but when you see something on there that you really want to read, how can you not request it? I guess the main problem is that I really want to read a lot of books, hence the over abundance of books in the March/April TBR.
On a really positive note, I won an awesome giveaway this month! I won a giveaway on the Tall Poppy Writers site for signed books from 16 authors plus a $100 gift card to Storiarts! Stayed tuned for a separate post on this, once I receive all my books I will post about them and what I ordered from Storiarts!
Anyways, here is my status update for progress I made on reading challenges this month and some highlights of my posts for this month.

Monthly Stats:
# books read this month: 12
# pages read this month: 3,527
# books read year-to-date: 27
# pages read year-to-date: 8,320

Favorite Books I Read:

The Passenger by Lisa Lutz – 4.75 stars
Just Fall by Nina Sadowsky – 4.75 stars

Books I Didn’t Particularly Enjoy:

I honestly can say that I enjoyed every book I read in March, therefore there weren’t any March reads that fall into this category for me 🙂

Status of 2016 Reading Challenges:

PopSugar Reading Challenge 2016 Checklist – 9/20 books read
Book Riot Read Harder Reading Challenge – 1/24 books read
Penguin Random House: Challenge Your Shelf A-Z Reading Challenge – 0/26 books read

April TBR list:

-A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams (BookBrowse) (rolled from March TBR – didn’t get to)
-Change of Scene: A 100 Page Novella by Mary Kay Andrews (NetGalley)
-The Winemakers by Jan Moran (NetGalley)
-The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie (NetGalley)
-You Can’t Always Get the Marquess You Want by Alexandra Hawkins (NetGalley)
-Remember My Beauties by Lynne Hugo (NetGalley)
-Amazonia by James Rollins (Fiction Lover’s Book Club)
-Dead Distillers by Colin Spoelman (NetGalley)
-The Year We Turned Forty by Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke (Won an ARC on their Facebook!)
-The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman (BookBrowse)
-I Know What I’m Doing — and Other Lies I Tell Myself by Jen Kirkman (Edelweiss)
-The Art of Not Breathing by Sarah Alexander (NetGalley)
-Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn (The Reading Room)
-Lake of Dreams by Linda Howard (NetGalley)
-Behave by Andromeda Romano-Lax (NetGalley)
-The Good Kind of Bad by Rita Brassington (NetGalley)

I’m overwhelmed just looking at this list. 16 books. So basically I need to read a book every two days at a minimum. Which I’m already falling behind at, so I guess we’ll see how this goes. I have some titles on this list that I’m really excited about though so I think it will be a good month. I’m technically already about a third of the way through A Certain Age and I love it!

So! That was March overview and my plan for April! Hoping to find more time for reading this month! Happy reading to all!

15Mar2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books on my Spring TBR

Posted in Book memes, For the love of books, Top Ten Tuesday by rebeccabook17

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Top Ten Tuesday is a book meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every Tuesday there is a different bookish topic and bloggers are asked to post their own top ten list based on the topic. This week is a listing of the Top Ten Books on My Spring TBR. Unfortunately right now is a pretty busy time of year for me at work (I’m an accountant) so I haven’t been able to read nearly as much as I would like. The result of this is that my TBR list has grown by leaps and bounds over the last month or two. Here are some books that I’m really looking forward to reading this spring (if/when I magically find the time).

In no particular order:

It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History by Jennifer Wright
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee
The Witches of Cambridge by Menna Van Praag
The Rose and the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh
Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate
The Love Seat by Sherise Seven
The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
The Other Child by Lucy Atkins
Beside Myself by Ann Morgan

14Mar2016

2016 Book #21 – A Sudden Crush by Camilla Isley

Posted in 2016, Book reviews, Contemporary romance, Fiction, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2016 checklist, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

Title: A Sudden Crush
Author: Camilla Isley
Date finished: 3/14/16 (just after midnight)
Genre: Fiction, contemporary romance
Publisher: Pink Bloom Press
Publication Date: February 4, 2016
Pages in book: 255
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: The Reading Room NOTE: I received this book for free from The Reading Room in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

Joanna Price is a city girl with the perfect life. She loves her job as a book editor, she just married Liam, high profile bestselling author and the man of her dreams, and she’s headed to the Caribbean to enjoy two weeks of paradise for her luxurious honeymoon.
Connor Duffield is a gruff, grumpy rancher from the Midwest. He is a country boy who has a no-nonsense approach to life, more scars than he’d like to admit, and he hates city girls.
So it’s just a misfortune they have to sit next to each other for a six hour plane ride. Even more so when their flight is caught in the perfect storm and Joanna wakes up stranded on a desert island with Connor, the very man she hoped she would never have to see again.
Why are they alone on this forsaken island? What happened to Joanna’s husband?
When her dream honeymoon turns into a hilarious tropical nightmare, Joanna’s first thought is survival. However, she and Connor will quickly discover just how boring paradise can be. As the days turn to weeks, and then months, this mismatched pair will have to learn how to coexist and how to resist the sparkles of an attraction they weren’t prepared to feel.
When they are finally rescued will Joanna’s marriage be saved as well, or will the life she knew and loved be in ruins?

My rating: 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. Also, this book will count towards my “PopSugar 2016 Checklist” reading challenge, marking off the “a book you can finish in a day” square since I started it yesterday afternoon and finished just after midnight. This book is about Joanna Price, who while flying to her honeymoon destination is involved in some freak plan accident and ends up on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean with one of the other plane passengers, who unfortunately was not her husband but a farmer from Illinois named Connor. Somehow Connor and Joanna manage to survive the jungle covered island for months before (**spoiler alert**) they are rescued. But after Joanna returns to her life at home, she finds out that her life isn’t exactly in the same rosy status as it was when she disappeared. From there she has to learn to find the strength to move on and forge a new life for herself.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read and I really liked the plot line. When I first read the book synopsis I thought it was going to be a little more like one of my favorite romance novels, Nerd In Shining Armor, and while the story line was very different, they both had that whole plane crash on a deserted island thing which I enjoyed. The emotions in this book too are really powerful and really draw the reader in. I was really rooting for Joanna when she was encountering her struggles head on and I was cheering her on to forge through whatever crap life was dealing her. I think that was one of the things that I especially liked about this book was that the romance for Joanna came after she already had her stuff figured out. She became a success entirely on her own and was really just living her dream and being her own person. Not to go too deep into feminism here but I thought that was a really important thing for women readers, and especially any younger women reading this, to see that a woman can be successful and happy without a man, that the love and companionship of finding that special person is a bonus but does not rule over your whole life. Anyways, I liked the book a lot. And with all the descriptions of the steamy weather on the island I think this would be a great book to read on the beach while lying in the sun. Make sure to check this one out!

The bottom line: This was an easy read for me and was a sweet story. Great beach read, I would definitely recommend!

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

7Mar2016

2016 Book #18 – The Last Girl by Joe Hart

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Dominion Trilogy, Dystopian fiction, Fiction, For the love of books by rebeccabook17

Title: The Last Girl
Author: Joe Hart
Date finished: 3/6/16
Genre: Fiction, dystopian fiction
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Publication Date: March 1, 2016
Pages in book: 386
Stand alone or series: #1 in The Dominion Trilogy
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

A mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent. Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.
Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she’s been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away—told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population.
Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she’s determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests…a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she’s successful, Zoey has no idea what she’ll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility’s walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning—but Zoey is ready for war.

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. Also, this book will count towards my “PopSugar 2016 Checklist” reading challenge, marking off the “a dystopian novel” box since this book is a dystopian novel. I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about this book over the last month or so and when I saw it on NetGalley (even though I saw it the same day it was published and I’m already swamped) I requested it because the plot sounded so interesting. A dystopian novel where there are only a few women left in the world because of a virus that pretty much only lets new babies be born as boys? Sounds freaking great. And boy it was!
This book centers around Zoey. She doesn’t have a last name because she has never been told what her last name was. This was done purposefully, the staff who have raised her at the ARC are raising her to help the “greater good,” not to be her own person. Zoey is one of a handful of women left at the research facility, the rest supposedly having moved on to the “safe zone” once they graduated at 21. Zoey can feel an evil undertone to her life at the facility though and she knows that everything isn’t what it seems, and that most likely all the girls are being lied to. I don’t want to talk too much about the plot line of the book because honestly its just full of surprises and twists and suspense. I will say that Zoey ends up uncovering what’s really going on there, and she fights back to try and save herself and the other girls living at the facility.
Overall I really liked this book. The plot line was interesting and creative and suspenseful, and though there was a good amount of violence through the story it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book. Zoey is a great lead for this book, she learns how strong she is during the story and the reader really gets to see her grow into her own force. The battle scenes in this book are intense and thrilling, you’ll be on the edge of your seat. It isn’t a great comparison because the stories really aren’t that similar, but I could see this being the next Hunger Games-like craze. I am really looking forward to the next book (I’ve already pre-ordered it) which luckily comes out near my birthday!

The bottom line: I have to put a disclaimer in here that there are some pretty violent/gory scenes. In all fairness I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to that kind of stuff but still, was pretty violent for me. It definitely didn’t take away from the story line though, VERY interesting plot and just a crazy creative idea. Loved it and would definitely recommend! Can’t wait for the next one.

Link to author website

Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

1Mar2016

2016 Status Update: February

Posted in 2016, Book Riot Read Harder Reading Challenge 2016, Bookish Bingo Holiday 2015, For the love of books, Penguin Random House: Challenge Your Shelf A-Z Challenge, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2016 checklist, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

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Ugh. I can’t believe it is March already! Its tax season for me right now so I am definitely finding myself falling behind schedule a little bit. That and I am requesting WAY more than I can possibly manage to read on the various ARC sites. Anyways, here is my status update for progress I made on reading challenges this month and some highlights of my posts for this month.

Monthly Stats:
# books read this month: 7
# pages read this month: 1,988
# books read year-to-date: 15
# pages read year-to-date: 4,793