Skinniness is Next to Goddessness? Anna’s Story by Julia Keanini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I give this book a 4.5 star rating. I really liked it. It’s the second in a series but seemed like a stand alone book. I didn’t feel like I had missed anything.

From the titles of the books, I gather that the books encompass the stories of the girls in the Sunday Lunchers eating disorder group. Other than the title though, the eating disorder was sort of a small side issue in Anna’s story.

The story, however, was really good. Anna, a 16 year old girl of Japanese descent, is derailed from “The Plan” that has been a part of her life since third grade. The plan would get her through an Ivy League college education to become a heart surgeon at a great hospital.

With the arrival of little AB, all of a sudden, the plan takes a back seat. AB is the baby daughter of her cousin, Aya. She helps Rhys, the baby’s father, to care for her and develops a huge crush on him. Through the course of the story, Aya tries to sell the baby to make good on a drug/gambling debt and much of the book is about this.

At the end of the trial, and the book, Rhys takes AB and moves to Colorado and Anna is free to be a 16 year old with a plan again. After what her family has gone through, her new plan is a more revised version of the previous plan which will allow her to have a more complete life.

There are family dynamics issues that contribute to Anna’s bulimia and those seem to resolve themselves as well, leaving her to feel free of the bulimia.

I liked this book. It was well written and I’d like to check out book one and any sequels. 🙂

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Being Layla Hart by Amanda McKelt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a cute book!

April and her friend, Sofia, are not among the popular kids at their school. They make plans for April to say hi to a boy she has a crush on, going to the pool where his water polo team is finishing up a match. As she goes to try and talk to him, his girlfriend and her BFF come up from behind and push her into the pool while video taping the event. As she falls into the pool, all she can think about is the fact that she’s wearing My Little Pony Pinkie panties and she just flashed Zach and everyone else, on video.

When the girls get home, April decides she can never go out of her room again. She deletes all of her social profiles because she can’t bear the thought of all the feedback she’ll get from the Pinkie Pants video.

She and Sofia make up a fake profile, Layla Hart, and decide that April should pretend to be Layla. Somehow when they wake up int he morning, April IS Layla. A quickly devised story of exchange students explains to Aprils mom what happened to April and how Layla came to be living in her house. It also gets her enrolled in school as Layla Hart.

The book travels along the path of April as Layla where all of a sudden it seems like she’s getting everything she wants: a beautiful face, a nice body, popular friends and a boyfriend.

In the end, though, she almost loses her best friend and decides all she really wants is to be herself. This is a really cute book and I highly recommend it! 🙂

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I Am the Traitor by Allen Zadoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the third book in The Unknown Assassin trilogy and I ate it up like a bag of chips. I love the way this author writes! So readable.

Zach is back waiting for a new mission. He finds his friend, Howard, from Book 2 is being held by the Program. He finds where he is, because Mike wants him to prove his loyalty by the Program by killing Howard. When he gets there and sees Howard, he realizes he can’t kill him. There’s also a girl, Tanya. Zach decides to break both of them out and make a run for it.

They come against all kinds of trouble with Mike hot on their trail. Tanya turns out to be an assassin for the Program and Zach isn’t sure whether he can trust her or not.

The story wraps up nicely although I will miss reading another installment. I highly recommend this, and the two books that come before it. Highly recommend!

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Dollar Daze: The Bottom Dollar Girls in Love by Karin Gillespie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really loved this book. It’s the third in a series but I didn’t feel like I’d been left out by not reading the books that came before which of course I must now read.

This book is about the Bottom Dollar Girls, a group of older ladies who have been friends for a long time (two of them for most of their lives!) and the granddaughter of one of the ladies.

The older ladies all seem to be looking for love in this book except for Mrs. Tobias who seems to feel she’s done all the marrying she needs to with her first marriage. But, in the end, love finds her anyway. I love the friendships, I love the character of Attalee who brings so much of the humor to the book and I love that Mrs. Tobias loosened up enough by the end of the book that they were calling her Gracie.

Elizabeth, the granddaughter, is frustrated at being a stay at home mom but her husband is not in favor of her going back to work while their daughter, Glenda, is still so young. She comes up with a great idea that both satisfies her and makes her husband happy.

I really liked this book a lot and hope there’s another in the series. I highly recommend this book! 🙂

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The Sound of Glass by Karen White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I was reading the prologue of this book I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But I decided to go ahead and keep reading and I’m so glad I did!

I was immediately sucked into the story about Merritt who inherited her husband’s grandmother’s house in South Carolina. She had decided she needed a change of scenery in her life and went ahead and moved to South Carolina even though her husband, who had recently died, had never told her anything about his life there. She didn’t know about his grandmother or his brother.

On her heels came her stepmother, Loralee, with her half brother, Owen. Loralee is dying of cancer but you don’t find this out until the end of the book although I suspected. She has never had a relationship with Merritt because Merritt couldn’t stand the fact that her father found someone else to love and marry after the death of her mother. Loralee’s plan is to have Merritt be sister/mother to Owen after she passes.

Initially, Merritt is reserved and unhappy that Loralee is there but both Owen and Loralee begin to grow on her. Her husband’s brother, Gibbes, is also in the picture because she wanted him to take whatever items from the house that he wanted as it was his childhood home.

I love the way Merritt grows in this book. I love all the characters, especially Loralee. I was so sad when she died even though I knew it was coming. I really love the way the prologue finally made sense to me. 🙂

Great book! Highly recommend.

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Paradise City by C.J. Duggan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really loved this book. It was so cute. 🙂

When Lexie Atkinson is in 11th grade, her parents decided she should move to the city, live with her aunt and uncle and attend a real high school. As a home schooled student, Lexie is extra excited about the promise of living in a place called Paradise City and has it all blown up in her mind before she ever arrives.

As a child, she and her cousin, Amanda, had been really close. She was looking forward to continuing that relationship but the first thing she discovers is that Amanda doesn’t want to have anything to do with her.

When they go to check out the school, the principal yells to a boy named Ballantine, the school’s resident bad boy. Lexie sees him and is smitten.

The story is about Lexie trying to fit into her new surroundings. She bumbles along getting into trouble but trouble comes with Ballantine, too, and their relationship grows.

I read this book really quickly because it was fun to see what trouble Lexie was going to get into next. The book ends on a cliffhanger and I’m looking forward to reading the next installment.

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House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a great, creepy book. It reminded me somewhat of The Shining.

Ben and Caroline move with their family out of the City after Caroline loses her banking job and their oldest son has trouble at school. While looking at Ben’s grandma’s house after her passing, he notices The Crofts. They decide to buy it, renovate it, and turn it into an inn.

As they begin to work on the house, Caroline, who has had periods of depression, starts feeling put upon. She’s trying to turn the Inn into something out of a magazine and she feels like she’s doing it all by herself. Ben, a writer, is having trouble with his second book, and their older son Charlie, keeps withdrawing more and more spending hours outside.

The house and the town itself have a creepy history and it’s chilling and creepy to see how they finally get away from it all in the end.

I recommend this book. Great story, plot and it’s a page turner. 🙂

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Scent of Triumph: A Novel of Perfume and Passion by Jan Moran
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fabulous book! I loved the story of Danielle Bretancourt, a perfumer from France and her family as they traveled through WWII.

Danielle is married to Max. They are on a ship to England the day that war breaks out. Danielle is pregnant with her second child and they have left their other son at home in Poland with Max’s mother, Sofia, as he was too young to travel with them. After they arrive, Max decides he needs to help the resistance. His half brother, Heinrich has turned into a full blown Nazi and they feel Max can help out by getting information from Heinrich. Sofia and Nicky are on the run with neighbors to get away from the Nazi’s.

Max loses his life and, try as she might to find him, Danielle loses Nicky and Sofia. She takes her daughter, niece and mother to America where her friend Jon’s sister lives to try and be safe and start over knowing she will never stop trying to find her son.

America is hard, as Danielle works as a shop girl. She wonders if she can ever get ahead. Finally, her boss invests in her perfumes and designs launching the career that will save them.

Jon writes to Danielle. He loves her but feels it’s too soon after Max’s death to tell her. She loves him but knows she can’t go back to London with her family while the war rages on. She ends up marrying another man after misunderstanding Jon’s intentions and he marries another woman whom he doesn’t really love.

The story is about a strong woman who goes through so much but refuses to quit. In the end she succeeds and has everything she wants.

Terrific book! I highly recommend it. 🙂

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