goodnight june

goodnight june
sarah jio
fiction/contemporary
plume
published 2014

June Andersen is professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby’s estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children’s bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s. Amidst the store’s papers, June stumbles upon letters between her great-aunt and the late Margaret Wise Brown—and steps into the pages of American literature.

I was so pleasantly surprised by this book!  This was one of those sweet beach reads that takes barely any time to read and you feel like you know where the story is going, but there are surprises here and there.

The book is told in part through the letters that June finds and I just loved it.  But I didn't think the book would revolve so much around family and the relationships between sisters both blood and the sisters you choose to share your life with.  I actually could have done without the romance part of the story because I felt like June didn't really need to find someone right away.  That her staying in Seattle could be just for the bookstore and the life she needed to carve out for herself and not because she fell in love, but it was wonderful nonetheless.

I think maybe loving the book might have to do a bit with how it reminded me of You've Got Mail which is one of my favorite movies of all time.  A little children's bookstore struggling, part of so many memories.....good stuff.

obsession in death

obsession in death
in death #40
jd robb
fiction/scifi/mystery
gp putnam's sons
published 2015


Eve Dallas has solved a lot of high-profile murders for the NYPSD and gotten a lot of media.  She - and her billionaire husband - are getting accustomed to being objects of attention, of gossip, of speculation.  But now Eve has become the object of one person's obsession.  Someone who finds her extraordinary and thinks about her every hour of every day.  Who believes the two of them have a special relationship.  Who would kill for her - again and again.

For a bit Obsession in Death dragged terribly for me.  She went over and over and over the crime scenes so many times I wanted to scream.  I don't know why this time it seemed like too much.  I didn't feel like she was doing anything different, but it was repetitive.  You see the crime when she sees it.  Then she talks it over with Peabody, then Roarke, then Mira then to her board, in her head, and on and on.  Like this description.

But then when I felt like this book was going to be my first JD Robb disappointment things got good.  I stayed up late into the night because I just couldn't put the book down.

With that being said, it took more than two thirds of the book for me to really get into it.  For the first time in the series I considered putting the book down and taking a break for a bit.  I guess in 40 books it's not that big of a deal for one to be a dud, but I was still bummed.

cinder

cinder
lunar chronicles #1
marissa meyer
fiction/ya/scifi
feiwel & friends
published 2012

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Here is an exception to the rule.  Remember this because there are few of these.

I started to hear a lot of hype around this series (as I write this there are currently 3 novels, several novellas and another novel set to release later this year) and everyone was stark raving mad about how much they loved it.  I already owned Cinder (I think I got it one day when it was on sale for $2.99 or something), but hadn't read it yet because it just wasn't high on my radar.  When I started hearing more and more reader friends raving about it I was both curious and put off.  Generally when people all really love a book I end up disappointed in it.  Few exceptions occur (Twilight was the weird one off), but generally when people go nuts over a book I distance myself.

But many of the reader friends who loved it had similar loves as me so I thought, I have the book might as well give it a shot.  And it was good!  Cinder is a fun, complicated character and the story itself (a retelling of Cinderella - obviously) was much more complicated than I expected it to be so it held my interest quite well.

It was most certainly a book that kept me reading and enticed me enough to continue on with the series.  A nice mix of romance, teen angst, sci-fi and suspense.