Recently, An Echo In The Bone, the latest book in the Outlander series was released, and I found myself thinking, wow, it’s been a long time since Gabaldon wrote an Outlander novel, and… where did I leave off in this series? I couldn’t remember enough about it, so I thought the best way to remedy that was to start over. No easy task when you consider the size of these novels. But start over I did with the first of the series, Outlander.

Englishwoman Claire Randall and her husband Frank are on a sort of belated honeymoon in Scotland. Having been separated shortly after their marriage by war taking Frank into the army and Claire into service as a nurse, they have been reunited and are enjoying another start to their marriage. On a trip to Scotland to learn more about Frank’s roots, they explore the countryside where they come upon a stone structure high atop a hill in the Highlands called Craigh na Dun. Frank, a professor of history, is fascinated by the stones, as they are often used in worship by pagans of an ancient time. Claire is interested in the foliage growing around the stones, as she enjoys learning about herbs and their medicinal uses. One day, Claire decides to go to the stones atop the hill to look for some plants she spied on an earlier trip, when she is literally sucked into a time warp transporting her back 200 years to a time of warring Highlanders and Englishmen.

She is set upon by Captain Jonathan Randall, the very relative her husband Frank had been researching. She discovers that Randall is not a hero of any kind, but a vicious sadist intent on raping her. As she fights to get away, she is rescued, then kidnapped, by a clan of Scottish men, who whisk her away deep into Scottish territory, at the Mackenzie clan’s Castle Leoch. Along the way, she meets a man who will become very important to her — the outlaw Jamie Fraser, a young, fiery, handsome Scot, who also happens to have been beaten and injured to an inch of his life. Claire calls upon her experience as a nurse and her knowledge of herbs to aid Jamie, and is soon labeled as a physician at Leoch and made invaluable to the inhabitants of the castle.

The chief of the clan, Column Mackenzie and his brother, the war chieftan Dougal Mackenzie, are reluctant to allow her to leave Leoch, not only because she is a healer, but because she is an English woman, and they suspect she is working as a spy for the English or for the French, as she has chosen to identify herself by her Maiden name of Beauchamp, rather than link herself in any way to the terrible Captain Randall. The Mackenzies are determined to find out her true identity, and eventually lead her back to the English to attempt a trade of sorts in order to discover who she is working for and how she came to be in the woods of Craigh na Dun that day they discovered her.

It soon becomes clear when Captain Randall manhandles Claire violently, that she is not working with him. But Captain Randall demands that she be handed over to the English army, as she is an Englishwoman and it is their right to claim her. To avoid handing her back to Randall, the Mackenzies decide they shall make her Scottish, and wed her to Jamie Fraser.  Neither Claire nor Jamie really want to marry, but they can’t deny a strong attraction between them — one that explodes into a passionate love that will change their lives forever.

Claire now has to decide which man she will be faithful to — her husband Frank, whom she left 200 years in the future, or her new husband Jamie. Frank is safe, if a bit dull, but he offers her stability and security in a time of modern conveniences. But Jamie lights her up with a passion she has never felt before, and he fights for her honor and safety at every dangerous turn.

And there is a lot of danger in this time period — the barbarism of the Highland games is no joke. This is a time of ruthless violence. A time of theft and killing at every turn. Claire is afraid for her life, but at the same time, she has never been happier. She is in love and her skills are useful at a time when modern medicine doesn’t exist. This is a time of beauty, untarnished by tar roads and vehicles puffing their fumes into the environment. Even as her protectors and new friends are attacked and beaten, she doesn’t want to leave them. They’ve become her family.

This was a great book. It’s the reason I kept on buying the series. Gabaldon’s writing is rich in details that bring the time and the places to life. There is certainly a lot of filler in the book — historical facts and details that might not be necessary for the storyline, but which help establish an authenticity and feeling that connect the reader to the story. Of course, this is not a book for the squeamish, as there is a lot of detailed and gory violence in it; and this isn’t a book for the prudish, as Gabaldon has no qualms writing sex scenes and plenty of them. I can recall being in a creative writing class once and discussing the difficulties of letting go of your inhibitions and writing a sex scene that will really put you in that moment and almost make your reader feel uncomfortable, like they’ve walked in on a private moment they aren’t supposed to be a part of. It’s not easy to write like that, but I have to say Gabaldon dropped those inhibitions and gave it gusto. You want sex, you got it. But it’s not all sex. At least not the first half or the book, anyway. My husband used to joke the first time I read this book and we’d be reading our books before bedtime, when he’d lean over and look at my pages every few minutes to discover another sex scene or body part being exposed. It was annoying the first couple of times he did it, but after it turned out he was right near the 4th or 5th time, it became funny and we’d make it a sort of game where instead of him looking over to glance over the pages, I’d just call out, “Another one!” and we’d laugh. You could get mighty drunk if you played it as a drinking game ;)

Anyway… enjoyable read. I’ll be starting the next one (again) shortly.

Fleur Savagar is known as “The Glitter Baby”, a model and actress whose meteoric rise in the entertainment industry took the world by storm. But after only a few years of modeling and one successful movie starring opposite Hollywood’s most sought after leading man, The Glitter Baby suddenly disappears from the limelight without any warning.

To understand The Glitter Baby’s disappearance, we are taken back to her childhood growing up in a convent where she was raised by nuns after her mother and father left her there. Fleur doesn’t understand why she must grow up in the convent and only see her mother twice a year for short vacations, especially when she has a brother who is allowed to live with her very wealthy parents. But she soon discovers the truth about her birth, her true heritage, and the masochistic game her parents play against each other with Fleur as a pawn to be used back and forth between them.

Once Fleur figures out the situation, she knows she can no longer trust anyone but herself, and she works to become independent and successful on her own terms. But life is difficult on her own, especially when her parents try to foil her at every turn. She decides the only way to win the game is to bring The Glitter Baby back to Hollywood, and become as powerful as she can through her fame and fortune.

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t find it to be very complicated in plot, but the characters are certainly complex and over the top — just the way you’d expect those rich and famous people to be. While I wouldn’t be holding this book up and talking about symbolism and morals and theme at a book club, it is definitely one of those fun books with characters you’d find yourself gossiping about with a group of friends if they existed in the real world.

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Victorine Laurent was raised to believe her mother died during her birth, and her father was unknown. Passed back and forth between two abusive aunts during her childhood, Victorine’s aunts finally bring her to Paris on her thirteenth birthday and leave her to be enrolled in the chorus of the Paris Opera Ballet. Without any family or prospects, her only hope in life is to become the mistress of a rich man who will take care of her, and Victorine soon finds herself servicing middle-class men on the side in order to support herself.

At first, it seems she is only destined to be one step above the cheapest of prostitutes. But one day, a friend introduces her to the young painter Edouard Manet who has requested that she model for him after seeing her at the ballet. Victorine agrees and what follows is a painting that shocks all of Paris with its blatant sexuality. Overnight, Victorine has become the most sought after courtesan in Paris and her fame spreads throughout Europe as she becomes Manet’s favorite model and poses for many more of his controversial modernist paintings. (more…)

Sigh… this is the final installment in the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy and the one that truly gets your swoon on. All the best scenes are played out in here: Darcy and Elizabeth’s reunion at Rosings Park when he thought he’d never see her again, her rejection of his first horrible proposal ( “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry”), his transformation into the sort of gentleman she deserved ( “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner”), their chance meeting at Pemberley, his rescuing of Lydia Bennet and the Bennet family name, and Darcy and Elizabeth finally understanding each other so they can be together. I think I sighed already, didn’t I? (more…)

In this sequel to Archangel, the world of Samaria is in a state of rebirth and rebuilding. The new Archangel Gabriel has taken control after the god Jovah brought down a mighty thunderbolt of destruction upon the evil Archangel Raphael and his fallen angel followers on Mount Galo. Gabriel’s first actions as Archangel have been to destroy Raphael’s angel hold at Windy Point and commission a new angel hold to be built at Cedar Hills.

The angels have seen better times. Their population is now severely depleted, a third of them having been killed at Mount Galo. The remaining angels are stretched thin across the three provinces, and there are not enough to travel the lands and help the people of Samaria. The birth of an angel baby, always a joyful event, is now cause for the most extreme of celebrations, for it will ensure the future of the angel population, the guardians of safety and harmony in the world. (more…)

This is the second book I’ve read of Shinn’s Samaria series, and while it lives up to the impression that Archangel left on me, it took a while to get there. At first, the story seemed too similiar to Archangel, and I worried that it would be the same story, just with different names and a few differences in scenarios.

The story takes place about 200 years before Archangel. It begins just like Archangel did, with the current Archangel’s term coming to an end and the Archangel-elect, Gaaron of the Eyrie, needing to find and marry his Angelica-to-be before the Gloria, an event where the people of Samaria come together to sing their praises and gratitude to the god, Jovah. And once again, the Angelica, this time named Susannah, is hard to find because she is a member of a traveling Edori tribe. And yet again, once she is found, she is unwilling to take on the role, but she does because it is what the god wants. So if you’ve read Archangel, you can understand why I worried that this novel in the series wasn’t going to feel original and be unique. Thankfully, the worry went away a few chapters in, as the story started to veer into its own directions. (more…)

So I made a few mistakes when I decided to read this book.

First, I decided to give it a go right before bedtime, thinking I would just read a couple of chapters and then go to sleep.

Second, I decided to give it a go right before bedtime. And sure, if you consider that I went to bed at midnight but didn’t actually go to sleep until 9:00AM, then I suppose you can say I read this book at bedtime. This novel was so engaging, that I could not close it. I was so shocked to look up about half-way through the book to see the sun was rising and I no longer needed the light on to see the pages. It honestly felt as if only a couple hours had passed.

Third mistake, I didn’t pick up this book earlier. I should have, since my husband told me weeks ago how much he enjoyed Shinn’s writing and that I’d probably like it too. We don’t tend to read the same sorts of books, so I was somewhat skeptical. But then I read Shinn’s YA trilogy and liked it very much. I’m glad that I gave this book a chance, because it’s a very good book, and (yay!) I’ve got the rest Samaria series ahead of me to look forward to. (more…)

This is my book club’s pick for August. I had actually borrowed this book from the library last year but hadn’t gotten around to reading it by the time it had to go back. I remember that I hadn’t been in a rush to read it when I had it, and I wasn’t in a hurry to get it again.

Why? The front flap gave the entire story away. I don’t need to be spoon fed the plot. Yes, I know this is chick lit and it’s commonly understood that the girl and the guy are going to get together once they get over whatever is keeping them from realising they should be together, and I’ve read enough Chick Lit that I shouldn’t be surprised I was able to figure it all out just from the flap, but still… maybe I just shouldn’t read the flaps.

So I expected this novel to be predictable. And it was. But I was happy to find that once I actually started reading it, I didn’t want to put it down and I ended up finishing it in the same day. So while it was predictable, it was clearly a good read. Why? Charming, very funny, and well-written, the feel of this book was comfortable and quite entertaining, reminding me very much of Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me, a book I really enjoyed. (more…)

Nell Dysart’s husband left her on Christmas Day for another woman. Broken and depressed, she lets her life fall apart. Her friends (and former sisters-in-law) Margie and Suze worry that Nell isn’t taking care of herself, becoming too thin and lackluster. Her brother-in-law arranges for Nell to start a job as the secretary for a local detective agency so that she can start a new life. Nell goes to interview with the agency owners, Gabe and Riley McKenna, two incredibly handsome, noble, respectable men. She has to agree to three rules before she gets the job: 1) Don’t talk about cases to anyone outside the office, 2) Don’t break the law, and 3) Don’t f*ck the help. She agrees, and she’s hired.

Gabe is a kind man, a good father to his teenage daughter and a friend (with benefits, the cad!) to his ex-wife, Chloe. He and Riley took over the agency from his deceased father, and he’s become one of the best detectives in the industry. But he’s a pig-headed boss when it comes to managing his employees, and he’s reluctant to change anything from the way his dad left the office; he refuses to let Nell fix the place up, and insists on fighting whatever ideas she brings forth every chance he gets… they’ll (not surprisingly) be falling in love later in the story. (more…)

This is the first book I’ve read of Jennifer Crusie’s chick lit novels and I liked it a lot. It fit my reading need at the time, which was something short and fun because I knew Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was on its way to my door within a few days.

Reading this book reminded me of the teeny-bopper movie, She’s All That, except that this was a version for adults. As the title suggests, the book is about gambling. Not just making bets for money, but gambling on the risks in relationships.

The heroine in the book is named Min Dobbs, and I liked her immediately. She’s a chubby girl with a quick wit, and she knows it. She’s got the same insecurities that all chubby girls have, and she really thinks that the only man who could ever want her won’t be anything like the type of man she would want or be able to get. She’s so sure of this, she’s decided she’s just going to get a cat and forget men altogether. (more…)