Danielle Steel - The House on Hope Street

95. The House on Hope Street by Danielle Steel (2000)  
Length: 295 pages  
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Started: 2 October 2014
Finished: 4 October 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 20 July 2012
Why do I have it? I like contemporary fiction and have read and enjoyed several books by this author in the past. 

During their eighteen years of marriage, Liz and Jack Sutherland had built a tremendous life together. A close-knit and loving family, a successful law practice, and a warm, happy home somewhere near San Francisco, in a house on Hope Street. The couple truly loved one another and were living the good life - life honestly couldn't be better for the Sutherland family.

However, on a bright, crisp Christmas morning, amid the laughter of children and the joy of the Season, tragedy strikes. In an instant, the peaceful life Liz Sutherland once knew is no more - and for Jack Sutherland a five-minute errand turns tragic. Suddenly Liz is alone, suffering in the wake of an unbearable loss.

She wonders how she can possibly go on living without her husband, her partner, the man she considered her best friend. How can she grieve herself, when she must be strong and console five devastated children, including one with special needs? Liz contemplates such painful questions, and is filled with despair.

As the months pass, Liz is strengthened by the love of her children. She eventually returns to work and slowly begins tending to her family again, becoming both mommy and "daddy" for her children. One by one the holidays come and go, until a devastating accident sends her oldest son to the hospital - and brings Dr. Bill Webster into her life. Bill becomes a friend to Liz as he slowly heals her shattered son.

As the long, lazy days of summer blend into autumn, a blossoming relationship offers new hope. So, with the first anniversary of Jack's death approaching, bringing with it another Christmas to the house on Hope Street - Liz reflects on life's little blessings; blessings that give strength when nothing else is left. However, Liz must face one more crisis before she can look back at a year of mourning and change - and ahead to the beginning of a new life in the house on Hope Street.

The House on Hope Street is about learning to live again after you think life is over. It is about cherishing the small miracles in life, and believing in the big ones. And it is, above all, about hope.

This was a very enjoyable story; and an easy, quick read for me. I found that the story was typically Danielle Steel - cresting from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows in the space of a single plot line. While I found this story to be very well-written and interesting, it was slightly disconcerting for me to read about such flawless characters. I would give The House on Hope Street by Danielle Steel a B+!

B+! - (89-94%)
            
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Debbie Macomber - A Good Yarn

94. A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber (2005)
The Blossom Street Series Book 2
Length: 345 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Started: 30 September 2014
Finished: 2 October 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 16 August 2014
Why do I have it? I like contemporary fiction and have read and enjoyed several books by this author in the past. 

When we last left Lydia Hoffman, she had just opened her knitting shop - A Good Yarn - on Blossom Street in downtown Seattle. This was her way of celebrating her cancer remission and she offered various knitting classes to those who wanted to learn such a skill. Well, in the year since A Good Yarn first opened, the little shop has thrived - and so has Lydia. This is due in no small part to Lydia's deep friendships with her first three students - Jacqueline Donovan, Carol Girard and Alix Townsend - and her close relationship with Brad Goetz.  

But when Brad's ex-wife suddenly reappears in his life, Lydia is not really sure what to do. She only knows that she loves Brad's son, Cody, very much and that she's beginning to fall in love with his father as well. Lydia is suddenly terribly afraid and unable to fully trust her new found happiness.

Elise Beaumont, a retired librarian, joins one of Lydia's popular knitting classes. Since losing her life savings, Elise has been living with her daughter, Aurora - the only positive legacy from her brief but tumultuous marriage to professional gambler, Marvin 'Maverick' Beaumont. Now she learns that her onetime husband plans to visit, and that Aurora wants a relationship with her father, regardless of Elise's feelings about him or the present situation.

Bethanne Hamlin, like Elise, is facing the fallout from a divorce. However her husband, Grant, left her for another woman - not a deck of cards - and she's still struggling to rebuild and completely reshape her life. She joins the knitting class at her children's urging; determined that this will be her first step in her effort to recover a sense of dignity and hope. Then Bethanne starts her own small business and also meets a man with whom she has something remarkably surprising in common!  

Courtney Pulanski is a seriously depressed and overweight teenager. Since her mother's death, she has been staying with her grandmother Vera. Vera is doing her best, trying to help Courtney...help that takes the form of dragging her reluctant granddaughter around to swimming sessions at the local Seniors' Center - and to the knitting class at A Good Yarn. Like so many women, these four find companionship and comfort with each other and in the age-old craft of knitting. Who knew that knitting socks could completely change someone's life?   

I must say that I certainly enjoyed reading this book; the story was well-written and very poignant and sentimental. However, while the story was very good, and I'm glad to have read it; I will say that it was just the slightest bit too sugary sweet for my taste. I give A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber an A! I will definitely read more books in the Blossom Street Series - or perhaps another book by Debbie Macomber - at some point in the future, but I think that I will wait for a while.

A! - (90-95%)
      
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Reading Wrap-up For September at Moonshine and Rosefire

Hello everyone out there and I hope that you all had a terrific reading month for yourselves. I am known as Rosefire around the Internet and this is my new personal reading blog. I originally posted my reviews over at my daughter's blog, Emeraldfire's Bookmark but am now in the process of transferring them all over to my own blog. My daughter makes blogging look like so much fun that I thought that I would try it out for myself! :)

Anyway, I started out September with 971 unread books lying around the house and ended the month with 960 books unread. All the books that I acquired this month came from a friend, Bookmooch, Paperback Swap and an author.

Let me try to break down the influx for you:

Rereads
- Still Talking by Joan Rivers and Richard Meryman

Changes to the TBR pile

Read from my TBR pile (Yes! I am a reading machine :))
- The Taker by Alma Katsu
- The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy
- Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber
- Hush by Nancy Bush
- Between Husbands and Friends: A Novel by Nancy Thayer
- Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick
- Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
- Blood in the Water: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith
- Suddenly by Barbara Delinsky
- Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson

Added to my TBR pile (oh well, you win some and you lose some! Not too bad though, I suppose:))
- Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell
- Born to Die by Lisa Jackson
- Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter
- Cold Dawn by Carla Neggers
- Broken by Karin Slaughter
- Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
- Chill of Fear by Kay Hooper
- The Closers by Michael Connelly
- Double Cross by James Patterson
- Echo Park by Michael Connelly
- Envy by Sandra Brown
- Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag
- Faithless by Karin Slaughter
- Entombed by Linda Fairstein
- Final Scream by Lisa Jackson
- Fractured by Karin Slaughter
- From the Corner of His Eye by Dean R. Koontz
- The Last Juror by John Grisham
- Left to Die by Lisa Jackson
- Marker by Robin Cook
- Montana Sky by Nora Roberts
- No One Left to Tell by Jordan Dane
- More Than Courage by Harold Coyle
- Most Likely to Die by Beverly Barton, Wendy Corsi Staub and Lisa Jackson
- Queen of the Night by J. A. Jance
- Nighttime is my Time by Mary Higgins Clark
- The Short Prose Reader by Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener
- Play Dirty by Sandra Brown
- The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen
- Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell
- Snow in April by Pete Hamill
- Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
- Third Degree by Greg Iles
- Quicksand by Iris Johansen
- Tough Customer by Sandra Brown
- Ricochet by Sandra Brown
- Undone by Karin Slaughter
- River's End by Nora Roberts
- Skeleton Canyon by J. A. Jance
- Still Waters by Tami Hoag
- Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner
- True Evil: A Novel by Greg Iles
- Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark
- We'll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark
- Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark
- Hope: A Loss Survived by Richard Meryman
- Kramer Versus Kramer by Avery Corman
- Broken Promises, Mended Dreams by Richard Meryman
- Dark Digital Sky by Carac Allison
- The Knitting Diaries: The Twenty-First Wish/Coming Unraveled/Return to Summer Island by Debbie Macomber, Susan Mallery and Christina Skye
- The Empty Robe: The Story of the Disappearance of Judge Crater by Stella Wheeler Crater and Oscar Fraley
- The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
- Knitting: A Novel by Anne Bartlett
- Traditional Knitting by Amy Carroll
- The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
- The Legacy: A Novel by Katherine Webb

Taken off my TBR pile and sent to a new home (Yay! Happy Dance! :)) 
- The Forbidden Zone by Whitley Strieber
- The End of Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher
- The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine
- Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons
- The Heresy of Dr. Dee by Phil Rickman
- When Satan Wore a Cross: The Shocking True Story of a Killer Priest by Fred Rosen
- The Search by Iris Johansen
- I'll be Seeing You by Mary Higgins Clark
- The Night Crew by John Sandford
- While my Pretty One Sleeps by Mary Higgins Clark
- The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman
- Mitigating Circumstances by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
- Dark Lady by Richard North Patterson
- The Ambush Murders by Ben Bradlee
- Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark
- Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice
- The House of Conflict by Iris Bromige
- Silent Victim by C. E. Lawrence
- Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell
- Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
- Justice Denied by Robert K. Tannenbaum
- Material Witness by Robert K. Tannenbaum
- The Switch by Sandra Brown
- The Forgotten by Faye Kellerman 
- The Chamber by John Grisham  
- At Risk by Patricia Cornwell
- The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker
- Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart
- What Matters Most: A Novel by Luanne Rice
- The Beauty of Friendship by Kahlil Gibran
- Crows' Parliament by Jack Curtis
- Dark Summer by Iris Johansen 
- Hush by Nancy Bush 
- House of Smoke by J. F. Freedman
- Requiem For a Glass Heart by David L. Lindsey
- Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark
- Move to Strike by Perri O'Shaughnessy
- Motion to Suppress by Perri O'Shaughnessy 
- The Geometry of Sisters by Luanne Rice 

Well, there it is...the breakdown! All in all, a very good reading month for me. Here's a further breakdown:

Books Read: 11
Pages Read: 3,939
Grade Range: A+! to B+!

So, there you go! The reading month that was September. I hope that you all had an equally good reading month; if not a little better. :) See you all next month! :)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

September's Book of the Month

Hello Everyone! I chose the picture posted above because it reminds me of reading to my daughter Mareena when she was little. Every afternoon until she was about eight or nine years old, we would take one of her books that she wanted to read or that she was reading and we would curl up together on my big bed.

We would spend an hour or so reading a chapter of her book, and then take a nap together. Her absolutely favorite author at that time was an English author named Enid Blyton. Ahh, nice memories...

My picks for 'Books of the Month' will be decidedly more adult these days, but they will be from almost any genre. September's Book of the Month is:

Between Husbands and Friends: A Novel by Nancy Thayer

Published as: Between Husbands and Friends in September 1999

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Birth Name: Nancy Patton

Born: 14 December 1943 in Emporia, Kansas

Canonical Name: Nancy Thayer
Pseudonyms: None

Between Husbands and Friends: A Novel by Nancy Thayer was the eighty-eighth book that I read in 2014. I have had this book on my TBR shelf since September 15, 2014 and it took me one day to read. This book is definitely a keeper for me.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Chet Williamson - Dreamthorp

93. Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson (1989)
Length: 357 pages
Genre: Horror
Started: 27 September 2014
Finished: 30 September 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 23 January 2001
Why do I have it? I like horror and Chet Williamson is a new author for me.

Welcome to Dreamthorp, Pennsylvania - an idyllic little resort town full of picturesque cottages, friendly neighbors and a sleepy, picture postcard-style atmosphere. It is to this quiet little town that two people from the city can finally come to get away from it all. A place where one can escape and start their life over...

Laura Stark is a woman on the run. She has fled to Dreamthorp in order to recover from a brutal attack perpetrated by a crazed rapist - the same attack during which she saw him mutilate her best friend. Dreamthorp seems like the perfect place for Laura Stark to hide - and forget the past... 

Tom Brewer is a recently widowed teacher and sculptor, determinedly trying to put his life back together and helping his grieving fourteen-year-old son, Josh. 

Then one day the peace of Dreamthorp is irrevocably shattered when a couple of local treasure hunters uncover several deeply-buried Native American artifacts. The couple's digging yields some ancient coins, beads, and an unusual-looking amulet. Once the haunted relics are unearthed, a hellacious and centuries-old evil is also unleashed; one that will inevitably exact a horrific vengeance that has no place outside of the gates of Hell. A series of brutal murders occur in the quiet town, rocking Dreamthorp - and its people - to its very core.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was certainly very graphic and gruesome in parts, and the story was somewhat far-fetched in places. However, I found the book to be surprisingly well-written, for horror that was written in the late 1980s and I'm currently looking for more books by this author. I would give Dreamthorp by Chet Williamson an A!

A! - (90-95%)   

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Barbara Delinsky - Suddenly

92. Suddenly by Barbara Delinsky (1993)
Length: 438 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Started: 24 September 2014
Finished: 26 September 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 16 August 2014
Why do I have it? I like contemporary fiction and have read and enjoyed several books by this author in the past. 

In the idyllic little town of Tucker, Vermont, life flows at a slower pace for everyone. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the lives of thirty-nine-year-old pediatrician Paige Pfeiffer and her colleagues. However when Mara O'Neill, Paige's medical partner and best friend since college, inexplicably takes her own life, the consequences of that one irrevocable act shatters Paige's peaceful life, and throws the lives of the three other doctors who practiced with her into absolute chaos. 

For Angie Bigelow, grieving Mara's death becomes the final straw in the disintegration of her once well-organized - and ostensibly happy - home and marriage. Peter Grace, whose relationship with Mara was much more complicated than he admits publicly, is left with a sense of desolation at her death. He has difficulty coping with his feelings of grief and feels a growing discontentment with life; a feeling which has its roots in his youth. 

Paige deals with her own feelings of loss and deep sadness by temporarily caring for Mara's newly-adopted baby daughter. As she slowly comes to terms with her grief, Paige clings to the hope that, in due time, she'll understand why Mara chose to end her life. And that her orderly life will eventually return. 

What Paige hadn't counted on were the unexpected pleasures that often come with change. In the wake of such a tragedy, Paige never realized that she would ultimately discover true meaning and purpose in her own life; including the touch of a man who offers Paige things she never thought she wanted. But before she can allow herself to fully embrace a future she never imagined, Paige must let go of the past and learn to trust her new found happiness. 

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading this book. It was a relatively quick read for me, and was very well-written. The story featured a wide variety of well-developed characters, and was written with a true understanding of the complexities of human nature and the intricacies of relationships. 

This wasn't necessarily my favorite book by Barbara Delinsky, but it certainly was well worth reading anyway. I give Suddenly an A!  

A! - (90-95%)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Gillian Galbraith - Blood in the Water: An Alice Rice Mystery

91. Blood in the Water: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith (2007)
The Alice Rice Mysteries Series Book 1
Length: 194 pages
Genre: Contemporary Mystery
Started: 22 September 2014
Finished: 24 September 2014
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 16 August 2014
Why do I have it? I like contemporary mysteries and Gillian Galbraith is a new author for me.  

At thirty-five years old, Alice Rice is a police detective with the Edinburgh Police Department. She is smart, savvy and eminently capable at her job. When she first entered the police department, Alice was a fresh-faced optimist, convinced that she could make a difference in the world. These days, while she remains optimistic, that feeling has dimmed somewhat in the face of all she has seen, leaving her severely disillusioned and very lonely. 

Amid her own personal and private battle, Alice must solve several grisly murders of professional people in Edinburgh. As the body count begins to rise, she races against time and matches wits with an implacable, faceless killer; someone who is targeting the affluent area of New Town, and who seems determined to make certain members of Edinburgh's professional elite pay dearly for what they've done.

Blood in the Water is Gillian Galbraith's debut novel and what a debut it was! This story was very well-written, and I really liked the character of Alice Rice. The plot was surprisingly refreshing and very Scottish. When I was younger, I often visited Edinburgh and reading this book just brought back such good memories of my travels. I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery and give Blood in the Water by Gillian Galbraith an A+! I certainly will keep my eyes open for more books to read by this author.

A+! - (96-100%)
       
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight