Flawless by Carrie Lofty (The Christies, Book 1)
A second chance romance filled with adventure and set in a South African diamond mine. Not your conventional romance.
Lady Vivienne Bancroft’s father, Sir William Christie, died and left each of his four children an inheritence. For them to claim it, each one has to take a part of his business and make it successful. Vivienne ends up with a diamond mine in South Africa that she has to make profitable in a year.
Miles Durham, Viscount Bancroft, and his wife have been estranged for a few years. He wants to get her back and somehow prove himself to her by taking part in making the venture profitable.
I love adventure romances in your not so average settings! It’s not often that you get a romance in colonial South Africa—in a diamond mine, no less—and for that alone I bought this book. (Okay, Rendezvous also recommended it in their newsletter.) It didn’t disappoint.
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The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
Humour, tragedy, realism and, of course, a happy beginning—this memoir has it all. I don’t know why I didn’t read this sooner.
Anh Do is a comedian who travelled to Australia at the age of two via a refugee boat from Vietnam. This memoir tells the story of his family and his experiences growing up as an Asian-Australian.
This book came highly recommended by so many people. It has earned multiple awards and accolades and has consistently been on the bestseller list since it was first released. I decided to find out for myself what the hype was all about.
Do’s family escaped Vietnam on a tiny boat in the 70s during the war. They went through all sorts of hardships—running out of food and water, running into pirates—before they made it to Malaysia and then finally Australia. When they arrived here, they didn’t have much and Do was pretty much raised by a single mum from the time he entered high school. The Happiest Refugee charts Do’s growing up, his beginnings as a comedian, and how he finally finds success, all with the support of his loving family.
I managed to read most of the book during my lunch hour. It is so easy to read, and Do’s narrative captured me from the first page…and I kept going and going.
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A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant (Blackshear Family, Book 1)
Sweet and well written, but requires a lot of patience.
Martha Russell is recently widowed. If she is not pregnant with an heir, she loses control of her beloved estate and the accompanying servants to her brother-in-law, who is not known for being kind. She decides to contract her hunky new neighbour, Theopilus Mirkwood, who has been exiled to the country by his father, into being her sperm stud. And this is where our story begins.
I had been looking forward to this book for a long time. Other readers absolutely raved in their reviews—lyrical, romantic, well-written, etc. Then I got the book and it took me two months to read it.
While I will agree that A Lady Awakened is well written and lyrical and thoughtful and beautifully done, I did not like it. I would, however, give Cecilia Grant a second chance and try her next offering, and hopefully it will not try my patience as much as this book has done.
For starters, while I get that this is the whatever ages (Regency? post? pre?) and that women enjoying sex is not the usual and doesn’t really happen and I understand the lead character’s moral qualms are at the root of her not being able to orgasm, did the author have to make Mary frigid for two-thirds of the book? This is a romance novel, for god’s sake—could Grant not have made her enjoy the sex and end her suffering somewhere along the halfway point? Does it really take that long to get an orgasm in a romance novel? (Note: This is not real life.) There are no sweet scenes to build you up to the sex, either, because I’ve read books where there’s one sex scene in the end and something has usually happened before that.
All they do is talk about crops.
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The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
A well written and somewhat heartbreaking story that explores how we understand our relationships. It’s also a film.
Matt King is descended from Hawaiian royalty and one of Hawaii’s largest land owners. His wife, Joanie, was injured in a sailing accident and will soon be taken off life support. Matt will be left with the care of his two daughters, Alex, 17, and Scottie, 10.
Matt decides to give his wife’s friends and family a chance to say goodbye and in the process finds out that his wife had been having an affair. He decides to find her lover, so that he can let him have a proper goodbye.
Matt is an interesting character. He’s well-meaning, but as his wife has taken care of their kids all his life, he has no idea what to do and is somewhat shocked at how different they are from what he perceives them to be. He has no idea how to be a parent, despite being a parent for almost 18 years. The book, to me, is less about his wife’s affair, but more about Matt’s relationships, especially with his daughters, and how his journey to find his wife’s lover turns into a journey for his own growth.
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Source: first date by ~Boston Bill~ (via Flickr)
In which romance and charity go hand in hand. Also, Wandergurl needs your help to get her mojo back! (And we’re not talking about reviewing books.)
While I read romance novels, and believe that there’s somebody out there for me somewhere (God only knows where) I am the most cynical person when it comes to love and romance in real life. For one thing, there’s a man drought in Sydney. And it’s not like it’s the easiest thing in the world to go out and meet someone (anyone).
And there’s the part where I’m lazy, and I prefer to go to nice, cozy bars where boys don’t try to pick you up, and while I love meeting people there’s all this effort involved in dating. Effort I haven’t always been keen to make.
This year, I said to myself, well, it’s time for you to just do it. Before you can complain about there not being any men around, you’ve actually got to go and try and find one. You don’t even have to forage, you just kind of have to show up. (Like, you know, not sit at home all the time and just read.) So to kickstart my dating adventure I let myself get roped into this: Five in Five.
Five in Five
What exactly is Five in Five? Well, you know how people run 14k (City to Surf), bike for cancer, etc.? I’m dating for the urban poor. Yep. You read that right. Go on five dates in five weeks in the name of raising money for charity (the LiveWires Program). You can’t use the internet—it’s called ‘vintage dating’—you have to get friends to set you up or you have to just ask a guy out. (When did that become ‘vintage’? Am I just showing my age here?)
How is it going so far? I’ve gone on two dates.
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HipsterMattic by Matt Granfield
Matt Granfield’s adventures are eyerollingly funny with just the right touch of irony. But be careful. You might find a little bit of yourself in there.
One day, Matt Granfield’s girlfriend breaks up with him because ‘you don’t even know who you are!’ She also says a bunch of other things, but this is the one he takes to heart. He decides to make something of himself…by becoming the ultimate hipster. What follows is a hilarious satire through one man’s quest to be cool—no matter how.
What is a hipster? The term hipster is based on the word ‘hip’, which once upon a time referred to people in the know, or the cool kids who always did everything first. Nowadays it’s more of a derogatory term because while I firmly believe that everyone has a tiny bit of hipster in them (if only by definition) no one wants to be called one. These days they can be found in skinny jeans— the men wear skinnier jeans than the women—drinking black coffee and wearing vintage clothing.
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The Mango Orchard by Robin Bayley
A charming, entertaining and very easy to read. Perfect for the summer (if we had one!).
When Robin Bayley was little, his grandmother would regale him with stories about her father, who had gone to work in a weaving factory in Mexico. His adventures seemed so fantastical and amazing. Now an adult facing a crossroads in life, Bayley decides to set out and trace his grandfather’s steps, back to the mill near a small town near the river somewhere in Mexico. Along the way he ends up in places he doesn’t expect—Colombia, for instance!—he meets an interesting cast of characters, he falls in love, and in the end what he finds is more than he expects.
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How Now Brown Frau by Merridy Eastman
If you like funny, heartfelt memoirs, this one is for you. Meredith Eastman seems to have lived out her dream—successful career, great guy and a lovely family—and it’s always lovely to see that come true for someone.
At 41, Merridy Eastman had accepted that she would be single (and happy) for the rest of her life. Then she meets a lovely German while visiting Europe. A year later—also preggers—she moves to Bavaria to be with him and start a new life together. This is the story of her adventure.
I have to admit this book caught my eye based on the title alone. In real life I say ‘How now brown cow?’ to people instead of ‘What’s up?’ sometimes, a legacy of my school days when they had Hershey’s Brown Cow commercials. I read the back blurb and the first chapter and, always a sucker for funny travel memoirs, I got it.
Eastman, a former Play School presenter, writes a comedic, sometimes bittersweet tale of what it’s like to uproot yourself to a new country, learn a new language and fall in love with the country and its people, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying.
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Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
A book for anyone with a sense of adventure, whether you’re an armchair traveller or someone who wants to see more of the world.
While working overseas in San Francisco for a year, Australian girl Torre DeRoche meets a hot Argentinian in a bar. Their romance is meant to be just a temporary thing, but somehow she ends up sailing around the South Pacific with him, despite a complete fear of sailing. Will their love survive the open water?
I first heard of the fearful adventurer by following a series of links and connections via Twitter. DeRoche’s book had not yet been published, but her story seemed so interesting. I immediately tried to get the ending out of her via Twitter but no, I was not allowed to kill a fairy and had to wait for the book to come out. When it did, I promptly downloaded the book, loaded it on the Kindle on my iPhone and, mid-book, left my phone on a bus…but not before skipping to the ending and killing a fairy!
What I love most about this book is that it combines two of my passions—travel and romance.
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Heart Search by Robin D. Owens (Celta's HeartMates, Book 10)
A good addition to the series for Celta fans who are curious to see how characters have evolved and want to catch up on previous characters’ lives.
I first read Robin D. Owens’ HeartMate earlier in the year. Within the next month I managed to collect every single book in the Celta series by visiting random bookshops in the Philippines and through some creative used book buying via @GirrlitsBooks. Needless to say, I love everything about this series—even the apostrophes.
Laev T’Hawthorn was stupid a few books ago and, as a twenty-year old, married the wrong girl, thinking she was his HeartMate. She fucked him over, to put it in simple terms, and later died when a devastating illness swept the land. Laev, now head of his family after the death of his grandfather, has since discovered that she stole family heirlooms and sold them. He is determined to get them back, and in doing so right some of the wrongs he felt he has brought upon his family by choosing the wrong woman.
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