Long hiatus - overwhelmed, a bit.

Hi. I'm going to take a long hiatus with the blog, probably until autumn. I've just got too much stuff flying around with getting the house ready to sell, trying to decide on a new place to call home, extra workload at the office (major stress there), illnesses and changes in the family/friends who might as well be family, and fourteen other things - life - getting in my way. Just like everybody else - too much on the plate. Something's got to give, and this is my one optional thing.

I feel terrible about not reviewing the 2-3 books I had left from NetGalley and Edelweiss but it's likely that the world will continue to spin.

I'll miss you.

Be well. Read some wonderful books, and a few stinkers so you appreciate the good ones even more. I'll hope to see you in a few months.

On the whole, I'd rather be reading. (personal, not a review)

Here's the news from Downsize Land:

It is more fun to read than it is to clear away 60-plus years worth of books, dividing into piles of Keep, Throw Away, Give Away. Especially when the Keep pile must be kept very small, a quantity of books that will fill one small (3 foot by 4 foot) and rather shallow bookcase. I am currently occupied in measuring out my life in book-width inches.

I am through the D section. (My books are arranged alpha by author, or by the subject if it's a biography.)

I remember buying nearly every one of these books. Remember why I picked it up and how I weighed it against other obligations and chose it, the book, and in my early years often chose it over food. Remember the nervous-tummy butterflies of anticipation.

It is fun to remember how many books I "couldn't part with" but then I joined paperback swap and parted with them cheerfully, knowing, in the way that one knows people by computer, that they were going to good homes. It was easier to give them away one at a time to someone I knew would enjoy them, and I cut my population of books by greater than one-half that way. http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php

It is fun to see how many little obsessions I've developed over the years with odd areas of life and the world. Everything available about a certain type of button that was made locally 100 years ago. Everything I could find on the Triangle Factory Fire. A rather startling amount of reading on the Black Death.

It is fun to see the gloms and mini-gloms: Anne Perry, Sue Grafton, Nora Roberts as Robb, Charlaine Harris, Laurie R. King, Martha Grimes, Sayers, Anne Tyler, Leon Uris, Vonnegut, Oliver Sacks, Helene Hanff, Norman Mailer, Dianne Day.

There are some books I have now in e-book form, but still I weigh the book in my hand, reluctant to part with the memory of selecting it, buying it, reading it for the first time. Then I look at the size of the print, the yellowing pages, the dust I can never seem to stay ahead of, and I *feel* the weight in my hand, and I'm grateful for the e-book. (Something some people do not recognize is the value of e-books for people with dust and mold allergies.)

On the whole, though, I'd much rather be reading books and talking about them here than to be picking up each one, each with a story, dusting and inspecting for mold or wildlife, culling and judging whether they are important enough to continue to be a part of my space.

Big Boy, by Ruthie Knox (short novella, contemporary)

And Ms. Knox is back! If you want a contemporary short novella, with some realistic sex (no unicorns, no clouds, no shooting stars, just good sex), role-playing, and complex situations, if you want a nearly perfect romance, and if you don't mind first person narration, skip the review and go buy it (two bucks, with more story in it than many high-priced romances). Just go buy it. We'll wait.

Here. I'll even make it easy for you.
Amazon non-affiliate link: Big Boy
Barnes and Noble: Big Boy
Kobo: Big Boy

Mandy has about as much pressure on her as a person can have. She's raising her recently-deceased sister's baby, she's teaching American Studies and under some pressure at work, not just the day-to-day of teaching, and she has almost no social support. She's grieving, she's coping, she's learning, she's working, and she has not one minute for herself except:

One night a month she meets a stranger, a man, the same man but with a different name and story each time they meet, and they role-play in a train museum. They talk, they laugh, they stay in character, and for a few hours they are someone else.

How I ached for the characters! Doing the best they can, seeing how they fall short - because nobody is perfect and no amount of love will make us perfect - and just coping. Getting through the day, one foot, next foot, with this little bit of something special and rare to look forward to just often enough to keep them sane, just enough of a taste of what life could be to make them hungry for more.

Of course I wanted more book. Ms. Knox could have doubled the page count to make us happy, but she could not have told us more story than she does in about 60 pages.

This - this! - is the quality of storytelling this author is capable of. These are real characters, so real I think I know how they take their coffee and would recognize them from their step.

Kindle formatting perfect, grammar fine. Ends at the 89% mark on my Kindle. It's an A-minus.

Spring, renewal, new starts, change, and stuff like that (personal, not a review)

Today is Easter in my culture. Sweetie-pies in bunny suits looked for hidden eggs in the rain and fog yesterday, howling like the little terrorists they are as their mamas tried to put rain gear over the bunny stuff. Today there will be sunshine (I plan to go stare at it until my eyeballs fry, since I've durn near forgotten what it looks like) and temperatures that will make those little pastel coats functional as well as decorative.

Tulips are starting to come up along the south side of houses, poking up through the snow. I heard children the other night playing on a playground before suppertime, jump rope rhymes and the crack of a bat on a softball. It's been so cold it may be a few weeks before we see the first blinding green of leaves on trees, but we know it's coming. Birds are taking applications for mates. Light is returning to the world.

As some of you know, we've been planning to downsize from The Money Pit to senior housing. Anytime now. Really. When we have time. I had a lot of time to think while I was sick - if you can call what you do on hydrocodone thinking, dang, I'm still fuzzy-headed - and determined that I want a divorce … from this house. Mr. Bat has finally agreed (I think having to hire out the grass mowing was the last straw for him) and so we will be. Sooner than we thought, I guess. Maybe before summer.

We have two options: rent a decent senior apartment in a nice church-affiliated complex or buy a small regular condo in the suburbs. The apartment doesn't require an endowment, but the rent there is twice the cost of the condo. The apartment is very close to where I work (3 minute commute, 20 minute walk) so I could go home for lunch every day if I wanted to. The condo would require taking the bus or doing some kind of car-pooling thing, a significantly longer commute, but paid for by my employer. The apartment has shared laundry (one w/d for 12 apts), in the condo we would have our own laundry. The apartment has lots of fun things to do every day and a real sense of community. In the condo, we'd be on our own. The apartment offers transportation to grocery stores and pharmacies. We'd be on our own at the condo. The condo has windows facing three directions. The apartment has only one direction of view. No stairs at the apartment, one set of stairs at the condo. Waiting list for a garage at the apartment, big attached garage at the condo (no small matter in this state where it can snow 6 months out of the year).

Clearly my decision tree needs to be pruned a bit because it is not helping us make a decision.

So we've got painters coming in to freshen things up and a couple of plaster people to fix the walls once I get my bookshelves taken down. Mr. Bat says WTH, move all the books and sort later. So tempting. We're going to rent a dumpster and start throwing things out of the window into it if they can't be donated or recycled in some way. Nephew has promised to haul many items to the Free Store here (local charity). Permission to throw away forks whose tines are bent, 50 year old thread, books with pages falling out or missing, photographs of people I don't recognize, clothes that fit me once for 10 minutes and never will again, fabric now rotting. No time to ebay, just throw, donate, give, and get out. Some things will go into storage until we're settled.

I tell you straight, it's pretty scary but there's an excitement to it that's very much like the week before I went to college for the first time. A real sense of doors closing and doors opening. Life as we knew it changing into we're not certain what, but we're hopeful. We have faith and hope, and joy with that. A sense of promises made, and kept. 

Spring, renewal, new starts, change.

Strong Enough to Love, by Victoria Dahl (short novella, contemporary)

It's hard to review a novella without giving everything away, especially such a short novella, about 50 pages. This was a freebie and if I'd looked to see who wrote it, I wouldn't have downloaded it, because I've been less than enchanted by Ms. Dahl's work in the past. This is a story about second chances, and I do like second chance stories.

Brian owned a photography studio in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was separated from his wife of twenty years for the third or fourth time, and this time it had been several years since the split. She lives out East. Eve was a bit of a protégé for Brian, rediscovering photography skills she hadn't used since college days. Over time, they became close in their work, very close personally, good friends but each feeling more, but, both honorable people, they would not even name their love to themselves in private, let alone act on it. Brian was a faithful married man, and Eve respected that boundary.

Two years prior to the start of the story, Brian's wife decided that she wanted one more chance to try to make the marriage work, this time with counseling. Brian, faithful husband, returned to the coast to go though counseling with her and try to make it work. After 20 years, he felt it owed it to his wife and to himself, to the vows they took and meant. He sold the studio in Jackson to Eve and left. He left her a letter explaining his feelings for her. 

He left Eve in tiny little bleeding pieces on the floor. She grieved, and grieved some more, and knitted herself back together to where she was more angry with him than anything else. She's started dating a bit, but mostly looks forward to being old enough to be considered permanently single. While she acknowledges that Brian did the right thing, and she did the right thing, she sometimes wishes that they hadn't and she feels less-than in that, despite his supposed love for her, he was able to walk away from her to be with his wife. She knows in her head that this is an admirable thing, but it tears her heart up.

One day, without warning, there is Brian standing by the shop window. He and his wife couldn't work it out, and they are divorced. Counseling has allowed them to be friends, but they can't be married. He has come back to Eve.

Well, isn't that just nice of him? Isn't that just lovely, that he thinks she'll still be there, holding the old torch, sitting on the shelf, wrapped in tissue and lavender, ready to welcome him back into her life. Oh, buddy, do you ever have another think coming. And there's the story. I'm not telling you any more about how it resolves or even if it resolves. If you can't figure it out from the title, you haven't been reading this genre very long.  

Kindle formatting fine. I think the grammar was fine, nothing off that I noticed anyway. There are a couple of scorching hot sex scenes, plain language, no clouds or rainbows but a fair amount of panting and growling. If you like explicit sex scenes, these are probably about as good as you're going to get.

I found the book satisfying. There weren't any real info-dumps that are so common in novellas. We get to meet Eve first and get to know her a little bit before the manure gets into the Mixmaster. If you like a good grovel, my goodness, you're going to love this book. Grovel, grovel, grovel, but I didn't find it a humiliating grovel, just an honest one. It was nice to see some characters who are over 25 for a change.

If you've got a marital infidelity trigger, be aware that these two do not act on their feelings while Brian is married, or even acknowledge them. That made it possible for me to read it.

I think if you've ever loved someone totally, and then been hurt by them so completely that you've had to rebuild your life brick by brick by brick, there are lines and paragraphs in this book that will jump out at you and you'll say, yes, this is how it is. This is how it is when you're just not good enough and he leaves and you can't breathe, you forget how to breathe, and you want to howl at the moon, you make sounds that aren't even human as you grieve. And this is the fantasy: he comes back and you get to say all the things you wanted to say, and he stands there and takes it. If you've survived this kind of relationship, you'll probably want to read this novella.

Hemingway said that life breaks all of us, and some of us are strong at the broken places. That's true, but some of us stay broken and bleeding. Eve's pain and anger are palpable. Her desire to hurt him, and to avoid being hurt again herself, very natural and very well-stated. Does she understand how refusing to forgive him hurts her? I think so. Is she proud of her emotions? No, but she owns them.

It’s a B. If you come to the book with certain kinds of life experiences, it could be a very emotional read. I will not be so dismissive of the author's work in the future. 

Lady Be Bad (Merry Widows), by Candace Hern

This is one of the books I read when I was ill, and I don't actually recall reading it. I have enough notes to do a short review. If I'm capable of writing a short review.

I've read one or two others in this series that has a group of upper class to noble widows going about doing good and in their spare time, taking lovers. Or that's the intent. It seems to me that they remarry, even as they swore they would not. Honest to goodness, in those days, with everything a woman gave up to marry, I'd be tempted to stay a widow, but that wouldn't make a good story, would it?

In this book, one I rather looked forward to, we have the bishop's incredibly repressed and straight-laced widow, Grace. She is so pure, and so publicly pure, that she becomes the subject - although not the object - of a wager. John (viscount, I think), bit of a rake, wagers his precious and remarkable racing horse against another man's equally magnificent horse that he can seduce the pure and perfect Grace by the end of the season.

And he sets out to do so. Rather the way one boils a frog, by putting it in cold water and gradually increasing the heat, so slowly that the frog does not perceive it. [With my background in biology, I have to tell you that that story isn't true: when the temperature starts to bother the frog, which happens at a fairly standard temperature, the frog will make decided attempts to escape.] [As an illustration, however, it's one you hear all the time and applies to a number of situations that involve a gradual erosion in conditions.] [See, for example, our Bill of Rights.] [Where was I?]

He takes a very small liberty with her, and then another, and then another. Poor Grace, who received a humiliating lecture from her more-sorrowful-than-angered, sincere but excessively pious husband during their honeymoon on the perils of woman having the slightest interest in sex, is overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, shame, and unfulfilled longing.

John, meanwhile, who is not a bad man, just careless in some ways and unthinking, is drawn to Grace's essential, bone-deep goodness and compassion. He sees that she doesn't simply hold herself out as good, she is a good person. Well, you know what's going to happen, don't you? And you do. But you don't. There's a little plot point at the end that shows Grace's power and we see that these two will be admirable partners.

There were some niggles. Man, she falls like ripe fruit, which kind of surprised me. I didn't make a note of grammar or Kindle problems, so probably fine. Moderately explicit sex and of course Grace takes to it like a natural. I enjoyed seeing the sisterhood of women in the book, the support each gave the others. I liked seeing that John was getting sick of his rakish life and was ready to change, which made his seeing the light easier for me to swallow.

A couple of times I had to blink and just carry on and not think about a particular plot point too much. The worst of these times was right at the beginning, and the book almost became a wallbanger. No woman of any character, let alone this bishop's wife, would have allowed a situation to unfold such that she was left alone with a rake for an extended time. It was jarring. There were some other points that bothered me as well.

All in all, it's a perfectly decent, unremarkable, pleasant way to spend some time if you're not feeling too picky and you want a story that features two nice people finding each other and making it work. It's a C-minus, almost everything is a C-minus these days, and I wish I had something fabulous to tell you about, but I don't. 

Danger in Cat World, by Nina Post (fantasy, mystery, romance elements)

Source: I received a free ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my time and honest opinion. When I could not get the .pdf to work, even after conversion (my lack of expertise, no doubt), they very kindly sent me a Kindle-compatible book to read. Curiosity Quills Press, folks, you heard it here: they care about their readers. 

I like cats. If I had the money, I'd probably be a crazy cat lady. So the idea of a book in which the protag suddenly enters a world in which more and more cats appear was appealing to me. Plus, a mystery, and I'm always looking for a good mystery/procedural.

Shawn Danger (yeah, I know, and so does he) is a murder detective in a small urban area. He's young, very good at his job, but socially isolated, having a dislike/hate relationship with his family, who do not understand him or appreciate his rare talents. He can't relate to the other detectives who dream about retirement. But he has his cat, Comet, with whom he has a good relationship, and he has the trampoline in his living room that helps him think - and cope. His work is about all there is to his life.

Shawn reminds me of Eve Dallas in his social isolation, his expertise, and his feeling of being the one who stands for the dead. He also has this way of standing in silence at the crime scene and intuiting at least some of what happened.

Shawn is busily avoiding the family celebration of his abusive father's birthday when he gets the call for his next case. A rich and beautiful, but isolated to the point of hermitage, middle-aged woman has died by violence in her own secured home. She has a small and um, unique staff (one staff member is in charge of weighing the anvil collection on a regular basis, another makes note of coincidences), and one of them must be the killer (I liked the way Shawn thinks of the murderer as the killer, and not as the perp. Let's call things what they are.) Shawn begins a fairly standard murder investigation - well, his standard, which includes going through the garbage and the dirty laundry, and the aforementioned meditation at the scene - and then things start to get weird.

He comes home to find that he now has 11 more cats in his home. (Now, you have to love a guy whose first thought, when he sees he has gone overnight inexplicably from 1 cat to 11, is "I have to get more cat food.") There's an earthquake, and odd celestial things start to happen. There's a decidedly odd television that shows him an alternate world that includes him - and the murder victim. He's seeing things on that TV that may or may not be relevant to his investigation, but either way, what the heck?

If you like cats, mysteries, and fantasy, this is going to be right down your alley. I'm not a big fan of SF/F but even for me, the fantasy aspect of the book was interesting at times, and certainly a big change from most procedurals. There's a small romance aspect to the book as well, with a smart and witty woman he's attracted to.

Kindle formatting fine, grammar fine, I think. I don't have any notes about incorrect grammar at any rate. (I read this when I was sick, and actually quite a bit of it was read to me, so I'm vague on some details.) There's a little violence and a little bit of animal abuse, the violence having to do with the murder, a 4 on the ick scale and later a hostage-taking, and the abuse mentioned in passing, maybe a 1. There's quite a bit of humor in the book, or parts I recognized as potentially humorous for people with a different sense of humor than mine; humor is so subjective, isn't it. There were a couple of holes in the plot or the procedure, but nothing that took me too far out of the story.

I really liked Shawn a lot. Again, he's a less damaged Eve Dallas in a lot of ways and I got a charge out of him and his attitude. I enjoyed his love interest, who seems to be a good fit for him. I liked Comet. I even liked the additional cats that cropped up all over at home, must have been Maine Coons from the sounds of them, loveable lugs [friends of ours had one they called "The Rug" because he would simply drop wherever and sleep and you couldn't move him, just had to step over him, inconvenient when he decided to sleep in the bathtub or on top of the computer keyboard].

I'm not into fantasy at all, urban or otherwise, so parts of the book just didn't click for me, but what I enjoyed, I enjoyed thoroughly. If I'd realized how much fantasy the book is, I probably wouldn't have requested it, but I would have missed out on a good story. If you like cats, murder mystery, and fantasy, this could very well be a B book for you. For me it was a C, fine for what it is, nothing I'd read again, but well worth my time and attention to have read it once. And once again, how about that service from the publisher?

Link to publisher's website: http://curiosityquills.com/published-authors/nina-post/danger-in-cat-world/

Hello again. Thank you!

Hi. Crawling out of my cave, blinking a bit in the sunlight, realizing I've just lost the best part of two months of my life, which is a very odd feeling. I have the stamina of a week-old kitten. First time in my life that I've felt old. Mr. Bat remains healthy, thank God.

Nephew changed the commenting thingie here so that you have to sign in some way in order to leave a comment. I'm sorry about that because there are a couple of valued commenters here who prefer to be anonymous, but the spam was getting too much for him to want to deal with, Blogger was letting some of it through, and I was concerned that someone might click on one of those links. Several of them looked legit if you only looked at them quickly and I was nervous for you. So - he changed the setting and I have had no further spam in the comments.

I'm hoping as the spambots find the door closed, my URL will fall off their lists and I can go back to totally open comments. I really, really don't want to require Captcha again. [I was on my eye doctor's new website awhile back and was quite surprised to note that they have Captcha. Of all the things to put on a website for people with low vision. It didn't have the audible option, either. Bizarre.]

I've done quite a bit of reading, but cranking out reviews is something else again. I've read some decent time-passers and a couple of real skunks and will review them soon.

I just wanted to thank you for the good wishes and for hanging in there with me. Thank you.

Darius (Lonely Lords #1), by Grace Burrowes

 Source: a review copy was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my time and honest opinion. This book will be released on April 2, 2013.

Here's the GoodReads blurb:

Desperate, penniless, and shunned by his wealthy father, Darius Lindsey begins offering himself secretly to jaded society ladies. He hangs onto his last shreds of honor, but he's losing ground financially each month.

That is until the aging Lord William Longstreet makes Darius an offer he can't refuse: get the Lord's pretty young wife-of-convenience, Lady Vivian, pregnant discreetly, and he will earn enough money to never want again. But problems lie ahead when the stunning Vivian captures his heart, and his clients refuse to let him go. Can Darius untangle himself without scandal and offer himself to Vivian heart and soul?

It is hard for me to write this review. Here's some history. I hadn't been reading romance novels very long when Ms. Burrows published The Heir. I enjoyed the book very much. There was just something about the way she wrote, her voice, that made everything right in the book, although I wasn't blind to its multiple problems (lemonade, anyone?). I enjoyed reading about people surprised by love. It caused me to become more interested in romance as a genre. Then she published the next book in the series, The Soldier, and it hit something elemental deep in me, despite its multiple obvious flaws. I could not get the story and the male protag out of my mind. However, The Virtuoso, the third book, left me completely cold and baffled: where was the story-telling I enjoyed? Had the author completely forgotten several vitally important points about the character from previous novels? And then I read several more books, and they were worse, and honestly, I've skipped the last couple. I did read a novella awhile back that I enjoyed adequately, primarily because it filled in some backstory on Heir. (Backstory deficit is a consistent problem with this author.) I refused to spend more money on this author's work.

So when I saw Darius listed at NetGalley, I thought, okay, fine, let's take my budget out of the equation and see what we get.

I've read this plot before - old/ill husband arranges for young man to impregnate his wife so title can go on and/or because she wants a baby - and it's not a favorite. I don't like marital infidelity stories, I don't like to see it glorified or romanticized. Yes, I know it was and still is part of life, and in this case not only had the husband's full approval, but he was the one who arranged it. Still I dislike seeing infidelity made laudable or somehow romantic and justified by "want." I understood the rationale for it in this book and I was hoping that the author's way of telling a story, her unique voice, would once again prevail and I'd have a good story to read.

I had a tough time getting into the book. I read the first 10% or so several times, trying to find the hook that would bring me into the story and cause me to care about the characters, or even one character. Finally I gave up and slogged on; there are books I love that did not engage me until the 30% mark or more, so it was worth going on. Plus, I gave my word that I would read the book, and that is non-negotiable.

It's not terrible. The characters are not terrible, although there's not much to them. Darius wants to be an honorable man, is protective of those he loves, bit of a beta male, essentially a male prostitute except he won't do anything that might lead to pregnancy. Vivian is the respected but 40-50 years younger wife of a good man who married her to save her from a bad situation. He wants Darius to get Vivian pregnant because his two sons from his previous marriage died and when he dies the title will go back to the crown, plus everything is entailed and Vivian will be a charity case with an evil relative just waiting to pounce. In exchange for stud duty, Darius gets enough money that he won't have to be a whore anymore, and with his investments, he can fix up his property and such. They have 30 days to get her to conceive.

Darius and Vivian are uncomfortable initially (doesn't help, or perhaps it does, that she's having her period) but they get the job done, and of course by the end of the month they're in love. There's some blackmaily stuff that goes on and characters from previous books help out. Lots of summarized telling there. Heck, someone fairly important to Darius dies in this book and we get one line, an off-hand reference, that tells us so. There are predictable plot turns. I predicted nearly every plot point. It wasn't awful, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever read, it just wasn't very good.

If you're trying to read these books chronologically, almost impossible unless you're new to this author, this takes place just before and during Valentine's book, The Virtuoso.

Author admits this was in her slush pile and they dragged it out and prettied it up and released it. I do not hear her voice in this book. I did not care about the characters. There wasn't one time that I laughed, or teared up, or started talking to the characters to give them advice. It's probably an okay book, but I had hoped for something better. It wasn't bad enough to DNF, but it wasn't good enough to make me want to continue. The dialog is a little less 21st century than in her other books, but the attitudes are still modern for the most part.

Author should look up loath/loathe. There were a couple of others. It's not marked as an ARC, so I hope the Kindle formatting on the actual release will be okay. ETA 3/21/13: The publisher, Sourcebooks, informs me that all their NetGalley books are ARCs and these things are corrected in the published book. Very good. 

It's a D-plus. Old plot, nothing new here, not even the author's previously interesting and inviting voice. Phooey. I'll cherish the two books I enjoyed, even if I never read them again, but the last, what, six? eight? (she's churning 'em out like pizza on a Saturday night) outweigh them on the stuff to avoid scale. If you're on the fence about this, get it from the library first and then buy if you love it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be way outside the fold on this one, which is fine, but I'm done. I wish the author continued success, just for the way she made me feel with her first two books, but I'm done now. 

Unfinished Business, by Nora Roberts (reissue, 1980s?)

I don't recall reading this book, but I know I read it last week, and there are enough notes to produce a drive-through review at least. It's very strange, I went through my pocket journal yesterday, trying to catch up on what I'd missed, and found that the last thing I really remember doing was toward the end of January. Spooky. I've lost over a month. BTW, yes, I had a flu shot - I get them every year - and I've had what is commonly called the pneumonia shot.

In any event, this is a NR romance from long ago, long enough ago that the medical in it made no sense whatsoever now, although it was fine back in the early 1980s, which is when I'm guessing this was written. Unless you work in the medical field, you probably won't care. The ulcer is just a plot device.

Vanessa is a gifted pianist, concert-level, record-level, international star level. She and her obsessed father left their little town - and her mother - [ETA: and her boyfriend, Brady] behind years ago in his near-maniacal quest for her fame. Fame she has achieved, at costs, but now he is dead and she has come home to meet her mother, a woman she does not think well of, particularly, and to figure out what's next. As Robert Frost said, home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Vanessa does not look well and does not feel well. If she eats, she hurts and that tube of antacid mints doesn't help.

Her mother, who never stopped loving her, notices, as does Brady, who is now the little town's doctor. They nurture Vanessa, even though initially she rejects all attempts, and this wounded child finally faces up to her past, what her father did, and makes peace with it all. One of the things I liked is that not only does Vanessa face her past and present, she sees how she failed to make her past better by not asserting herself, by taking the easier road, and she forgives herself for that. That's pretty deep for a Silhouette oldie.

It's your basic Nora Roberts plot with your basic NR characters. Nothing unusual. Nothing to keep you up at night after you've finished it. Basic solid craftsmanship, a Ford Taurus in a world of cars trying to be Lamborghinis. Perfectly good story, as long as you don't read too many of them in a year, or make the mistake of reading two of them back to back.

Kindle formatting fine. Grammar fine. This was before her "long eyes" tick, so I didn't have to tense up waiting for it. Vanessa has the world's fastest healing stomach ulcer: one dose of Tagamet and she's up and running. I have to say, although NR writes pretty much the same characters over and over, that Vanessa was one of the brattier of her characters. Her father isolated and psychologically controlled her to the point that at 28 she's still really 16 (oh, heaven, who would be 16 any longer than they have to be?) and she acts like it. She pouts, she mouths off, she holds grudges, she flounces. The presto-chango to Grownup Vanessa was just a little too abrupt and complete for me.

It was fine, it was okay, it was not a waste of my $3.50 or a couple of hours of my time. It kept me company and was never annoying enough to make me want to quit reading. It's a C/C-minus. Probably not one of her better works. Still, the multiple HEA (there is a mature-years love story also) make it a happy book. Sometimes a person just wants a happy book.

ETA: Sorry this review is so rough. Clearly brain is not quite up to this just yet.