Christmas Review: Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish by Grace Burrowes

Book Description

A luminous holiday tale of romance, passion, and dreams come true from rising star Grace Burrowes, whose award-winning Regency romances are capturing hearts worldwide.

All She Wants is Peace and Anonymity...

Lady Sophie Windham has maneuvered a few days to herself at the ducal mansion in London before she must join her family for Christmas in Kent. Suddenly trapped by a London snowstorm, she finds herself with an abandoned baby and only the assistance of a kind, handsome stranger standing between her and complete disaster.

But Sophie's Holiday is About to Heat Up...

With his estate in ruins, Vim Charpentier sees little to feel festive about this Christmas. His growing attraction for Sophie Windham is the only thing that warms his spirits-but when Sophie's brothers whisk her away, Vim's most painful holiday memories are reawakened.

It seems Sophie's been keeping secrets, and now it will take much more than a mistletoe kiss to make her deepest wishes come true...
(Description from Goodreads)

Genre: Romance, Historical Romance

Series: Windham #4, Duke's Daughters #1
Does the series need to be read in order? No

Review

Liked
• Our hero and heroine meet over an abandoned infant, and even though I'm not a huge kid person, I found the whole setup to be adorable and heartwarming without tipping over into saccharine toothache territory.
• Sophie and Vim are great characters though oddly enough I felt that the hero was more fleshed out than the heroine in this novel. That's unusual for a romance novel, but I liked it.
• I enjoyed the kind-hearted meddling of Sophie and Vim's families. It sometimes verged on annoying but for the most part, it was fun.
• This book wasn't as heavy on the Christmas as The First Love Cookie Club, but I don't think it could be put at another time of year either. The holiday was well-integrated in the plot.

Liked Less
• I was a little confused toward the middle of the book because I didn't understand why Sophie was behaving the way she was. Her behavior is partially explained later by one of her brothers, but that didn't provide a complete resolution to my bewilderment. It's frustrating to not have a better view of what's going on inside the heroine's head. I would have liked to have known more about her and especially her motivations.
• Sometimes it was hard to keep track of who was who among Sophie's brothers. The three who were traveling together were referred to by both name and title so it took a few scenes for me to sort everyone out.
• The trauma that kept Vim from visiting his family home was rather silly. His response was a complete overreaction.

TL; DR

A heartwarming Christmas read for historical romance fans though it could have used a little more of the heroine's point of view.

Rating

Knight of Swords
A decent read. I will likely read other books in this series.

Disclosure: I purchased this book.

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Christmas Review: The First Love Cookie Club by Lori Wilde

Book Description

"On Christmas Eve, if you sleep with kismet cookies under your pillow and dream of your one true love, he will be your destiny."

The townsfolk of Twilight, Texas, believe the legend, but not Sarah Collier--not since she was a pudgy teenager, running down the church aisle on Christmas Day in a jingle bell sweater and reindeer antlers, trying to stop Travis Walker from marrying someone else. She may be grown-up, slimmed-down, bestselling children's book author "Sadie Cool"now, but Sarah will never forget that day. And she'll never fall foolishly in love again

But when a letter from a sick fan brings Sarah back to Twilight, she's shocked to discover that Travis is the little girl's father--unattached and hotter than ever. His smile still makes her melt, but Sarah knows that ship has sailed. Travis, however, might have different ideas.
(Description from Goodreads)

Genre: Romance, Contemporary Romance

Series: Twilight, Texas #3
Does the series need to be read in order? No

Review

Liked
• The kismet cookie tradition is really cute. I wish the author had included a recipe in the book. I'd like to dream of my true love, but then again, I don't think I could deal with crumbs in my bed. Would a baggie interfere with the magic?
• Do not read this book if you are not in or do not want to be in the holiday spirit. It's a giant Christmas cheeseball. I was in a holiday mood so I ate it up.
• I really loved how Travis is such a devoted dad even to the point of almost screwing things up with Sarah.
• Sarah and Travis had good chemistry and their backstory was great. I love how they were both knit up in the community even though Sarah didn't really want to be.
• Twilight, TX (the setting) is as much a character as the people are. I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the town, her people, and her history. The sense of place was very well-crafted.

Liked Less
• I didn't buy Sarah's relationship with Jazzy because we didn't get to see enough of their interactions. I can understand feeling protective of a seriously sick child, but the depth of love she is said to feel is out of proportion to the circumstances that we're shown.
• The Raylene plotline was clumsily handled. Although the book is all in third person, there was still a notable switch in tone for the parts focusing on Raylene. Although that subplot later re-integrates into the main Sarah/Travis storyline, the shifts are jolting. I think that particular plotline could have been integrated in a way that didn't pull the reader out of the story.
• The sex scenes were kind of weird to me. They came across as somewhat awkward.

I managed to find the kismet cookie recipe!

TL; DR

A fun, delicious Christmas cheese-fest; only to be read if you're in the holiday spirit.

Rating

Knight of Swords
An average read. I may or may not read other books in the series.

Disclosure: I purchased this book.

Amazon | B & N

Review: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Book Description

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.
(Description from Goodreads)

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia

Series: N/A

Quick Synopsis

In a post-fossil-fuel world where genetic modification has run rampant, many different people fight to choose the direction of Thailand's future or just to survive the machinations of others.

Review

Liked
• It's very refreshing to have a book set in a non-Western country with plenty of non-Western characters.
• The world-building was well done. Windup Girl shows a future plagued (often literally) with the bad effects of gene manipulation and rampant corporations. This vision of the future is compelling because it's believable.
• I loved the exploration of the varied outcomes of genetic manipulation. The author manages to cover the issue fairly even-handedly, at least in regard to mammals (New People/Windups, Cheshires). It's incredibly imaginative.
• The tale reads a lot like a Neal Stephenson book with each chapter being told from a different character's perspective. Mr. Bacigalupi packs a lot of information about the characters into the relatively small spaces devoted to them, and as a result, the players seem real.

Liked Less
• Though I felt that the coverage of mammal gene manipulation was covered in a balanced way, I thought that the author tipped into preachiness when discussing the genetic modification of food crops.
• I felt like Gibson was kind of just thrown in there. I couldn't really get a feel for him at all, and I think he could have been cut out entirely without changing the plot.
• Though the style is similar to Neal Stephenson, it's missing the punch. With Stephenson, I get moments of sheer "OMGWTFBBQ that just happened!" Bacigalupi delivers more of a "They really did that?!"

Rating

Knight of Swords
An average read. The good and bad points balance each other out.

Disclosure: I purchased this book.

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