Waiting on Wednesday......I Was Here by Gayle Forman

 
"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine.  It's a blog roundup that spotlights the upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My "can't-wait-to-read" selection is "I Was Here by Gayle Forman".  I loved Forman's "If I Stay", both the book and the movie.  

I was like......

The release date for "I Was Here" is January 27, 2105.  I think I'll be starting it on a Friday night so I can ugly cry all weekend.

What's your favorite hide in the house and cry book?

Top Ten Books I Read In 2014 (must be published in 2014)

Top Ten Books I Read in 2014.

 Another week, another top ten list where I can't get to ten.  I read a lot of great books, but most of them won't be published until 2015, but The Broke and the Bookish clearly stated the list should include books published in 2014. 

1.  The Rosie Effect.  I loved The Rosie Project, and I loved The Rosie Effect just as much.  Don is one of my favorite characters.

2.  The Opposite of Maybe.  I'm a sucker for an unexpected pregnancy, especially a 44 year old one.  This was a great chick lit book.

3.  The Good Sister.  This was one of my favorite fractured family books of 2014.  Such a powerful read.

4.  Big Little Lies.  A compulsive reading book.  I had to force myself to not flip to the end to see who died and who did it.

5.  What She Left Behind.  This was published on December 31, 2013, but I'm still counting it.

6.  A Good Year for Roses.  English chick lit, my favorite.

Bennington Girls Are (not) Easy (to read)

What They Say.....Bennington College, founded in 1932 as a suitable refuge for the

wayward daughters of good families, maintains its saucy reputation for attracting free spirits. There, acres outnumber students, the faculty is composed of fading hippie and clothing is largely optional. Or, as J. D. Salinger put it in Franny and Zooey: a Bennington-type “looked like she’d spent the whole train ride in the john, sculpting or painting or something, or as though she had a leotard on under her dress.”

Cassandra Puffin and Sylvie Furst met in high school but cement what they ardently believe will be everlasting friendship on Bennington’s idyllic Vermont campus. Graduation sees Sylvie moving to New York City, where, later on their twenties, Cassandra joins her. These early, delirious years are spent decorating their Fort Greene apartment with flea market gems, dating “artists”, and trying to figure out what they’re doing with their lives.

The girls are acutely and caustically observant of the unique rhythms of the city but tone deaf to their own imperfections, which eventually drives a wedge between them. Equal parts heartfelt and hilarious, Bennington Girls Are Easy is a novel about female friendships—how with one word from a confidante can lift you up or tear you down—and how difficult it is to balance someone else’s devastatingly funny lapses in judgment with your own professional and personal missteps.

What I Say....I am super proud of myself that I finished this book.  It took work.  

It wasn't the writing that was bad, the author definitely has talent, but the story just meandered.  There was no beginning, middle or end.  It just felt like one long description of two characters that I couldn't tell apart until about the middle of the book.

As for the main characters, Cassandra and Sylvie, I didn't care too much about either one.  For two girls who were at a very expensive liberal arts college, there was never any mention of family money or support, which seemed a little odd.

In the beginning, I thought the book was set in the 50's, so I was confused later when there were some recent pop culture references made.  It was so weird, I couldn't even tell what time period this story was supposed to be taking place in.
 
I wonder if the story would have been more meaningful to me if I had attended, or knew anyone who attended Bennington College.  Since I don't, I didn't get a lot of the references to Bennington girls being sluts (the author's word, not mine), or lesbian-ish, or having multiple broken engagements.

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.  I can honestly say bad books make me sad.

Sunday Post, Showcase Sunday and Stacked, December 14, 2014

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea, and Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.

All three are blog roundups giving you a chance to share what your weekly book haul!

This was the lightest week ever for me.  I was in Hawaii for the first time (paradise!), so I didn't get a whole lot of new books, and I didn't blog a lot but I did read a lot.

Am I the only one who is struggling with time management with Christmas approaching?  I feel resentful of the reading time I'm losing to running errands, shopping and baking.  Not a real problem, right?

Anyway, here's my one lone acquisition for the week.......

For Review

Skating at Somerset House by Nikki Moore....There’s nothing Holly Winterlake loves more than Christmas and skating, so working as an Ice Marshall at London's Somerset House is a dream come true.

Noel Summerford hates the festive season and is a disaster on the ice, so taking his godson to Somerset House is his idea of the nightmare before Christmas!

Things are bound to get interesting when these two collide…

With a forty foot Christmas tree, an assortment of well meaning friends and relatives, and a mad chocolate Labrador, will this festive season be one to remember … or forget?

What I Blogged

Winter Street by Elin Hildebrand

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos

 

 

Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand

Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand 

What They Say.....Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket's Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can't get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley's second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who's playing Santa at the inn's annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley's ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays. 

What I Say.....This was a fun, easy read to get you in the holiday spirit.  I've always loved Elin Hilderbrand, and I 've enjoyed all of her books. 

This book was full of interesting characters, although some of them got on my nerves. 

For example, Kevin taking $5,000 from his MOTHER to buy an engagement ring, when he had just been thinking about the 25k he has saved.  I doubt Isabelle would need a five thousand dollar ring in order to marry Kevin, considering she is pregnant and needs a green card.  Man up, buddy, buy your fiance a ring with your own money.

Kelley inviting his cheating wife to dinner with her new boyfriend, one day after finding them in a liplock in his house?  Not likely.

Ava just making the sudden decision to fall in love with Scott was a little weird, since the first part of the book kept pointing out how she knew he had feelings for her but she didn't reciprocate.  And after getting the proposal from Nathaniel that she's been waiting for, one makeout session with Scott made her no longer want to marry the man she had been chasing for years.

But I was still enjoying the book, until it just ended abruptly.  I am hoping that there will be a follow up book so I can see what happens to Bart and Kevin.  I would definitely read it.