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250 book challenge 2022-2023

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Book Number: 18

Number of Pages: 294

Book Title: Sunday at the Sunflower Inn

Author:  Jodi Thomas

Summary: Three generations of stoic, grumpy, men find each other again, reunited over the rocky land they’re determined to protect. A group of seniors go wild, their antics inspired by two friends who never married but have decided to get engaged in their twilight years. A runaway girl hides out in the haunted Honey Creek Café as she searches for her lost love. A career soldier who thrives on seeing the world is inexplicably drawn to a café owner with deep roots who causes him to rethink his life.

Review: Although this is the fourth book in the Honey Creek series, it never felt like it. Each story line was complete within the book. It was an easy read, told in short chapters from different characters' viewpoints. The characters were interesting, often flawed. My only complaint is that everything just seemed to end up so neatly, but who can argue with happy endings?

Edited by purplehaze

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2 hours ago, purplehaze said:

Book Number: 18

Number of Pages: 294

Book Title: Sunday at the Sunflower Inn

Author:  Jodi Thomas

Summary: Three generations of stoic, grumpy, men find each other again, reunited over the rocky land they’re determined to protect. A group of seniors go wild, their antics inspired by two friends who never married but have decided to get engaged in their twilight years. A runaway girl hides out in the haunted Honey Creek Café as she searches for her lost love. A career soldier who thrives on seeing the world is inexplicably drawn to a café owner with deep roots who causes him to rethink his life.

Review: Although this is the fourth book in the Honey Creek series, it never felt like it. Each story line was complete within the book. It was an easy read, told in short chapters from different characters' viewpoints. The characters were interesting, often flawed. My only complaint is that everything just seemed to end up so neatly, but who can argue with happy endings?

pretty sure I said this before, but I adore Thomas' Whispering Mountain series!

 

Book Number: 77
Number Of Pages: 477
Book Title: The Dead Key
Author: D M Pulley
 

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20 minutes ago, galleri said:

Count me in late :P 

Welcome!

 

Book Number: 66

Number Of Pages: 409

Book Title: One Day in December

Author: Josie Silver

Summary: One day in December, Laurie locks eyes with a young man at a bus stop, and they both fall in love. The next time she sees Jack, he's now her best friend's boyfriend. What's a girl to do?

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Book Number: 11

Number Of Pages: 654

Book Title: Night Stalker

Author: Robert Bryndza

Summary: Another serial killer, and another novel for Detective Erika Foster. 

Review: I'll give this one a 4/5 because the kiss between Erika and Peterson never happened! I'm so mad! 

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Book Number: 30

Number Of Pages: 215

Book Title: The Beast Within

Author: Serena Valentino

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Book Number: 12

Number Of Pages: 624

Book Title: Dark Water

Author: Robert Bryndza

Summary: A little girl's skeletal remains are discovered at the bottom of a quarry, and Erika Foster has to dig through all sorts of family secrets to find her killer 26 years after her death. 

Review:  Another 4/5, since it's not bad. And that ending? Wow! 

Edited by AsymDoll13
Accidentally put the wrong title of the book.

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Book Number: 19

Number of Pages: 355

Book Title: The Lost and Found Bookshop

Author: Susan Wiggs

Summary: In the wake of a shocking tragedy, Natalie Harper inherits her mother’s charming but financially strapped bookshop in San Francisco. She also becomes caretaker for her ailing grandfather Andrew, her only living relative—not counting her scoundrel father.

But the gruff, deeply kind Andrew has begun displaying signs of decline. Natalie thinks it’s best to move him to an assisted living facility to ensure the care he needs. To pay for it, she plans to close the bookstore and sell the derelict but valuable building on historic Perdita Street, which is in need of constant fixing. There’s only one problem–Grandpa Andrew owns the building and refuses to sell. Natalie adores her grandfather; she’ll do whatever it takes to make his final years happy. Besides, she loves the store and its books provide welcome solace for her overwhelming grief.

After she moves into the small studio apartment above the shop, Natalie carries out her grandfather’s request and hires contractor Peach Gallagher to do the necessary and ongoing repairs. His young daughter, Dorothy, also becomes a regular at the store, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works.

To Natalie’s surprise, her sorrow begins to dissipate as her life becomes an unexpected journey of new connections, discoveries and revelations, from unearthing artifacts hidden in the bookshop’s walls, to discovering the truth about her family, her future, and her own heart.

Review: Although I did enjoy all the characters in the book, I think my favorite was Natalie's mother, Blythe, whose death had set off all of the events in the book. She never appeared in the book, but her spirit and wisdom infused it.

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Book Number: 31

Number Of Pages: 419

Book Title: The Innoncent 

Author: Harlan Coben

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Book Number: 5

Number Of Pages: 238

Book Title: Faeries, Elves & Goblins: The Old Stories

Author: Rosalind Kerven

Summary: A collection of stories about faeries from the U.K., some going back centuries. These are in the vein of mischievous and capricious beings, not the Disney depiction of fairies.

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Book Number: 80
Number Of Pages: 416
Book Title: Lightlark
Author: Alex Aster
 

 

I also read Shadow's Legacy so that once the new book comes out I will have completed the entire Iron Fey saga, bittersweet. This novella doesn't meet the page requirements for the challenge so it isn't listed.

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Book Number: 20
Number Of Pages: 344
Book Title: Truths I Never Told You
Author: Kelly Rimmer

Summary: The novel revolves around a family that is preparing for their aging father’s death. Beth is the youngest of her four adult siblings. She is struggling with adapting to her role as a new mother and feels the need to hide her struggles from her family. The siblings move their father to a care facility and during the process of clearing out his home, they discover long hidden letters from their deceased mother. Through these letters, they uncover long kept family secrets that leave many unanswered questions.

Review: The fact that I read this book in 2 days shows how engrossed I was in the story. Told in two timelines -- the late 1950s and the late 1990s -- it highlights how much had changed in that time. It is a very emotional book, dealing with postpartum depression in two different generations. It ends on a hopeful note of improvement in women's agency over their lives. Still, I can't help but think that recent Supreme Court decisions and legislative actions in many states are eroding that hope.

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Book Number: 32

Number Of Pages: 247

Book Title: Les Contes Interdits : Scrooge

Author: L.P. Sicard

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Book Number: 67

Number Of Pages: 295

Book Title: Out of My Mind

Author: Sharon M. Draper

Summary: Eleven-year-old Melody is trapped with an intelligent mind in a body that doesn't work.

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Book Number: 21
Number Of Pages: 406
Book Title: The Keepsake Sisters
Author: Lori Wilde

Summary: Anna Drury couldn't believe her eyes when she opened the front door of her home in Moonglow Cove, Texas, to see a woman who looked just like her, and in her hands the woman held a familiar-looking keepsake baby bracelet -- just like the one Anna has. Anna finds that she has a twin sister that she never knew about. Drama ensues.

Review: This could have been a good story, but it just never flowed. The author packed it with so many cliches, many of which had nothing to do with the main premise of the story, that it was really hard to care about what happened.

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Book Number: 6

Number Of Pages: 323

Book Title: Shenanigans

Editor: Mercedes Lackey

Summary: The newest annual Valdemar anthology features 19 stories set in the Valdemar universe with new and returning authors, including another new story from Mercedes Lackey herself.

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