Reading Recap: Week of Oct. 23rd

Wow, this week was another slow one for reading. I've been busy, very busy, and my reading has suffered because of it. *sigh*.

This week, I had a much needed girl's day with my best friend. We decided to do baking all day (literally). We ended up making Molten Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting and Homemade Sugar Cookies (Halloween shapes, of course!) with homemade icing. Yum! Of course, we had much more fun eating the ingredients along the way than the final products (though they were very good!). I'm telling you, if you get the chance to do this with your best friend(s), do it! No matter your age! We felt like little girls again while decorating and mixing, but it was so worth it. Grown women, playing in the kitchen and making enough sweets to keep a group of children happy for days--yep, that's what I call a fun day! :D

Oh, and all the dishes? That part wasn't so much fun....however, we did such a good job cleaning up as we went (by any means necessary....*cough cough*) that most of the bowls that would have been covered in sticky batters and frosting were instead nice and clean when they went into the dish water. :D What do mean, did we lick the bowls? Of course not, we're adults, not children..... *Innocent look*. Moving on... ;-)

Here's what I read:

I had a lot of hope for A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant. However, I'm sorry to say that it fell short for me--very short. I'll go into more detail when my review is posted (closer to it's release date in December), but for now I will say that I felt as if we were not seeing the hero and heroine in front of us, but rather reading about them from an outside source. And not in a good, interesting way. I don't feel like I ever knew either one, and I could barely even describe to you how they looked physically little loan what they acted like as a character. With such rough character sketches, it's hard to base the story on them and have it come out right, and I think that if only they had been better developed, and described in a different way, the story would have turned out slightly better as well. 2.5 Stars, review to come!

Next up was another book that I had in my pile thanks to one relative or another buying it for me. Unfortunately, it was another miss, and it too will no doubt find its way to the used bookstore soon. Under the Radar by Fern Michaels simply had nothing to it; the storyline wasn't anything special, the characters were not well defined and were very annoying, and the overall pace left me bored more often than not. I finished it, but just barely; it was only accomplished by turning out "auto-mode" and just reading the words so that right after I finished a page, I couldn't have really told you what I read but rather that I had indeed "read" it. For some people, Michaels' books are some of their favorites; for me, I doubt I'll be picking another one up as this is my second attempt with this author (the other one was only slightly better than this one). 1 Star.

Somewhere My Lass by Beth Trissel was quick read, one that I started and finished in less than a day. It was enjoyable, but didn't quiet reach top novel status for me. I will, however, probably look for future books by her. 3 Stars---read my review HERE!






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What did you read this past week? Or, have you read any of the books I just listed above--if so, what were you thoughts on them? Let us know!



Enjoy!







Until Next Time,