The Perfect Hope by Nora Roberts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third and final conclusion to Inn Boonsboro ties things up rather nicely. Sexy, swaggering, tool belt toting, and oldest brother Ryder Montgomery is at odds with the lovely city girl and innkeeper Hope. Admittedly Hope runs his mother's inn like clockwork, smoothly and perfectly. When the inn's resident ghost and matchmaker, Lizzy, locks them in the penthouse together, the only thing to do pucker up and make Lizzy happy. Hope's best friends, Avery and Clare, are delighted to see the romance progress and want Hope to be included in the Montgomery family.

MacTavish's Restaurant and Tap House gets finished and another building begins demolition and rehab. The dialog is hilarious as usual, the way the Montgomery men interact with their children, as in Men night, is a hoot and learning what led to Lizzy's fiancee's death during the Civil War is heartbreaking. Great series to finish!

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A Winter Dream

A Winter Dream by Richard Paul Evans
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Richard Paul Evans is known for his inspiring messages set in a compact little format. His new novel parallels the well known bible story of Joseph's coat of many colors. The same Joseph that saves his brothers from certain death.

Talented, young Jacob Jacobson has 11 brothers and one sister - all who work for a very successful Denver marketing firm run by their father, Israel or Izzy to his friends. Jealous of their father's attention to Jacob, his brothers plot the day when Jacob can be ruined. When youngest brother Ben "borrows" money from the business, the plot is hatched and Jacob, in order to save Ben and the company's name, is forced to leave his job and hometown. Even his fiancee jilts him. As his world falls around his feet, Jacob tries to pick up the pieces in a new town and new agency, only to find himself on the disadvantage again...

A lovely modern twist....

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The Christmas Garland: A Novel

A Christmas Garland: A Novel by Anne Perry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another little Christmas gem by Anne Perry spun around the events set in the 1850s following the horrendous massacre of many during the siege of Cawnpore in India. The British military is depending on one young man to unravel a mystery, a thankless job, that can only point the way of restoring loyalty and the code of honor during the Christmastide. Lt. Victor Narraway is chosen to defend a medical orderly named John Tallis because Tallis is the only man unaccounted for his whereabouts during a bloody prisoner escape. With no way to prove his innocence Tallis is likely to hang - against all odds can Lt. Narraway somehow find a clue?

Perry is a writer of detail and horror - this book lacks neither. You'll feel Narraway's despair over his hopeless task as he learns the details of the escape and the earlier massacre of men, women, and children and you'll cheer him on as he decides not to give up on the condemned Tallis. Christmas is time of hope.

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Those We Love Most

Those We Love Most by Lee Woodruff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three normal but flawed generations of family, who are already close to splintering, are broken when one of the youngest is involved in a fatal accident. Can love and loyalty overcome even the deepest hurt?

Two favorite quotes:

"People always came out of the woodwork at a time like this, for good and bad. There was some need in human nature to insert yourself immediately, to take action, even if you knew the person only tangentially. The proximity to tragedy and sorrow caused an immediate evaluation of your own relative good fortune. The people who really understood, though, would hang back until the right moment, knowing that the real work began when all of the cars had left the driveway."

"Trust took such a long time to earn. And yet it could all come unmoored in an instant. She was smart enough to know at least that. People kept secrets. People built walls. It didn't mean they couldn't and didn't love with all their hearts. And so this was what she would have to make peace with: this was what she would have to hold close. Like the cross section of a tree, the bad period would be marked in interior rings, the years of drought, the blunt force trauma to the heart, all of it only visible after death. Maybe silence was a price we sometimes paid for loving so completely, the price we sometimes paid to protect those we loved most."

Lee Woodruff's main characters are well fleshed out and you will feel their families' gamut of emotions as heartbreaking events unfold.


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Dawn Comes Early

Dawn Comes Early by Margaret Brownley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Certainly if you can write a potboiler about ranching there should be no problem living the real deal - right? College-educated Bostonian Kate Tenney is about to find out that ranching in Arizona territory is not all romance and roses. Determined to be the heiress that toughened Eleanor Walker needs to inherit her ranch, Kate will outlast the other applicants - even if means signing the dotted line to never marry. No big deal, her past life experiences have taught her never to trust men - any men. Unfortunately for her and Mrs. Walker, blacksmith Luke Adams and local hombre, Cactus Joe might have a say in the matter.

I love Brownley's characters, especially faith filled ranch hand Ruckus and Luke's aunts - Bessie and Lula-Belle. These two ladies are a hoot and when Bessie decides it's time to make her husband's toes curl with passion - don't be surprised to find yourself laughing out loud!

Next book in the series The Brides of Last Chance Ranch: Waiting for Morning

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The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Julia is eleven, going on twelve and like every California girl in middle school, worries about puberty, boys, homework - but never about if the earth's rotation would slow to a crawl. Soon nights are longer, days shorter, the landscape - scorched, birds fall from the sky and humans begin to feel the loss of equilibrium. Julia's mother becomes a hoarder of emergency supplies and food and her father stays away from home for long periods of time. In the middle of all this fear and upheaval, Julia falls in love.

I agree with a few other reviews that suggest this book would be better billed for a young adult audience - even the cover, to me, screams YA. At some parts the writer gives it a dreamy quality, glossing over the scientific reasons of the slowing and focusing on family and peer relationships. Regardless, it was an interesting book, dystopian in nature - even at the end you're not sure if earth will continue with some kind of life.

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