Sunday, April 21, 2013

Book review: Swept Away by Mary Connealy


Swept Away (Trouble in Texas, #1)This book, in my opinion, was not the best Mary Connealy book. I found myself skimming at times. This may be because of the cover.

I don't really like the cover. The girl who is supposed to be Ruthy looks like she's TRYING to be sassy, and he . . . well, I don't really like the way he looks. Faces on covers really affect the way I look at the story. And these faces didn't help. Also, on the spine, his face is really creepy. My siblings and I joked about his "I have candy in my van" face, or so they called it.

The story, overall, was lovely. As they always are. I was hoping for something more, though. I'm not sure what. It's just that every one of her books are like this. If you've read one, you've read them all. I don't know what I was hoping for, but I didn't get it.

We have our tough heroine. Our charming hero. Great side characters. The whole thing.  But, in my opinion, it was lacking humor. All of her other books have lines that make me laugh out loud all throughout it. With this one, I don't recall laughing once.

I'm not saying it was bad, I'm just saying it's not as great as her other ones.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Book review: Firefly Island by Lisa Wingate

Firefly IslandA pretty good book. I liked the plot, though it was a bit cliched. I was bored by the endless amount of marriage advice. This book is . . . basically a fictionalized "How to get through the first few months of marriage" book. I'm fourteen. Not only do I have no interest in marriage or boys (shocker, I know), I also can't legally get married for four more years, so the tons of marriage advice fell flat with me.

So, taking a look at Mallory. She's a good character. Not one to jump out and stand apart from the other characters though. She's your regular woman who had a nice job and life and left it all behind for love and moved to a small town where everyone knows just about everyone.

Let's look at the love of her life, Daniel. He's a bit different. I don't really recall another character like him. At the beginning, he's pretty sweet and all. Towards the end, he's more tense and snappy, which doesn't make me like him very much.

And now Nick, Daniel's son, and Mallory's stepson. Nick is one of the only characters I liked. He was sweet and charming, for a three year old. Though the constant misspellings and words he couldn't pronounce were a bit much. I have an almost-three sister. She can speak almost as well as I can. There's really no need for all of the wrong pronouncing.

All of the side characters are pretty much the same. Woodsy and kinda redneck. Small town people. Basically, whatever you think of when you think of small town, that's them. They fit just about every stereotype that you can come up with.


Okay, I promise I won't spoil it, but I just have to say, the ending was disappointing. We didn't get many answers. Very few questions I had were answered. So if you are the kind of person who wants everything settled and no stone left unturned, you probably shouldn't read this book. There are a lot of possible ways this story could have gone, and it had so much potential on all of the ways, but it seems like the author took the easiest and quickest way.

Obviously, the ways she could have gone probably wouldn't have worked for Bethany House, but I'm just saying.