After a seemingly fatal car accident Lana Walters is transported to a parallel world for a second chance with her dead husband Frank. However, she is not prepared to find that her husband – and the world itself – are very different to her own.
In her other life Lana's upbringing prepared her for the challenge of being married to Frank, who had a terminal heart condition. In this new world everyone she knows has made different choices and are different people. In this world she is Alannah Walker, and her husband is Tristan. At first the transfer is a fairytale come true ... until reality intrudes.
Born Frank Walters, Tristan hides his past under a new name. His heart condition discovered and treated when he was a child, Tristan's life fell apart when he was 19 years old and made him the man he is today. In love with his wife, Alannah, but betrayed by her neediness Tristan recognizes she is a different person since the car accident but lessons of the past have taught him not to trust too easily.
Now Lana has a choice to make: is this a second chance for love, or a second chance for her to live the life that she never could before?
Publication Date: September 1, 2013
3.5 stars. The writing was solid and the story was good with plenty of emotion, but as good as it is, it's just not a story that will draw readers to it again and again. I don't think I've wasted my time by reading the story, but it's not one I'll keep thinking about. And it would have been nice for Johnny the rapist to have gotten his butt kicked or something. LOL
"You have to teach your heart and mind how to sing together…then you'll hear the sound of your soul."
Mia Kelly thinks she has it all figured out. She's an Ivy League graduate, a classically trained pianist, and the beloved daughter of a sensible mother and offbeat father. Yet Mia has been stalling since graduation, torn between putting her business degree to use and exploring music, her true love.
When her father unexpectedly dies, she decides to pick up the threads of his life while she figures out her own. Uprooting herself from Ann Arbor to New York City, Mia takes over her father's café, a treasured neighborhood institution that plays host to undiscovered musicians and artists. She's denied herself the thrilling and unpredictable life of a musician, but a chance encounter with Will, a sweet, gorgeous, and charming guitarist, offers her a glimpse of what could be. When Will becomes her friend and then her roommate, she does everything in her power to suppress her passions-for him, for music-but her father's legacy slowly opens her heart to the possibility of something more.
A "heartbreaking and romantic" (Aestas Book Blog) debut, Sweet Thing explores the intensity and complexities of first love and self-discovery.
Publication Date: August 20, 2013
Probably 4 stars. The story was beautiful and I absolutely loved Will, but Mia drove me a little crazy. She was all over with her feelings and back and forth and jerking Will around and I started to hate her towards the end of the book. I also thought Banker Bob was an unnecessary character that made the story drag on at times.
One kind deed can change your life forever...
Brynn Tomlin could never afford to follow her heart. But when she sees a stranger shivering in the snow outside of the college library, an inexplicable urge leads her to buy him a hot cup of coffee. It's just a small act of kindness, a few words of conversation. Brynn should be focusing on her finals, after all, not on the man who looked up at her gratefully with piercing blue eyes.
He could have been anyone - a janitor on break, a graduate student, a bum. But the man standing outside in the cold turns out to be Dr. Eliot Herceg, one of the most brilliant minds in mathematics and heir to a fortune. After years of reclusive isolation, he now finds his heart awakening to the kind girl whose name he does not know.
Brynn has spent her life trying to forget her desires, and Eliot's deep wounds have taken nearly a decade to heal. After so much hurt, will either of them be able to open their hearts again?
Publication Date: June 24, 2013
3.5 stars. The writing is good and the story is believable, but it wasn't easy developing an attachment to the characters and it would help if it was a little clearer when the author switches from one point of view to another. Often the view had switched without my realizing it and I had to go back and re-read things to get it all straight.
Thanks to the publishers for copies of these books for review!
Nice reviews! None of them sound like anything I'd want to pick up, though. And that's just from the synopsis. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jessica. WRITE ON!
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