Caddie Woodlawn (Last Friday's Bad Poetry)

Last Friday's prompt at Poets & Storytellers United was to write something using the following words: 

"fol-de-lol, frippery, tender, delight, singing, sweet, new" 

What came to mind was a book I enjoyed as a child. Meanwhile, the dVerse prompt asked for unusual takes on couplets. The most unusual take on couplets that came to mind would be the Nashery. So:

When the Woodlawns moved to their Wisconsin area

Some of them were ill, possibly with malaria.

Sister Clara stayed indoors and baby-sat the others,

While Caroline, or Caddie, played outdoors with her brothers.

Exercise helped Caddie recover faster

And learn things, while the settlement lacked a schoolmaster.

Pale, sickly Clara, so delicate and slender,

Made everyone, even Caddie and the boys, feel protective and tender,

But Caddie naturally didn't want to share Clara's plight.

Running and playing and even farm chores were her delight.

At heart both sisters were pretty and sweet,

Though Clara frowned righteously when Caddie didn't look neat.

Their settlement in Wisconsin was rough and new.

Menominee people still lived there, at least a few.

The place was still "Western" and wild and woolly.

When school was open, the big bully

Left Caddie and her brothers alone,

Picked a fight with the teacher, and so was shown

The error of his ways. Being tough, but no fool,

He fought a fire, later, and saved the school.

Caddie and the boys,

Having few toys,

Did their part in bringing

Pleasure with their singing;

They put on a sort of sideshow

Singing "Fol-de-rol-lol, de-rol-li-do."

When their pampered city cousin made a long trip

To visit them, they wanted to ship

Her right back to Boston. On her fancy frippery

They broke a raw egg, horrid, squishy, and slippery.

"Unladylike" was the word that came to Caddie's mother's mind,

But, thinking it over, Caddie realized it was unkind.

Half a dozen newer editions have been worn out since my town library acquired a dozen brand-new copies with the cover as shown. Some of the illustrators don't even remember that Caddie had red hair. 

A good Nashery should probably be snarkier and funnier than this one. Apologies.

Monday's Book Review: Second Chance with My Secret Crush

Title: Second Chance with My Secret Crush 

Author: Andrea Ocean

Date: 2023

Quote: "I really would like to rediscover my artistic side and find the courage to try again."

That's Amy-for-short-for-Amethyst who works at the cafe in Mermaid Shores, a small town on New England's coast. She paints. She tells herself not to hope for anything when her old school friend Liam,who struck it rich on Lombard Street, comes back to Mermaid Shores and buys the cafe...but we all know she'll be married to a man who can afford to keep an emerging artist as a wife, soon. 

This is a sweet, wholesome romance in which we read a few "I love you"s but don't have to watch any kissing. If the children want to read it,let them.  

Book Review: Bullets

Title: Bullets 

Author: Terry Toler 

Date: 2026

Publisher: Beholdings

Quote: "That was the problem. He was too good at surviving."

Peter is a decorated veteran, the toughest of the tough, and he's tired of being one when he swims out into rough sea with the intention of drowning. But along comes a woman walking her German Shepherd, and the dog dives into the big, cold waves to rescue Peter. The woman knows something is wrong because he's swimming in jeans, and invites him to her house for breakfast.

Maggie is a veteran's daughter, pretty tough too, in her own way, but she has an Insane Admirer who's starting to give her the creeps. She tells Peter the call she rejected was a wrong number. He knew it wasn't by looking at her. Now he has a reason to live again: He will protect Maggie. He teaches Maggie, who has never been interested before, how to shoot. He can't resist showing her that, for him, shooting is an art form.

Local laws seem to protect the Insane Admirer more than they do Peter, Maggie, or the lovable rescue dog Bullet. When Peter and Bullet finally see the man face to face, he runs madly away, smashes his face on the curb, then fakes bite marks and tells the police they attacked him. The police reclaim Bullet. Maggie blames Peter and doesn't want to talk to him. Peter has nothing left to live for, but doesn't feel suicidal this time--yet.

In literary fiction, a happy ending to a story like this one is supposed to be caused by something the protagonists do. In Christian fiction, their alternatives include praying and catching a lucky break. This sweet romance ends with a wedding.

Toler (since this is a romance, I should probably mention: he/him) has written a lot of other novels. This one seems to stand alone, but it's actually #6 in a series of romances featuring rich, successful, dominant men. Maggie says more about what she doesn't like than the usual heroine of female-authored romance, because Peter is realistically damaged and Maggie is realistically tough enough to tell him what puts her off. We can tell it's True Love, though, because Peter listens and learns...as does Maggie. By the end of the book it's possible to imagine that their quarrels will become less frequent and less painful, over time, rather than the usual pattern of quarrels getting worse as each person locks into ego defense mode and refuses to listen or learn. Bullets is genre fiction, but in a small and generic way Toler has pulled off something few authors have even tried.

Book Review: Seasoned Timber

Title: Seasoned Timber

Author: Dorothy Canfield (later Mrs. Fisher)

Date: 1939

Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Co.

ISBN: none

Length: 485 pages

Illustrations: color frontispiece by Paul Honoré

Quote: “Mr. Hulme...had self-indulgently picked up a magazine instead. It was a Manchester Guardian, a fortnight old, but newly arrived. What he saw in it was anything but inspiriting—an account of recent anti-Semitic brutalities under Hitler—but a familiar feeling of guilt over the passively accepted safety of his own life had made him ashamed not to go on reading.”

During the two school years Seasoned Timber spans, Timothy Hulme, principal of the Clifford Academy in Clifford, Vermont, does a number of things because he would be ashamed not to. Around his forty-fifth birthday, he falls in love with a younger woman. He gets over being ashamed of his eccentric aunt, who compulsively plays classical music to keep down panic, and confides in friends about what makes her so special. He recognizes his feeling for one of the older teachers as a kind of nonsexual love. He rescues a nephew from disgrace. He stands up to a frankly detestable member of the school board. He persuades the town of Clifford to vote against what seems to be their clear economic interest. He helps one of the students launch an idea that may be more profitable for the school. And he buys an old house, fixes it up, and nobly gives it away...but the house is made of native stone. Timothy is the “seasoned timber.”

Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote one novel for children, Understood Betsy, that won a Newbery award. Understood Betsy is the only one of her novels you’re likely to find in most libraries today. It was not her only one. Nor was it her most interesting one. The first few chapters of Seasoned Timber drag a bit, and gave me the impression that the book was going to be a longwinded, boring, but clean romance. It’s not.  Halfway through the book I’d lost all preconceived notions of where this story was going and actually built up a sense of suspense.

Vermont’s “hillbillies” had a considerable image problem in Mrs. Fisher’s day; she wrote in defense of her people. With this as a goal, I’d say that she succeeded quite well. I nominate the characters in Seasoned Timber as superb examples of the fine art of describing fictional characters who aren’t meant to be perfect, but whom readers would have to like and respect if the characters were real anyway.

The main fault readers might find with this story is that, for too many chapters in the beginning, all Timothy does is passively admire a woman he knows is too young for him; the plot plods and Timothy starts to seem like an old fool. Bear with him. As the plot becomes more interesting, so does Timothy. One could wish that he’d find a woman his own age to love—he is, after all, still the active and healthy coach for all the school sports—but in 1939 middle-aged people were supposed to have put romance behind them.

Timothy’s period-perfect politics naturally add a great deal to the story. The language used in Timothy’s political discussions is authentic--meaning that it would be very offensive today. Educated adults talked very differently in 1939 than they do now.

This novel is recommended to mature readers. It would be no more offensive to high school students than The Rise of Silas Lapham or The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg but it may, like those classics, be over some high school students’ heads.

Book Review: Mystic Brews and Malice

Title: Mystic Brews and Malice

Author: Karen McSpade

Date: May 26, 2026

Quote: "For a second, I thought I heard someone singing."

Samara Snow is just starting to enjoy the second half of her life in Winter Haven, Maine, but doesn't feel really "settled." Her "first perfect feeling" there arrives on a date with Jack. But Jack is a Mundane, a Muggle--isn't he?--and Samara is a psychic witch, as featured in TV sitcoms. How will Jack be able to handle his relative lack of contro?

That'd be telling. Anyway, first things first. They have to find out whether a local politician murdered his campaign opponent, and find and lay to rest the Siren who's been leading ships astray.

Samara doesn't know it for sure yet, but she has "come home" to a town that accepts witches, friends who will become her family, and a Partner for Life. She's even bonded with her familiar, Pumpkin, a cat who speaks English. She enjoys having a tea shop, though she's not learned to bake her own tea cakes yet. And it's lucky that she's a good sailor, because a substantial part of the action in this story takes place in boats.

Not all of it, though. While challenging the wicked witch of Winter Haven, Samra will learn to fly. She learns although that traditional English witches never flew on broomsticks, a broomstick is like training wheels for a beginner...and onto her broomstick and off to the fray she goes. 

If you're going to be an escape fantasy trope, it always helps to be a nice one. Samara is as easy to like as Sidney Grace, the witch in this author's earlier popular series set on Flroida, only at the other end of life and the other end of the United States' Atlantic coast. You'll enjoy the slow steady realistic pace of her relationship with Jack and her willingness to face danger to keep her townsfolk, even the ones she doesn't like much, from being unfairly condemned. 

Book Review: Destiny Delayed

Title: Destiny Delayed

Author: Teresa E. Nelson

Quote: "Donald Swenquist didn't want to be a peace officer when he was a child."

Of all the books people have published on Kindle when they must have meant to revise the manuscript again, this is the most obvious I've seen so far. Donald is a child of the Depression with plenty to be depressed about. His father is an alcoholic; his mother may be that, or may also be a schizophrenic, or maybe both. Early in life he's sent to stay with another couple in the country. Local police come out to talk to the new boys (Donald has younger brothers) about stolen bicycles, and Donald convinces them that another boy is stealing bicycles, then catches the other boy and proves his charges. Knowing that he'll need a good job when he grows up, Donald's foster father encourages him to do errands and odd jobs for the police. It goes well; he helps rescue a straying child, and they send him to "police school." Donald has a girlfriend from high school who goes away to nursing school and becomes involved in crime, in a very innocent and pitiful sort of way, but that problem seems to be resolved...when Donald's mother comes looking for him.

So, is Donald adult enough to be kind to his mother while continuing to work for an organization she hates, or child enough to be sucked back into her dysfunctional life? We are not told. The e-book ends with the mother being glad she's found him. Is his "destiny" to be the nice middle-class life he's looking forward to as a "peace officer," or misery in the slums with his parents? We are not told.

This is not a book. It's part of a book manuscript. It should not have been published and should now be withdrawn from publication, finished, and published when it becomes a real, printable book.

It should be worth reading, when it's done. Nelson writes simply but clearly, and handles the specifically Christian scenes well. 

Book Review: Out of Practice

Title: Out of Practice

Author: Piper Finley

Date: 2025

Publisher: House of King

Quote: "Well, if anyone can spot early recovery signs, it's you."

Emma is a physical therapist who thinks outside the "box" both of hospital practice and of her stuffy boyfriend's social expectations. 

Although it was marketed as a romance, this "prequel" to a series of romances is actually what I used to call an anti-romance, and wish there were more of. "Book boyfriends" are usually about as believable, or not, as their "book girlfriends," but the whole idea that physical attractions always lead to happily-ever-after is not believable. Don't any of these women, I used to think after reading a few of what used to present themselves as novels "with a love interest" and read like romances, ever notice that even men who look attractive aren't necessarily all that we ever wanted in life? Where are the stories about the relationships that don't have to lack good will, but are not and will never be True Love? Publishers used to allow women to be rescued from marrying Mr. Wrong only by meeting Mr. Right, and romance publishers, especially, didn't make a clear difference between the two.

So, Out of Practice ends with a promise that Emma is going to meet Mr. Right in the first full-sized novel in the series; what happens in this mini-book is that she recognizes that the co-worker she's been claiming as a boyfriend is not someone she wants to marry. Hospital protocols are too narrow to work for some of her patients, and his family, although apparently a good family, are too image-conscious to offer much hope that living with them will be fun. 

As a woman who likes to read what other women really think about life and relationships, I liked this novel. Women who like to read romance novels as a marital aid may want to skip ahead to the full-length book about Emma and the man she will decide to marry.

Book Review: Little House by Boston Bay

Book Review: Little House by Boston Bay

Author: Melissa Wiley

Date: 1999

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0-06-440737-3

Length: 195 pages

Quote: “This Francis Scott Key is a fine poet. My hired man says folks have set it to music already—you know that old air ‘Anacreon in Heaven’?”

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote nine books about her early life. Although fictionalized enough to preserve people’s privacy (in real life there were six children, in the books only four), the books were based on facts. They were recommended to, and often enjoyed by, middle school readers partly because of their wealth of accurate historical detail. Eventually the books inspired the Little House on the Prairie TV series and enabled Mrs. Wilder’s nieces and nephews to preserve a family museum as a tourist attraction.

Nieces and nephews had to operate the museum, because Mrs. Wilder’s one daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, had no children. Mrs. Lane did, however, bond with younger protegés, particularly with Roger Lea MacBride, who produced the TV series and later wrote his own series of stories based on the childhoods of Rose Wilder Lane, of Caroline Ingalls (Laura’s “Ma”), and of her mother and grandmother. Well ahead of their time, these women had learned to read at an early age and left enough letters and diaries to allow book-length reconstructions of their childhood memories.

The ancestor of Rose Wilder Lane who was a child when “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a new song was Charlotte Tucker, born in 1809. In this book, she’s a little girl just starting school, much interested in songs, recipes, and war news...the kind of thing it takes to make a five-year-old’s sheltered little life into a book older children and adults will read.

As a fictional character Charlotte lacks some of the individuality Laura Ingalls Wilder was able to give herself and sister Mary, even when she wrote about them as five-year-olds. Wiley has, however, given her a thoroughly researched historical background. Her story is recommended to middle school readers who prefer their history dramatized rather than simply narrated. 

Book Review: Right Where We Belong

Title: Right Where We Belong

Author: Farrah Penn

Date: 2025

Publisher: Viking

ISBN: 978 05935 28334

Quote: "I do not want Sumner Winchel thinking I've intentionally sought him out."

Delaney is, of course, in love with Sumner. They're keeping it age-appropriate, during their last year of high school, with the focus on academic and intramural rivalries. They have to work together, though, when they find a lost English boy who seems to have stepped out of the nineteenth century wandering around their New York State prep school campus. He's not hard to integrate into their school life, but there's a problem. He really has time-travelled from the nineteenth century. He's the founder of the school. If he didn't stumble into a future America he might not have founded the school. If he doesn't go back to his own time in time, the whole school, including second- and third-generation students like Delaney and Sumner, could blink out of existence.

Lots of science fiction fun and games help Delaney through the late stages of grief (her father, who used to teach at her school, died last year). Age-appropriate flirting with Lord William also seems to help her relationship with Sumner. She has to think about her studies, too, of course, and fundraising...read the book.

If you believe that being "in love" in grade twelve is a happy way for a story to end, you'll enjoy this young-adult romance with a spice of geophysics. Delaney is pretty and romantic, and she also has a life of her own, which puts her romance well above average.

(Fair disclosure: I'm writing this review in July, having received a draft copy, or "galley proof," to read in order for reviews to appear when the book appears in stores. It's expected to reach your local bookstore some time in October. If you don't see it in a store today, pre-ordering books is always encouraging to writers.)

Book Review: Wedding at the Storyteller's Cottage

Title: A Wedding at the Storyteller's Cottage

Author: Brooke Burton

Date: 2025

Quote: "Kieran?...There's a man here. He told me to drop the charges against Jacob."

He's a clue, of course.

People sympathized with Izzy when her ex Jacob stole her identity and her money...but employers don't want drama (and think Izzy should've known better), and even the police, though they've not said anything to her, think Izzy was smarter than Jacob and probably planned his scams. Izzy may be about to lose her first career-type job.

Kieran, also known as "Officer-Sexy-Pants," befriended the family to get evidence of Izzy's and possibly her siblings' innocence. Or guilt. 

Izzy's impatient Italian siblings, noticing her attraction to the burly Irish policeman, want the two to get together already. But Kieran can't tell anyone he's personally interested in Izzy until he's cleared her name. 

When a friend of Jacob's makes vaguely threatening noises outside Izzy's apartment, she's moved into the Storyteller's Cottage, a cozy little place with a guest book full of couples' stories about how they fell in love, were reconciled, etc., at the cottage. Kieran is sent there too, for security. We see them eyeing each other avidly in the hot tub where he's trying to behave like a guard and she's distracting herself from the lust in her heart by helping organize her sister's wedding. Some body parts are described, but not all, and not in great detail.

I think I might have liked the story better if the baby had been conceived on its mother's wedding night rather than its aunt's. You might find Kieran and Izzy more believable as written. You know they're going to marry each other, eventually; the suspense is finding out how they can clear Izzy's name. 

For me the mix of "slightly sweaty" romance and cozy mystery is good for a short,  frivolous read. It didn't give me a feeling that I must own the other stories of the couples who found or reclaimed True Love at the Storyteller's  Cottage. It might have that effect on you.

Book Review: Wicked Wilde and Witchy

Title: Wicked, Wilde, and Witchy 

Author: Ruby Raine 

Date: 2023 

Publisher: Ruby Raine 

Quote: "No man since had ever lived up to Galen Wilde." 

In order to find out who murdered her mother and her aunt, deal with him, and inherit their magic Dani will have to rekindle her old flame with Galen Wilde. She thinks her figure is not perfect enough to match his. Galen is muscular, attractive, dominant, now head of the village's tiny police force, and always willing to correct Dani about his appreciation of her curves. Also, not unlike Silas King in a slightly different story that's been "bundled" together with this one on Amazon, Galen can shapeshift into a big alpha wolf.

Too steamy to stay on my computer for long, this is a romance for readers who want all the details of each sex act spelled out as a marital aid. 

Book Review: A Midlife Shifter's Dream

Title: A Midlife Shifter's Dream 

Author: Ruby Raine 

Quote: "I still needed to sell her home and figure out how to move on with my life." 

No she didn't. Ava would really rather keep her mother's home and learn why Silas broke things off. Silas has "pine green eyes," which would undoubtedly linger in anyone's memory since they're not a feature natural humans have, and it's not because he's wearing some new kind of contact lenses. 

Silas is a "wolf shifter," with more control of his "shifts" than a werewolf would have, and he didn't want the usual "open-ended relationship" in which young people commit fornication, these days, because he sensed that Ava was his mate for life, but she seemed too young to accept that. Ava is now forty-four and has never been in love with anyone else. Part of the happy ending to this installment in her story (it will be, at the very least, a trilogy) is lots of that last-chance-to-have-a-baby stuff women in their forties do so well.

They have a few adventures along the way, and some foreshadowing of more adventures in following volumes, but Ava and Silas are credibly portrrayed as the sort of characters who won't be able to focus on paying off the property taxes until they've spent several more hours in bed. Do not store this book where children can find it.

Book Review: The Witchfinder's Serpent

Title: The Witchfinder's Serpent

Author: Rande Goodwin

Date: 2023

Publisher: Greenleaf

ISBN: 979-8-88645-091-0

Quote: "On the second floor, there's a single room that shall remain locked at all times. Under no circumstances shall that room be entered."

So of course, when Nate and Marc find that their Aunt Celia is telling someone she's "managed to keep them in the dark," they decide it's a matter of life and death to break into the locked room. It's a museum full of artefacts from the witch hunting era, which Nate's class happen to be studying at school. And of course their breaking in releases the powers of malevolent magic that have been trapped in a brittle old bottle.

A metal serpent he picks up wraps itself around Nate's arm. He can't get it off. Sometimes it squeezes painfully. Its metal fangs stick in; he worries that they may be injecting some sort of poison. Trying to cut it off, he breaks two cutting tools and causes the school band saw to catch fire. There's nothing to do but tell Aunt Celia. Instead of knowing the secret to release the metal she reacts along the lines of "Oh dear."

Somehow Aunt Celia is connected with Alice Young, the first witch hanged in Connecticut, and also with the bullies at Nate's school and the gorgeous, friendly new girl. How I'll never know, because what I received of this alleged book was a "sample"--the first eight of twenty-nine chapters. I would have been interested in reading more of what Goodwin's been able to learn about Alice Young, but I can't recommend a book that's being reverse-marketed in this annoying way.

Book Review for 7.21.24: The Road to Home

Title: The Road to Home 

Author: R.A. Douthitt

Date: 2021

ISBN: 979854661578

Nobody preaches in this book. Nobody gets converted. People have faith in God or they don't; they're not doctrinaire enough to mention "Jesus" or "Allah" or "Ha Shem," so a maximum number of readers can read without cognitive dissonance. It's because the author identifies as a Christian that I can identify this as a Christian book for readers who may be too young to have thought much about the Cosmic Mystery.

Molly is a young teenager. In chapter one, we see her sneaking out to the mall with a school friend who's not exactly a good influence, telling her mother she missed the bus. In subsequent chapters, we learn that Molly's mother liked shopping with Molly until Molly raged that she didn't want to go to the mall with her mother any more, and that Molly's mother came out to meet Molly at the bus stop and was killed by a drunk driver. Molly's father remarries and moves to the country right away, while Molly rages that psychologists recommend not making other major life changes during the year after bereavement.

But Molly's lucky. All the other major life changes are good. The rural community in New York State is delightful in the summer, though the small town school may not be so pleasant. Molly meets nice older people, then a nice boy and then a nice girl to hang out with. In fact they seem much nicer than her best friend from her city school, though Molly is loyal, and when she stands up to her old friend Amber about making fun of people on social media and taking parents for granted, Amber respects Molly's bereavement enough to stop talking that way. Soon Amber admits that the nicer tone of their conversation "feels like the old us." 

And their new house comes with a dog. The dog was abandoned by his previous human family has become a neighborhood dog. Everyone feeds him; people even pay for his rabies shots. Molly tries to adopt the dog, but he keeps looking for his original humans.

This novel is well neough written that it ought to be snapped up by a traditional publisher. Christian-phobia, anti-White discrimination, and the glut of new books people decided to finish and self-publish during the COVID panic, worked against it in 2021. Traditional publishers should be looking for reprint rights. This is an extraordinary dog story. It's not at all like Sounder but, when I think of ways to describe the unusual ending, Sounder is the only other dog story that comes to mind. 

Book Review: Dog Gone Troubles

Title: Dog Gone Troubles 

Author: Karen McSpade

Date: 2022

Publisher: Karen McSpade

Quote: "[W]alking into the office still felt special--like I had made it somehow. The truth, however, was that...my coffee-making abilities remained the thing that the other office staff prized most about me."

This is the very first story about Sidney Grace, protagonist of the Crystal Beach psychic/witch series. Here we're introduced to a very young Sidney, convinced that her grandmother has magic powers but that she is merely a "butterfingers," regretting that her grandparents have decided to move to Crystal Beach. At this stage Sidney needs grandparents more than most twenty-somethings seem to do. Especially when, determined to find the dog she allowed to slip away when the rich lady asked her to hold his lead, she has to confront a pistol-packing dognapping scammer. 

Trigger warning: These novels feature the TV-sitcom kind of "witches"--not Satanists, not even Pagans, but ordinary women who happen to be born with TV-star looks and psychic powers. In the fictive world of the series that's just the way things happen. If you believe that all things "paranormal" are either (a) scams, (b) satanic, or (c) both, you will not like this series.

Otherwise, you'll probably love it.

New Book Review: The Dead of Praeter Road

Title: The Dead of Praeter Road

Author: Ali Kaden

Date: 2022

Publisher: Ali Kaden

Quote: "The son of a wealthy family, the merchant...paid them no mind. They'd never understood him. Peasants. Fanatics."

The unnamed merchant in the Puritan settlement called Baneford shares the Puritans' worldview...and takes the Devil's side. He paints portraits that aren't indecent, but that bring out the worst in each of his models, some of whom have died, possibly as a result of being made to confront their shame and guilt by the merchant, whose evil intentions do not include encouraging them to seek forgiveness as Christians do. He's in the process of destroying another local girl's self-respect when...

Fast-forward to modern times, when a teacher, still in early middle age, has a sudden heart attack and is found dead in the street by his pre-teen daughter. In some mysterious way these unrelated deaths are going to connect. 

This short story is the prequel to a series of novels about what's going to happen in present-time Baneford as the evil merchant's spirit begins to haunt the town. 

People who like stories of "the paranormal" may like this one, in which an historical era of US superstition is considered from the perspective of a culture where superstitions still have power. It's not precisely my cup of tea. It may be yours. 

New Book Review: Second Chance with the Enemy Neighbor

Title: Second Chance with the Enemy Neighbor 

Author: Ashleigh Quinn

Date: 2024

Publisher: Ashleigh Quinn

Quote: "I know how much you hate romance, but this could really elevate your sales."

Emily's mind is resisting the editor's advice to develop the romantic element in her novel because her own high school romance didn't work out. But she and Tyler are still young and single, and when Emily flies home for a short visit to her parents, they start talking to each other again. 

Short, sweet romance. You know how they go. Recommended to all who want to recapture the feeling of making up after a lovers' quarrel. 

New Book Review: First Love in Bar Harbor

Title: First Love in Bar Harbor 

Author: Amy Rafferty

Date: 2023

Publisher: Amy Rafferty

Quote: "But the biggest love you'll ever feel is for your own children."

While this short novel is about romantic love, it is not a romantic novel. It's realistic to the point of pain. Despite all the reasons why she doesn't want even to date Logan--he's her brother's friend and they've made it a rule not to date each other's friends, he's about to ship out with the Navy, his engagement to the "sweetheart" actress of the moment has been reported in the newspapers--she "falls in love" and spends a night with him. All we're told is that she spends a night with him. And the story ends with a burst of... motherly love.

Rafferty says this is the prequel to a series, so we can imagine that Hope and/or Logan will find romantic love in the volumes to follow.

By itself, First Love in Bar Harbor is a good book to hand to teenagers who've not lived through similar stories with their own friends.  

New Book Review for 12.29.23: Surprise in the Snow

Title: Surprise in the Snow

Author: Mel (Melissa) Morgan

Date: 2022

Publisher: Stonefire

Quote: "I was on my way to a work retreat, just before the Christmas holiday."

The surprise Rosie Jones and a co-worker find in the snow, at the resort where they're "retreating," isn't very nice--a big red velvet "Santa bag" full of elaborately wrapped lutefisk. Is it a threat, or what? Rosie Jones doesn't panic, but calmly settles down to find out what.

This short mystery story is meant to interest readers in buying a series of novels. I can't say it had that effect on me, but it might on you. Anyway, it's a cozy Christmas mystery. 

New Book Review: Game Set Matchmaker

Title: Game Set Matchmaker 

Author: Evie Sterling

Date: 2023

Publisher: Evie Sterling

Quote: "How do you drive away from a guy you feel out-of-control, terrifying feelings for?...You keep your foot pressed to the gas, that's how."

Game Set Matchmaker is a sweet romance about a woman who runs a matchmaking service and a retired tennis champion. Do you deduct points for the title being too, too cute?

Given that you're interested in a sweet romance, that's about all you need to deduct points for. This is a sweet romance with a charming, socially confident introvert, volunteer teaching, the Appalachian Mountains (the Green Mountains, specifically), and shelter cats in it. Be still my heart. It would have been hard for Sterling, who did not write this book for me, to have tailor-fitted the atmosphere to my preferences any better, but toward the end of the book, at the ugly holiday sweater party, she does. 

It's still frivolous froth, intended strictly for use as a marital aid, but it's so completely my cup of frivolous froth that you might distrust my review. So I'll quickly add that the hero is the sort of blond muscle man I have never found attractive. With tattoos. Isn't biodiversity wonderful--it's good for the species that some women do like that type of man--and all that. I have liked blond men who were skinny and who, if they had any scars, had come by them honestly. Do women's preferences for real-world men ever affect our preferences in romance novels? Don't we always cast our own heroes when visualizing these stories?

Also there's a bit of a cheap trick, where a frazzled nurse blurts out a lot of information about "his" condition, not specifying which patient's privacy she's violating, that prompts a woman to pour out her heart to the "him" behind the curtain...oh, read the book and find out. This is a romantic comedy. 

If you like a romantic comedy with a book-smart heroine who thinks she's been life-stupid--is she right or wrong about that?--you will enjoy Game Set Matchmaker. Like all of these Booktober Blitz books, it is available online, sometimes directly from the author, sometimes on Amazon. This one should be on Amazon some time today. (This review is being written ahead of publication, too.) Writers have reported some schedule/release glitches at Amazon due to the high volume of activity this season, but if you don't find this book at this moment, Sterling has a few other romantic comedies to read while you wait.