The Hollywood Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

The Hollywood Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

Published by Bantam ISBN 9780593156926

Hardcover, $27, 368 pages

There are a small number of series that I impatiently wait for the next book to publish, and Susan Elia MacNeal's WWII spy Maggie Hope series is one of the few. Maggie has taken us from London to Berlin to the coast of Scotland to Paris, and in the latest book, The Hollywood Spy, Maggie is in 1943 Los Angeles to help her former boyfriend discover who killed his fianceé.

Maggie's old beau RAF pilot John Sterling is in Hollywood training pilots for war. He also has a project in the works at Walt Disney Studio, working on an animated film about pilots. Disney has opened up his studio lot for the war effort, in addition to creating films intended to promote the US involvement in the war. 

Maggie's friend and former spy Sarah has a dance role in one of the films, so Maggie is staying with her at the Chateau Marmont hotel. While investigating the drowning of John's fianceé, which the police have ruled an accident, Maggie discovers an ugly underbelly of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was a hotbed of Nazism until Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. While the Nazis have seemingly gone underground, the Ku Klux Klan is an emerging power. Their anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, and racism attracts people drawn to the White Power movement, including people high up in the Los Angeles police department.

The more Maggie digs, the more she discovers a possible connection between John's fianceé's death and the Nazi sympathizers. But when evidence in the case disappears, Maggie doesn't know who to trust.

MacNeal immerses the reader in 1943 Los Angeles. We visit such iconic places as The Cocoanut Grove, Disney Studios, and Schwab's Pharmacy. Her descriptions of the architectural mishmash of different styles - Moroccan next to Spanish next to Greek next to Roman- highlight that Los Angeles is "a mirage in the desert- suspended between fantasy and reality", a point made more than once. (One house that Maggie visits actually contains fake marble columns from a film set.)

Since this is Los Angeles, many famous people made cameo appearances- Walt Disney, Linus Pauling, Howard Hughes, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Hattie McDaniel, Igor Stravinsky- that add to the atmosphere of the story. It's also good to have our old friends here- Sarah and John.

I learned so much about a time in the history of Los Angeles with which I was unfamiliar, and a glance at the extensive Sources section at the end are a tribute to the substantial amount of research MacNeal did in crafting this fascinating chapter in Maggie Hope's story.

MacNeal opens the book with two powerful quotes- one from Hitler in 1933 about undermining the morale of the American people, and one from Albert Camus' The Plague about a plague lying dormant and rising again. Both of these (unfortunately) resonate with the political dynamics of today. I don't know if it should be a comfort to know that as a country we have faced these problems before or a disappointment that we still have not reckoned with anti-Semitism and racism.

The Hollywood Spy is the tenth book in the brilliant Maggie Hope series and it's good to see that Maggie has seemingly come through the personal troubles she has faced in the last two books. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series should start reading the Maggie Hope books, they're a great companion- both women are strong, intelligent, brave and great inspirations for young women. I highly recommend The Hollywood Spy.

Friday 5ive- June 18, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week.

1) On Thursday night, my husband and I heard what we hoped was fireworks. We went out on our balcony and sure enough, there was barge in the East River shooting off fireworks. It was a few days too late for the Back to Normal celebration that New York State organized earlier in the week. Maybe it was practice for the Macys 4th of July Show?

2) My husband and I put together our new wine rack from Wine Enthusiast on Saturday. (Well, I held it together while my husband screwed in the 100 screws.) Thank goodness we had a cordless drill, we were able to finish in less than two hours. It's been awhile since we had to put furniture together.

3) I received the cutest invitation for our Beach Club Book Club meeting next month. The book is Jennifer Ryan's The Kitchen Front, about a cooking contest in England during WWII. I can't wait to read and discuss the book, if it's half as much fun as the invitation, it will be a great time.

4) We watched the hugely popular French TV series, Lupin, on Netflix this week. It tells the story of a man, Assane Diop, who sets about to avenge the false imprisonment and death of his father. Assane is a "gentleman thief", inspired by the French literature character Arséne Lupin, and it's a combination of Ocean's Eleven  and Sherlock Holmes. Omar Sy winningly portrays Assane Diop, a big man with a charming smile. It's fun to try and put the puzzle together as to what is happening. I forsee future Lupin tours of Paris, similiar to the Sex and the City tours in NYC. 

5) I read two terrific books this week. I stayed up late to finish in one day Laura Lippman's latest mystery, Dream Girl. Lippman has recently paid homage to books she loved Wilde Lake  (To Kill A Mockingbird), Sunburn (the novels of James M. Cain) and now she salutes Stephen King's Misery in Dream Girl. When writer Gerry Andersen is seriously injured in a fall at his Baltimore condo, he is bedridden and dependent on his young assistant Victoria, and the nurses and therapists who come to his home. He begins to get threatening phone calls from a woman who claims to be the character of his most famous book. Are these calls real or a figment of his imagination? It's a twisty mystery that goes back and forth in time through Gerry's life, and he has to take a look at how he has lived his life. and treated others, particularly the women, in his life. It's a fantastic, meaty mystery.

Julie Metz's nonfiction Eva and Eve, looks at the life of her mother, who escaped from Vienna with her parents during WWII. Metz and her mother had difficulties, and Metz hopes by visiting Vienna and Italy, where her mother spent nine days before boarding the ship to America, she will better understand her mother. If you only know about Austria's history during WWII from The Sound of Music or the brief mention of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany in your high school history book, you'll learn so much more about that important moment in history. It also has relevance in today's world if you look at what Russia is trying to do with the Ukraine and other neighboring countries. It's an enlightening book. My full review publishes June 28th. 

Our apartment building has lifted all mask requirements for vaccinated people, and it seems like teh whole world has changed for the better. I hope all is well in your part of the world as we get back to normal.

A Winter Night by Anne Leigh Parrish

A Winter Night by Anne Leigh Parrish

Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9781950730605

Trade paperback, $16. 244 pages

I was first introduced to the Dugan family in Anne Leigh Parrish's book of linked short stories, Our Love Could Light the World. (My review here) The Dugan family story continued in the novel The Amendment (My review here) I loved both books, and so I really looked forward to a third meeting with the Dugans in A Winter Night.

A Winter Night focuses on 34 year-old Angie Dugan, who works as a social worker at a retirement/nursing home. Angie helps families and residents adjust to a new life. She's good at her job, even if it is not exactly what she wants to be doing with her life.

Angie is dating Matt, a younger bartender who is a real people person, a useful trait for his profession. Their relationship is fairly new, and Matt is a friend of one of Angie's younger brothers, which means they spend a lot of time with her brother and his girlfriend.

Trust is an issue for Angie in relationships. She's only had three serious relationships, and each ended on not great terms. Angie's mom Lavinia left the family for a time when the children were young, and then divorced her alcoholic husband Potter and married a wealthier man who later died after being struck by lightning on the golf course. Angie has always helped pick up the pieces of her father's life, even after he married a successful realtor. 

Parrish's beautiful writing gives us such insight into Angie, as seen in this passage about Matt's apartment building:

"It reeks of the temporary, the rootless, somewhere people stay on their way to somewhere either better or worse. She's only channeling her own experience, though, of moving so often when she was growing up. Her family never seemed to stay anywhere longer than a year."

Angie "was told her honesty was a weapon, a means to hand out judgment that was seldom unbiased. Her mother said she liked to beat people up with her words." She sees a therapist to try and have a better understanding of herself.

When Potter relapses and starts drinking again, Angie does not want to be pulled back into the caretaker role she undertook when she was younger. Although Potter promises to stop drinking, as Lavinia says, his "promises are never false. They're just seldom kept."

Reading A Winter Night felt like going back to your hometown and catching up with an old friend. The Dugans live near the Finger Lakes region where I grew up, and that connection drew me in once again. Like Angie, I also grew up as the oldest of five children, and the Christmas dinner scene with all the siblings with all the family dynamics that entails is so relatable.

I highly recommend A Winter Night. It can be read as a stand alone novel, but do yourself a favor and read the two earlier books to get a deeper appreciation of the arc of the Dugan family story. I hope we get to read more about the rest of the Dugans in further stories, as Angie's story reminded me how much I missed them.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Anne Leigh Parrish's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Review tour:

Friday, June 4th: 5 Minutes for Books

Monday, June 7th: @jenniaahava

Tuesday, June 8th: BookNAround

Wednesday, June 9th: Eliot’s Eats

Thursday, June 10th: @reading_with_nicole

Friday, June 11th: Nurse Bookie and @nurse_bookie

Monday, June 14th: SusanLovesBooks

Tuesday, June 15th: Lit and Life

Wednesday, June 16th: Mom Loves Reading and @mom_loves_reading

Thursday, June 17th: Bookchickdi

Friday, June 18th: @fashionablyfifty

Monday, June 21st: Blunt Scissors Book Reviews and @bluntscissorsbookreviews

Tuesday, June 22nd: Openly Bookish

Thursday, June 24th: Run Wright and @karen_runwright

Friday, June 25th: Kahakai Kitchen

Monday, June 28th: Stranded in Chaos and @sarastrand9438

Wednesday, June 30th: Girl Who Reads

Thursday, July 1st: @lovelyplacebooks

    

Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond

Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781616208202

Hardcover, $27.95, 309 pages

In the memoir, Nowhere Girl, author Cheryl Diamond states "by the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identies. I know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and the most important, how to disappear." How can you resist that?

When the book opens, four year-old Cheryl (whose given name is Bhajan), her older brother Frank (age 14) and older sister Chiara (age 16) are traveling in an out-of-control car careening through the Himalayas with their parents, George and Anne. The family are Sikh, vegetarian, and constant travelers, on the run from Interpol and their mother's father, a member of the Luxenbourg secret police. 

Cheryl is not exactly sure what her father has done, it has something to do with money, but the family has to obey his three rules- always be loyal to their family, trust no one, and be a noble criminal. It is an "unbreakable outlaw code".

Moving from country to country, the children could not make friends. When they are in British Columbia, Chiara plans on attending college and is devastated when George gets into some trouble with an investor and tells them to pack up, they are on the move.

For people who are always on the run, I found it puzzling that George encouraged Frank to join swim teams wherever they moved, becoming good enough that he would train for the Olympics. Cheryl showed skill in gymastics, and she trained with an eye towards the Olympics as well. Weren't they worried they would be discovered?

George had an explosive temper and could be violent with his family. He verbally and physically abused them, beating young Cheryl with a electrical cord. He didn't speak to Frank for over a year- not a word spoken to him. That abuse left emotional scars on all of them.

As the children get older, they rebel against this lifestyle. Eventually, Cheryl wants a passport in her real name, but the problem is that she doesn't have a legal birth certificate. The birth certificate she has is fraudulent, and getting a passport with that would mean that she would be committing fraud. 

Nowhere Girl is a crazy true story, and if it were a novel, the editor would probably tell the author to tone it down, it's too outrageous. The family lived like kings in fancy hotels at times, and then were living in their car, homeless, at others. They had adventures and traveled the world, but had to constantly look over their shoulder. If you liked the books Educated and The Glass Castle, put Nowhere Girl on your list. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Cheryl Diamond's tour.

Friday 5ive- June 11, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blogpost about five things that caught my attention this week.

1) I made a Costco trip this week, and there were so many people there for a weekday. My sister-in-law had these delicious Lemoncello Chocolate Almonds from Sconza Chocolates at a family gathering last week and I loved them. If you've been to Italy and enjoyed limoncello, these white chocolate covered almonds will take you right back there. They're my new obsession.

2) Speaking of Italy, we did a wine Zoom with a family Italian winery we visited two years ago. NostraVita combines their beautiful winery, with its gorgeous views of the hills of Montalcino, with owner Annabale and Elena's love of art and local history. When we received our shipment of wine this time, we also got a original drawing from their daughter Carlotta, who is is well respected artist. When we visited in 2019, we bought three of her paintings. 

3) I passed a big milestone this week on my Peloton bike- 1000 rides! My two sons (who were doing their 1200th and 1300th rides) and brother-in-law joined me on my favorite instructor Jenn Sherman's Sold Out Show Ride on Sunday morning. All of the songs were from live shows, and she played songs by four of my favorite artists- Fleetwood Mac (The Chain), Bruce Springsteen (Promised Land), Donna Summer (No More Tears) and I got a shout-out from Jenn during one of my all-time favorites, Heart's Crazy For You. 

4) Before Hamilton- The Musical became the juggernaut that it is, Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In The Heights about the members of a neighborhood in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan surprised everyone by winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. When I saw it, I thought it was the best musical I had seen. The movie version of In The Heights is now playing on HBOMax until July 11th and it is spectacular. It's about the lives, loves, and dreams of a community and the everything about this movie is fantastic. Some of the standouts include the song 96,000 (filmed at a local public pool that rivals anything ever done in Esther Williams' films), the joyous choreography by Christopher Scott, brilliant direction by John M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and fantastic performances by Anthony Ramos as Usnavi the bodega owner (a star-making turn) and Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia (whose song Paciencia y Fé is astonishing). This is the perfect movie for summer, the joy we need now. 

5)  I read two terrific books this week. First up, Anne Leigh Parrish's A Winter Night (set near the Finger Lakes region where I grew up) continues the story of the Dugan family, this time focusing on 34 year-old Angie. She works as a social worker at a retirement home/nursing home, dealing with families and helping new residents adjust. Angie is dating Matt, a bartender, her first serious relationship in a long time after a series of bad ones, but trust issues get in the way for her. Reading it felt like catching up with old friends (we met the Dugans in Our Love Could Light the World, and continued with their story in The Amendment). These are characters that feel like real people, people who live in your neighborhood. My full review posts here on June 17th.

Matthew Norman's new novel, All Together Now is a story of friendship. Four friends who were kicked out of their private Baltimore High School years ago reunite after the most successful of the group, hedge fund billionaire Robbie, invites them for a weekend at a Rehoboth Beach mansion. Wade is about to get evicted from his New York City apartment after his second novel fails to attract attention from publishers. The woman he loved in school, Blair, is a mom of two young children with a marriage on the rocks who gave up her artistic endeavors. Cat is a morning television show assistant producer in Los Angeles who doesn't know her clandestine relationship with the married female host of the show is about to blow up. The world knows Robbie as a math genius, philanthropist, and astute businessman but they don't know that he is dying, and neither do his friends. What else is Robbie hiding from them? I'm a big Matthew Norman fan, (Domestic Violets, We're All Damaged, Last Couple Standing) he puts his characters in interesting situations, and he writes some pointedly funny stuff, and although this one is more serious, it's still a great book. It's got a Big Chill vibe. (80's movie reference there).

Have a safe week, I hope you're able to get out and enjoy the nice weather now that things are returning to normal.

Summer Reads

Reprinted from auburnpub.com :

With Memorial Day in the rearview mirror, it’s time to turn our attention to summer reading season. There are so many books in so many different genres, what should we read?

For traditional beach reading, while fans of the Amazon show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are patiently awaiting the next season, Elyssa Friedland’s novel, The Last Summer at the Golden Hotel with its Catskill vacation hotel setting and family dynamics will fit the bill. 

In Mary Kay Andrews’ The Newcomer, a woman flees to a small beach town motel in Florida with her young niece after her sister is murdered. The retirees and snowbirds of the small town are suspicious of them, and a handsome cop becomes a romantic entanglement. (The hotel/motel setting is popular this season). 

Taylor Jenkins Reid, who scored big with Daisy Jones and the Six two years ago, is back with Malibu Rising, another rock’n’roll affiliation. The four adult children of famous rocker Mick Riva are throwing their annual summer blowout at their Malibu mansion. Everyone wants to be there, and the craziness that begins ends with the home burned down by morning.

The Queen of Beach Reads, Elin Hilderbrand, has Golden Girl as her annual entry. When a popular female novelist is killed in a hit and run accident while jogging, she ends up in the Beyond, where her guide allows her to follow her family for one last summer, and give her three adult children each one “nudge” to guide their behavior. 

If mysteries and thrillers are more to your taste, Laura Lippman channels Stephen King and the #MeToo movement in Dream Girl, as a famous novelist, laid up in his apartment after an injury, receives disturbing phone calls from a woman claiming to be the protagonist in one of his novels. No one believes him. Is he losing his mind or is he in trouble?

Fans of John Grisham’s legal thrillers will like Stacey Abrams’ While Justice Sleeps. When a Supreme Court justice mysteriously slips into a coma, his law clerk discovers that she has been named his legal guardian. She uncovers that he has been researching a controversial case before the Court, and now she is the middle of danger. 

Good historical fiction abounds this summer. Alka Joshi’s The Secret Keeper of Jaipur follows the characters from her brilliant 1950’s India-set novel, The Henna Artist as they move into the 1960s and try to find their way in the changing world. 

Chris Bohjalian goes back to 1662 Boston in Hour of the Witch.  Mary fears for her life after her husband’s violence towards her escalates. When a young boy she treated with herbs dies, Mary is accused of being a witch, and must fight for her life. It’s The Crucible meets The Handmaid’s Tale.

Beatriz Williams takes on Cold War spy novels in Our Woman in Moscow. In 1952, Ruth McCallister receives a postcard from her twin sister Iris who disappeared with her husband and young children four years ago after Iris’ husband defected to Russia when he was uncovered as a spy. FBI agent Sumner Fox convinces Ruth to travel to Moscow to help extract her sister. It’s a tension-filled narrative with twists and turns that will keep your turning the pages.

Nonfiction fans have many choices as well. Continuing with the Cold War, Anne Sebba’s Ethel Rosenberg- An American Tragedy  takes a fresh look at life and the case against the wife and mother who was executed with her husband in 1953 accused of for spying for Russia. 

Ashley C. Ford’s memoir, Somebody’s Daughter shares her story about growing up as a young black girl in Indiana. She had a troubled relationship with her mother, and her father was imprisoned for reasons no one would tell her. Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, and Oprah have praised this powerful memoir. 

There are a few suggestions for Father’s Day gifts as well. Popular business/current events writer Michael Lewis’ The Premonition tackles the COVID crisis through people who saw it coming when the CDC didn’t and tried to warn others. 

Sy Montgomery’s The Hummingbirds' Gift takes a deep dive into the world of that beautiful bird, perfect for the nature-loving dad. 

Tom Coyne takes readers on a trip across the country to the best golf courses in A Course Called America. If your Dad spends his weekends hitting the links, he’ll love this one. 

Happy summer reading to everyone!

The Happiness Thief by Nicole Bokat

The Happiness Thief by Nicole Bokat

Published by She Writes Press ISBN 9781647420574

Trade paperback, $16.95, 280 pages

How can you resist a book that opens with "I think I killed my mother."? Nicole Bokat's novel The Happiness Thief begins with that intriguing sentence that encourages the reader to discover why Natalie would think that.

When Natalie was thirteen, she was in a car accident that killed her mother. Natalie suffered a serious brain trauma, and she can't remember exactly what happened, except that she fears that she shined her flashlight in her mother's eyes and that is what caused the accident.

Natalie is with her stepsister Isabel on a Caribbean island where Isabel is speaking at a Happiness Conference.  Isabel is a self-help guru (think Glennon Doyle or Brene Brown) who is trying to build her brand after writing a successful book, and working to finish a second book. People surround Isabel at the conference, wanting any piece of her and her advice that she can give them.

"Isabel was the powerhouse and the bulwark, while Natalie was the sensitive one" in the family. Natalie's husband recently left her and their teenage daughter Hadley for a younger colleague. The dissolution of her marriage has left Natalie depressed, and this trip is supposed to cheer her up.

While driving on the island at night, a car follows them and shines highbeams at them. Natalie is driving and hits something in the road, leaving blood on the bumper. She panics, and flashes back to the accident that killed her mother. Isabel and the man in the car behind them get out and look for what was probably an animal, but Natalie is convinced it was a person.

When they return home to Boston, Natalie receives an email from somone who says he knows that she hit someone on that road. Even though Isabel does her best to prove Natalie that she didn't hit a person, Natalie is not convinced.

There are two mysteries here- was Natalie responsible for her mother's death and did she hit someone on the island? I didn't find myself as invested in the mysteries as I did with Natalie's home life. The relationship between Natalie and her daughter Hadley was the strongest part of the book, that felt true and honest.

I found it difficult at first to keep track of the family situation- Isabel's mom (deceased), Natalie's mom, Natalie's dad who died when she was young, her stepfather who is Isabel's father. It took awhile to get it straight. 

There are a lot of moving parts in this story, this is the kind of book you have to pay close attention to when you're reading. If psychological suspense and family drama is something you enjoy in a book, The Happiness Thief will quench your thirst.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Nicole Bokat's tour. The rest of the stops are here:

Review Stops

Friday, June 4th: Instagram: @readyourworriesaway

Saturday, June 5th: bookchickdi

Monday, June 7th: Books and Bindings

Tuesday, June 8th: Stranded in Chaos

Wednesday, June 9th: Write – Read – Life

Thursday, June 10th: Instagram: @whatalyssareads

Friday, June 11th: Instagram: @berittalksbooks

Monday, June 14th: 5 Minutes For Books

Tuesday, June 15th: Instagram: @babygotbooks4life

Wednesday, June 16th: Instagram: @sealedwithabook

TBD: Wednesday, June 2nd: Live, Read, and Prosper

TBD: Thursday, June 3rd: What Is That Book About

Friday 5ive- June 4, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. We made a trip to Pittsburgh over the holiday weekend to visit family, and it was wonderful to see loved ones we haven't seen in over a year.

1) My sister-in-law took us on a quick tour of the area, and we made a stop at one of their favorite breweries, Hitchhiker Brewing Company. There was a food truck parked there, Bridge City Brinery, and we got some delicious food to go with the beer. Bridge City has a Korean inspired menu, and I loved the Onion Tots with Honey Mustard best.

2) We also visited the Strip District which has lots of cute shops, including some great foodie shops. Shop In The Kitchen has every possible kitchen gadget you could want (and many you didn't know that you needed). We spent too much time in there. Pittsburgh Macaroni Co. is an amazing Italian food import shop. They have so many pastas, sauces, meats, prepared foods, and my daughter-in-law was excited to find a cheese from back home in Catalonia that she has never seen in the United States. Check out their their website, they ship.

3)  We stayed at the Marriott hotel near the airport, and they gave people the option of using a qr code to put the television remote on your phone via an app. What a great idea! The remote is one of those things that I don't like touching in a hotel, and this eliminates that. This is a photo of what it looks like.

4) I started watching Hacks on HBO Max. Jean Smart is phenomenal as a Joan Rivers-type stand-up comedian who has been around a long time. She's based in Las Vegas now, and works constantly, hawking items on a shopping channel and even showing up at the opening of a pizza joint. She is forced to hire a struggling young writer, wonderfully played by Hannah Einbinder, to update her act for the 21st century. It's a fantastic show, with the brilliant Mike Schur (The Good Place) executive producing. You can the watch the trailer here. 

5) Romance was on the menu this week in my reading. Historical romance novelist Eloisa James moves into contemporary fiction under her real name, Mary Bly, with Lizzie & Dante. Lizzie is a Shakepearean scholar traveling with her best friend to the Italian island of Elba to help his boyfriend, a famous mega movie star, write a script for his version of Romeo & Juliet. Lizzie meets a handsome Italian chef and falls in love with him, his twelve year-old daughter Etta, and their dog. But Lizzie has a serious illness and if they get more involved, she could hurt Dante and Etta deeply. You can feel the warmth of the Italian sun, hear the sea roar, and taste the delicious food Dante creates in his restaurant in this novel that appeals to all your senses. You'll be packing your bags for Elba before you finish this wonderful book.

Kate Bromley's contemporary romance novel, Talk Bookish to Me, is about a historical romance novelist. Kara is struggling to complete her latest novel as she prepares to be maid of honor at her best friend's wedding. When she discovers that Ryan, the man who broke her heart in college ten years ago, is one of the groomsmen, she is unhappy. After Ryan and his bulldog Duke are kicked out their hotel, Kara offers to let them stay at her apartment for the weekend of the wedding. The banter between Kara and Ryan made me laugh out loud, and you'll learn about romance novel genres, subgenres and tropes in this delightful, sexy story. My full review is here. 

After last weekend's freezing cold weather, we're getting ready for 90 degrees for the next few days. Stay safe and cool everyone.

Talk Bookish to Me by Kate Bromley

Talk Bookish to Me by Kate Bromley

Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525806438

Trade paperback, $15.99, 320 pages

Give me a funny, sexy novel with books thrown in like Kate Bromley's Talk Bookish to Me, and all of the boxes are ticked for me.

Kara Sullivan is a 32 year-old romance novelist, successful in romance on the page, but not so much in her real life. She is maid of honor for her best friend Cristina, and it is wedding week, which means there is a lot to do.

At a pre-wedding party, Jason the groom is waiting for the arrival of his groomsmen. Kara is astonished when she turns around and comes face-to-face with the man who broke her heart in college- Ryan is one of Jason's best friends from childhood and he is standing in front of her.

Kara hasn't seen Ryan in ten years, and she can't believe he is in the wedding. When Ryan gets kicked out of his hotel because of his high-maintenance bulldog named Duke, Kara offers to let Ryan and Duke stay with her. 

The banter between Kara and Ryan is snappy and often hilarious. I confess to laughing out loud more than once. The sexual tension can be cut with a knife, but Kara is leery about getting involved again with Ryan even as she finds herself attracted to him. On the plus side, the writer's block that has been plaguing her as her next deadline approaches seems to alieviated by Ryan being in her apartment.

Bromley knows how to write sexy scenes that will leave you hot and bothered. We also get to read excerpts from Kara's historical romance that in some ways mirror her new relationship with Ryan. If you are a big romance reader, you'll enjoy Kara explaining the genres, subgenres, and tropes of romance novels to Ryan.

The characters are interesting and I loved the New York City setting. Kara's references to specific NYC touchstones- dinner at Butter, brunch at The Smith, the digital lottery for Oklahoma! tickets- give a great sense of place. 

If you're on Instagram, you'll recognize Kara's work as a bookstagrammer, she puts a lot of effort into making her photos look enticing. If you're a dog lover, Duke's antics and Ryan's comprehensive list of  rules for caring for Duke will make you smile. (When did dogs become more involved to care for than children?)

Talk Bookish to Me reminded me of Stephanie Evanovich's novels- sassy and sexy. I loved so much about this book, it's a terrific read for the beach or back deck. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Summer 2021 Beach Reads Blog Tour.