Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues by Blaize Clement - 5 stars

Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues (Dixie Hemingway Mystery #3)
by Blaize Clement


Dixie has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The day she happens upon the dead body outside a fancy mansion is no different. She’s had her fill of homicide investigations, so she leaves the gate-keeper’s corpse to be found by somebody else. Unfortunately, that somebody else sees Dixie leaving the scene of the crime, and the fatal bullet might have even come from her own gun! To make matters worse, the owner of the mansion is Dixie’s new client—a scientist who is either a genius, insane, or both—whose pet iguana is under her charge. All that, plus a feisty calico kitten that needs some TLC, means that time is running out for Dixie to catnip this case in the bud… and collar the killer.

My Review
This was the third book in this series and a very good mystery. I like this series, they mystery was interesting and kept me guessing until the end. I also like Dixie the main character, she's a pet sitter and throughout the book there are little tidbits and advice for care of pets, like iguanas and kittens. My favorite character in book was Ziggy the iguana I never thought I would like a lizard but after reading this book I can't help but loving them a little. One other thing reading the books in this series always makes me hungry, Dixie is always meeting people at restaurants or having dinner at someone's house or mentioning some fantastic meal her fireman/chef brother Michael is making!

I also love Blaize Clement's description of Florida and the special people that live there, especially the "snowbirds".

Death at Bishop's Keep by Robin Paige - 5 stars

Death at Bishop's Keep (Victorian Mystery #1)
by Robin Paige

Kate Adrleigh is everything the Victorian English gentlewoman is not--outspoken, free-thinking, American...and a writer of the frowned upon "penny-dreadfuls."

Soon after her arrival in Essex, England, a body is unearthed in a nearby archeological dig--and Kate has the chance to not only research her latest story...but to begin her first case with amateur detective Sir Charles Sheridan.

My Review;
This is the first book in this series and I loved it. I love the Victorian atmosphere and the lovely old homes and the characters, oh my gosh, the characters, I loved them. The authors really outdid themselves with the storyline and I am looking forward to reading the other books in this mystery series!

The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson - 4 - Stars

The Ice Cream Girls
by Dorothy Koomson

As teenagers Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts.

Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again...

My Review;
This is the first Dorothy Koomson book I have read, I am very impressed with her writing style and I am looking forward to reading other books by this author.

Her characters are very well drawn, they became very real to me, especially Serena, Poppy and Marcus.

The story was so heartbreaking and so real because I could just see why each girl made her decisions and what awful paths the two of them followed when they were both teenagers and how each of them became they women they were at the end of the story.

This is a story of abuse and shame and forgiveness and it will stay with me for a very long time.

The Day I Shot Cupid by Jennifer Love Hewitt - 5 stars

The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I'm a Love-aholic

by Jennifer Love Hewitt

2.78  ·  rating details  ·  254 ratings  ·  89 reviews

For any woman who has ever bought a self-help book and wondered why she bothered. (P.S. Now that I know he's just not that into me, where do I go from there? Yeah, thanks for that advice.)
Jennifer Love Hewitt is a self-proclaimed "love-aholic" and hopeless romantic (her middle name is Love, after all!). She has been lucky and unlucky in love, and lived to tell—and she's done it all in the spotlight. Much has been written about her love life—some true, most made up to sell magazines. Now Hewitt shares the real story of what she's learned navigating the dangerous dating waters.
In The Day I Shot Cupid, Hewitt offers her hard-won wisdom and tells us how to embrace love with both feet on the ground. First, we have to shoot Cupid. We have to believe that happily-ever-after is hard work—it's not all flowers and symphonies and floating hearts.
Wise and wry and refreshingly honest, Hewitt talks about how to pick the right guy and how to know when to let the wrong ones go free, and she offers some surprising truths about the opposite sex.
From twenty things to do after a breakup, to ten things to do before a date, to the perils of text flirting (Note: You are waiting. By the phone. For his response.), Hewitt uses stories and dating secrets to illustrate the idiotic, romantic, crazy, depressing, hilarious, awkward, glorious moments we all experience in relationships. Funny, quirky, and empowering, The Day I Shot Cupid deserves a place on every woman's nightstand, bookshelf, or coffee table, or tucked inside her oversized designer handbag.

My Review;
I really enjoyed this book, it's a cute little book with some interesting and amusing insights on relationships written from Jennifer Love Hewitt's point of view. She seems to be a very sweet and genuinely beautiful person. This is a quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave - 1/2 star

Little Bee

by Chris Cleave (Goodreads Author)

We don't want to tell you what happens in this book.
It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it.
nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:

           This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there ...
           Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.

My Review; 
I did not like this book, I really, really didn't like most of the characters. I had to grind my teeth and really force myself to read the chapters written from Sarah's point of view. There were alot of inconsistencies in the plot as well as the lives of the characters. Just really hated it to be honest, so glad I'm done with it and that is, in the words of Forrest Gump "all I want to say about that!" 

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - Audio Recording - 5 stars

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

by Gregory Maguire

11 cds unabridged 11.75 hours

Amazon.com Review

Gregory Maguire's chilling, wonderful retelling of Cinderella is a study in contrasts. Love and hate, beauty and ugliness, cruelty and charity--each idea is stripped of its ethical trappings, smashed up against its opposite number, and laid bare for our examination. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister begins in 17th-century Holland, where the two Fisher sisters and their mother have fled to escape a hostile England. Maguire's characters are at once more human and more fanciful than their fairy-tale originals. Plain but smart Iris and her sister, Ruth, a hulking simpleton, are dazed and terrified as their mother, Margarethe, urges them into the strange Dutch streets. Within days, purposeful Margarethe has secured the family a place in the home of an aspiring painter, where for a short time, they find happiness. But this is Cinderella, after all, and tragedy is inevitable. When a wealthy tulip speculator commissions the painter to capture his blindingly lovely daughter, Clara, on canvas, Margarethe jumps at the chance to better their lot. "Give me room to cast my eel spear, and let follow what may," she crows, and the Fisher family abandons the artist for the upper-crust Van den Meers.
When Van den Meer's wife dies during childbirth, the stage is set for Margarethe to take over the household and for Clara to adopt the role of "Cinderling" in order to survive. What follows is a changeling adventure, and of course a ball, a handsome prince, a lost slipper, and what might even be a fairy godmother. In a single magic night, the exquisite and the ugly swirl around in a heated mix:

Everything about this moment hovers, trembles, all their sweet, unreasonable hopes on view before anything has had the chance to go wrong. A stepsister spins on black and white tiles, in glass slippers and a gold gown, and two stepsisters watch with unrelieved admiration. The light pours in, strengthening in its golden hue as the sun sinks and the evening approaches. Clara is as otherworldly as the Donkeywoman, the Girl-Boy. Extreme beauty is an affliction...

But beyond these familiar elements, Maguire's second novel becomes something else altogether--a morality play, a psychological study, a feminist manifesto, or perhaps a plain explanation of what it is to be human. Villains turn out to be heroes, and heroes disappoint. The story's narrator wryly observes, "In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings. When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats." --Therese Littleton

 My Review;

This was a pretty good retelling of the Cinderella story, I enjoyed the book and narrator was very good. I sometimes got frustrated listening to the story because it seemed to move very slowly at times until it finally got to the point the author was trying to make, but all in all I thought it was a good book, I do think that if I had been reading it instead of listening to it I would have given up on it out of frustration with slowness of the story.

Hawke by Ted Bell - 5 stars

Hawke (Alexander Hawke #1)

by Ted Bell (Goodreads Author)

Lord Alexander Hawke is a direct descendant of the legendary English pirate Blackhawke and highly skilled in the cutthroat's deadly ways himself. While still a boy, on a voyage to the Caribbean, Alex Hawke witnesses an act of unspeakable horror. Hidden in a secret compartment on his father's yacht, Alex sees his parents brutally murdered by three modern-day pirates. It is an event that will haunt him for the remainder of his life. Now, fully grown and one of England's most decorated naval heroes, Hawke is back in the same Caribbean waters on a secret mission for the American government. A highly experimental stealth submarine, built by the Soviets just before the end of the Cold War, is missing. She carries forty nuclear warheads and is believed to be in the hands of a very unstable government just ninety miles from the American mainland. Hawke is in a race against time. His mission: Find the deadly sub before a preemptive strike can be launched against the U.S., and confront the murderous men behind the personal nightmare that haunts him before they find him first.

My Review; 
This was a "manly man" book with a lot of action and guns and explosions and submarines and Cuba and very, very, very, bad guys! I liked it and I will definitely read the next one in this series.

Death at Whitechapel by Robin Paige - 5 stars

Death at Whitechapel (Victorian Mystery #6)

by Robin PaigeKathryn Ardleigh and her husband, Charles, are called on for help when scandal threatens Jennie Jerome Churchill. Her son Winston's political future is jeopardized by someone who claims to have proof that his father was none other than the notorious Jack the Ripper... 

 

My Review;

This was the first book in this series I have read and I really enjoyed it, I loved the Victorian England setting and I like all the characters, I am going to get the first book in the series so I can begin at the beginning!

 I have read quite a few books that featured Jack the Ripper and I found the theory of his identity in this one very plausible and I have even seen it presented before in the Johnny Depp movie; "From Hell" 2001.

 

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - 5 stars - LOVED IT!!!

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)

by Suzanne Collins

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love

My Review;
This was a great book, totally worth all the hype! I love the action and the story is very unique and interesting. All the characters were very well developed, I even cried at one point in the book and I honestly could not put this book down once I started to read it! 

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson - 5 stars

Murder on Astor Place (A Gaslight Mystery #1)

by Victoria Thompson

As a midwife in turn-of-the-century New York, Sarah Brandt has seen pain and joy. Now she will work for something more--a search for justice--in a case of murder involving one of New York's richest families.

 

My Review; 

This a really good historical mystery. It is the first book in a series and I fully intend to get the next books in the series. I thought the characters were very well developed and I really enjoyed reading about New York City when it was still a very young city.