Meadowbrook Lane ReadsALot

  Another book I’d highly recommend. This takes place in Baltimore, and then later in Hickory, North Carolina in the early 1940’s as the polio epidemic is ravaging the country.   Tess, age 23, moves from Baltimore to NC after ending her engagement to the love of her life after agreeing to marry another man. Tess is also a nurse who plays a very important role in the polio treatment hospital.   Her marriage ends up being very strange and loveless.  Most of the people in the town treat her as an outsider. There is a fair amount of tragedy while she is there that she is wrapped up in and she is not happy there for quite some time —even with their husband being a very wealthy highly-esteemed prominent figure. The book also touches quite a bit on racial tensions of that time period and some big differences noted in the rich and the “common.”  Very interesting story about the life Tess is given to lead over this time period.   Now, this really isn’t the best desc...

  This is definitely a new favorite!  I’m putting it in my top 10!!  I looooved this book.  The beginning may be a little dark—it’s about a woman who basically has her life just falling apart. Nothing is going well. She really has no one significant in her life…it’s just…blah. She decides to take her own life by OD’ing on her antidepressants and alcohol.  The bulk of the book takes place in this in-between time where she is not really alive OR dead.  She’s in the “Midnight Library” where she not only can see and feel all of her past regrets but also the infinite possibilities of how her life could have gone by either changing one regret…or even making just the smallest different decision. She gets to “try out” these other parallel lives for herself in this space. I just adored this book and the themes that ran through it about how we can dwell on things we regret and oftentimes wonder what our lives would’ve been like if this or that decision would have bee...

 Recommend!!!  First Colleen Hoover book I’ve read and can’t wait to read another. It’s a mix of both a love story but also just kind of a general “novel.”   I was trying to think of how to describe the book without completely giving away the whole story…so…I’m just going to go with the synopsis on the back of the book: (As follows)  Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true.  Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is distu...

Ok—so.  Definitely an old-school Kristin Hannah book. Nothing like anything I’ve read of hers before. Apparently she started out as a romance novel writer. That is definitely what this was. I must say, I didn’t hate it. It was good, in that it still had that part of Kristin Hannah that pulls you in …and that makes you want to keep reading to see what will happen. So this story is actually about a woman who basically wakes up 100 years in the past. At first she keeps thinking she is dreaming but it turns out she is not.  So the premise of the whole book is basically her trying to get back to her present day life and figuring out what needs to happen to do that. Of course now with it being a romance book obviously there is a romance twist in it all. I think it’s definitely worth reading  just to check out early Kristin Hannah, if for nothing else. Three out of five stars.   

  Ok. I loved this book. I think it’s because the author did SUCH an awesome job on developing the main character. It’s like you TRULY knew him—-or know people just like him!  You can “hear” his voice and just exactly HOW he’d be saying different things.  It’s almost like a “coming of age” book, but about an old man instead.  An old, grumpy man in the years after losing his wife.  The quote on the front cover of the book from People actually wraps it up so perfectly. It says, “ You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel new sympathy for the curmudgeons in your life.”  Highly recommend. Solid 4.5/5 

 A true story/memoir of Horace “Jim” Greasley, an English POW during WWII.  Incredible story and a new perspective from what I’ve read about in the past. This is all from the point of view of a captured Allied soldier.  Unfortunately for him, his brigade is captured in the early stages of the war….so he has almost a full 5 years to endure as a prisoner of the Germans.  Excruciatingly similar to stories involving concentration camps, it turns out. There is also a forbidden love story weaved through this (and quite a graphic one I might add! Lol) that keeps a spark of hope alive for not only Jim, but his fellow prisoners.  Excellent true story.

  Such a fun, different book :).  It’s part magical, part Hallmark feel-good. Just what is needed sometimes!  The main character’s name is AnnaKate who is in her early 20’s and ends up moving to a small town in Alabama after her grandma dies—and a cafe is willed to her.  She plans on going there and tying up loose ends and then selling the cafe, however she ends up being really drawn into this little town and the people/family and culture of the place. And the cafe….known for its “magical” you might say—Blackbird pie…..what IS this all about?!? Such a great read.  A definite recommendation!  4.2/5