Meadowbrook Lane ReadsALot

  Holy cats was this one amazingly good. A can’t put it down, need to see what happens next, kind of book for me. I will say that instantly in my mind if reflecting on it, it has a complete cross between Behind Closed Doors and The Last Mrs Parrish.  A very wealthy housewife hires the recently out of prison,   Millie, for housework and light cooking, some childcare. It’s a “live-in” position… which is actually perfect for Millie since she finds herself homeless at the time.  Nina, the wife, once in awhile seems nice enough, and at other times totally psychotic. The husband is very successful and drop dead gorgeous. There are many secrets (and crazy twists and turns!!) this house holds…. A million perfect worth the read.  For a “thriller” type this was darn near a perfect 5 star for me!!!

  Loved this one.  The main character in the book is Hannah, who recently  moved back to LA after jumping from city to city the last couple of years since college trying to find that perfect fit and always coming up empty.  She is staying, for the moment, at her best friend Gabby’s house (and her husband Mark’s) in the guest room.  Soon after arriving they decide to get a group to all go out to celebrate her return to the city. She has to make a choice at the end of the night—does she stay out and hang with her old HS boyfriend Ethan who is there and see if they have a future, or does she go home with Gabby as planned and if they are meant to be together in the future, to just figure that somehow it’ll work itself out.  From this point in the book it’s like the parallel universes of how things transpire based on the one split decision—-so two stories continue through the book based on that one choice.  It’s such an intriguing book to me…and concept rea...

  I looooved this book for a fun, easy, “beach read!”  This reminded me of a perfect meld between a Jennifer Weiner book and a Elin Hilderbrand book :) A perfect mix of romance and humor. The story centers around a romance author named January who is not only struggling to write her next book by her publishers looming deadline, but also sorting through her anger and feelings about her recently passed father whom she found out was basically living a double life with a mistress.  In fact he left his second home-who he had with the girlfriend ..and January never knew about, to January.  She moves there for the summer to go through the house and sell everything off and write her book at the same time. Her next door neighbor there (Augustus Everett, or Gus) ends up being a fellow author whom she knew from college. What transpires from there is all sorts of fun :) I really enjoyed this one. As far as rom-com’s go, I’d actually give it a 4.5/5 :)

  Sometimes you just need an interesting, good, entertaining (also with a bit of mystery!!) FUNNY story :). That was this book exactly.   This story is about an Instagram influencer who is asked to be in the wedding of her former (childhood) best friend —whom she’s been estranged from for several years after a bit of a rift.  This “friend” comes from a LOT of money and has that perfect life on the outside, easily making everyone else feel less than—although also privileged to be able to be in her presence. The story centers around the wedding weekend away and the death (murder??) that happens there.  Throw a little side love story in there (as long as he isn’t involved in the death, right?!?!?!) and you have the makings of this fun, fast read.  Definitely worth it when you need to lighten things up a bit!  Jennifer Weiner books are always hilarious to me. I think it’s maybe the inner thoughts of her character that people can relate so much to??   4 of ...

  OK – – so I got this book to read with having absolutely no clue at all what it was about. I got it because there was so much hype about it. I kept seeing it over and over and over …mentioned anywhere that books were being discussed.  No, from judging a book by its cover, I totally thought it would be like a fun, funny, maybe romantic comedy type of thing. In a way I guess it was… But it also wasn’t. This book is so hard for me to describe. There definitely were funny moments in the book – – although most of them, in my opinion, came from the dog in the story that was named Six-thirty (that alone is kinda funny). Without giving too much of the story away in case you do want to read it, it is mostly about a woman named Elizabeth who is a scientist in the 1950s.  You can imagine this was highly unusual for the time and came with a plethora of unique challenges.  Again, while there are definitely funny little anecdotes and whatnot in the book, it deals actually with a...

  Such an emotional, different,  good book.    The book takes place in a hospital where the 17 year old terminal patient Lenni meets 83 year old Margot. The book follows their friendship and basically the stories of their lives as Lenni realized that together “they are 100 years old!”  To leave a lasting mark on the world, they decide to paint 100 pictures (for each year of their collective life) depicting the big moments of their lives. For every painting there is a story. And all of those little stories are what make up a life.  Beautifully written, thought provoking book! 4.3 out of 5. 

  Mid-summer calls for a classic Elin Hilderbrand “beach read.”  As always, it was great!  I’ve never read a book of hers I didn’t love.  This story follows the main character Lizbet who is basically recreating her life after a split from her longtime boyfriend JJ, whom she lived with and ran a restaurant with on Nantucket. An opportunity surfaces for her to become the general manager of a newly remodeled, very high end hotel, that has been on the island for over 100 years and was just recently bought by a London billionaire and remodeled after sitting abandoned for quite some time.  So many good little side live stories throughout and a fun twist to this one is—hmmm—-is the hotel also haunted by the ghost of a woman named Grace who was killed there over 100 years ago ?? ;). Solid 4 out of 5 in the beach-read category! Nice, easy and fun. :)