Good Reads

The continuation of the Immortals series starts next Tuesday, the 26th with the release of Immortals: The Redeeming.

But right now I'd like to break from BSP and recommend some reads.

1. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray. I had been wanting to read this book since 2005, and finally sat down and did it. An excellent YA historical/paranormal coming of age story about a young girl sent to a straightlaced boarding school in England, a place that holds strange and dark secrets. Gemma is a forthright heroine with a wry outtake on life, but her troubles and griefs are very real. The book is about love and hope, fear and hatred, illusion and reality, and choices that are often between evils. The author gives a fine portrayal of how little control young women in the Victorian age had over their lives, and how they struggled for freedom. An excellent novel, I look forward to reading the next two.

2. Triple Exposure, Colleen Thompson.

This is Colleen's latest rom. sus. release, set in the Texas town of Marfa, where mysterious lights dance in the sky (in real life as well as in the book). Colleen never disappoints me with her tight plots, her well-researched locales, and her masterful handling of "when extraordinary things happen to ordinary people" scenarios. Each of Colleen's books stands alone, so you don't have to read them in order, but I encourage readers to find her first book, Fatal Error. I fell in love with Colleen's writing with that book--I remember sitting down to glance through it and finding myself riveted in place until I'd read 100 pages without realizing it. I lent it to my mother when I finished--I haven't seen it since. :-)

3. Snowbound, by Janice Kay Johnson. There's a reason this one won the 2008 RITA for best contemporary series romance. I don't read many series romances, but this one nestled into my heart. A teacher hauling her debate club teenagers back to Portland gets stranded in a snowstorm--they reach a lodge not yet open for the season and take refuge there. The innkeeper is an Iraq veteran who took over the inn to ease his transition back to his old life. Now, usually I run away screaming from a novel full of cute teenagers. But the author made her teenagers real people who act like they're sixteen and seventeen, not thirty, or four. Her painting of each character as an individual is lovely, as is her capable handling of the hero and his pain. It's not a dark "he has PTSD" novel, it's real life. Both h&h come together while taking care of the kids and try not to hope that their relationship can blossom. An excellent work.