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Wanting Secret Baby
Wanting Secret Baby
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Naomi has the worst luck finding men. She wants to find someone to settle down with and start a family but all the men she keeps interacting with are duds. At her friends engagement party she encounters the brother of the intended groom and sparks fly, at least on her end. Is Alex the man she needs in her life?

Naomi has enchanted Alex since first glance. He’s barely spoken to her, yet she envelops his nightly dreams. He cannot get her face out of his conscience and tries to come up with any excuse just to see her again. When his brother asks him to be his best man, knowing Naomi is the maid of honor gives him a perfect excuse to see her again.

Naomi is powerless whenever Alex is near her. She needs to find a way to be as far from him at all times as possible. He messes with her concentration to a point that she knows she can’t trust herself near him. One stolen kiss is all it takes to send her over the edge.

Alex and Naomi can’t fight the pull that is constantly at work when they are near each other. After sneaking away from the wedding reception they find themselves at the point of no return. A tragic phone call after sends Naomi running from Alex, but can she stay away from him forever?

Alex and Naomi find themselves apart but never far from each other’s thoughts. After an unexpected gift leaves Naomi scrambling to escape, will she ever be able to come home again? Alex has to get Naomi out of his mind, for good this time. He tries to move on but every woman has Naomi’s face. When she shows back up in town a year later, he realizes he still cares for her more than he’s ever cared for any woman. Can he convince her to give him a chance?

Include some big secrets in the mix and Naomi and Alex find themselves fighting even harder to stay apart. Their chemistry is palpable. I received an advance copy without expectation for review, any and all opinions expressed are my own.
  
His Frozen Heart
His Frozen Heart
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
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<b><i>His Frozen Heart pulled me into an idyllic winter paradise and made me want to cuddle up with a warm blanket and a hot chocolate in my bed.</i></b>

This is the most romantic novel by Georgia Le Carre I have read so far. Don’t you worry, the steamy scenes are there too, but for the first time, they are not the main focus of the book.

Cade lives alone on the mountain side. He is there to escape both his reality and his troubled past. When a woman crashes her car and a blizzard is coming up, she needs to spend a few days in his cottage.

Sometimes, you only need a few days with a person to know whether they are right for you. What begins as a lust turns into a deep relationship, full of love and caring.

But with an unexpected twist, I started doubting everything I had read and all the characters involved. With an even more unexpected ending, I felt so disappointed…

When you find out a dark secret that makes you double-check your feelings, you need to talk to the other person. You need to get face to face and bloody talk. No matter your decision, whether you’re going to stay or go. No matter if you have already made your mind, you need to say something. If nothing is said, how can it be a happy ending?

Despite the ending though, and my emotional reaction, this is so far the most thrilling book I read by this author. Unpredictable and satisfying, she did manage to keep me on my toes, and actually managed to get me to care about the characters.

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You Were There Too
You Were There Too
Colleen Oakley | 2020 | Contemporary, Romance
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Mia and Harrison move to tiny Hope Springs from Philadelphia, each hoping to escape their own problems. Here they have a picture-perfect house and a supposedly matching perfect life. But Mia is struggling with infertility and her husband has his own hidden demons. Plus Mia has a secret: at night, she has recurring dreams about another man. So imagine her surprise when she runs into him--in the flesh--in Hope Springs. Even more surprising? He tells her he dreams of her, too.

This was an odd and intense read--nothing like what I expected, though I'm not sure what I was expecting, really. In fact, it was so serious at times, I had to read it in chunks. It was too much to take in, Mia's miscarriages and her emotions, the dreams and what they could mean. I don't really mean this in a bad way, either. The feelings in this book are just strong and extremely well-done.

I really liked the idea of dreams in the novel and how they are presented. I mean, what would you do if you were suddenly face to face with your fantasy, with someone who had been in your dreams for over a decade? What a particular situation.


"It's only that--at times--he feels so real. And has for the ten or more years that he's been starring in my nighttime reveries."


For me, where this book went off the rails, is when it started to meander. Oliver--Mia's dream guy in real life--and Mia join forces to try to figure out what their dreams mean. Mia laments about the men in her life. And then the book takes a turn and is just so damn sad. I felt betrayed, honestly, by its outcome. While I feel that it was very well-written--the way infertility is portrayed is well-done in a lot of ways--I felt as if I read an entire book for nothing. Why, I wondered, did we go through all that?

So, while I found the book to be quite captivating and emotional, what was going to be a 4-star read fell down to 3. Alas.
  
W&
Windswept & Interesting
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
143 of 230
Book
Windswept and Interesting
By Billy Connolly
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life.

Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy's life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.

Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician - a 'rambling man' - with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart.

As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken - willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy 'glam-rock' stage appearance - wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots - only added to his appeal.

It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson's chat show in 1975 - and one outrageous story in particular - that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy's pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too - for over 50 years, in fact - until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson's Disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings... and writing.

I grew up watching Billy my dad absolutely loved him. The only swearing we were allowed to watch. I have always loved him the one comedian that I took from my childhood and kept watching. I discovered so much in this book that I never knew and you have to admire him. He went through so much but never seems bitter, he never really flaunts his fame in this book and plays a lot down. Such an amazing insight into his life and a really good read.
  
5-Minute Marvel
5-Minute Marvel
2018 | Card Game, Fighting, Real-time
I’m a sucker for Marvel. Not necessarily the comic books, though the ones I have read have been pretty good. But I’m a sucker for Marvel games, movies, shows, gear, etc. I saw this on sale at my FLGS and had to have it. I finally was able to get it played on International Table Top Day 2019 and was happy with the result. It’s easy to understand, plays quickly (ahem, reference the title), and is Marvel-related. I have to LOVE it, right?

Ok so here’s the quick rundown. Setup is almost as long as the entire game, but needs to be reset with every subsequent play. You have the individual hero decks for each player, a LARGE resource deck, and a mission deck to divvy up and shuffle each time. It’s not difficult to keep it all straight, but you are given a LOT of cards to handle. Once the decks are all setup you are ready to play. I downloaded the 5-Minute Marvel timer app to accompany my game plays, but that’s completely unnecessary (I do like it though). Start the timer, and then flip over the first card of the mission deck on the boss’s mat. Each card will have several resource icons that the heroes will need to discard from their hands to overcome the card. There are no “turns,” as all heroes are attempting to gather the necessary resources at all times. Each hero has a special ability they can use that is printed at the bottom of their play mat, and they are very powerful, so use them often! If you can get through the entire mission deck and defeat the boss within the 5 minute time limit, you win! Since the game lasts only 5 minutes you should probably play it several times in a row using different bosses of the six that come with this base box.

Components. This game is a combination of thick cardboard play mats for heroes and bosses and linen-finish cards for everything else. The quality of the cardboard and the cards are both pretty good, so I have no issues here. The art on the game is really spectacular. I have not really seen Marvel art like this and it is very refreshing. It is somewhat cartoony and not very gritty at all (which seems to be the comic book trend). Definitely a positive for me.

Do I love this game? Um, no. Maybe with more and more plays with different playmates it will grow on me, but the several times we played it we had a great time and it was very stressful to acquire the needed cards, or to decide to use your special ability, but we never once failed. I know we can increase the difficulty and use higher-ranked bosses. AND WE WILL, but the first few bosses are pretty much chumps and we had no problems dispatching them. I do believe this game would benefit from lots of expansions, but I do not know how successful the base has been for the publisher, so that may never come to fruition.

I do recommend you try out this game, as the frenzied rush to beat the clock is something I very much enjoy in games (a la FUSE, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, et al). Also: it’s Marvel. The game unfortunately does not come with Dr. Strange nor Iron Fist like I would have preferred, but it DOES come with a couple of my other favorites: Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl. They are so so fun! Purple Phoenix Games is pretty consistent with this one (even my wife agrees!) and we give this a frantic 12 / 18. Go get ’em Cap!

https://purplephoenixgames.wordpress.com/2019/04/30/5-minute-marvel-review/
  
40x40

Stephen Merchant recommended After Hours (1985) in Movies (curated)

 
After Hours (1985)
After Hours (1985)
1985 | Comedy, Mystery

"What else would I include on a list of top five? That is so tricky because that list varies on a week-to-week basis. Another movie I’m really a fan of — and again, I think it mixes all kinds of flavors — is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. That’s a really eccentric little film. He made it, if you recall, he was trying to make The Last Temptation of Christ and that fell apart, so he went back to basics and wanted to make this sort of short film that he could shoot very quickly in just a couple of months on a small budget. It’s a very, sort of, eccentric film about Griffin Dunne trying to get home from a date that’s gone wrong. It’s like a black comedy equivalent of Taxi Driver; it uses New York as one of the characters, to some degree — this kind of weird, almost Hansel and Gretel forest kind of place, where you can’t escape and there’s strange oddities around every corner. It’s shot through with this brilliantly black sense of humor. Lots of really quotable moments. The playing, as well, from particularly Griffin Dunne, who I think is such an underrated performer, a really great performance of a man just trying to contain his ever increasing panic and rage. Yeah, that’s a film I’ve watched endlessly."

Source
  
The Identicals
The Identicals
Elin Hilderbrand | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Harper and Tabitha Frost--identical twins--grew up thick as thieves, the best of friends. But their parents' divorce at seventeen cruelly separated the girls, with each being allocated to a parent and sent off to live with them on a separate island. Harper goes with their more laid-back father, Billy, to Martha's Vineyard, while Tabitha goes with their formidable and exacting mother, renowned fashion designer Eleanor Roxie-Frost. The twins' relationship is then further destroyed by a tragic event in early adulthood. They've barely spoken since, and it's only the death of their father that forces them to reluctantly reunite on the Vineyard for Billy's memorial service. It also allows Harper a chance to see her popular but rebellious teenage niece, Ainsley, who is struggling under Tabitha's freestyle, lax parenting. Harper and Tabitha are set in their ways--and resolute about never forming a friendship. Can Billy's death change the way the twins feel, or is it too late?

I've read a handful of Hilderbrand's novels by now and many of her books have a similar, beachy feel, often with a focus on twins (this makes more sense now, knowing that Hilderbrand is herself a twin) and wayward teens. There's always rampant gossip on Nantucket, which is her usual locale, yet you'll always be left wanting to visit (and in this case, the Vineyard as well). Things are typically a bit predictable and there's always a romance or two thrown in.

Still, this book especially peaked my interest as I have (young) twin daughters. I was pleasantly surprised by the plot and quite captivated by the book. It's a perfect beach read. Obviously you're not going to find a literary masterpiece, but if you're looking for escape, it's perfect. The plot is exciting, the characters complex enough (and up to their elbows in trouble), and the summery location makes you feel as if you're at the beach, experiencing the crazy gossip as it happens. I found myself quite drawn to all the characters--which doesn't always happen in novels like this--and especially liked headstrong teenage Ainsley and poor Harper, who just can't seem to get her life together.

Sure, things happen rather as anticipated at times and some of the characters' changes are pretty foreseeable. But they are a fun group and the supporting cast really adds depth to the story. The epilogue is a cute addition, as well. Overall, this is a pleasant, entertaining beach read and a step above many in the genre.

You can read my review of Hilderbrand's novel THE RUMOR <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23341607-the-rumor">here</a>;.

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Queen &amp; Slim (2019)
Queen & Slim (2019)
2019 | Drama, Romance
Queen and Slim share a nice, if odd, first date. Driving her home after dinner their night takes a turn as they're pulled over by a police officer. It's clear that he's less than happy, and when he asks Slim to step out of the car with no real reason Queen, as a lawyer, tries to stand for what's right. What happens next leaves them both changed and they need to escape what's coming, but neither are prepared for what it'll lead them to.

Queen and Slim was interesting and yet at times boring. The basic idea is that these two are on the run after committing a crime, that can be a thrilling ride to be on, but between the thrilling, there was a lot of filler. It wasn't bad, it's artistically shot, but at some point that doesn't make up for the lack of scene.

There's also a technique employed that really didn't sit well with me. In those in-between bits when we're shown characters there's a voiceover when they're sitting looking intense. The first time it happened I honestly thought something had gone wrong with the audio but it all went back to normal fairly quickly. Then it happened a second time and I suddenly realised... this is a thing. I didn't feel like it added anything to the film, rather it took me out of the scenes every time.

Our peripheral characters are all solid and I was particularly impressed with the lad playing the mechanics son, Jahi Di'Allo Winston. While he wasn't in a lot of the film his moments were important and held an interesting message about what was occurring in the film.

With our main characters there was a big issue I had from the very beginning. I didn't particularly like Queen as a character. Even considering the events that take place for her outside of the film's main timeline I found her actions to be unbelievable compared to the image of her as a person that we'd already gleaned. In turn, I found the reactions of Slim to be against character too. This led to a lot of other similar issues through the whole film.

Jodie Turner-Smith's performance felt a little flat, while some of that will be to do with the way Queen was written I didn't get any flashes of something unique to latch on to. Daniel Kaluuya also might not have had the best writing to deal with but his performance was much more impressive.

While the story was an interesting one and brings up a lot to think about when it comes to social justice I was almost instantly taken out of it by Queen's actions, and then put off again by the strange voiceovers. I don't think I will need to watch this one again, while there are good bits in Queen and Slim there was way too much that was just okay between them.

Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/02/queen-slim-movie-review.html