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The Unhoneymooners
The Unhoneymooners
6
8.0 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
I picked this up a few months ago, not really knowing what it was about, but it was a steal at 99p and I've read books by this author before.

In this, Olive is chief bridesmaid at her sisters wedding. Ami has been a bit of a bridezilla but because of her love of competitions, everything has been free - more or less - at the wedding. Olive has been given a list of 50 things she has to check on the day of the wedding and one of them includes ordering a separate meal for herself (allergic to seafood) and the best man and her sworn enemy, Ethan, who has an aversion to buffet food. Turns out it's a good job she did as everyone falls ill after eating the seafood and she and Ethan end up going on the free honeymoon together. Once there, as they spend more time together, they realise that the other isn't as bad as they seem and they actually grow to like each other.

Hmm... I did like this but I wasn't fully into this. I didn't get butterflies reading of them falling in love. I wasn't sucked in to their love/hate relationship - it was a bit too tame for me in that regard. I think I snorted a handful of times at the things they said to each other or the situations they found themselves in while on the island of Maui but there's something I can't put my finger on. I was a little underwhelmed by the story.

One thing I was very gung ho about once the first little fibres started unravelling: Dane. There was just something about him. I'll let you figure out what when you read this.
  
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Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post

Feb 12, 2021  
Check out this awesome playlist (and the sweet inspiration for it) for the cozy mystery GRAND OPENINGS CAN BE MURDER by Amber Royer Author on my blog. Come view the book trailer, and enter the giveaway to win a signed copy of the book as well as a $25 gift card to Dandelion Chocolate!

https://alltheupsandowns.blogspot.com/2021/02/book-blog-tour-and-giveaway-grand.html

**BOOK SYNOPSIS**
Felicity Koerber has had a rough year. She's moving back to Galveston Island and opening a bean to bar chocolate factory, fulfilling a dream she and her late husband, Kevin, had shared. Craft chocolate means a chance to travel the world, meeting with farmers and bringing back beans she can turn into little blocks of happiness, right close to home and family. She thinks trouble has walked into her carefully re-built world when puddle-jump pilot Logan Hanlon shows up at her grand opening to order custom chocolates. Then one of her employees drops dead at the party, and Felicity's one-who-got-away ex-boyfriend - who's now a cop - thinks Felicity is a suspect.

As the murder victim's life becomes more and more of a mystery, Felicity realizes that if she's going to clear her name in time to save her business, she might need Logan's help. Though she's not sure if she's ready to let anyone into her life - even if it is to protect her from being the killer's next victim. For Felicity, Galveston is all about history, and a love-hate relationship with the ocean, which keeps threatening to deliver another hurricane - right into the middle of her investigation. Can she figure it out before all the clues get washed away? FIRST IN A NEW SERIES!
     
Souls For Sale (1923)
Souls For Sale (1923)
1923 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The first one would be Souls For Sale, which was actually written and directed by Howard Hughes’ uncle, Rupert Hughes. It was based on a novel that Rupert Hughes wrote. He had been an author and a playwright and he had been brought to Hollywood in 1918 as sort of an effort that Samuel Goldwyn did to bring famous authors into the movies to try increase the qualities of movies. Rupert Hughes had just fallen in love with Hollywood and once it started being attacked after the scandals of the 1920s, he wanted to defend what he felt was an industry that was getting a bad rap. He wrote this novel and they made a movie out of it called Souls For Sale, and it’s about the daughter of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who escapes her brand new husband, who she has a bad feeling about, and ends up in a movie and immediately becomes a huge star. It basically tells the story of this girl encountering the movie industry, and at every moment where something sort of dirty or scandalous could happen, she actually finds that the people in Hollywood are really hard-working and upstanding citizens and are a higher quality of human than – for instance – her treacherous husband. It’s a really interesting movie. It’s definitely an artifact of its time and place – and you could say that more literally about it than many other movies because it has kind of a documentary element about it. The director really goes out of his way to show you what the studio lots looked like in 1923, and he films other directors like Charlie Chaplin working. It’s a movie that I had never heard of before as I was doing research [for the book], and I think it’s probably the earliest sort of Hollywood movie about Hollywood."

Source
  
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ClareR (5869 KP) rated Memorial in Books

Jan 19, 2021  
Memorial
Memorial
Bryan Washington | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, LGBTQ+
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Memorial is the story of Mike and Benson’s relationship and about their separate lives. They have lived together and loved one another for a few years, but when Mike gets word that his estranged father is dying back in Japan, it seems to come at the right time for their relationship. They clearly need the space to think. Except “frying pan” and “fire” comes to mind. Benson is left to live with Mike’s mother who has come to visit her son, and Mike is propelled in to caring for a dying man, a stranger to him, and running his bar.
It was so interesting to read about their lives and motivations. What starts out to be a purely selfish move by Mike (I felt that he was running away at first), actually becomes a selfless act. Of course, there is the advantage that he gets to know his father before his death, but he is there for him until the end.
Even though Mike’s childhood was much harder, it’s Benson who, to me, seemed to have been more affected by his parents break up. His father’s alcoholism, his mother leaving them and starting a new family, and his HIV+ diagnosis, all added up to a difficult mental space for him. But I didn’t feel that any of this became sentimental. It’s a joint decision when Benson and Mike realise that their relationship is coming to an end.

I really enjoyed this book. Its gentle pace where small acts and occurrences form the bigger picture really appealed to me. It’s an original and engrossing story from an author that I’ll be looking out for in the future.

Many thanks to Atlantic books for providing me with a copy of this book through NetGalley.