Showing posts with label CHICKLIT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHICKLIT. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

BOOK REVIEW: SUMMER AT THE SAINT BY MARY KAY ANDREWS


 GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Everyone refers to the St. Cecelia as “the Saint.” If you grew up coming here, you were “a Saint.” If you came from the wrong side of the river, you were “an Ain’t.” Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn’t rich enough or connected enough to vacation here. But she could work here. One fateful summer she did, and married the boss’s son. Now, she’s the widowed owner of the hotel, determined to see it return to its glory days, even as staff shortages and financial troubles threaten to ruin it. Plus, her greedy and unscrupulous brother-in-law wants to make sure she fails. Enlisting a motley crew of recently hired summer help—including the daughter of her estranged best friend—Traci has one summer season to turn it around. But new information about a long-ago drowning at the hotel threatens to come to light, and the tragic death of one of their own brings Traci to the brink of despair.

Traci Eddings has her back against the pink-painted wall of this beloved institution. And it will take all the wits and guts she has to see wrongs put to right, to see guilty parties put in their place, and maybe even to find a new romance along the way. Told with Mary Kay Andrew’s warmth, humor, knack for twists, and eye for delicious detail about human nature, Summers at the Saint is a beach read with depth and heart.

TEE'S THOUGHTS:

I always look forward to a Mary Kay Andrews book, she has the ability to make me cry or laugh while feeding me a great mystery. Her summer releases are always a favorite. Maybe. I do love a good holiday story and hers are the most merry!

Summers At The Saint, her newest book was once again a winner with me. It was a fantastic beachy summer read, but it also had a bit of heaviness included within it to keep it from being too fluffy.

The St. Cecilia, or the Saint as it is know by the rich clientele that summer there sets on the coast of Georgia. Traci Eddings owns it, inheriting it from her husband when he died. She is struggling trying to keep it a float, but she has a lot that is working against her, mainly her late husbands family. The descriptions of the hotel, from the front receiving area to the kitchens all painted a vibrant picture of where you were.

All the characters in the book, and there were plenty, from the family to the summer workers, were well written and thought out. Traci was not from a rich family, she spent her summers there as a lifeguard at the hotels pool, but ended up marrying the bosses son. There is certainly a class struggler's between her and her dead husbands family.

The mystery has been unsolved for decades, and it has a surprise twist that I will confess I did not figure out. It is a great little who done it that added plenty of intrigue to the family drama.

I read and also listened to this book, which made the 400 plus book go by quickly ( everyone who knows me know I do not like a book that roams over 350 pages ), but I feel like it was a fast paced book either way. The narrator Kathleen McInerney made the listening pleasurable with her smooth and silky voice,

Summer At The Saint is fun and entertaining and it is the perfect summer read for everyone.

Monday, April 24, 2023

Book Review: Twelve Hours in Manhattan by Mean Gabriel


 GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Two worlds. One heart. Twelve hours.

Bianca Maria Curtis is at the brink of losing it all when she meets Eric at a bar in Manhattan. Eric, as it turns out, is the famous Korean drama celebrity Park Hyun Min, and he’s in town for one night to escape the pressures of fame. From walking along Fifth Avenue to eating ice cream at Serendipity to sharing tender moments on top of the Empire State building, sparks fly as Bianca and Eric spend twelve magical hours far away from their respective lives. In that time, they talk about the big stuff: love, life, and happiness, and the freedom they both seek to fully exist and not merely survive.

But real life is more than just a few exhilarating stolen moments in time.

As the clock strikes the twelfth hour, Bianca returns back to the life she detests to face a tragedy that will test her strength and resolve—and the only thing she has to keep going is the memory of a man she loves in secret from a world away.

TEE'S THOUGHTS:
Twelve Hours in Manhattan promises to be the perfect love story for anyone who enjoys kdramas but unfortunately, it falls short, a few times, feeling much more like a fanfic you might come across online instead. 

Honestly, I wanted to like this book. I enjoy kdramas and love that more books are starting to feature more material that showcases them! Unfortunately, this felt more like someone just decided to write something they thought would be liked because it was “in.” 

I’m an avid fan and reader of fan fiction so it’s not necessarily a negative to be compared to it, I’ve read some amazing fanfics, but this felt more on the side of messy, disorganized, and kind of forced. 

Plots kept piling up in the story that just didn’t need to be there, almost as if they needed to be thrown in to reach a certain word count. 

Beyond the story itself, the characters lacked as well. Sometimes I can read a story and think, “I don’t like this plot but I love this character,” but I never once felt that way with Bianca. 

Bianca just wasn’t likable. Everyone who watches Kdramas knows that the main character is always kind of frustrating and you’re wondering HOW are they the “IT girl” in the story but eventually, they have redeeming qualities and you fall in love with them, swearing to protect them always. Never happened with Bianca for me. The only thing that Bianca left me with was exhaustion. She cries about everything and anything. There were times I couldn’t even remember what it was she was crying about because I was just so tired of her. 

Eric was a perfect cookie-cutter kdrama boy but much like Bianca missed the mark because there wasn’t much substance to him. 

Honestly, the secondary characters were more of a fresh breath of air, which is common in kdramas but even there, there wasn’t enough. 

The book itself is a fine read, especially if maybe you are a bit younger and don’t need more from a book. This story could have made a fine one-shot on a fanfic site or even a hilarious social on Twitter but it just did not need to be an almost 300-page book. 

** THIS BOOK WAS READ AND REVIEWED BY MY DAUGHTER LIZZ **