It’s Monday! What are you reading?

Sealed with a Kiss by Rachael Lucas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate recently broke up with her boyfriend of six years.  Lacking a place to live, she answers an ad for a live-in Girl Friday position on a Scottish island.  

The island is home to an eccentric cast of characters who welcome Kate in.  Her job involves fixing up old buildings on an estate to be available for rent.  She also develops an interest in watching the seals that come onto the beach.  When a seal pup is abandoned she and the Lord of the Manor team up to rescue it.

This book is chick lit but with more finely developed characters than many books I’ve read.  I was nervous about reading it because I’ve followed the author’s blog for a long time and wasn’t really interested when she had excerpts there.  Then she announced it was on a free download for a few days so I got it.  It was really good.

The Goddess Inheritance by Aimee Carter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate, the new queen of the Underworld, has been kidnapped by a jealous Goddess and is being held until she gives birth to her son.  Her captor plans to take the child for herself.

This is the third book of this series.  There is a war coming between the Gods and the Titan Cronos.  By dividing the Council of Gods and getting them to fight among themselves, Cronos is likely to win.

This wasn’t my favorite of the series but it did give a good resolution to it and set up a new series to come.

Passport Diaries by Tamara Gregory

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kia Carson is a lawyer in the DA’s office in Los Angeles.  When she is suspended for 6 weeks she takes the opportunity to travel to Europe.  She isn’t used to doing anything alone so she has a lot of learn about herself and the rest of the world.

This was an interesting story but one thing bothered me.  The main character is obsessed with race and racism to the point where she is the most racist character in the book.  She judges everyone and every interaction based on race first (and any other consideration is a far distant second) while going on and on about how horrible it is that everyone judges her based on race.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother has been missing for 2 weeks and the police are no longer looking for her.  Scarlet knows her grandmother wouldn’t just run away.  When a street fighter named Wolf shows up in her town and seems to be linked to the disappearance she decides to track down her grandmother herself.

The book takes place immediately after the events in Cinder.  Linh Cinder is a cyborg in New Beijing who was just discovered to be the missing Lunar princess Selene.  Now Cinder is on the run from her aunt who wants her executed.  Meanwhile, Scarlet is finding out that her grandmother is not just an old lady who runs a farm.  Cinder and Scarlet’s paths cross in this second book of the Lunar Chronicles.

I really enjoyed this story.  For most the book there are two separate stories taking place in China and France but it didn’t feel disjointed. Even though these characters are based on Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood the story isn’t predictable.  I can’t wait for the third book to come out.

A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies by Ellen Cooney

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Charlotte Heath has been bedridden for almost a year with a mysterious illness.  On the first day that she feels better she drives her horses to town to surprise her husband.  She finds him kissing another woman.  She drives off to the only place she can think of.  A former servant had left to work at a hotel for women in Boston.  But when she gets there she finds that there are gentlemen there to serve the women who stay and one of those women is her husband’s aunt. 

Charlotte annoyed me.  It is 1900 and she is the wife of a rich man.  Supposedly she came from a poor background and she is very independent but she is so passive in this novel that I wanted to shake her.  Eventually she comes out of this a bit but I didn’t see a lot of personal development.