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AW Book Review: The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

Posted By Danielle on April 22nd, 2011

When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. These spinster sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

But back in the summer of 1947, Milly and Twiss knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And, most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.

Rebecca Rasmussen’s masterfully written debut novel is full of hope and beauty, heartbreak and sacrifice, love and the power of sisterhood, and offers wonderful surprises at every turn.

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Book Review: Here Come The Girls by Milly Johnson

Posted By Chloe on April 21st, 2011

With their 40th birthdays approaching, Ven, Frankie, Roz and Olive all promised to do something spectacular when they were young kids, but now that doesn’t seem likely. Frankie and Roz are no longer speaking after an awful row many years ago, and Ven and Olive are fed up of running as go betweens and being friends with both while avoiding getting together in a group. But when Ven wins a luxury cruise for 4 people, she decides to take along her 3 best friends in the world and sod the consequences. On board the beautiful ship, the ladies begin to relax and enjoy their holiday touring the mediterranean with their every whim catered for, and lots of glorious sunshine and fun. But will the rift between Roz and Frankie ever be healed? What is the secret that Ven is so vehemently hiding from her friends? And will Olive be able to cope with her return to the land where her long lost love resides?

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Book Review: Hollywood Sinners by Victoria Fox

Posted By Leah on April 13th, 2011

Marriage to Hollywood heartthrob Cole Steel secured Lana Falcon a glittering place on the red carpet. But running from a wicked past she has trapped herself in a gilded cage the price of freedom…her soul? Kate diLaurentis’s career is fading as quickly as her looks… What could be worse than discovering her husband s latest mistress is Hollywood’s hottest starlet? Her only option the most shocking revenge. Chloe French’s innocent beauty has captured a million hearts, but no one’s warned her of the dangerous, dark temptation of rock star Nate - will lust destroy her? Las Vegas King, Robert St Louis’s fairytale wedding to Sin City’s richest heiress is tabloid gold… But scandal circles like a vulture - dirty secrets are about to be exposed! From the deepest desires come the deadliest deeds…and these four couples are about to pay for their sins...

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AW Book Review: The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry

Posted By Danielle on April 10th, 2011

After the unexpected death of her parents, painfully shy and sheltered 26-year-old Ginny Selvaggio seeks comfort in cooking from family recipes. But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning (“do no let her…”) before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish.

A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known. As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs. The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them.

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Book Review: Girl on the Run by Jane Costello

Posted By Leah on April 6th, 2011

Abby Rogers is the least health-conscious 28-year-old you’re ever likely to meet and her only concession to healthy eating is eating on blueberry muffin instead of her usual two. So when her best friend Jess invites her to her running club, Abby can think of no worse way to spend her time. However, the thought of seeing Dishy Doctor Oliver on a regular basis propels her to say yes. After a disastrous first session, puking included, Abby vows to never run again. Until she finds out something shocking about friend and co-worker Heidi and soon Abby’s running for more than just the fun of it.

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Book Review: To Marry A Prince by Sophie Page

Posted By Chloe on March 31st, 2011

Bella Greenwood is just a normal girl returning from her travels when she is hauled along with her best friend Charlotte to a rather well-to-do party. She manages to get herself into a somewhat embarrassing situation, but is rescued by a tall, dark and handsome stranger. All is fine, until Bella realises that her knight in shining armour is none other than Prince Richard, son of the King and Queen and heir to the throne of Britain. Bella is mortified but can’t stop her feelings towards him. Soon the pair are madly in love, and Bella begins to think a Royal Wedding might be on the cards. But is she right in thinking that a Prince can fall in love with her, and do fairytales romances ever have a happy ending?

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Book Review: The Happy Home for Broken Hearts by Rowan Coleman

Posted By Leah on March 30th, 2011

Ellen Woods spends her days immersed in the escapist pages of the romantic novels she lovingly edits. But her reality is somewhat less rose-tinted. Once upon a time, Ellen had her ‘happily ever after’ moment when she married her beloved Nick, but fifteen years later her husband’s tragic death leaves her alone with their soon-to-become-a-teenager son, faced with a mountain of debt, and on the verge of losing the family home. On the brink of bankruptcy, Ellen finally succumbs to her sister’s well-meant bullying and decides to rent out some rooms. And all too soon the indomitable Allegra with her love for all things lavender, Sabine on secondment from Berlin and estranged from her two-timing husband, and unreconstructed lads’ mag aficionado Matt enter her ordered but fragile existence – each with their own messy life in tow. And Ellen finds herself forced to step out of the pages of the romantic novels she hides behind, and learn to live – and love – again. Maybe a new chapter is about to begin for them all…

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AW Book Review: The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Posted By Danielle on March 25th, 2011

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.

For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.

Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.

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