Shelley Thrasher

I wanted to love this book, or at least like it. It has all sorts of things that are unusual in romance: the two leads are older, there is positive mention of Wicca, etc. So I was fully prepared to love this book.

Except I didn't. I really cannot stand the character of Bree, who comes off as quite snobby and elitist. She got into a pissing match with her mother's wound care nurse and insulted her for presumably going to a community college instead of somewhere with more prestige. She only backed off once she discovered that Linda (who becomes her love interest) didn't actually go to a community college. What the heck is wrong with going to a community college? Seriously. This is only one instance of Bree's snobbery. So she was a complete dud for me in the heroine category.

Linda was okay, but rather bland and two dimensional. And Ann was just horribly cardboard and awfully done. All of the other characters just blended into one another and didn't have distinct voices, so it got rather confusing at times trying to keep everyone sorted in my mind.

I really wish that I could have liked this book, but it definitely wasn't for me.… (mehr)

This novel reminded me a lot of KG MacGregor's "Mulligan", although I do believe that the characters in this book may have been slightly older. Still, both novels were well written and also about an older (than I at the first reading of this book) generation.

It's the story of Bree and Linda. Bree's a curator in Chicago who's almost ready to retire (and that was one of the things I liked about this book was how Thrasher both told us that Bree was ready to retire as well as showing us really well also). She comes back to her home town when her mother gets injured and moves into an assisted living apartment. Linda has lived in town for many, many years, with children and grand children and a very rich family life. But just as Bree has storm clouds in her life, Linda has a few too.

Another wrinkle that made this story interesting was that Linda and Bree sorta grew up together since Ann (Linda's older sister) was Bree's best friend until a point during their senior years when Bree and Ann had a humongous fight that changed that paths of everyones lives for decades to come.

There's so much delightful drama in this book. Between Linda's family, Bree's family, Ann, and so many other things. It was awesome. The characters were well drawn and the plot was very twisty and turney. It was an all around interesting book that I was hooked on from the very beginning.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Bold Strokes Books.… (mehr)