Previous Reads

Face the Fire, Nora Roberts
Seven Up, Janet Evanovich
Shopgirl, Steve Martin
Feeling Sorry for Celia, Jaclyn Moriarty
Jemima J, Jane Green

Face the Fire, Nora Roberts
Even though I've got a proposal for As Bad As Can Be due on my editor's desk in just a couple of weeks, I couldn't help but scrounge the time to read the final book in the Three Sisters Trilogy.

Three hundred years before the trilogy begins, a trio of witches fled the Salem witchcraft trials to form their own haven of safety off the coast of Massachusetts. It was not the shelter they'd hoped, however, and one by one each perished through a key failure of character -- she who was Air lacked courage, she who was Earth lacked control, she who was Fire lacked the faith to let her lover choose freely. Fast forward to the modern day. As the three-hundred-year protection spell cast by Fire before her death nears its end, three witches gather on the island. In the previous two novels of the series, Dance on Air and Heaven and Earth, the modern-day Air and Earth each face their demons and win, finding the courage and finding the control to rewrite the past. In Face the Fire, Fire's counterpart Mia Devlin seeks to join with her sisters to banish forever the evil that threatens their home and their happiness.

I have been a Nora Roberts fan since her category days. I really enjoyed the first two books in the series, but I had a hard time getting into Face the Fire at first. Perhaps it was the dominance of the paranormal theme compared to the previous two books. When the story took hold of me, though, boy did it take hold. It was exciting, suspenseful, and, I admit it, had me sniffling at bit at the end. It's definitely a book worth reading. (top)

Seven Up, Janet Evanovich
Okay, so I have this little quirk, which is that I hate reading hard bound books, especially for pleasure reading. Hard bound books are heavy and bulk with dustcovers you have to be careful of, stiff spines, and pokey, sharp corners that dig into your lap when you're reading. They also cost way too much to accidentally drop into the water while you're reading in the bath. With the exception of Diana Gabaldon's Voyager, I have always made myself wait until the paperback comes out. Which is why you're reading my paen to Janet Evanovich's Seven Up instead of Hard Eight.

First, let me just say, Janet Evanovich is god. Her Stephanie Plum series is rip-snortingly funny, constantly surprising, and steamy as hell. (Pssst. Forget about Morelli, Steph, get your hooks into Ranger).

Ahem. In Seven Up, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is once again on the case, this time trying to find a retired hitman who is also her grandmother's ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, she's trying to figure out why the prospect of marriage to Morelli isn't rowing her boat, she's trying to find a couple of high school buds who have gone mysteriously missing, her mother's dragging her into Tina's Bridal Salon to look at wedding gowns, and tall, dark, handsome bad boy Ranger is doing every thing he can to get her into bed. Evanovich just gets better and better every time. (top)

Shopgirl, Steve Martin
I picked this up out of curiosity and found myself with a luminous surprise. Mirabelle is an anachronism, the glove girl at Neiman's. She's overlooked by shoppers heading to the couture and makeup departments, and overlooked by her friends, who consider her too shy. The men who don't overlook her, like amplifier salesman Jeremy, are generally clumsy and callow, so Mirabelle passes the days not expecting much, managing her clinical depression, and occasionally sliding into her true calling as an artist to turn out sensitively rendered drawings. Then Ray Porter springs into her life, bringing a breeze of romance and lust and excitement. But Ray doesn't know what he wants and doesn't understand that he has the capacity to hurt…

Martin writes lovely, spare prose that is insightful and moving in its brevity, and ultimately uplifting. He has an understanding of people, their motivations, and their self-delusions that is remarkable. It makes sense -- achieving success as a comedian requires observing people, understanding their foibles, their strengths, and their drives. (top)

Feeling Sorry for Celia, Jaclyn Moriarty
For high schooler Elizabeth, life is a misery. She feels like a misfit, has no boyfriend, only communicates with her mother via notes on the refrigerator, and her best friend Celia has disappeared.

Told through an interchange of notes between Elizabeth and her cross-town penpal, as well as letters from imaginary groups like the Association of Teenagers, the Cold Hard Truth Association, and the Society of People Who Are Definitely Going to Fail High School, this incredibly clever book is funny, poignant, wise, and uplifting. And some of it is a laugh-riot, such as Elizabeth's advertising exec mother who's always leaving her notes looking for inspiration: "While you're at school today, why don't you ask your friends what they think of purple lipstick? Explain to your friends that your mother may lose her job if she doesn't think of something good to say about purple lipstick very soon." (top)

Jemima J, Jane Green
Jemima Jones is 100 pounds overweight, working in a deadend job at the Kilburn Herald, lonely, and secretly in love with gorgeous colleague Ben Williams. Then she discovers the Internet, which is the beginning of a stunning transformation that finds her thin, beautiful, and jetting off halfway around the globe to meet a stranger in California. But nothing is what it seems in this updated riff on Cinderella. You'll root for Jemima, a sassy, smart, hip heroine. If you want feel-good entertainment, pick this one up.

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