In Five Years

 

By Rebecca Serle

Dannie and David have been together for several years. Dannie is a lawyer and David is a banker and the two of them have been focusing on their careers and not on their relationship. David has asked Dannie to marry him, but so far she has not said yes. But she finally agrees to getting married but no date for the wedding gets agreed to. 

Dannie has a very realistic dream shortly after getting engaged where she finds herself in having a passionate sexual relationship with a handsome stranger. This man stirs her in ways she has never felt with David. She shakes off the feelings it created in her as just a dream, though.

That is until five years later when Dannie meets her best friend Bella's new lover, Greg, who she recognizes as the man from her dream. Dannie truly cares for Bella and also Greg seems very sincere in his attachment to Bella, so that dream must have been a lie, not a premonition.

Things become more complicated when Bella is diagnosed with a serious illness. Dannie just can't shake that dream about Greg five years ago before she ever met him. The dream haunts her and has prevented her from following through on her promise to wed David. But seeing Greg and Bella together pushes Dannie into hurriedly arranging her and David's wedding, as if that will cure the doubts that have troubled her for the past five years, doubts she buries and refuses to face about her love for the faithful, kind and understanding David. 

This was an OK read. I did find it a bit dull towards the middle. And the character of the best friend, Bella, was little more than a device for the main character, Dannie, to react to. And poor David, all we ever hear about him is what a great guy he is and how well Dannie and he get along. Never really any good reason why Dannie is dragging her feet other than maybe she doesn't find him exciting. Well, I didn't find Dannie or her story exciting.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly. 

Fool Me Once

 

By Catherine Bybee

Lori is a lawyer who works with a company called Alliance. Alliance specializes in bringing together people who are looking for a temporary marriage with people who are willing to agree to being married for a few years in return for being well-paid. For example, Paul Wentworth. He was running for governor in California but as a single man, he wasn't polling well. Thanks to Alliance, who found Shannon Redding, a respectable woman willing to be his wife for a few years in exchange for a nice house and several million dollars in her bank account, Paul won the election to become governor.

Anyway, that how it usually worked. But Shannon fell in love with Paul and wanted to be his forever wife. Paul was not interested and they were divorced, as originally planned. Shannon never got over him.

It also didn't work out that way for Trina and Fedor Petrov. Fedor killed himself before the arranged marriage was scheduled to end and Trina inherited from his mother what should have been his fortune of over $300,000,000. And Fedor's father, a nasty piece of work, is not happy about being cut out of his ex-wife's fortune and is not above extortion, intimidation, and brutality to get his hands on the money. 

And there is Avery, whose divorce ended exactly as planned, with both parties happy. Until the paparazzi snapped a photo of her celebrating her divorce at party featuring a male stripper. 

Avery is pretty unfazed by the publicity, though. Still Lori includes Avery along with Trina and Shannon as Alliance's guests on a cruise to Europe, hoping it helps the three women adjust to their new circumstances better. 

All the women seem to be having a good time on the cruise and even Lori makes a bit of a love connection with an attractive man, Reed, who appears to be just as attracted to her as she is to him. What she doesn't know is that Reed has deliberately targeted Lori and is being paid to discover everything he can about her. What wasn't in his job description was falling hard for the woman he is being paid to get close to.

This was a pretty good story. The best part was the cruise. But the three women are soon back on solid ground and Lori runs afoul of Trina's ex-father-in-law, Ruslan. Angry at losing his chance at his ex-wife's fortune, he makes violent threats at Lori. And the tone of the whole story just got a bit too grim, kind of took the fun away from it. The first part of the story was much more fun and enjoyable than the other part, where Ruslan is threatening to kill Lori in his attempts to get access to his ex-daughter-in-law, Trina. 

This is the first book in Bybee's First Wives series.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

The Way Home

 

By George Pelecanos

Teenager Christopher Flynn told himself he didn't care. About his parents, about his schooling, about his future. When his reckless behavior resulted in people being injured, Chris was sent to a juvenile facility. Being locked up hardened Chris but it also made him realize that he never wanted to be in that situation again.

After doing his time, Chris went to work for his dad as a carpet installer. One of the boys from the facility Ben, who had been in his unit, came to work for his dad too, upon Chris's urging. 

One day Chris and Ben are installing carpet in a vacant house when they discover a bag full of cash hidden underneath a floor. Now Chris wants nothing to do with the money but Ben, who comes from poverty, thinks Chris is nuts to leave $50,000 behind. Eventually Ben promises to leave the money be.

Unfortunately, that money belongs to two thugs who come to the house looking for it and find it gone. Neither Ben or Chris took it, but Ben told a friend, Lawrence, about the money. Lawrence was part of their group in the facility and a friend of both Chris and Ben, but especially Ben. The thugs track Ben down and torture him, trying to make him tell who has the money. Ben knows Lawrence took it, but refuses to tell the them who then kill him. 

When Chris finds out about Ben's death, he immediately knows it is because of the money. He contacts Lawrence and together they come up with a plan to deal with Ben's killers.

This was a pretty good read, once the story moved away from the time in the facility. That part didn't interest me. But once Chris gets back into society and tries to live a decent life, it got a lot more interesting.  

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Summer Tree

 

By Guy Gavriel Kay

Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry

When a famous speaker invites five college students to travel to another world with him, they eagerly agree to come along. Of course, it turns out the man, Loren, wasn't quite honest with them. He wants these five people to help him steer his land through the difficult times that are arising.

An ancient enemy, who was imprisoned, has managed to break free of his bonds. Rakoth Maugrim's only desire seems to be to destroy everything. He was defeated in the past and locked away in a prison under a mountain. But now that Rakoth is loose, he is once more starting to wage war against the people of Fionavar. 

But five young people of Earth are now on Fionavar and they will stand along side the beleaguered folks of Fionavar, helping in ways they never imagined and finding love and worth in the battle against the Unraveller.

This was an OK read, if overly detailed and way too long. I'm not a person who cares about mythology and I think a lot of this story is taken from Norse and Celtic mythology. I generally try to avoid stories based on mythology, of any kind. For someone who enjoys it, this is probably an interesting story. I was not the right audience for it and I was glad when I finally finished it. One thing I really didn't like was there are too many characters to keep track of, over 150 characters. Just too many gods and beings and objects to remember and I finally had to make a list in order to keep track of them all. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Shanghai Moon

 

By S. J. Rozan

Shortly before the start of World War II, Rosalie Gilder and her younger brother Paul have left Europe and have fled to Shanghai, China, which was one of the few countries in the world that was willing to accept Jewish refugees. While on board the ship to China, Rosalie met a Chinese man, Chen Kai-rong. They struck up a friendship and a few years after arriving in China, she and Chen were married. To commemorate their union, they had a brooch made that combined a jade disk from the Chen family and diamonds from the Gilder family which came to be called the Shanghai Moon.

The Chens and the Gilders all suffered during the war and during the unsettled times after the Communist takeover of China. Rosalie died in China but her brother Paul eventually moved to the United States, as did Rosalie and Kai-rong's son, Chen Lao-li. During the years of turmoil, the brooch disappeared and rumors of its beauty and value have grown over the passing decades.

Lydia Chin is a private detective who lives in the New York City area. A friend, Joel Pilarsky, asks her to help a woman from Germany locate the relatives of the Gilder family, all of whom, except for Rosalie and Paul, died by the hands of the Nazis. A box of jewels was recently discovered in Shanghai, valued at several thousand dollars that belonged to Rosalie and Paul Gilder, and the woman, Alice Fairchild, wants to reunite these jewels with Gilder relatives. The box of jewels does not contain the Shanghai Moon which has been missing since Rosalie died in China. The newly found box of jewels were stolen by a Chinese official who is believed to had come to New York City to sell them. However, Lydia has barely begun her investigation when Joel is murdered. And it seems to be for more than just the Gilder jewelry, as rumors of the Shanghai Moon are once again popping up. Lydia decides to continue her investigation despite being fired by Alice Fairchild. Lydia has become intrigued by the Shanghai Moon and she is also set on finding the person who murdered her friend.

This was an OK read, although a bit slow. Much of it centers around the Gilders and the Chens in China in the 1940s. Some of the story is presented in the form of Rosalie's letters. Peoples letters in stories is one the things I most dislike reading. I just find them tedious. 

The Lydia Chin detective series is a new one to me but is rather extensive. This book would probably be more interesting to those who are familiar with the series.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Doctor In the House

 

By Richard Gordon

Richard Gordon started his professional life as a medical doctor but became famous for his humorous stories about life as a doctor. Doctor In the House  was his first semi-autobiographical novel but he went on to write several more books about his life as a doctor. His doctor series went on to inspire film and TV versions.

In this first book, the author is telling the amusing story of his experiences in medical school in London, England. It is set in the years between the two wars. 

The system used in England at the time is different from that used in the  United States today. Gordon basically went from high school directly to medical school, if I am understanding his story correctly. He has a lot of fun pointing out the doctors, nurses, patients, his own and fellow students failings and foibles. 

It was an interesting read, although I was a bit lost at times understanding what he was talking out. The period he was writing about is nearly one hundred years ago and in a medical and educational system foreign to my experience. It wasn't as amusing as I was expecting it to be, though. At times, his judgments of his fellow humans were unnecessarily harsh, in my opinion.