Tizi’s Book Review

The synopsis of this book sounded very promising so I was very eager to start reading.

Somehow I had the expectations that it would all start with a flashback of 2 children and reading on we would get to the present. So when it didn’t start like I thought, I was a little bit disappointed…

But that feeling soon was gone and the only thing I could do was reading, reading, reading.

The story of Carver and Jenny isn’t the typical ‘man and woman meet, fall desperately in love, have a few minor issues but live happily ever after’.

Both Carver and Jenny had suffered major losses and are struggeling with their lives.

But when they meet, it’s just the beginning…

Like I stated earlier, once you start reading, you just cannot stop. There aren’t any holes in the plot and somehow it all makes sense.

You understand the feelings of the main characters and can really relate to them until a certain level (never been in such a situation, so hard for me to tell how I would process such losses)

Not wasting any more words, I recommend this book for all the lovers of a good book with romance, drama and a little bit of mystery!

Thanks to Choc-Lit, I fell in love with this author. So when I had the opportunity to read another one of her books, I grabbed it with both hands. And I didn’t get disappointed!

This is a story where both main characters love each other desperately since they were teenagers, but as so often is the case, are too afraid to come clean about their feelings. We get to know them in that period, only to fast forward a few years later and then another jump until present day.

Both Lizzie and Nick have moved on with their lives (or at least, tried to….), Lizzie as a topmodel, and Nick as a ‘normal, boring’ accountant.

But Lizzie’s life gets turned upside down when someone she thinks that cares about her, betrays her on the worst possible way.

Of course childhood friend and best friend of her brother comes at the rescue!

Of course I’m not going to explain the whole story here, but from this moment on the real story begins.

The author succeeds in writing a romantic story without both characters falling head over heels in love without even knowing each other that so well.

As you read both sides of the story, you get the feeling that you REALLY know Lizzie and Nick.

From the very start until the end you are cheering for them. And once in a while I facepalmed myself when there was a miscommunication between them.

Exluding the being-a-topmodel-part, and the way too f*cked up betrayal, this is a story that could happen to all of us.

Haven’t we all ever fallen in love with someone and were just too afraid to come clean about it as we didn’t want to jeopardize the friendship or making a total fool of ourselves?

I could go on for pages explaining why I loved this book and why I’m a fan of Kathryn Freeman, but I’m going to spare you all that!

Just read it, and also the other books, and you’ll understand it perfectly!

This was an example of a relaxing book, to read while you’re enjoying the sun, with a nice drink (even a cocktail, why not?)

The start of it is a bit sad, as we get to know Lucy, a woman in an unhappy marriage. I even dare to say that she is psychological abused by that ***hole of her husband.

Then the whole adventure begins when she wins a motorbike. Her husband wants to sell it immediately, but Lucy refuses.

So she starts taking lessons and meets Ash.

As stated here above, Lucy is a young woman who doesn’t dare to stand up for her own ideas and convictions. Slowly she grows to be an independent woman who isn’t afraid to chase her own dreams.

Ash is just the perfect dream guy. A police officer with a hint of a bad boy, as riding a motor bike. Bus also a very loving father, and slightly naive when it concerns his sister-in-law.

Here also Ash starts off as a grumpy (with a huge beard) man but also develops into a man who isn’t afraid of showing his emotions.

And of course the attraction towards Ash is given a little push by his little girl Daisy. How not to love her!!!

I believe this story teaches you a very important lesson: never settle for less, and most important: always stand up for yourselves!!! At home we have an (Italian) saying: better alone than in bad company. And this is exactly what Lucy does: she prefers to be living on her own than rather continue an unhappy marriage.

And as I’m being totally honest here… I am curious about what it feels like to ride a motorbike myself. Maybe now it would be great opportunity to start myself riding one? Who knows…

What to say about this story? Well…it was a difficult start… I began reading one day and after 1 page I had enough of it… Was I in the wrong mood? Could be… So I put the book aside, wanting to give it a second chance.

At the second chance, I read the first pages again, and had again enough of if…

So it was clear to me that really starting in this book would be a real challenge.

Time for a time-out and start again with a clear mind.

So there we were 2 weeks later…

My main thought at the start was: Don’t give up, keep reading! Just get past the first few chapters and then you’ll get drawn in the story as usual!

Now that I have read the whole book, I am not sure what to think of of…

Was it that bad? No, of course it wasn’t but I just didn’t get attached to it.

Cassie may have her own ‘concierge’ bussiness, but I would think that she would have some more common sense…

She doesn’t look forward to work together with her first love again. But she accepted a very suspect job, and she want to know if it’s all legit.

And suddenly she’s travelling to San Remo with that same ex-boyfriend Jake.

How so, apparantly she isn’t so immune for his charms? Didn’t see that one coming at all! (Sarcasme, in case you didn’t notice…)

Of course every love story comes at a point where someone does something wrong, or a secret comes out at the wrong moment.

But here Cassie is in my opinion a bit shallow and in a couple of minutes the fight is over.

Don’t know about you, but if someone I knew would pull me that trick, well, it would take days or even weeks before I could have a decent conversation with that person.

And Jake is a little bit too smooth… British young man moves to the States, comes back with lots of money and great looks.

He wants the girl, and with some sneaky tricks gets the girl…

Summarizing, I finished the book and I wasn’t that sorry I’ve reached the end of it.

I expected more intrigues, more depth and on a very personal note, more San Remo (being an Italian-Belgian / Belgian-Italian).

Hopefully her next books will be more of my thing!

When I read the synopsis, I got really excited! A nice love story with some little amount of magic. Unfortunately the book did not really satisfy me…

I had the feeling that the story went all too fast. Chloë and Ryan already had a summer fling, they break up, meet again during a trip to Hongkong, after the first hesitations of Chloë, they spend a night together to only break up afterwards again for in the end, well yeah, there is a happy end…

What I like most about reading books, is that for as long you’re in the book, you get submerged into the story, you get to know the characters and start to love or loathe them (depending of the fact if they’renthe goods ones or not)

But this book let me down…

Nowhere in the story I could relate with Chloë and sorry for the people in Team Ryan, but Ryan didn’t charm me at all. He just looked like a selfish, egocentric man only thinking about himself.

So if Ryan would be a real man, I suppose I wouldn’t even think about falling for such a man.

The only sweet parts for me were the dogs. Both Fred and Wilma (and I realised just NOW that those are also the names of the main characters of ‘The Flintstones!) were so lovely in the story!

So this time I was not really impressed, but as so often in books, and also in real life, up to the next and better one!

I am more the kind of woman who enjoys a real good romantic book, but that doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy a book with more drama and suspence.

So when I had the opportunity to read ‘The Fake Date’ I thought ‘why not?’

The book sucks you immediately into the story. Ella was left for dead after an assault. Who did it? Why? And will she survive?

Luckily, she does survive but is seriously injured and obviously is really traumatised by the events.

She suspects her date as he left her in the restaurant. Rick Greaves had been already investigated by the police after the suspicious death of his 2 wives but with no further consequences. And now Ella pointed him as the culprit of the assault. But is he really guilty?

When Rick has been declared not guilty, Ella has a really hard time to get over it. How can he walk free if she is 100% sure of him being guilty?

And then she meets her new neighbor Will… can she start trusting people again even if her attacker is still out there somewhere?

I really liked this story, as you try to figure out yourself who the murderer/aggresor is. In the meanwhile you get to know Ella better and see how she starts living again, with the help of Will.

Each time a new character is introduced, you see strange behaviour which makes you think ‘Could he/she be it?’

And once in a while you get a glimpse of the mind of the culprit. And you learn that there are more crimes commited than we first thought.

This makes the whole story even more intrigued.

Story is also very easy to read, you just want to keep on reading and you even forget the time and suddenly you realise that your whole afternoon has passed.

What I pity a bit is that after reading a while, I had a clear idea who was responsible for all the attacks. But maybe perhaps I’m a too good investigator? Who knows… 😃

Also a few chapters were a little bit too short in my opinion. But this is really searching a needle in a haystick.

So big thumps up for the author and keep up the good work! 😀

I don’t know why, but I had a totally different story in my mind after I’ve read the summary.

I thought that the ghosts would have a bigger part in this story.

So what did I think about this story? Well, I’m still not sure what I think of it. It didn’t get me all warm but it didn’t leave me unmoved at all. I wanted to know what was going to happen but not at such point that I dropped everything so that I could continue reading.

Rosalie is a sweet girl, always ready to help other people. Then her world get knocked over when Marc Petersen arrives at Raventhorn an arrogant man who only thinks about money.

Marc learns about the ghosts living around Raventhorn, but dismisses this immediately as a myth. Because ghosts aren’t real… or are they?

Like I said, I’m not sure what my final thoughts are… there was enough drama, but it was a little too predictable. When the strange things happened, I already had an idea who was responsible for it (of course not about what the ghosts were doing, as ghosts do always mysterious things 😃).

But it was well written, in such a way that I kept reading until the end.

Perhaps that other people will be more into this story, but for me it was ‘Ok, I’ve read the story but I won’t be inclined to read it a second or third time’ like I have with books that really peeked my interest.

So… I got some mixed feelings about this book…

There were some different things that got me annoyed while reading the first chapters. The whole time the story is written in present tenses. Nothing wrong with that, but for some reason, it bothered me…

Another thing that I wasn’t fond of, was the way the sentences were written. Too often it was ‘he does…’ followed by ‘he says’…. followed again by a ‘he thinks…’ and so on.

I’m sure there are other ways to explain what’s going on in the story than this…

But this is my personal thoughts, and I’m sure that my friends would say : ‘ There she is again, being part of the Grammar Police!’

As I had the ‘duty’ to review the story, I went for it anyway and continued reading.

I must says, sometimes too often I disliked all characters. While I got to know Dean better, all I could think about was: ‘How easily can you be fooled? And how superficial can he be?’

And Beth… well, I never liked her from the beginning.

In my opinion it was way too obvious what was going on, so I never was drawn to the story.

The further I got into the story, I somehow managed to get over my reservations.

Slowly I wanted to know how the murderer would be discovered, and how all the effects would affect Dean and his entourage. And before I knew, I finished the book, without counting how many chapters were left…

I know that each writer put his/her heart into each story they write, but this one was, sorry, not really my cup of tea…

But as this is the first of a series, maybe the next stories of Dean and Rocky will be more my thing, who knows?

Winter is coming, and so are the Christmas stories.

And when I had the opportunity to read this story, I went for it.

As the title may suggest (no need to be a bright light here…), the story takes place around the Christmas period.

And like most stories, don’t have too high expectations of it.

I’m not saying it’s a bad story, on the contrary, but there are a lot of Christmas clichés in it. So if you hate clichés, just skip this one.

And if you expect this to be a new ‘classic’, you will get disappointed.

I enjoyed this story, it was a great way to blank my mind and just being swept away by the romance and in a small amount, also magic.

Annie and Nik meet by accident and immediately there is a mutual attraction.

They start dating and they fall in love. But Nik has this big secret and is not ready to share it with just anybody. So is Annie the right person?

Don’t know if it’s just me, but I figured out rather soon what this big secret was.

I’m not that kind of woman who spills spoilers all over the internet, so I’m keeping it for me (and all the other readers of the book).

It’s a really lovely story, perfect to read on a lazy Sunday, with a nice cup of hot chocolate.

Annie is a nice woman, who also has the same issues every woman on earth has. And Nik is just a man made to swoon over.

But let’s not forget the side characters, meaning the animals… every appearance made me smile. They don’t have this huge part in the story, but their presence made the story extra loveable.

So if you like romance without stuggles, if you like Christmas with all the clichés and you want to get lost in a nice love story, go on and read this one!

After reading this book, I have some mixed feelings…

I didn’t dislike the book, but I cannot say it got me all warm and cosy.

It was a rather short story, compared with other books I’m used to. I’m more used to books with over 20-30 chapters.

When I started reading it, I felt like I missed a lot of background. Have you ever read a book where the initial chapters were missing? Well, that’s the feeling I had. While I was reading, I was thinking that more information, more details about the characters would be welcome.

And also the fact this is a part of a serie, makes it harder to comprehend the other characters if you haven’t read the other stories.

It was fun to jump back and forth from the past to the present and vice versa.

I like the story of Charles and Milie more than the story of Tom and Emmy. There we saw how both characters had feelings for each other, but in first instance not able to declare their love.

For Tom and Emmy there was an instant attraction.

Something I missed also, was that how Charles and Millie lost each other, was nothing more than one sentence told in the present and we will never know how Charles survived his loss.

And in my modest opinion, Tom and Emmy accepted too easily the explanation. If I were in their shoes, I would be a little more sceptical, even if it is a magical love story.

It may seem that I totally disliked the story, but I don’t.

It’s just that for a magical Christmas story I would expect a little bit more of everything, more love, more magic and why not, even a little bit of drama, so that the ‘love that overpowers everything’ is in its right.