207 Book Talk

  I read Things You Save in a Fire  to kick off the new year. I posted about it on Twitter, and the author shared the link to a bridge chapter between that story and this one. I read the bridge last night, and ended up wanting to start How to Walk Away  immediately afterward, so I did. Margaret Jacobsen is on the verge of getting everything she has ever wanted... a great job, the ideal fiancé, and all the other hallmarks of a perfect life. Then, after being talked into doing something she most certainly does not want to do, everything changes.  Katherine Center writes her characters to perfection, because it is evident Maggie's fiancé Chip is a jerk from the very start. Who forces someone to do something they are terrified of doing, just to show off? Ugh. He was just so smarmy and self-centered. (Side note - why wasn't he charged with some sort of crime for "borrowing" and flying a plane without a license?!)  Maggie has to rework her whole life, while those arou...

 I noticed when I added Believe Me  by J.P. Delaney to my currently reading shelf on Goodreads that it had a rating of 3.68. In the past, a lower score like this led me to shy away from a book unless I really wanted to read it, but I have learned that while I sometimes agree with other readers, there are often times that I just don't, and this ended up being one of them. The book opens with a scene, as it might be written in a movie script or play. This made me a bit nervous, but I quickly realized the whole book was not written in this style, and I was intrigued from the first pages.  Claire is a struggling actress from the UK trying to make it, without a green card, in New York City. To make ends meet, she works for a law firm to catch men willing to cheat on their wives. She doesn't feel great about it, but it gives her a chance to practice her acting and it helps pay the bills.  Enter Stella, wife of Patrick Fogler, a Columbia University professor. Claire is aske...