Rippler and Chameleon by Cidney Swanson

I won the Rippler in LibraryThing Member Giveaway... and after I reviewed it, the author approached me asking if I would like to read the sequel.. I said yes. Here's why: 

What a great story!! I'm on the edge of my seat as it ends, wondering what happens in book two. The author has done a superb job catching my interest, holding my interest, and making me seek out the second one.

What is a rippler? It's when a person suddenly goes invisible, appearing to ripple as they disappear and reappear. Same and her new guy friend can both ripple and it's gotta be a secret as people all over the world that can ripple (or have the disease that brings it on) have been killed.

You think this would draw them closer, right? Hm.. Maybe. Part of the story is teen love. Does he love her? Did his kiss mean anything? What's all this "friends" talk.. (sigh) We have all been there.

Also, Sam has to make a difficult choice between her new potential beau and her best friend. She can't have them both cause telling her friend the truth about their rippling is a no no and could cause her man to leave town out of fright... so Sam deals with the loss of her friend.

As if she isn't bummed enough, some strange man comes to town asking lots of questions and she finds out some serious stuff regarding her mother's death previously... that maybe it wasn't an accident. By the end of the book, it appears someone wants Sam dead. 


The rippling descriptions... AWESOME stuff. Especially loved the "rippling through" glass thing. I could almost imagine it. The diary excerpts from Germany's experiments with children.. spine tingling and alarming and I'm sad to say, believable.

Really enjoyed this. My only quibble is I didn't care for Mickie and never did came to like her. I found her annoying. 


Rippler got four stars from me so naturally, I jumped at the chance to read the second one.. Chameleon.


First of all, in Chameleon, Mickie isn't quit so annoying.. perhaps because she has met her match in Sir Walter. Sir Walter is 600 years old so even though he's quite wordy and old fashioned, finally someone knows how to handle Mickie!

Sir Walter enters the picture when Sam and Will and Mickie travel to France. He's the keeper of many secrets and hold most all the knowledge that Sam and Will need to know about their amazing rippling ability. While Sam and Will prance around France and see the sights, Sir Walter is in tow appearing and disappearing at will telling them and US, the readers, about the history of his evil cousin and the rippling story. 


The downside: While the book is supposed to clarify many things, it actually confused me more. There needs to be a handbook/manual about the rippling rules. I was left scratching my head more often than not. In book one, I learned that one cannot ripple while holding more than their body weight. Sam weights less than Will obviously so Will is able to save her when they are in a tight situation. He grabs her and ripples her away. Later in the novel, in an underground cave, they are once again faced with danger. Both him or Sir Walter OR him AND Sir Walter could have grabbed Sam and rippled her away.. so why couldn't they? What happened here? I don't understand. A few pages later, it's like the idea finally dawns on Sir Walter and Will when Walter tells Will to ripple her away.. At that point I was still screaming, "why did you do that when the bad guys first showed up????"


Also, there's a moment when Sir Walter wishes to help Will with a wound. He ripples Will away to fix him. If you are rippled, you cannot physically touch anything. The Ripplers must maintain solid form to grasp/touch things or people so how did this work? How was Sir Walter able to touch Will in invisible form and fix his wound?


More questions that answers for me... BUT again, amazing descriptions!!! 


"Will's mouth tasted like the whisper of willows through my mind, and sunshine, and coming home. I thought he was kissing me back, and then I was sure of it. His lips on mine felt like the slow embrace of rippling through glass. My hands on his face trembled."


Nice! Also enjoyed the teen love thing.. Does Will love her? Did the kiss mean anything or they 'just friends?'


Once again, four stars. Good, but confusing.

Ride for Rights: The Real Glen Eyrie

In Ride for Rights, my historical young adult novel, Angeline and Adelaide come across a castle during their trek across the United States... 

           The nearer the sisters grew to the beautiful peaks, the more exhausted they became and upon arriving in the small town of Colorado Springs, they were no longer staring at the mountains, but searching for a respectable hotel. Upon riding through a small maze of rock formations, the women thought they had found one, a very large one. Whereas the sight of the majestic peaks from seventy miles away had caused them to stare in awe, the sight before them now caused them to stop and stare in complete shock and wonderment.

            Ahead of them was a castle. It was a very large mansion made of brown stone with tall beige framed windows and a matching tower. It appeared so out of place in what Angeline had always thought of as the “wild west” that she found herself wondering if she was hallucinating or if perhaps they were lost? Was it possible they had crossed an unknown bridge to England?

            Adelaide broke the stunned silence. “Surely, that is a hotel,” she declared, “and I don’t know about you, but I would sure like to spend a night or two there!”

            The sisters did not waste a moment more. All thoughts of scenery were forgotten as the women shared an excited smile, and aimed their motorbikes towards the looming castle ahead. Surely it was a hotel and in a small town like this, it was bound to have available rooms and due to its elegant appearance, indoor plumbing. Thoughts of warm baths and clean bed linens propelled the sisters towards the brown castle.

I had the pleasure of visiting this castle myself in January, but let me tell you a bit about the place... It's a 67-room English Tudor style castle built by General William Jackson Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs. His wife was from England and so he built this for her, to mimic an English castle. It contains 24 fireplaces, all them brought over from England.

General and Mrs. Palmer had three daughters, Elsie, Dorothy, and Marjory.

In Ride for Rights, Angeline and Adelaide make a friend in Elsie, the last family member left residing at Glen Eyrie, in the novel. Though the name is the same, Elsie is a figment of my imagination. She loves horses, is a suffragist, and encourages Angeline and Adelaide to summit Pike's Peak. 

When I visited the castle, I took care to pay attention to the real Elsie's bedroom. She was a very private woman and even required visitors to her room to go through two doors.

Glen Eyrie is now owned and operated by a group called the Navigators.

How many of you have actually visited a place you read about in a book? Or if you're a writer, have you visited a place and then wrote about it?

Highland Storms by Christina Courtenay

I don't know how this woman does it.. one fabulous historical romance after another and as usual, Courtenay does the male POV wonderfully. And as usual I fell in love with the hero myself. (I'm super picky so this is not a easy feat!)

Highland Storms is a sequel to Trade Winds, but if you haven't read Trade Winds, this could stand alone without major confusion. The hero, Brice, is the son of the couple previously in Trade. He leaves Sweden and heads to Scotland where he has a family home and land and a suspicious landlord, Seton. Seems Seton has been "skimming off the top" and not doing his duties. Brice means to get to the bottom of it. 


Seton is an evil cretin. His crimes may not stop at just thievery when Brice shows up threatening all his plans. He was Marsaili, the lovely housekeeper. Will he stoop to rape or abduction to get her? Marsaili fends him off as well all other suitors, but can she fend off Brice? He does something to her.. (giggling)


What seems like a slow plot in the beginning becomes super exciting in the last half. There's false accusations and arrests, beatings, hidden tunnels, lies revealed, abductions, escapes, and a ship briefly with a docking in Amsterdam. And the best part??? The dog. There's this dog named Liath and his role isn't minimal. The lovable hound even saves the day at point. I absolutely loved this scene! I stayed up till 4am reading this scene. I couldn't put the book down.


And the hero and the heroine must not only survive all that, but come to terms with the fact that they just may love each other.. (They are both hesitant for their own reasons to fall in love...) 


Favorite quote: "Love is when you realise a part of you will die if you can't be with a certain someone. That life isn't worth living if you can't share it with that special person. That you want to kill, with your bare hands, anyone who comes between you."


I wholeheartedly give this five stars, five well deserved stars. I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

It's a Wonderful Life by Jesse Goossens

I saw this on netgalley and the blurb got my attention because I love classic movies. First: the movie quotes in the books are not just from classic movies.. but from more recent stuff too. The movie quotes come from Wizard of Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Home Alone, The Heiress (I recognized this one!!), Frankenstein, and more. Actually, most of the quotes were from 80s and up. I was a bit bummed about that. And the movie quotes.. well, they don't really tie in to the story. BUT...

It's a good read. It's about this Holland chick who travels to small town Pennsylvania for her summer vacation rather than go with her parents to a nudie colony. She gets a job in a vintage store (where she proceeds to make up cool stories and insinuations about the products being from movie stars), starts a tea corner, meets a young undertaker, and in one month in America learns about a lot of different cultures and DEATH. There's Jewish eating rules, a tribe in Uganda that has a grotesque death custom in which they basically drink the dead body's fluids, Irish handfasting, and Irish funeral fighting. It's really very fascinating. I learned a lot of customs from different cultures and how they deal with death... though it's kinda weird how a story about death ties in with a girl "robot" who "when she hears a word, the weirdest quotes come bubbling right out of her." I can't explain it, but it worked somehow.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I was disappointed with something though.... When Anna gets to go to NYC and visit different movie sites, we don't get the details of that. I was hoping for some fun movie tidbits here. Though I got a great laugh at the story Anna made up about Alfred Hitchcock, blondes, and his cane. (Could be true. Who knows?)

Now, something fun I got from the book (and I'm quoting even though it's an egalley. Pardon me.)

Look up the word ACROSTIC if you don't know what it means and read this gravestone epitaph....

Free your body and soul
Unfold your powerful winds
Climb up the highest mountain
Kick your feet up in the air
You may live forever
Or return to this earth
Unless you feel good where you are

If you got it, you're either laughing or terribly offended. LOL. I laughed. :)

Four stars and I got this from netgalley.

Never Too Late by Christina Courtenay

Another excellent large print novella from my favorite author... yes, I'm a friend of hers, but I was a fan before I became a friend. 

This was originally sent to me to pass on to my grandmother who loves to read but has trouble finding large print books. (She likes the inspirational ones, but occasionally wants to read a book that isn't trying to send her a hidden message. LOL) Nevertheless, before passing it on to my G-ma, I had to read it myself.. I couldn't resist.


Once again, Courtenay does a superb job putting together a likable hero and a damsel in distress. The damsel in distress (this is NOT a bodice ripper) is Maude. She loved Luke long ago but circumstances.. er, well, people, I should say kept them apart. She ended up marrying his cousin instead. So.. there are some hard feelings here between Maude and Luke.


But Maude ends up widowed and Luke is the new head of her estate. He keeps her on as his housekeeper but he secretly still desires her and this is a difficult situation. She desires him too, but is afraid to say so.. But these two may have to stop tip toeing around each other and confess their real feelings cause... someone wants them dead. There's arsenic poisoning, smashing pots, run away carriages, and kidnapping. These two better figure it out soon or it WILL be too late for them to salvage their earlier feelings for each other.


Superbly done, descriptive where it needs to be descriptive, action where there should be action, and a lovely one day read. It's a clean read (no smut) but no hidden religious messages either. LOL. Conclusion: I did and my grandmother will love it.

Eleanor Roosevelt's Life of Soul Searching and Self Discovery by Ann Atkins

This is a very short biography, not a long and drawn out 500 page thing. It tells the need to know information about Eleanor. By need to know, I mean:

Where she came from: A very dysfunctional family. Her father was a womanizer and a suicidal alcoholic. Her mother felt that she was ugly and did not make a secret of it. Imagine growing up in that environment.


How she rose above it: Went to boarding school, dealt with the death of her parents, slowly began to find herself when she met Franklin and it all came crashing down. She married a man much like her father.
She was a doormat for a long time: to Franklin's mother and Franklin himself. It took a betrayal by Franklin and her best friend to make her wake up and begin being just Eleanor again. Unfortunately, in a way, she lost her children to her mother in law.


She stood up for the little people: She stood up for women:


"Eleanor not only conducts her own press conferences, she flaunts the 'men only' rule at press conferences with Franklin, making hers only for women journalists.Since newspapers want to carry stories about Eleanor, this policy give job assurance for many female reporters. What critics deem conniving, Eleanor sees as leveling the playing field."

She stood up for African Americans in her speeches, her policies, and her actions:


"As she is leaving her hairdresser, an African American youth backs his car into her and knocks her down. This being 1959 Eleanor doesn't want to chance a racial incident and tell the young man to hurry on before people can gather."


She supported the troops during the war:


"She walks to each truck load and wishes the boys good luck. On that day, Eleanor's unpretentious ways make her every soldier's mother. Upholding the written rule, "Don't cry in front of the boys," she bids them each farewell. Although those with Eleanor report, "her voice quavered."
Conclusion: An enlightening biography of a woman who rose from a twisted home to make something of herself and change the world. (Great photos in here too.) Four stars due to one minor annoyance that I found a tad odd for a biography: the use of the present tense. 


I received this book from the author.

All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

I don't read futuristic stuff usually, but this really got my attention. 1. A world in which coffee is illegal. (My first thought was, 'OMG! The Mormons took over!) 2. Chocolate is illegal. (Gasp. My curiosity was piqued. How the hell can we possibly survive?) 3. The heroine is part of a mafia (spelled mafiya in the book) family. Those three things were enough to make me step out of my comfort zone and read this YA novel.

I wasn't disappointed. It's a really good, entertaining read with a very likable heroine. The story is told from her POV but she's involved in so much excitement that the first person narrative works well.. At no point does the reader feel as though she's on the outside looking in. I liked the girl's sense of humor, the sarcastic way she tells things, the inner turmoil she deals with.


The turmoils: She's an orphan and pretty much the guardian of her immediate family. Her grandmother is about to die. Her brother has brain damage. She's accused of attempting to kill her ex boyfriend (death by chocolate!!!). Her new boyfriend's dad doesn't want her dating his son. Her family's illegal chocolate business may need her at the helm. Her bff starts dating her ex.... and it just keeps piling up. No end to the drama. Oh.. and she's Catholic and trying to save her virginity till marriage but the new guy is making that hard.


Thoroughly enjoyed it. There were some minor irritations that got on my nerves though. 1. The constant references to things her daddy used to say. One or twice is fine, but 15 times? 2. The whole 'no sex before marriage' moral being bashed over my head. 3. I didn't like how the heroine treats her brother. Yes, he's 'damaged' but the longer you treat him like a child, the longer he will act like one.


Four stars, but if I was 12 to 16, the age group this was intended for, I most likely would have gave it a five.


I received an ARC from the publisher.