A Wind in Montana by Mitch Davies

This is a young adult novel. It addresses so many issues that teens must deal with. First of all, the setting is Great Falls, Montana. A lot of the novel takes place in school. The hero is Rory. Rory is dealing with young love/lust. He's experimenting sexually and dealing with all the feelings involved in that. He must deal with having a girlfriend, being dumped, attraction to another chick and all that fun stuff. And let's not forget, having a car. But Rory's main issue is: He wants to do what he wants to do, not what everyone else wants him to do. He wants to focus on chemistry. Everybody else wants him to play the tuba or shoot baskeball hoops. 

Rory stands up for himself, but there's a psychotic band instructor at every turn...

Meanwhile, Rory develops a crush on Victoria. Victoria is a very likable chick. She's an oboe player and she's got band camp going on and decisions about college or music schools to make. Rory isn't the only one interested in her either.. There's this German musician who comes into the picture.. could she return the feelings?

Though Rory and Victoria are drawn together during high school  their future desires may tear them apart.. or the adults in their lives.. or the German fellow... or...

I laughed when Rory and his buds went to a whorehouse and I grew angry with the way the adults treated Rory and Victoria sometimes. I also got a kick out of mustard bomb.

I think it's a good story with lots of twists and side stories, but I have two issues bringing it down to a three star rating.. 1. Too much telling, not enough showing. I too often felt on the outside looking in instead of feeling as though I was in the thick of it. 2. Too much details (makes the book unnecessarily long for what it contains) about the kids' everyday lives.. especially when their summer break starts. I don't need to know what time Alyssa's (can't remember the exact spelling and it's an ebook so can't flip back and look.. would take too long.. ) parents do this or that at all hours of the day. Also, Rory's chemistry projects. It's not a subject I have ever enjoyed so I somewhat spaced out in those parts.

I think young adults will relate to it, especially those with musical inclinations, an interest in chemistry and any teenager that is experiencing sexuality for the first time. But I especially recommend it for those who simply want to do what they want to do and are tired of adults telling them what they want do do or should do. Because more than anything, it's about kids finding themselves and making their own decisions.

I got this in ebook format from the author.



Christmas: Santa is a Lady by L.J. Holmes

I don't do Christmas, but out of respect for those that do (like the rest of world almost) I decided to a Christmas blog post and thus, read a Christmas book.. and my choice was Santa is a Lady. How could I resist a title like that?

Here's the 411. The local Santa Claus impersonator was busted for kiddie porn on his computer. The owner of a candy store is left in a rut. No Santa for the kiddies and with just four days till Christmas, no other jolly giant elves available so she enlists the aid of her best friend, Angie to be Santa...

Angie has a disability. She's been badly banged up in a car wreck, has a limp, and is almost blind. She rarely leaves her house but she agrees to be Santa for her friend, Beck. (Beck is a girl) Things go really awry though... Beck turns out to be a mega (I'm thinking 5 letters, first letter B, rhymes with itch..) and Cam, a former Iraq War Veteran brings his daughter into the store and upon discovering Santa is a lady, goes up one side of her and down the other...

Cam has issues of his own and realizes he has lashed out Lady Santa for the wrong reasons. But while Cam and Angie make up and make peace, Angie and Beck have it out and it looks for a while there like Christmas may be ruined before it starts. Can Angie and Beck become friends again? Is something brewing here between Angie and Cam?

I had one issue with this story, making it a four star read. I enjoyed it, it was a feel good, sappy thing, it was short and perfect for the holiday, BUT I was terribly put off the humongous deal made of Santa's beard revealing a woman's face. Um, OK.. the brat/demon spawn/little girl pulled on Santa's beard so why the heck does everyone turn on Santa? I thought everyone was extreme in the overreacting department.. --"You should be ashamed!" he snarled before clomping away. "Get yourself fixed!" Cam heard Beck issue a whispered snarl of her own.--

Though relevant to the story, I was appalled. First of all, tell your brat/demon spawn/child not to pull on people's beards cause though I've never had a beard of my own (thank goodness!) I imagine it hurts. And how is it Santa's fault you got a rude beard pulling child, regardless of the sex under the suit?

That part just didn't make sense to me. I certainly wouldn't date the man who snarled at ME cause HIS kid pulled my beard off my face. LOL However, there is more to it than that.. could have something to do with the kid calling Santa "mama." I mentioned that Cam has issues... but I won't go into that. Read the book for yourself.

Anyways, that's why Santa is a lady this year. :)

I bought this book on Amazon Kindle.

The Vote by Sybil Downing

If you haven't figure out what this book is about just from looking at the title... It's about this:

Alice Paul

In 1918, there was not only a war going on overseas, but also a war right here in the States, the war for women. Women wanted, deserved, demanded the right to vote. At the head of this war were two women, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. They headed the NWP (Shame on you, ladies, if you don't know your women's history. National Women's Party for those that don't know.) These women arranged a picket line in front of the white house. Everyday, women stood out there with banners appealing to President Wilson. And they were arrested. They were thrown in Occoquan prison at one point and the heroine of this tale, Kate, a young girl from Colorado goes with them. Her and Lucy Burns are just two of the incarcerated women thrown in with cockroaches and rats and fed bug infested gruel for fourteen days while forced to work sun up till sun down.

Lucy in Occoquan

Though Kate was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, she stands up with the women of NWP and decides to join them after their 14 days is up. She defies her mother and father back in Colorado and goes from stuffing envelopes to organizing peaceful protests in parks, which gets her arrested again.

She is sent back to her hometown to convince the Colorado Senator who is also a close family friend to change the upcoming Amendment vote in the women's favor OR the NWP will get him out of office. This causes much friction with Kate's family. Meanwhile, there's a budding romance, but the fellow in Kate's sights may be spying on the NWP... and we can't have that...

BUT this chick does what she has to and hooks up with another chick, head of a union, Mary Daly.  I got to confess, at this point, the book got a bit dull (around page 210 or so) because as Kate runs around and visits the press and politicians, it gets repetitive.  I also seen the movie, Iron Jawed Angels not too long ago so I knew what was going to happen. 

I thoroughly enjoyed all the parts involving Lucy Burns and Alice Paul and I never get tired of reading about women's rights so I really liked this book. I had one minor quibble in the beginning. I found myself a bit bothered when the book points out that all people of color are valets or floor scrubbers. I know good jobs were not available to non whites back then, but the race issue not being a part of the book, I failed to see why that was pointed out.  It came off as a bit degrading and I found myself wondering if the heroine was a racist. After the first quarter, however, the issue never came up again.

Four stars and this was a library book.

Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi



I wanted to like this book for two reasons. 1. The publisher sent it to me, in a lovely hardback (I want to note the hardback part underneath the cover is PINK!!!) 2. I have read this author previously and found her work enjoyable for the most part. However, I didn't like this novel and I must be honest.

Quick summary: The book follows three women, Grace, Florence, and Clarissa. Grace is marrying a man "above her station" who is the brother of Florence. Florence is stuck in an abusive marriage (personally, I think she just didn't have the balls to leave.. but.. ) and Clarissa used to be engaged to Grace's husband. World War II comes and the men leave.. and these three women either grow up, have affairs, have babies and ponder who the daddy is, take in country evacuees, or work for the WRENs. Lots of drama and very soap opera like.

What I liked: The style is very similar to that of Catherine Cookson.

What I hated: Grace.. Until page 500, she has no balls at all, no courage. She just does what her husband tells her, sits there quietly, la de da. One point in her favor: She keeps the kids despite her husband's demand she not. (Read the book, I'm not explaining all 500 pages.. )

Florence... ugh! Any woman that stays in an abusive marriage, has a baby and tells two separate men they are the fathers, lies through her teeth left and right, deserves to be slapped around!

Clarissa... I liked her just fine (except for all her "darling this" and "darling that") until her husband gets badly maimed in the war and she whines that he looks repulsive and acts like his life is over cause he is OMG! UGLY! (gasp!)

And I'm leaving it at that. One point in this book's favor though: the WWII details. I really felt I was in England during that trying time. The book does not lack realism or historical facts.

Overall, a disappointment for me. I didn't like the women at all. Two stars.



The Spy Wore Red by Aline, Countess of Romanones

This is a memoir, but told in way that makes it hard to distinguish fact from fiction, even though it is from the first person POV. Aline is an American model during world war II with two brothers overseas fighting in the war. She wants to be over there as well so when an opportunity to be a spy for the "baby CIA," called the OSS at the time comes up, she jumps at the chance and heads to Washington for training.

This is the part I liked. I liked reading about invisible inks, crawling around on the ground, weapons, and code. Aline also begins a bit of a romance with a fellow operative, nothing really juicy though the man does pop into her window while she is in Spain to steal a kiss. (sigh) The romance stays clean though.

Once Aline goes to Spain... and you would expect the action to pick up here.. it goes downhill for me. I didn't find her to be a very good spy. Her cover is blown from the get go obviously as she is constantly followed and her room is searched. She pretty much (in a fellow operative's words) is a "fashionable front." It becomes a name dropping episode as she parties with this count, converses with this countess, has a shooting match with that prince, and has a bull fighter wooing her by day. All the while, she is no closer to finding out the purpose of her mission: finding the mole in the OSS.

She's such a bad spy that while taking a bath in her Malaga hotel room, someone enters her room. She assumes it's the maid and hollers out "Would you please close the door? I'm in the tub?" Well, um, duh. Naturally her room is totally searched and ransacked while she washes her hair.

Thus, I had some issues with the book so three stars. I liked the beginning and the training parts more than the mission itself. Also, the ending.... good, but I knew it was coming from page 100. It was no surprise.

This was a library book.

Postmortem by Laurel Saville

This is a memoir and an eye opening story of what alcohol abuse can do to a family. The author writes about her mother and spending the first thirteen years of her life watching her mother decline day by day. Her mother was a alcoholic. This story shows how a once beautiful, coddled woman, given every advantage a young lady in the thirties could have, a model, a talented artist, a dress designer ends up being a single mother of three, jobless, with vagrants and drunks coming in and out of her home until finally she ends up dead in her bed with her panties around her ankles and her throat strangled with a one eyed dog barking at the police.


It's a memoir of the sixties, of hippy parties, of free love and a nine or ten year old girl forced to swim naked in a pool with adults, forced to walk past coupling people in her own living room, forced to find her naked mother getting slapped around by a boyfriend's drunken friends, forced to wash her own clothes in a bathtub and run to KFC for food. The further into the book I read, the more disturbed I became as her mother's "illness" progresses to the point that she yells and curses at her daughter, allows her numerous boyfriends to hit on her daughter and grows jealous over her daughter instead of protective. There were moments I had to set the book down, I was so upset.

Def. a thumbs up to Ms. Saville to have the courage to share this shocking story. She reveals some very intimate things about her life, her mother, her feelings and fears. I give it four instead of five stars because there were some parts that bored me.  I feel she went on a bit too much about paintings and photographs and except for the interesting part about her grandfather's metal aircraft he designed (WAY COOL!!), I didn't care so much about reading about her grandparents. They seemed like normal, well meaning people, but that doesn't make for intriguing reading.

Four stars. I highly recommend it for people who like memoirs about dysfunctional families, but brace yourselves. It's a shocker.

I received this in ebook format from Amanda at getredPR.

Murder at the Luther by Kathleen Kaska

This is the second in a historical hotels mystery series following Syndney, a young woman journalist in 1953 as she tours famous hotels and while attempting to write a human interest story, always finds herself involved in a murder.  In this case, she is at the Luther Hotel's (Est. in Palacios, Texas in 1903) New Year's Eve ball when a man she has a bird watching date with falls dead at her feet.  Her finger prints are on the weapon and an overzealous sheriff up for re election arrests her.  After one day in jail, Sydney must find the real murdered in order to clear her own name.. or she is going back to the jail cell.

People are trying to kill her as she uncovers a corrupt plan involving a greedy ex wife and an oil company and hired goons.  Sydney's hotel room becomes a hub full of interesting, crazy, lunatic, and drunk people and even a "long lost relative," supposedly...  And of course, cousin Ruth shows up.  I don't like Ruth and I think the books would be better without her and thus, the four star rating instead of five.  In this installment, especially, I found Ruth's character annoying and most of the time, unnecessary. 

Still a good mystery though.  Favorite laugh out loud moment: (When Sydney hitches a ride with a man on a tractor, the following occurs) "I bade him goodbye and jumped down, and as I did my gun went off and shot a hole in his radiator.  I ran back, handed him another five, took off down the street, and didn't look back.  If I survived this day, I'd give serious thought about attending Mass on a regular basis."

I bought this book on Amazon kindle.  For those interested in this series, the first one was Murder at the Arlington.