Jeff Sexton

(Mostly) Solid Next Entry In Series, Brings Us Closer To Finale. What seems to be clear with this series is that our final book in it will seemingly be the origin story of Hope House, the very entity that essentially started the entire series - which itself would be an intriguing dynamic, storytelling wise. This book does a phenomenal job of bringing us that much closer to that tale... possibly as soon as the next book after this one???

Otherwise, this book largely works to the same degree and in the same ways that its predecessors do - they all manage to superbly combine both elements of Soraya Lane's romance writing prowess and her historical fiction writing prowess (as Soraya M. Lane). In this particular book, yet again both elements are particularly strong, though I might perhaps give the edge to the historical side - Evaline is truly one of the more assertive (in the best of ways) ladies Lane has ever created in a fictional period, and yet Evaline is also true to her times - she manages to have that steel hand wrapped in velvet that women of earlier times were well known (at least in some circles) for, and yet nothing is actually out of place here. The modern timeline is another of the "writer writes about her life" trope, and yet again, it works well with Lane writing it.

I say "Mostly" in the title because the back part of the tale just felt like it was missing... something? I'm not even sure what, exactly. Maybe more time with Evaline post-war, rather than the way we (the readers) get that information here? Even then, I'm not *sure* that's what I felt was missing, I just know that the ending ultimately felt a touch abrupt and not as complete as these tales have been, for some reason. But you, the reader of my review, should absolutely read this book and maybe help me figure out what I missed here?

Ultimately truly another excellent entry combining both of Lane's strengths.

Very much recommended.

One New Revelation Can Change Everything. This is, ultimately, a tale of exactly what the title says. As a dual timeline tale, the linkage here is rare, but rare in the sense of the now-mythical banana chocolate chip cookie from Chips Ahoy - done once years ago, and *may* (HOPEFULLY, in the case of the cookie, I've missed it ever since!) eventually come back.

Discussing the 2010s era timeline at all is a spoiler in that it isn't mentioned at all in the description of the book (at least as it exists at publication in August 2024), but it was one that I could very much relate to given my own family's history. It was also the timeline where this book could be classified as a romance, but that is all that I will say here.

The WWII story is compelling, though we've actually seen its pivotal moment in at least The Last Day In Paris (Book 1 of this series), if not The Paris Orphans (Book 0). The story here is more both how we got to that particular moment and what happens after - both compelling, if at least slightly different, mysteries.

Overall this was a tense book full of both the peril of WWII in so many facets as well as the long tail of its aftermath in so many different ways. Very much recommended.

Stoker Meets Doyle With A Touch Of The MCU Approach. If you love the non-sparkly, dark, horrific, brooding, *evil* vampire lore... you're gonna love this book. If you love the Sherlock Holmes type detective tale, perhaps with a more solo "beat people until they give you answers" Batman/ Jack Reacher type bent... you're gonna love this book. If you like MCU style storytelling with a shared universe with lots of different well known characters... you're gonna love this book.

Here, Holloway clearly shows that he too is a massive fan of all of the above, and he uses his skills as a writer to manage to combine elements of each into a cohesive tale that works both on its own and works to set up a "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" type saga. At just under 300 pages, this isn't the shortest book out there, but it provides just enough... *ahem* red meat *ahem*... to tell its tale well without overstaying its welcome (a danger, with these types of characters, just sayin) and while effectively both satisfying the reader of this tale and leaving them wanting a subsequent tale in this shared universe.

Meaning the book did its job on all fronts, and did them all well.

Now I just need y'all to fall in love with this book and start preaching its wonders so we can see how far Holloway can take it. ;)

Very much recommended.

Will Be Difficult For Many. Read It Anyway. This book is a romance that is about surviving domestic violence and the lengths some people will go through to do that. It is about the lengths two mothers will go to to protect their children in that situation, as best they can. And yes, there happens to be a second chance romance in there as well. Ultimately, it almost feels as though the romance plays second fiddle to the more women's fiction domestic violence drama though, even though the book *does* meet all known romance novel "requirements"... *without* going the Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (which also meets them) route. And without being near as explicit in anything, though the "spiciness" here is at least say jalapeno level. So for those that prefer the spice level of maybe a warm glass of milk... read this book for the women's fiction side and maybe shield your eyes or something when things get more "exciting". ;)

Ultimately a solid book that does indeed begin to create at least the possibility of some dusty rooms, this really is one that everyone should read, even those who find it most difficult. Perhaps *particularly* those who find it most difficult.

Very much recommended.

Atmospheric But Long. This book almost feels like a Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but an East Coast variant. It has the same 60s era setting, the same type of fire-based setup and ending, but then tells a more "East Coast" feeling tale of the era, in some ways dealing with some of the same kinds of relational topics... but from that "Old Money" / "High Society" kind of East Coast / New England vibe.

That noted, this is far from a clone of the other, and it does what it does in showing the various relationship dynamics of its ladies - each in different societal strata - remarkably well. Gold clearly put in a lot of effort to make each of these women as real and relatable as possible, and she truly did a good job there - we begin to sympathize to a degree even with our ostensible villain of the tale... even as she continues to show *why* she is the villain. Along the way, we encounter so much of that admittedly lily white social scene and period the tale is set in, in interesting ways that show both the warts and the beauty of each of our characters.

The one real criticism I have here is that the book *does* go perhaps 30-50 pages long. Not a "Return Of The King After The Coronation" slog, but certainly a "this could've been trimmed a bit" feeling, at least after completing it. Now, where, exactly, could the cuts have been made... becomes perhaps less clear. Which would perhaps indicate that the book is exactly as long as it needed to be. I'll leave it to the reader of this review to read the book for yourself and make your own calls there. (Also, please leave a review when you do. They don't have to be anywhere near as wordy as mine tend to be - 24 words will be accepted on any review site I know of, including the big corporate ones.)

Ultimately this was a solid book of its kind, one that *should* be seen as an equal or perhaps even superior of Malibu Rising... but which clearly hasn't had Reid's marketing people behind it. ;)

Very much recommended.

Solid RomCom in Shared World With Other Books From Author. This is one of those books where characters other than our main couple play crucial roles and while it isn't *completely* obvious that they are pre-existing characters from other books... it also kinda is, or at least was for me. In part because I *did* read Sex Ed, Mia and Ed's story, and remembered them so distinctly. As it turns out, the other couple that plays crucial roles here, Beth and Will, had their story told in one of Bailey's other works in another series, Did My Love Life Shrink In The Wash? - book 3 of 5 in the Callaghan Sisters series.

But don't get me wrong, this book can completely be read as a standalone with no knowledge of the other two books, and the only blatant spoilers aren't really spoilers... gee, the main couple in a romance novel wound up together... hmmm... *BREAKING NEWS!!!!!* (/sarcasm :D).

As to this tale itself, I thought it worked quite well in showing the difficulties of an age gap romance, if in a slightly more socially acceptable way than the somewhat more common older man- younger woman, instead we get here a bit of a cougar, with an older woman - younger man dynamic... except that it isn't really cougar so much as friend to lover. The opening prologue sets the scene, with our eventual couple meeting right as our female lead learns devastating news, and the tall proceeds in an almost Gilmore Girls - meets - 2020s manner, with a lot of banter and texting (and sexting, and confusion/ hilarity around the confusion regarding both forms), and, since this *is* set in the UK... soccer. (*NOT* football, no matter what those crazy Brits claim. There are *reasons* we in the US were the first of many to kick them out of our country, and this is just another (more modern) reason they continue to be wrong. :D) (To be clear, 99% of the prior parenthetical statement was a joke. Though they *are* wrong in calling soccer "football". :D)

If you prefer "clean" / "sweet" romances with the spice level of a warm bowl of oatmeal... this ain't your thing, as this is closer to jalapeno at least, *maybe* habanero. As in, at 41 years old myself, there are things in this book that I've both never done and have lost the flexibility to do. So kudos to our female main character for being so nimble. :D

Overall a fun, solid romcom with the usual expectations and perhaps a bit more heart than most that manages to take some typical tropes in at least slightly different directions.

Very much recommended.

Lots Of Moving Pieces, Yet Feels Slow Somehow. I think a growing peeve of mine- maybe not yet a pet peeve, but certainly a major annoyance - is using a "hurricane" bearing down on a location and yet using it poorly... which is what happens here. Why a hurricane when a normal storm system would have worked just as well for plot purposes??? Hell, here in *Florida* (much less Maine, where this is set and where they get far fewer hurricanes), our daily thunderstorms (particularly in the summer) are generally worse than many of the hurricanes I've lived through here in North Florida (including Irma, just a few weeks after I moved here).

Beyond my irritation with the misuse of the hurricane though, which is admittedly a personal thing, the story works reasonably well, if seeming a bit slow and perhaps a touch unrealistic/ idiotic with some of the moves some of the characters make. But hey, we're all idiots at some point, right? It just seems like our supposed "heroes" in this particular tale are particularly stupid at times... which grates some people more than others. (Indeed, reading over the other reviews, it seems like many have a hangup on this similar to my hurricane one above.) And yet the stupidity ultimately works to make this novel work, and perhaps that is the reason it is here - this near 400 page book may have been reduced by at least a third and perhaps as much as a half had one or two characters made even a single better decision, perhaps a couple of better decisions. And maybe Day had a word or page count to meet.

Still, there's nothing objectively wrong about this book, and it *is* an enjoyable read that is *certainly* better than other books and is a solid way to lose a day or a few afternoons in a fictional world... which is becoming so much more important as election season ramps up in the US again. So forget the politics for a bit and pick up this book. You may be disappointed a bit in it, but it will still be better than spending that time watching the news. :)

Recommended.

Wildly Divergent Storytelling From First Book In Series, Still Great. The Bitter Past, the first book in this series, was a dual timeline almost historical fiction/ spy thriller, and it worked beautifully - to summarize my review of that book. This time, we get a lot of solid character work and even more solid action pieces (particularly towards the end, but also an intriguing prologue to bring us into the tale), with plenty of "what the hell is going on here" in the middle. Whereas the first book looked to the past to tell its tale, this one actually reads as though it is bringing the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war into a tale set in rural Nevada. There's some innovative action sequences one would expect more in a Vin Diesel XXX movie or one of the GI Joe live action movies than in a tale of a small town Sheriff... even if this particular Sheriff *is* a highly trained former soldier. (And yes, this comes into play as well.) Borgos does well to show Beck's strengths *and* weaknesses, and it is the combination of both that make Beck feel like a fully "real" human rather than just another action hero.

Overall a solid tale more in the mystery/ action space than its predecessor, and yet it does its job of making the reader *need* the next book perfectly.

Very much recommended.

Orange Is The New Black Meets Deliverance. With this series in particular, Bratt has been making it a point of spinning a fictional world around all-too-real cases... and in this case, we get a version of the book form of Orange Is The New Black (ie, a far more serious take than the dark comedy that was the Netflix show) along with a harrowing tale of wilderness survival somewhat akin to Deliverance, but with Bratt's own wilderness survival style she developed with Dancing With The Sun. Both parts of the tale are well done, though it does seem that perhaps the Orange Is The New Black part was perhaps a bit rushed in the ending, perhaps because of the zinger Bratt wanted to leave in the epilogue?

Yet again, another solid story in this world, and yet again another one that will leave the reader breathless for the next.

Very much recommended.

Does NOT Predict July 2024 Assassination Attempt of President Trump. This is a book I've had for a few years now - apparently I purchased my copy in 2020, several years after it had been out, and I just this month read it after an Acton Institute Fellow claimed on Twitter that this book "predicted in 2012" that something like the assassination attempt of President Trump would occur.

To be clear, if there is any indication at all of such a prediction, I must have missed it somehow.

Instead, what this book *does* do is show Haidt's own work as a psychology based sociologist, studying both societies and how the brain gets to the decisions it makes. Here, Haidt actually has a lot of seemingly solid ideas... though it is clear in looking through the one star reviews that few on the left appreciate his candor, despite his own admitted background (and presumptive leanings at the time of writing this, at minimum, back in 2011 or so) being as a leftist himself.

Yet Haidt makes his points clearly and logically, and actively builds concepts up rather than just expecting the reader to understand complex points from the get-go. The narrative is well laid out, and the overall writing is such that nearly anyone should be able to follow along reasonably well.

I can't speak to the bibliography, as I listened to the Audible form of this book and thus don't have access to that particular information.

Thus, all that I can see here, all that I experienced here, was a reasonably well written, clearly thought out narrative structure that made clear Haidt's own work and the work of others in his field in a way that proves particularly illuminating and worthy of conisderation.

Indeed, in the points Haidt actually makes within this text, we can all learn to understand each other quite a bit better... which actually leans to this book *not* predicting any assassination attempts on current or former Presidents.

Still, I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I absolutely recommend you do too... just don't think it makes any predictions on current events. (It doesn't.)

Very much recommended.

Unoriginal Hyper-Leftist Wet Dream. In all honesty, had I known that Chemerinsky was the Dean of the Berkely School of Law, I probably would never have picked up this book to begin with. I would have already known most of what he was going to say... and now having actually read it, I can positively say that 95% of my assumptions would have been correct.

Basically, however you feel about the Citizens United ruling, recent SCOTUS decisions, packing the Court, the Electoral College, and the well-debunked "Russian Collusion" conspiracy theory from the 2016 Presidential Election is largely how you're going to feel about this book. It honestly reads as little more than hyper-leftist dreams about everything that has gone "wrong" with America for the last decade or two. Thus, some of you are going to sing this book's praises from the highest places you can as loudly as you can. And some of you are going to want to take a window to those places just so you can be assured that you will be able to defenestrate this book from those places.

Chemerinsky *does* get *close* to some genuinely good ideas, ideas that could *actually* solve a lot of the problems he names... and then quickly backs away from them, for the most part. His one consistent good idea is that the process of "Winner Take All" as it relates to Electoral College votes does in fact need to end - a stance I've had for much of my adult life, particularly my politically engaged adult life. The more interesting things that he addresses but then thinks *secession* is more viable are as they relate to the number of Congressmen. Chemerinsky correctly points out that the only thing limiting the size of the US House to 435 members is a US law passed less than a century ago - and laws can be overturned in a number of ways. Here again, one weakness of Chemerinsky is that in proclaiming the Constitution a threat - and even spending quite a bit of the text here decrying the SCOTUS as a threat - he openly advocates for SCOTUS to take action against this law. But even this idea is hardly original, as people across the political spectrum have been proposing it for many years already.

Another point Chemerinsky gets truly close to a near-original idea (it has been proposed by at least one writer) is when he proposes - briefly, before quickly retracting it and dismissing it as unworkable - that States be broken into "smaller States". But if "Democracy" is truly the end goal, and Chemerinsky wants everyone across the US to be as truly even as possible, why isn't he going full-bore here? As others have written, first, build the House up to its Constitutionally mandated maximum size - every Congressman represents exactly 35,000 people, the Constitutionally mandated minimum number of people per Representative. That gives us something like 11K US Representatives. Now, take Chemerinsky's own note here that "smaller States" would each get 2 US Senators... and make every single one of those US Rep Districts its own State. That would mean that every US Rep represents 35K people... and every Senator represents 35,000 / 2 == 17,500 people each. Meaning that for every 35,000 people, on average 1 Congressman of some level represents just under 12,000 people. Which in some urban areas is considerably less than an entire block, and in some rural areas could be several hundred square miles of territory. But Chemerinsky doesn't go here, instead he just continually reiterates hyper leftist talking points rather than seeking actual solutions to the problems he decries.

Ultimately, I deducted two stars from this book - the first is for the dearth of a bibliography, clocking in at just 12% of the text I read weeks before publication. Even being generous and lowering my 20-30% standard, as I've been trying to do of late, I just can't justify allowing such a small bibliography against such grand claims. Even here, the bibliography itself is quite cherry picked and doesn't show the full scope of what is going on through many of Chemerinsky's claims, but I've never really addressed that issue in other reviews and won't really address it here either.

The other star really was for the lack of objectivity and just how unoriginal very nearly everything about this book was. If you've seen nearly any left-leaning politician or activist speak in the last 20 years, they're all saying much of the same things Chemerinsky is saying here - including more and more of them openly talking of secession, which would be ruinous on us all.

Again, at the end of the day your feelings about this book are largely going to hinge on just how ideologically aligned with extreme leftist US politics you are, so know that when making your decision to read this book. Some of you are going to LOVE this book, and others are going to HATE it, and it will largely be for exactly the same reasons.

Recommended.

Some Heroes Have Half-Lives. Honestly, I didn't even realize while reading this book that it was Book 1 of a new series - though with the way things end, I could certainly allow for that possibility. Here, Borgos manages to capture a lingering effect of the Cold War not often seen by those of us living on the East Coast - well away from all Cold War era nuclear test sites, including the Nevada deserts pictured here and the New Mexico deserts featured in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which will be releasing around the same time as this book. We also get a dual timeline yet linked spy thriller (in the past)/ murder mystery (in the present), and in neither case is all as it seems. Borgos manages the pacing of each quite well, and the ultimate integration of the two quite seamlessly. Ultimately this is absolutely a world and storytelling style I'd love to come back to, so I'm glad there will be at least one more book forthcoming here. Very much recommended.

Nothing Technically Wrong, Yet Much Many Won't Like. In my review of Mason's earlier book, Between You And Me, three years ago last month, I noted that Mason managed to craft a tale "with particulars that I’d never seen done quite this way before, and that is always something I seek out and love to find". That remains true in this tale, seemingly her first attempt at a more lighthearted romcom after several books more in the domestic thriller/ women's fiction space.

And while the particulars are at least somewhat new - while also being a hodgepodge of other ideas and characterizations well known in the romance space in varying forms - it also becomes quite clear that Mason is new to writing within this particular space, as she has the basic formula down quite well... and yet, there is much here that those looking for a truly mindless and hilarious "beach reach" romcom won't find here at all.

To be clear, this book absolutely has its moments of hilarity. It also has at least habanero level spiciness... in a form that many will consider potentially offputting (but is also well known in *ahem* "certain video circles" *ahem* to be quite popular therein). And the book's locations, in coastal California, Santorini, and even the historic areas of Athens (Greece, to be clear, vs Athens, GA, home of my beloved University of Georgia Bulldogs) are shown well... yet don't seem to "hit" quite as well as others within the space. It also has moments of stone-cold seriousness, including when we find out our male lead's "deep dark secret" - and here is yet another point that will be divisive for some, but which I felt was handled in a very realistic manner.

Indeed, perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of this tale is that throughout, it can never really decide if it wants to be a romcom or a "serious women's fiction" type tale... and sadly, the combination of both comes across as disjointed enough to detract from each, rather than enhance each.

This is a book with no actual objective-ish reasons to deduct stars or not recommend, and yet it is still a difficult book to classify and really find an audience that will clearly love it - which is a shame, because Mason has shown herself to be a talented storyteller in prior efforts, and even here shows quite a bit of that talent... in fits and spurts.

So read the book for yourself and see if you can help me sort it out.

Recommended.

Interesting History That Doesn't Really Fulfill Its Premise. As a general history of the titular "Decade of Disunion", this is actually a reasonably well written and documented look at the overall political situation in the US in the decade (and then some) just before the onset of the American Civil War, including solid biographical overviews of several of the key players- both the actual key players and the ones Merry chooses to try to focus on, namely those from South Carolina and Massachusetts.

But that is actually where the book fails to really drive home its purported premise, that these leaders from these two States in particular played particularly important/ oversized roles in the events of the decade, in the events that lead to war. There really is just *so much* that happened in that decade that lead to disunion, and so much of it happened outside the States of South Carolina and Massachusetts - and even outside the District of Columbia - that it really was quite a stretch to claim that *any* two States could have played outsized roles in all of it, though in picking States that did in fact lead in the opposing ideals, Merry perhaps at least came closer than other potential selections.

Truly an excellent primer on the decade, with 18% of the text being bilbiography and thus a solid set of documentation/ further reading, this book even includes several examples of what made that particular decade so turbulent throughout the nation - including both the caning of a sitting Congressman *inside Capitol Hill* and the resultant comment from a Congressman - also quoted in James A. Morone's 2020 book Republic Of Wrath - that if a Congressman didn't have two pistols on his person *on Capitol Hill*, it was because he had a pistol and a knife.

I read this book in the days before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, and I'm writing this review on the day this book releases, less than 48 hours after President Biden's announcement that he would not seek a second term - and while President Biden hasn't been seen in public in days now, somehow the Director of the US Secret Service still has her job. In other words, quite turbulent times indeed in this country.

But as Merry points out early, often, and frequently throughout this text - as turbulent as these times are, there have indeed been much, much worse. So pick up this book - and the aforementioned Morone text - and learn a degree of historical perspective that is desperately needed in these times.

Very much recommended.

Atypical Tale In So Many Ways Yet Everything Works Well. I'm actually listening to the playlist that plays such heavy role in this book as I sit down to write this review, and while not *everything* is to my own tastes, either back in 2005 or 20 yrs later in 2024 as I write this, the songs are not *so far* out there as to not be enjoyable, particularly given the characters in this story and where they are from. (Says the fellow native Georgian who is less than a decade older than the characters here. :D) As an example, Fall Out Boy and The Offspring? Yes please. :)

But that actually does get into parts of what La Rosa does so well with this tale - the interesting spin she puts on the now-classic "flashback" sequences absolutely work, and work to allow effectively a romance version of a "Frequency" type story. Meaning, for those unfamiliar with that particular movie (to be clear, I never saw the TV show reboot), this storytelling device basically allows La Rosa to tell a dual timeline romance... where *both* timelines are the same couple *yet*... multiverse theory. (Which, to be clear, La Rosa never mentions.)

While we do get some dramatics in the third act, they actually serve more of a women's fiction purpose that also helps to flesh out both our female lead and some of those around her a bit, and even with limited "screentime" in some instances, La Rosa manages to pack quite a bit in here in a short space. Indeed, given the book's overall just-over-300-page length, it is actually rather remarkable just how much story La Rosa manages to pack in here, particularly given how other authors even within the romance space can spend seemingly 100 pages describing the landscape around the characters.

Ultimately this was a fun book that had a lot of nostalgia and several interesting spins on now-classic concepts and it used all of this well in service of the story it was trying to tell. In the end, using the elements you bring in well in service of the story you're trying to tell is really all I ask of *any* book.

Very much recommended.

Shotgun Beginning Focuses Into Laser Ending. This is one of those stories that opens up with a lot of moving parts, even as we only really get a single perspective of them, so it can be a bit difficult of a read to get into at first. Compelling, to be sure, particularly the accident during the blizzard, but through these intro sections the tale doesn't seem to know what it wants to be yet... and thus the reader may find it difficult to follow.

This noted, as the story progresses, things become ever more clear and pointed and the book finally decides what it wants to be... and oh, boy. Absolutely several interesting twists here, both within the story and in how the story itself subverts expectations of the reader.

Ultimately this is going to be one of those stories that seems like a bit of a challenge up front, even if compelling, but stick with it long enough for the tale to figure itself out. Because once it does, you're in for a fun time indeed.

Very much recommended.