Catherine

This was my favourite of the series, but Daphne Elliot was the reason I read the series in the first place.

Delia was the man-hater, out of the four moms who moved into the brownstone together she was never going to fall. But Dylan's baby is due and she needs a contractor to get the house up to spec. Beckett enlists Enzo and riles both of them up enough to make it work.

This book took a fairly two-dimensional character and developed her into the best of the bunch. Delia comes across as a man-hater and just mean but actually she's trying to keep it all together and protect her friends and kids. She's fired all the contractors so far, but what nobody bothered to ask was why. Some were bad, some were lazy, some were just taking her money. Beckett and Cortney pressure Enzo to take the contract by promising future work with their family businesses. Enzo gets caught up in the family and falls in love with the kids as well as Delia and sees her for what she really is. Which is apparently more than her friends were capable of doing.

All in, it was a good read and I'm looking forward to Daphne Elliot's new series coming out.

Shayla's a widow who lost her husband to cancer 3 years ago. She's bringing up their 8 year old son, Kai, as best she can but everything terrifies her. Skateboarding, fried food, high fructose corn syrup (in fairness that scares most people) and ice skating.

Kai, being 8, loves the local ice hockey team. At a game one of their key players (insert correct sports term here), Rowan ‘Slick' Parker, gets hurt. Shayla is a physio and her friend's new husband, Beckett, is bossy and working on setting up all the moms. Beckett, whose family happen to own the team, makes sure Shay is the one to provide the physio therapy.

this wasn't the worst of the books, that was Mother Maker, but it was hard to get swept up in it. For one, the nickname 'Slick' just made me cringe every time. As Shay is a physical therapist she didn't want people to become aware of the relationship in case anyone thought she was unprofessional. I get why that was the trope for the book, but they already had a connection and Rowan had offered to teach Kai to skate.

Liv is supposed to go away for the weekend with her 3 best friends. Her 3 kids are staying with her recently-ex husband as ‘one last favour' but her boss, Beckett Langfield, makes her and her friends fly to his house in the Florida Keys instead so they can work on a pitch. Whilst drinking on the beach in the evening the women open up, they're all struggling as single mums. So the idea forms that they'll move into Delia's brownstone in Boston. Her great-aunt left it to her and it's definitely a fixer upper but it's got enough room for the four of them plus their seven kids. Except... except Liv accidentally marries her boss when they're in Vegas and drunk. It helps him out of a kid-hating tight spot that was going to cost his future at the company. He'll pay to help fix up the broken house.
Except... except, his parents announce that they'll stay in his apartment whilst their place is getting done up so Beckett moves in with Liv and her extended family. It's grumpy-sunshine, he kinda falls first but she's always like him just never thought he'd like her back because she's 'plus size' (I honestly have no idea what this means in the context as it's not referred to anywhere except like all women she has hips and boobs....). Ends as expected but good characters and would read books by the author again.

I liked the rest of the series but I didn't enjoy this one as much. I don't know if it was because the characters got shoe-horned into a hard-to-write trope but I struggled.

Dylan is the hippy one of the group of friends, trusts in crystals and the universe sending everything she needs her way. Like Cortney Miller, the baseball player from a well-to-do Boston family.

Dylan had a rough time when she got accidentally pregnant in her early 20's with Liam - his dad was from a rich family and they treated her like rubbish. But they did give her a pay-off that allowed her to start her own daycare business. There's a lot about this book that annoyed me - Dylan's portrayed as a crazy earth mother but actually she's a successful business woman whose company continues to grow. She provides home schooling and child care for all the other kids which none of the other moms have to do but that doesn't seem to get recognised. There's minimal interact between the women in this book to the point you'd wonder how they were friends at all, never mind friends who live together and I really dislike what they did with Beckett's character in this book. I don't think he would have done that and he just came across as hateful.

I liked the character and think she deserved a better book.

Sadly not for me. I did this as a buddy read and that's the only reason I kept going.

I couldn't understand the relationship between the two main characters, there was nothing to explain their closeness or why they came to work together.

The author also frequently used popular phrases linked to TV shows and films. Within 30 pages I'd text my buddy reader to complain about a concept that had been lifted from Star Wars and the book was quoting Spock from Star Trek. In addition, the villains are Romans who use a drug, Opian, to control the population. There's too many references to real world things (or very similar terms to real world things) to stay engaged in the world the book attempts to create. The Romans have polluted their world and use science versus the Empires who use magic. It feel a bit preachy at times and the characters were just so hard to like or care about. The book ends with a cliff hanger setting it up for the sequel. I wish it luck and hope it does well but I won't be reading it.

Wonderful book, as always, but its not going to get you in an overly festive mood (just as a heads up).

I liked this. I like this a lot. Misery is a vampyre but she's had a horrible time of it - first her dad (head of the vampire council) sent her off as a child to be a 10-year collateral with the human, then he signed her up to marry Lowe Moreland to make peace with the werewolves.

She does it for her own reasons, her best friend, a human called Serena has disappeared and the only clue Misery could find is a ripped piece of paper with 'L. E. Moreland' on it - Lowe must be involved. Turns out Lowe's kid half-sister takes a shine to Misery when she's stuck in the were complex and Misery tries to save the kid sister. Turns out Serena, like Ana, is a human-were hybrid. Serena was kidnapped by the vampires and kept hostage for months whilst Misery cracked the case.

In the meantime we learnt more about Vampyres and Werewolves and their physiology, shrug every day's a learning day.

I really struggled, I couldn't warm to Daphne at all. I finished it because I was hoping there might be a twist or gotcha moment and it would all come together and be worth it.

The book jumps between the present and Daphne's past dating history. There's no dates or timeframes so it is a bit bumpy going back and forth. Plus we know none of those relationships worked out so it didn't add a huge amount to the story line. I really struggled to understand how Daphne kept dating these really handsome, rich, successful men because it doesn't gel with my take on her. She seems very average (not in a negative way) and is finding herself in terms of her career and living in LA by herself but the flashbacks are just a string of handsome, successful, rich men. There's no quirky boyfriends or equally-struggling-to-get-established boyfriends, and no dates where he's just too odd and she slips out a back door.

There was a twist about half way through and that's probably the reason I read through to the end but unfortunately it's not a book I could recommend to others.

Nup, I tried. I really tried. I wanted to love it because the premise sounded so good. It was just too annoying. DNF-ed somewhere around 30% and the 100th mention of Obeah and I just couldn't any more.

Having enjoyed the first book so much, I was disappointed with this one. I found the beginning as Liv explores her surroundings confusing and with Erik and Liv apart the book didn't have the same witty banter and tension. For something that had the potential to be dark it felt almost wholesome which isn't how it was marketed. (Which isn't terrible, just not what I was expecting)

Wells Whitaker is a golfing has-been. Once the darling of golfing media he's now only in possession of two things: a hangover and one hell-bent fan who won't go away. Until she does.

Josephine Doyle saw Wells potential, but you can't keep believing in someone who can't believe in themselves. Besides, her own life's a train wreck. Health insurance is hard, business insurance is hard, Hurricane Jake was harder.

Wells notices Josephine once she's gone, tracks her down and makes her an offer she can't afford to refuse: caddy for him and they'll split the prize money.

The more Tessa Bailey books I read the better they get. I really enjoyed this one and she dealt with a chronic illness in a very relatable way. I know nothing about golf but that didn't stop me enjoying the book. You should definitely read this.

Another amazing book by Ben Elton. The story pulls you in and keeps you guessing right up to the end.

Ok, I'm late to the party with this one but how did I manage to miss it's not a standalone and book 2 isn't out until Sept 2024?? I was not prepared for that level of cruelty.
It's actually a good book, the more I read the better it got. Granted, a medieval setting centred round a 9-5 office environment was not what I thought the book was going to be about but once disbelief was suspended it was just fun. It got me through a delayed flight and a hotel where I can hear everyone else's plumbing.
So definitely read the book, just in August 2024.

Pascal is brother #3, the rich broody one who gave it all up to come home and help the family business. Parker was a cop but that was in the past. Thanks to Pascal. But the only way to crack this case is to go undercover. Deep undercover. Well, not that deep, just pretend to be Pascal's girlfriend to get the closed off locals to talk. Easy, right? Except this lumberjack's hobbies include a grand piano as well as chopping trees.

What if Thor was a lumberjack? And an ex-airforce pilot? And probably saved kittens in his spare time. Finn Herbert's family imploded around him and now his name is mud. He ends up taking a job at the rival family's firm to keep his dreams alive and starts seeing more of Adele Gagnon. Who is very much the grumpy to his sunshine but can throw axes with alarming accuracy so nobody's given her that feedback.