A Holiday by Gaslight: A Victorian Christmas Novella by Mimi Matthews

Pretty Cover? Checked!
A Christmas theme Historical Romance book? Checked!
HEA? Checked!

I have to admit that the first thing that caught my attention about this book is the cover. Being a great fan of historical romance genre, this book is just calling out to me.

Sophie Appersett is quite willing to marry outside of her class to ensure the survival of her family. But the darkly handsome Mr. Edward Sharpe is no run-of-the-mill London merchant. He’s grim and silent. A man of little emotion—or perhaps no emotion at all. After two months of courtship, she’s ready to put an end to things.

But severing ties with her taciturn beau isn’t as straightforward as Sophie envisioned. Her parents are outraged. And then there’s Charles Darwin, Prince Albert, and that dratted gaslight. What’s a girl to do except invite Mr. Sharpe to Appersett House for Christmas and give him one last chance to win her? Only this time there’ll be no false formality. This time they’ll get to know each other for who they really are.

I love how the book started with Sophie rejecting the courtship from Edward. No long and draggy information about how, who and what led up to this event. This is one of the reason why I love historical romance genre. The book always give us what we want right from the beginning.

Sophie might not be the prettiest daughter of the Appersett family but she definitely is the most charming to me. My favorite type of heroine who knows what she wants but always spare a thought for her family first.

Edward on the other hand was something fresh to me. Not one born with a title to his name but yet he worked his way up the social ladder, turning himself into a wealthy man whom others respect.

This is a clean romance book. We get sweet kisses between our hero and heroine and nothing too erotic. For someone like me who is not a fan of erotic novels, the premises of this book is perfect.

The book is fast paced as we read about preparation of Christmas at the Appersett House also getting to see how Sophie and Edward slowly learned more about each other and growing closer as Christmas approaches.The tiny surprise during the Christmas Ball is sweet and it was a nice to see Edward and Sophie faced their true feeling after.

In addition to romance, it can be noted that there are reference to real historical event like the passing of Prince Albert in 1861 and seeing how something that came natural to us such as gaslight was a luxury back in those days that it could possibly bankrupt a family. Although there can be a tad too many references to it throughout the book.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and actually finished it in two sittings (rarely I do so since I like to take breaks between my reads). I will definitely recommend it to all historical romance lovers out there.

This book will be published on 13th November 2018 and you can pre-order it now on Amazon for US$2.99! (Price accurate as at 6 October 2018). 

The Sunday Lunch Club by Juliet Ashton

I picked up this book because of the title and also the description of the book had me anticipating some huge dark secrets that can change the protagonist's life.

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is … don't make any afternoon plans.

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.

Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of forty. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.

Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?

What I had expected: Heartwarming family support & a dark secret to be unveiled
What I had read: A massive load of soap opera done wrong.

If I have to give a quick summary of this book, these is a quick list of the story that you will be reading about:

1. A pregnant woman in her 40s who is still lusting after man and her secret is not such a big deal afterall
2. A gay brother who is whiney and over sensitive about being gay when no one else was bothered by it
3. A needy, attention seeking sister who acts like a whore sometimes
4. A social recluse brother who has secrets to hide
5. An ex husband who needs help getting his girlfriend back (otherwise acting like a crazy drunkard)
6. A grandmother who had to marry a rapist and pretended that it was a lovey dovey romance encounter

Nothing about the Sunday Lunch left an impression on me. All I can remember are the whiney people in this book. Practically everyone in the Pipers has a secret and is worrying about something.

The author tried to cramp the 6 issues I've listed above into one book while these issues are in no way related to one another. Imagine reading a book with 6 different stories weaved in between each chapter. That was how I felt. 

The book is awfully slow and draggy. For the first 60% of the book, all I was reading were the continuous whining from the Pipers and the whines just kept repeating in every chapter. The story only picked up in the last 30% of the book and the last few chapters redeemed it.

Out of all the supposedly problem/secrets above, the only redeeming one was about Josh who faced his true self and how the family came to accept him for who he is.

Honestly I will not recommend this book to anyone.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

If you have not heard of this book, you are missing out on something great!

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

In this story, we followed the lives of Madeline, Celeste and Jane revolving around drama at the kindergarten with other parents leading to a murder on the School Trivia Night.

The book started from a third party's POV that tells us that something bad had happened at the school on Trivia Night. The story then rewinds to orientation day at the kindergarten where the drama first began.

I love those short interviews/bitching of the other parents at the end of some chapters. They really enhanced the chapters! Those are so quirky and funny to read. It gives hint about the drama between the parents and yet it is so relatable because in reality, parents do bitch about other parents from school! Even co-workers bitch to one another in our life.

Friendship, domestic abuse, school bullying, parenting mishaps....despite the heavy topics, this book is a very light and easy read. The humor within it that comes from the various characters made it so much easier to appreciate it. This is my second book by Liane Moriarty and she is quickly becoming one of my favorite author.

Overall, if you are a fan of Where'd You Go, Bernadette (another amazing book that you must read if you haven't), this book is for you. If you are a parent, you will totally be able to relate to some of the contents in this book because they just so real to everyone out there. An amazing book and one that I will recommend to all my friends to pick it up. 

P.S: Two of my friends already did and they both loved it too!

P.P.S: Do not watch the HBO TV Series! It does no justice to the book. The book is way better!

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

This book has been on my to-read list since the day it was published. Due to my slow reading over the past 3 years, I only picked it up this year. I had quite an expectation for it due to the good ratings and reviews from readers worldwide.

A captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

The story travelled between Year 2011 and 1929 to 1943. In Year 2011, we have Molly who was having issue with her foster family and she met Vivian, an orphan who had experience the Orphan Train back in 1929 and going through various foster family too.

I enjoyed Vivian’s story about her experience on the Orphan Train and the tough times she went through with each foster family. My heart aches for her at times and when things got better, I felt happy for her. The Orphan Train chapters were interesting and I found myself flipping through the 2011 chapters just so that I can continue to read what's going happened next on the train back in 1929.

The story however slowed down when Vivian's story moved into her foster home experience that were predictable. It was still a good read though as she had portrayed a strong character despite the hardship, never giving up her passion for an education.

I found myself having a hard time getting into Molly's part of the story. Her story was like a predictable YA novel about problematic teenagers who behaved badly with a sad story attached to her.

The chemistry between Vivian and Molly was almost non existence. I can see that the author tried to weaved the two stories together into one but I just cannot connect the two.

I would have enjoyed the book better if the whole novel is on Vivian and there were more about the Orphan Train rather than only 5 out of the many chapters in the book.

Overall, the book is an okay read but it did not lived up to my expectation based on the book description and the hype about it from other reviewers.

One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

I have to say that I wasn't expecting much from this book when I picked it up but it turned out much better than my expectation. I was trying to find an easy mystery book to read and was scrolling through my Goodreads bookshelf when this book cover just caught my attention. The author sounds new to me but the book description sounds good enough for me to pick up a copy of it.

The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide 

Pay close attention and you might solve this. 

Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. 

Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose? Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

The book was easy to read and each Chapter is narrated by one of the four students who soon became a suspect of the murder. The story follows through the event after Simon's death and slowly revealing the secrets that each one of them had to hide.

I loved how each one of the four main characters developed over the course of the events and they all found something new in their life and faced their weaknesses.

The author did a good job in concealing the truth about Simon's death although I managed to guess some of the side stories relating to his death.

Overall a good debut novel by the author and I will look forward to future work by the same author.

If you want an easy read that involves a murder, a mystery to be solved and a hint of romance, this will be the book you might want to pick up next.

I'm Back!

So....after a few years....I'm back!

I have to say that I kind of got so busy with work and personal stuffs that I have not been reading much over the last few years. I can barely manage more than 10 books a year! Here's a quick recap of how I have been doing since my last post...

2015 Recap

2016 Recap 

2017 Recap

Well I guess it is quite obvious that I had went from reading 100 over books a year to 25 in 2015 and down to only 12 books last year!

My life has been in a turmoil for the past 12 months and reading is the only thing keeping me sane right now.

This year, I started picking up my books again. To start off the year, I've got a new Kindle Paperwhite from my BFF for my birthday and it really does helped me to read more because I am so excited over my new reader.

My old bookclub had disbanded so I don't really have many places to talk about books anymore. A friend on Goodreads once told me that she loved reading my review because they are right to the point and no long nonsense introducing the book like many others and once she read it, she can decide if she wants to pick up that book or not. I think that is a really nice compliment so here I am again to try to share more books to others out there!

I'll be updating a few of the books I've read over the last few months first and there will be more to come. Stay tuned!