Book Report May 2014

The Prodigal Women by Nancy Hale (1942)

A coming of age story about three women who look for love and a sense of self with the wrong men. Leda is ashamed of her humble background and is only concerned with being in the “right” crowd. Her friend Betsy is from the same humble beginnings, but doesn’t care. Instead, she becomes very promiscuous until settling for an abusive alcoholic. Betsy’s sister Mazie has so many fears that when she finally traps a man into marrying her, she has a complete mental breakdown. This was NOT a happy book.

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The Ghost Who Fell in Love by Barbara Cartland (1978)

In Regency England, Demelza is living a very frugal (meaning “poor”) life in the country while her brother spends money they don’t have living the high life in London. When he rents out their shabby mansion to the

Earl of Trevarnon (a notorious womanizer) during Ascot Week, Demelza hides in the secret room in the walls. Of course, this being a Cartland book, there is a very happy ending. I know they’re shallow reading, but I love them.

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Grab Bag by Charlotte MacLeod (1986)

This old paperback that I got from a thrift store contained a lot of Ms. MacLeod’s mystery stories from the 60s. It was interesting reading her earlier works. Her later writing style was quite a bit different. Both styles are very enjoyable.

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Dear Me by Peter Ustinov (1977)

I always loved Ustinov’s movies. I didn’t realize that he was such a prolific writer of plays, and he certainly knew his music, too. He was only in his mid 50s when he wrote this book, so it’s just about his beginnings and early acting career. I would’ve liked to read a sequel, but he never wrote one.

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Time And Again by Clifford Simak (1951)

One of Simak’s earlier sci-fi books. There was a LOT of hanky-panky concerning time travel. It made my brain hurt. If you’re gonna mess around with time, go to some TIME, do stuff, go home, then deal with the consequences. I really don’t care for the endless getting lost kind of thing. Too many loose threads all over. The main character, Asher Sutton, discovers he wrote a mankind changing book way in the future and spends the rest of the book trying to escape people trying to kill him so he won’t write the book. Meh.

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A Kiss of Blood by Pamela Palmer (2013)

This was the sequel to Blood Seduction. I really enjoyed the story. It was a good story. Lots of action and vampires and other creatures. What I got real tired of real fast was the graphic sex. There wasn’t that much of it in the first book. I just wanted to read what happened when Quinn returned to Vamp City with her brother Zack, seeing a cure for his illness and looking for their friend Lily. The story built very nicely, but definitely ended on cliff hanger. If they had spent less time on sex, they probably could’ve finished the story. Now I have to wait for the third book in this series.