Bookish Thoughts

For a while it seemed like my husband might be recovering. We had hopes that we'd be able to bring him home, that he'd be able to have some kind of life. At the beginning of July he had a really good week. Then it took a sudden turn for the worse. He got the hiccups and they wouldn't go away. He didn't sleep for over 24 hours because they were so bad. On Monday morning, the doctor gave him something to make them stop and it worked. He was finally able to sleep, and I sat by his bed and read and waited for him to wake up again. He didn't wake up, and so I read this entire book, in a single day, sitting at his side and holding his hand and wondering where my happy ending went. Lisa Kleypas still isn't my favorite romance novelist. I liked the emphasis on female friendship in this series and the relationship between the various wallflowers. But I kept feeling like the men were getting a bit shorted. I wanted more of the perspective and fuller arcs for them. Still I...

This is the longest I've gone without updating this blog since I started it. I've got fifteen books waiting to be written about, which is the furthest I've ever fallen behind. I was already a bit behind when the doctors said my husband might only have a month left to live. That was six weeks ago, and while my reading pace has certainly slowed, it never quite stopped. At the moment things are more or less stable. Not getting any better, but not getting significantly worse either. And in this moment of calm I wanted to try and catch up on my backlog. But I'm starting with the most recent book I finished, Devil in Winter . I'll get to the others as I get to them. Time has stopped feeling linear in so many ways that I'm less concerned about this blog being perfectly chronological. Moreover, this book was surprisingly pertinent to my own situation. The heroine, Evie, spends a good chunk of the book taking care of her husband, Sebastian, while he convalesces after bei...

I must have adjusted to Lisa Kleypas' style, because I liked this book a whole lot more than the first one. I don't know that the hero actually had more scenes, but what he had seemed better paced. I actually felt like I got to see his arc rather than assuming that it happened off-page. But the majorty of the book was still devoted to Lillian and her friends. And it's the friendship between the wallflowers that really make these books special. Lillian is a fantastic heroine. She's rash and brash and full of energy. She doesn't like rules that make no sense, though she learns to appreciate that sometimes she doesn't know the reason behind a rule. Sometimes, of course, the rules are simply outdated and she's there to point that out. She's also wonderfully innocent - she has no idea how much she doesn't know - and that leads to some fun scenes as well. There are also a handful of scenes that give us glimpses into the heads of characters other than t...

I've read a decent number of romance novels at this point by several authors, both historical and contemporary. They've all followed the same format - alternating chapters between the hero and the heroine - and I started to think that was standard across the genre. Then I picked up my first Lisa Kleypas book and discovered a story that was 90% from the heroine's point of view with only the occasional insight into what the hero is thinking or feeling. It threw me for a curve, and I'm still disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time with Simon. I think he had an interesting arc going from bachelor to husband, and I'm sad that it mostly happened off-page. But I shouldn't expect all books in a genre to conform to a certain style - especially since I often seek out books that play with style and format on purpose. The lack of Simon also gave us a lot more time with the Wallflowers - Annabelle and her friends and their hunt for husbands. This ended up b...