“You can be a mother and a poet. A wife and a lover. You can dance on the graves you dug on Tuesday, pulling out the bones of yourself you began to miss.”

Once in a while, a book shows up on your doorstep & for millions of reasons that add up to you choosing to read it as soon as you rip off the wrapping-you sit down and begin reading. I sat down this afternoon and began reading What Kind of Woman and couldn’t put it down. As a Woman, A Wife, A Mother- I felt so seen, so understood and received that overwhelming but refreshing confirmation that I’m not at this journey alone. 

I am a lover of poetry. To my soul, it is one of my favorite things to read, but I get it.. a lot of what comes out nowadays can be so difficult to understand and can feel unreadable. Kate sticks to the basics. She magically takes ordinary words, throws them all together to create these beautiful sentences that in the end paint a beautiful real life scenario that you completely see or have seen yourself in before. We need more f*cking honesty about how tough Motherhood can be. How tough Womanhood can be. How tough married life can be. It isn’t all fairy tales and happy endings: “When I took you as a husband I did not know the deaths our love would suffer. I did not know the grave of loneliness.” Kate writes this in Curveball and ends the passage with, “even in our darkest hours, I still wait for the sound of your feet at the door.” Curveball is followed by the poem For the Advice Cards at Bridal Showers which at its core is all about time revealing loves complications but shines the light on something I think we as women tend to do; holding out hope and staying positive, “For now just remember how you felt the day you were born: desperate for magic, ready to love.”

Her poems on Motherhood, oh my goodness, “Experience will teach you two things: you are the mother, and it’s okay to let them go up the slide.” The everyday activities that also resort in a lot of anxiety, like park visits, “I am aware of dogs at the park. I am aware of men too.” “Maybe he is just a man walking or maybe he is searching for a bird to break.“

I think every woman should at some point read her poem, Robyn Hood which is all about us thinking about what we could do, could’ve done if we were able to steal all of the time back that we spent comparing ourselves to someone else and the power of assurance. I am going to reread Things My Girlfriends Teach Me everyday and meditate on this passage from To Take Back A Life, “Pick up your heavy burdens and leave them at the gate. I will hold the door for you.”

This is an absolute amazing collection. I hope that it finds you at the right time.

First and foremost, thank you to Hallmark Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book early. These are my thoughts.

Rating: 4/5 Stars on Goodreads

Expected Publication Date: 3 November 2020

Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy is the romance between New York City girl Katie and resident of Evergreen, Ben. The two meet on the train heading into Evergreen and with it being a small town, their paths continuously cross. Ben is very skeptical of Katie’s motives in the beginning once he learns that she is a reporter trying to find inspiration of an article. In the past, reporters have come to Evergreen and poked fun at how seriously the town gets over the holidays and he thinks that’s what she’s there to do. In the beginning she does have intentions of writing an article on Evergreen and she is a little suspicious of all of the holiday cheer but she never showed any intention of poking fun. This is their romance.

It was kind of hard rating this book. I immediately wanted to rate it a five/five stars which who knows, maybe eventually I will? The Tidings of Joy film premiered on Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas of 2019. Of course I saw it and of course I loved it. I love the Evergreen movies. It is just really weird when a book is written after a movie versus when you’ve read and loved a book and then we get a film adaptation. With book to movie adaptations you get to see the stories you love brought to life but on one hand where is the fun with that when you saw the film first? On the second hand though, as I read this book which beat by beat was exactly like the film, I could imagine the characters in my head based off that experience. 

That being said, Nancy Naigle is slowly becoming a go to for holiday romances for me. I read The Christmas Shop by her last year and really loved the spin on You’ve Got Mail and this one didn’t disappoint. She really nails the small town charm and sense of community. There is more than one love story in this one, I specifically love Hannah and Elliott’s story. I remember crying when they finally got together in the movie. I was so happy for Michelle and Thomas. I love the time capsule aspect to the story, sort of this surprise across time from Evergreen 50 years ago. It was really sweet.
If you’re into sweet, Holiday romances set in small town Vermont which I’ve pulled up on Pinterest and is absolutely gorgeous during the fall and winter, I definitely think this series is a try. If you’ve already seen the film adaptations and are just nostalgic for the stories then give them a read but honestly, what you see in the movie is what you get in the book so you be the judge!

Top 5 Wednesday

Dream Adaptations

Happy Wednesday Friends. I am here with a Top 5 Wednesday post. It’s crazy. I remember when I first discovered Booktube back in 2014, I eventually began seeing Top 5 Wednesday videos float around and they were my favorite videos to watch for the longest! I am happy to see it revived. The moderators for Top 5 Wednesday are Ginger Reads Lainey and Thoughts on Tomes, and if you’re interested in checking out the group on Goodreads, click here.

I would really love to see film adaptations of both The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. While for the longest, I thought Helen Hoang was the first to write a romance with a heroine on the autism spectrum, as I’ve read through some backlists of authors, I’ve learned that’s not the case, but I am grateful to her for making me realize that is representation I hadn’t noticed and wanted more of at the time. I went into The Bride Test expecting the same very fun and sexy feel that I got with The Kiss Quotient but it was a totally different vibe, and just as excellent. We need more Asian rep in everything and I would love to see both of these on screen.

I would love the Destiny series by Beverly Jenkins to be turned into a series. I think with it following a family of brothers and their matriarch, I think there is enough with each book to carry a good tv adaptation for a couple of series. I think with the right writers and directors we could get the right amount of focus on each brother and their respective love interest and it would just be beautiful to see bought to life.

I can’t have a list without Jill Shalvis on it. She has been getting me through 2020 and all of it’s madness. I would love a tv series adapted from the Heartbreaker Bay series which she is still writing books for! About halfway through, the series does shift and focus on new characters so I think it would need the right writing team and a good director to figure out how to capture the small town within a big city feel and how to have all of Jill’s characters be featured but not have too many perspectives for viewers to have to keep up with.

The Forbidden Lust series by Aubree Pynn would be amazing. It is a sexy as hell four book series of novellas, so this adaptation would be quick but it had me on the edge of my seat from the very first page of book 1 through the last page of book 4. Things get messy in this series but in the end, the very confident, crazy about the heroines Black Men in the book go get their girls and I just loved it. I think we need more black joy on screen and this series would be amazing to see on screen.

The last series I want to see adapted would be the Magical Bookshop series by Amanda Flower. This is a cozy mystery series that is still fairly new; I believe there are only 4 books out at the moment. It is set in upstate New York in a small town; total dreamy setting. Violet and her Grandmother own the small town’s bookstore that has a mind of its own. This being a cozy mysteries series, there are off the page murders and the books in the bookstore send clues to help Violet solve the murders. It’s so fun, so cozy. I love seeing cozy mysteries brought to life in film and this is one I would definitely like to see!

That’s it from me Friends, let me know a 2020 read that you would love to see adapted into film. Happy Reading.

First and foremost, thank you to the Harlequin Publicity Team for sending me a copy of Here To Stay by Adriana Herrera in physical copy and access to the ebook on Netgalley. The expected release date is 25 August 2020.

Here To Stay is the romance between Julia Del Mar Ortiz and Rocco Quinn. These two are both New Yorkers whose paths don’t cross until they both find themselves in Dallas, Texas. Julia moved from NYC to Dallas with a boyfriend who dumped her and left shortly after they arrived and Rocco is there temporarily for a job-this job entailing having to prove to a company that Julia’s job isn’t needed.

There is so much to love about this book. I love when a location feels like an added character to the story and I loved what Adriana did with the city of Dallas in this book. Dallas represented, making it work and starting over. For Julia all I kept thinking was how huge of a city Dallas is, and to be basically left there alone after being dumped how lonely and intimidating that can feel. For Rocco it was this very tempting place of new possibilities but he was holding on very tightly to what was back home in NYC. The workplace drama is always lingering in the background; Adriana never really lets us forget the reason why there is some hesitation on the characters parts but I loved that we spent quite a bit of time seeing them get to know one another and slowly piecing together the reasons why this new city was a good fit.

I will always love found family. The Gotham Exiles is formed in the book; a group of people all from New York City now living in Dallas and it was so fun to see all of them build that support group with one another. The found family aspect was such a joy along with Julia’s family! I love when family members do too much, because that is reality for so many of us. Julia’s conversations and the scenes where her family was actually around were always so fun to read. I like what she did with both Julia’s family and the Gotham Exiles because for Rocco, his family life sucked. His parents are in this constant back and forth of abuse and I really appreciate how Adriana pointed out through Rocco and Julia having a conversation some of the long term effects of being a kid who grew up in a abusive household. His focus was on getting his sister and niece out of NYC, away from his parents. His situation is also one of those where the one whose always taking care of everyone else has to learn to let people be there for him too and in the case of Julia-he has to learn that he no longer has to go at things alone.

“We hid in those bushes and kissed and touched until we were both so turned on and disheveled all we could was slink away like thieves in the night. And I guessed we were stealing. We were trying to rob a little of time, as ours was running out.“

Domestic abuse and the deportation of immigrants were two very important topics handled amazingly in this book. Here To Stay is one that I will be recommending for a very long time, especially as a book that I think shows what the romance genre is out here doing! Educating you on everyday topics while promising a happy ever after.

“That man looks at you like you’re the answer to every question he’s ever had. Trust that you can be that to someone.”

Hello Friends, I am here to chat with you about a 2020 Christmas Romance from Forever Publishing which is expected to release on September 29th. It is The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Lizzie Shane and I was given the opportunity to read and review the book early thanks to the publisher and Netgalley.

Very rarely do I finish a book in a day, but once I got into The Twelve Dogs of Christmas, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and instantly knew this was a book I would read, read, read until I had it finished!

This is the romance between Ally and Ben. Ally has returned to small town Pine Hollow from New York City to assist her Grandparents with their animal rescue shelter and shortly after arriving, she learns that the town council is cancelling the shelter’s funding to use that money toward the community center after their roof caved in. The deciding factor on that vote, was Ben. Ally and Ben do not get off on the right start so when she learns that he had something to do with the vote which now gives her about four weeks to find homes for all the dogs in the shelter-this doesn’t help her already bad vibes with him. This is a romance though, so brace yourself and watch as Lizzie Shane unravels the romance between these two.

My only ‘con’ with this book is a personal preference thing, specifically something I noticed. You know how when you’re reading a book and you begin to pick up on certain words the author uses a bit too much.. Every time someone spoke to Ben, we’d get, “Ben grimaced,” I was seriously at one point, like Why is Ben grimacing all the time? Again, this is just something I noticed and it’s a really small con.

One of my issues with 2019 Christmas romances is that they didn’t really feel Christmas’ey at all and if the rest of the new releases I read this year give off the same vibes as Twelve Dogs of Christmas, I’ll be happy. Can we please get Hallmark to adapt this into a film? I think it’d be perfect. Small towns are perfect for Christmas romances. Sometimes you have to separate yourself from the hustle and bustle of the big city to figure things out and I liked seeing that with Ally. I loved her selflessness which I think you have to be when you’re rescuing and caring for animals, a lot of which have been completely discarded. I loved that entire premise to the story. Ben realizes how crappy the whole vote is that is effecting the shelter, so he goes to Ally with the idea to help her get all of the dogs adopted before the end of the year by posting photos of them in the town paper and website, as the Twelve Dogs of Christmas. They eventually get some of them on a float during the holiday parade and some get to be part of the Christmas pageant. I’ll never get tired of that close knit, small town feel and seeing people come together to help out. I am a sucker for the close proximity that working together brings and how that factors into the blooming romance so I loved seeing Ben and Ally spend time together and get to know more about one another.

Ben was so complex. He is the guardian of his niece Astrid, after her parents died. He is so consumed with getting everything right on his own, he’s one of those guys who refuses to ask for help and unintentionally pushes people away. His journey and his growth could be frustrating at times but it got to a point where Ally had to stick up for herself and put her own feelings first which leaves Ben to either get his crap together or lose the girl. Sometimes we truly do get in our own way.

As a girl living in South Texas where a beautiful white Christmas is nonexistent, I loved the descriptions of the snow and all of the holiday festivities. This was really a fun holiday romance and I am excited for more from Lizzie Shane.