Saturday, February 01, 2014

Week in Review: January 26-31

And Be A Villain. (Nero Wolfe). Rex Stout. 1948. 256 pages. [Source: Book I Bought] 
1066 And All That. W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman. 1931/1993. Barnes & Noble. 116 pages. [Source: Bought]
Duchess of Drury Lane. Freda Lightfoot. 2013. Severn House. 256 pages. [Source: Library]
Seven Stories Up. Laurel Snyder. 2014. Random House. 240 pages. [Source: Review copy]
The First Dragon. The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica #7 James Owen. 2013. Simon & Schuster. 304 pages. [Source: Library]
A Woman's Place. Lynn Austin. 2006. Bethany House. 450 pages. [Source: Book I Bought
The Dancing Master. Julie Klassen. 2014. Bethany House. 432 pages. [Source: Review copy] 
With Autumn's Return. Amanda Cabot. 2014. Revell. 416 pages. [Source: Review copy]

This week's favorite:

My favorite this week may just be my favorite of the entire month of January. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Laurel Snyder's Seven Stories Up. The novel opens circa 1987, Annie, our heroine, is preparing to meet her (dying) grandmother for the first time. They meet. It's a bit overwhelming--a mix of good and bad, perhaps. The love the grandmother has for the granddaughter that she's never met because of the horrible relationship she has with the daughter--well, it's heartbreaking. But I can see how Annie might not now how to take on that much emotion from a stranger. She goes to bed, she wakes up in 1937! Same room. Same hotel. (In the modern setting, the family-owned hotel had been closed awhile.) Annie meets Molly, a girl just her age. It isn't long before she realizes that Molly IS her grandmother...this one is OH-SO-MAGICAL. Loved every page of it!!!

© 2014 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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