The ultimate chick-lit; the literary form of those 80's romantic comedies that more often than not starred Goldie Hawn or Meg Ryan.  I read all of these years ago, long before my online booksite days so they were never reviewed.

 

There isn't much to review really.  Full Bloom is pure marshmallow fluff; it's funny and entertaining, but ultimately about as deep as a summer puddle.  There's a murder mystery at the base of it that is actually pretty well constructed, but it's obvious the authors' were focussing on the flirtation, the romance, and the laughs, which are of the slapstick variety.  The HEA is a given and if you dislike insta-love, you're gonna hate this book.

 

A fun, fast read that will not tax your mental abilities even a little bit, but might entertain you if you see the appeal of Goldie Hawn.  :)

3.5 star read

Review first published on my blog: http://memoriesfrombooks.blogspot.com/2013/12/winter-in-full-bloom.html

Lily is alone. Her only child is off to college, leaving Lily's nest empty. Lily has been estranged from her own mother for over ten years. As empty nest syndrome effects Lily, she attempts a reconciliation with her mother.

Not surprisingly, she is unsuccessful. What is surprising and shocking is that her mother reveals that Lily is an identical twin. Lily has always thought she was an only child - no sibling, much less a twin. The other twin, Camille, is now living in Australia. That is all her mother will tell her, providing no information as to how or why Camille ended up in Australia.

Shocked and hurt but also amazed at the possibility of having a sister, Lily travels to Melbourne Australia with limited information. There, she meets Marcus, another US transplant who is escaping events in his own life. Together, they form a bond and search for Lily's sister. In this search, Lily learns a lot about herself, and perhaps finds herself.

Some of the "why's" of the book are difficult to believe, but if you are willing to suspend disbelief, the book is an easy and quick to read story that moves quickly and resolves sweetly. A feel good book.

*** Reviewed for GoodReads First Reads program ***

Winter in full bloom by anita Higman
Book starts out with Lily on a plane traveling when a girl sits next to her Jenny and talks her through the anxiety of flying. She starts to tell her of why she's traveling and the story of her visiting her mother once her husband Richard had died and her daughter had gone off to college.
Her mother thinks it's time to tell her of her twin sister-which she knows nothing about.
Her sister, Camille Violet and she's Lily Anne. The only head she has is the church she goes to and that doesn't pan out but Marcus, a local meets her in the botanical gardens and they talk and he seems to think he knows her-she does look similar to Lily. They have dinner and talk more in hopes of seeing Camille.
Love the gardens and travel as I've never been to Australia. So many new foods, places that would also excite me.
When she does find her sister Camille is not very open but things change with their lives and now she's heading back to the state. Love the talk of how similar they really are, I'm amazed at all the small similarities.
Because of their bond they have moved Marcus into making some life resolutions. Love banter Lily and Marcus have with book features, names of characters in the children's book that she has a bond to also.
Especially loved the bagpipes playing and the Irish poem-it's my favorite one as I have an Irish ancestry.
Love Camille's career choice, explains a lot of what's in the book. When they approach their mother to get to the root of the problem they find God has always been missing from their early years.
Detailed descriptions, even about making spaghetti sauce and time is short. Love the pact the woman make.
Before she can commit to her new relationship she must finish up with the last one and others end their other relationships...
I received this book from The Book Club Network (bookfun.org) in exchange for my honest review.

This is a bit of a pivotal book, from a pivotal period in romance fiction. In this one you can see some of the older tropes rearing their ugly head; domineering male issuing commands that the woman follows without arguing enough; that sort of thing, the tropes that gave romance fiction a bad name for many years. But then Krentz pulls the rug out from under it in subtle ways, the woman has done an assertiveness training course and some self defence classes and she stands up to the male character, he dictates to her where they going to move but she keeps her business, in fact he has to deal with the fact that in some ways he's her dependent. Overall you can see the roots of later assertive female characters in romance fiction taking root and spreading their wings in this book. This is not to say that there aren't flaws and there were times that I wanted her to tell him to "get lost" and call the cops on his ass several times and get a barring order organised, for being a controlling asshat like her family had been and I'm glad to see that in the end he let her be assertive and control her situation like she needed to. The wedding made me deeply angry tho, he basically told her they were getting married and while he acknowledged she was upset throughout the situation he didn't try to resolve it BEFORE getting married in Reno. Still overall it wasn't bad, it got an extra half star for the ending.