Romance (as per the RWA definition)

17. Rebellion by Nora Roberts - my first adult historical romance. TW for rape in the prologue. Enemies to lovers trope with a Scot heroine who is a badass and the half English/half Scot hero who is trying to bring Bonnie Prince Charles back to the throne and fights in the battle of Culloden. They move to America to start a new life and the start the MacGregors series. 

18. With Every Letter (Wings of the Nightingale #1) by Sarah Sundin. Hero and heroine fall in love via a pen-pal scheme while both serve in the North African campaign of WWII. Faith-based but not preachy. Heroine is half-Filipina, hero is the son of infamous murderer; great cast of side characters that are blended into the story very well.

19. Let It Shine by Alyssa Cole - an American historical romance set in the very early 1960s. Heroine is African-American, hero is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor. The short story that follows the couple post Loving decision and into the thick of late 60s/early 70s rights movements and should be read with the original novella.

20. Unclaimed (The Turner series #2) by Courtney Milan - hero is making his name via his writings on male sexual purity in Victorian England, heroine is blackmailed into seducing him to discredit him. Angsty to the hilt, but I love this book out of all of Milan's historical romances.

21. The Dragon and the Pearl (The Tang Dynasty #2) by Jeannie Lin - again with the enemies to lovers with a hero and heroine who are not squeaky clean typical romance characters. The setting, the details, it is all so different and refreshing from the glut of historical romances. Some of the best sex scenes because of the sensuality of the writing and not the graphicness.

22. Beverly Jenkins - seriously, just anything by her. Ms. Bev does so much research and then seamlessly blends that real historical detail into a great romance. Just can't go wrong with a Jenkins historical romance. 

23. Drifting to You and A Radiant Soul by Kianna Alexander and The Lawyer's Luck (Home to Milford College #0.5) and The Swan: The Seventh Day (The 12 Days of Christmas Mail Order Brides #7) by Piper Huguley - I feel these authors in general and these books in particular need to be on anyone's essential romance list because they defy an ugly and false myth that constantly circulates around romance writers groups and bloggers - certain characters can't have a happy ending when their story is set in certain times - or to put it more bluntly, black woman can't have HEAs at any time in American history prior to 1955. Alexander and Huguley prove you most certainly can have your black heroine have a HEA in any historical setting if you approach your writing with sensitivity and knowledge of the era and area you set the story in. Basically, do your homework.

Fiction

24. True Colors by Kristin Hannah - story of three sisters and how they dealt with growing up without a mom and with an mentally/emotionally abusive man. The youngest sister marries a Native American man who is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and goes to jail and how the Innocence Project-like organization, along with his sister-in-law, got his name cleared and him back at home with the family. 

25. Naked in Death (In Death #1) by JD Robb - a futuristic-ish police procedural that is about to publish #49 in September and #50 in February 2020. It was originally slated as a trilogy and this is where it all started. The more recent ones have been hit or miss for me, but yet I keep coming back to spend time with the NYPSD gang because the specialness of this series comes via the relationships between the recurring characters and the main characters.

And that's my essential 25-ish books.

It's weird. I started off reading this book years and years ago. It was published back in 2008 and I just didn't like how it ended much. Binchy ended up changing up the ending, but I don't have that version in my Kindle version (grrrr) so I do know that she had a new ending that worked a lot better. That is the main reason why I gave this one 3 stars. We end up leaving a lot of characters in the lurch I thought. I also thought the whole thing with Clara and Hilary needing to "get" their two kids together was ridiculous. Additionally, the amount of jobs that the character Ania was working didn't even make sense since it sounded like at best she would only be getting about 2-3 hours of sleep. I know it was to show the contrast between Clara's one daughter, but it was a bit much.

Heart & Soul follows characters that many Binchy fans have been reading about for years. We have Aiden and Signora popping up (Evening Class (96) and Quentins (2002), Brenda (from Evening Class and Quentins), Grania and Tony (Evening Class), Fiona, Barbara, David, Vonni (Nights of Rain and Stars 2004), Maud, Simon, Cathy Feather (Scarlett Feather 2000) and Father Flynn (Whitehorn Woods 2006) and probably a whole host of other people I have forgotten. 

We also have some new ones like Clara Casey, the new director of a heart clinic and Ania, a young Polish immigrant living in Dublin. 

Though Binchy doesn't call out characters by chapter heading in this one, we do go back and forth to characters within chapters sometimes. So if we start off with Clara, we may also include another character like her daughter, her ex-husband, etc. I didn't mind it at all in this one, but I think I miss that we could just stick with a character through one sitting instead of bouncing around a lot with them. I found all of the characters to be good, but I was really happy with the follow up to Fiona and Barbara. I had really liked Fiona in Nights of Rain and Stars and we see that she  has totally changes from who she was after the events from her last relationship that was depicted in that book. 

As I said above though. I had a bit of an issue with Clara in parts of this book. We find out that she has been long separated from a cheating spouse who wants to divorce and marry his partner of several years. I know it wasn't great, but her reaction to it wasn't great either. I liked that she realized that her friends and family were tired of her hanging on to the guy and she needed to move on from him. She starts a new relationship in this one, that left me feeling meh, and it was good to see her realize that too. Her fighting with her daughter Linda though made me scratch my head. Her thinking that she needed to get married and settled with Hilary's son made me want to go huh. This was written in 2008, not 1988, so I didn't get why she thought her 21 year old daughter needed to settle down. 

Ania's story was sad at first. We meet her and she's barely hanging on doing odd jobs in Dublin to obtain money to send back to her mother. We don't know what happened to her in Poland, but hints are it wasn't great. When Binchy reveals her tale, it was okay and all, but not Earth shattering. I just thought it was a bit much that Ania works at the heart clinic, at the laundromat, at a restaurant, helps with landscaping, etc. At one point I felt myself getting panicky at her jobs that she was doing. And her acting as if everything was super expensive (like some lace for sleeves on a dress) was making me go okay after a while. Ania is set up as some perfect person, but I was left a bit cold towards to her while reading.

We follow a new doctor named Declan in this one and we get to see his romance with someone that readers are familiar with (no spoilers). I liked Declan okay, but liked to see him push back on things later on in the book. He seemed a bit too perfect to me at first.

Hilary's story I found sad. I don't know if Binchy was going for clueless with her, but I definitely felt she was. We find out that she married a perfectly charming and handsome man who never worked. Her poor mother went and got more jobs to support them all (Hilary and her son Nick too) and Hilary works more to help. Things don't go well in Hilary's life I thought when we see that her mother is having some medical issues. 

Father Flynn who popped up in Whitehorn Woods shows up here and his whole storyline was weird I thought. Leaving that one alone.

The book going back to Vonni in Greece and Aiden and Signora caused it to drag for me a lot too. 

The writing was okay, but I am realizing that the flow wasn't great. Binchy jumping from character to character within a chapter didn't work as well for me in this one. I was looking forward to the ending which isn't like me usually. 

The setting of the book revolves around the heart clinic doctors, patients, and friends of patients or doctors working there. Maybe if we stayed focused on the staff it would have worked more. It would still be nice to read about characters that were introduced in prior books still, but we could have focused on new characters more.

The book ends with a wedding and just kind of ends. I liked the new ending ( I happened to read it in a new paperback release one day at the bookstore) that showed some characters after the wedding and what something new is going on with all of them. 

2018 is now half over....I feel like I have lived 4 2018s honestly. 

Read

1. Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer - America's Deadliest Serial Murderer by Anne Rule - 3 stars

2. Winds of Salem (The Beauchamp Family #3) by Melissa de la Cruz - 3 stars

3. When Summer Comes (Whiskey Creek #3) by Brenda Novak - 3 stars

4. Drifting to You: Cape Fear Shipworks Novella by Kianna Alexander - 4 stars

5. The Valcourt Heiress (Medieval Song #7) by Catherine Coulter - 3.5 stars

6. A Radiant Soul: A Sweet Way to His Heart Novella by Kianna Alexander - 4 stars

7. Wishing Lake (Finding Home #3) by Regina Hart - 4.5 stars

8. After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder; A Daughter's Search by Sarah Perry - 3 stars

9. The Spirit of '76: From Politics to Technology, the Year America Went Rock n' Roll by David Browne - 2.5 stars

10. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah - 2 stars

11. Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald - 5 stars

This story involves Rosaline's  (from Drifting to You) former apprentice, Sarah, as she carves out a career baking in a luxury resort in Wyoming territory while volunteering for the women's vote. She is called home for her mother's upcoming 45th birthday and decides on the way back to Wyoming that she will go to Washington DC to network with other WOC suffragettes. While home, she meets Owen, a carpenter that is building a gazebo as a birthday gift to her mom. Owen also volunteers his time to clandestine organization (the Sons of the Diaspora) that works to maintain and forward the progress of the black male vote, even at the expense of the women's vote. 

I really enjoyed reading Sarah and Owen's story except for the fact that they met because her father's manipulations - dear father wanted Sarah to move back home and be more "traditional". Screw that, I liked Sarah the way she was and in the end Owen did to which is why they continued to court through letters and trips to see each other after she returned to Wyoming. Plus, after they got engaged, they decided to leave Fayetteville and Wyoming and make their home in a place that offered both of them opportunity for employment and to continue their volunteer work. I also loved that I got to see Sarah and Will together with their new daughter.

In both Drifting to You and A Radiant Soul, Alexander explored the lives of African-Americans during the Reconstruction/Gilded Age by the characters' back stories; Rosaline and Will were former slaves, Owen grew up the child and grandchild of escaped slaves that hid in the Great Dismal Swamp until after the Civil War, and Sarah grew up freed. There is a lot of great history within these romances and a great way to discover parts of history that don't get told in classrooms. 

*This story was originally published in Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology.*

Tomorrow is the kick-off of COYER Big Summer Birthday Bash. To start, I am reading two books off my COYER reading list, Drifting to You and A Radiant Soul by Kianna Alexander. These were historical romance novellas from two different indie published anthologies that are now sold separately, at least in the Kindle store. 

I already have two books done for Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo this week: Winds of Salem for "time travel" square and When Summer Comes for "heroine is older than the hero" square. Right now I am working on a third, the one for the "Pre-Renaissance" square (The Valcourt Heiress by Catherine Coulter, set in medieval England).

I gave up on that WWI book because I couldn't get through the first chapter. I am taking the summer off from the reading list and will get back to it in September.

Started the grad school application process this week. Hopefully by September I will be back in school along with my kids.