DNF @33%

Book source ~ NetGalley

Miss Angela Ripon thought Matthew Harkness, the Earl of Colton, was going to ask her to marry him. Instead he dropped her like a hot potato. Now she wants revenge. She wants to seduce him until he can’t live without her and when he asks her to marry him, she rejects him. Seeking the advice of Madame Rouge, or Ruby as she’s known by her patrons, Ruby warns Angela that the game she’s playing will most likely not end up the way she hopes. Angela forges blindly on anyway. Matthew is newly intrigued by this change in Angela, but he’s wary. He’ll not be trapped into marriage. When Angela insists that she’s not looking for marriage he cautiously decides to play along and see where it goes.

The writing isn’t bad, but the characters are horrible. Neither one is honest with the other and neither thought or had the balls to just come out and say what they want, so they circle endlessly in a continuous loop of lies and prevarications and at 33% I just could not stand it anymore. I just couldn’t face another 67% of these two dipshits never coming out and saying what was actually on their minds. So, they are dead to me. Moving on.

I absolutely love this book and I am so grateful Ms. Gilmore introduced me to it. It will always be a part of my collection. I love the message and it is a great book for children most importantly. Grace is talented, fearless, and determined. She does not let anyone or anything stand in her way and that is a great quality to have. There are so many activities you can do with this book, students can put on a play and act out the book or write about what they want to be when they grow up. For younger students instead of writing about what they want to be, they could draw or act it out and explain it to the class. 

Lexile 680L

Stella and Leonardo are a firework. They set off sparks at first meeting, but the actual burst takes a bit more time. Stella and Leonardo bring a tension that is palpable and a fire that is consuming to their tango of heated words, battered hearts and strong personalities. They bring out the best in each other at the worst of times.

***copy provided by publisher through NetGalley***

This one was even worse than its predecessor.

The heroine was a cold, emotionally-stinted bitch, but without the requisite explanation as to why she was that way. I guess Ms Monroe wanted her to come across as eccentric, but the girl was just a cold, emotionally-stinted bitch. Especially once she turned her eye onto the hero as a replacement for the corpse she's been trying to resurrect for the past six months.

The hero was flat and one-dimensional, the "romance" completely nonexistent...The entire story was an utter disappointment.

When I was a child we had a cat which my mom christened Golda My Ear (he was a yellow tabby) which was a clever play on words that went completely over my head. Therefore, when I came across a book while shelving entitled Golda Meir: A Strong, Determined Leader it felt like fate was telling me to take it home and read it. (It's so short that I finished it on my first train home.) David A. Adler decided to write about Golda for the "Women of Our Time" biography series which covers a wide array of spectacularly talented, intelligent, and strong women. Prior to reading this book, I had no knowledge of who Golda Meir was which is pretty shocking seeing as how she was Israel's Prime Minister. She grew up in Russia but her family moved to Milwaukee when she was a young girl in the hopes that they could improve their quality of life with the opportunities that America promised were available to all within its borders. Much like her sister, Golda was homesick and longed to be a part of the larger Jewish nation and to build it in Israel. That determination never left her and she made it a reality after she married and moved to Palestine to be an active participant in the political party that wanted to build the Jewish nation. It covers not only her childhood and her move to Palestine but also her political career as Prime Minister and her meetings with Nixon (as well as her secret missions to the enemy's camps). Lest you picture her as a pacifist, she was not against using weapons to protect her people against the encroaching Arabs, Egyptians, and Syrians which threatened daily to drive them out of the space they had carved for themselves. Overall rating from me is 8/10 because I wanted a little more depth to the narrative.

As this is written with a younger audience in mind the chapters are very short and not exactly chock full of details. If you want the bare facts (or want to teach them to your child) then this is a great resource. I think this book and the rest of the books in the series would be a great resource in a classroom or home library as the women discussed come from different parts of the world and worked in various fields/capacities. It can never hurt to teach children about powerful women who paved the way!

What I'm Currently Reading: The Outsider by Stephen King