To paraphrase the words of Belle, I have just finished the most magnificent book. I LOVED this book!

Anthony hires Laura as his housekeeper. Laura is divorced and lonely. She needs something different to do. Anthony has been a finder of lost items which he brings home and meticulously records when and where he found them. Upon Anthony's passing, Laura is left his home with instructions to find the owners of the lost things he has found through the years. Can she do it?

These characters are wonderful. I laughed. I cried. I saw things come full circle. There are three stories in these pages. Anthony and Therese's story is the first and, for me, maybe the most tragic. Eunice and Bomber's was, perhaps, the funniest though it also brought me to tears. His sister, Portia, made it both funny and sad. Laura and Freddy, the gardener, was the most recent. Each story has its highs and lows. Each person must determine what is right and best for them. At times I was not sure if the choice was right. But I grew to love these characters.

Another character, Sunshine, Anthony's neighbor girl was a bright spot. She saw with the heart. She was honest, even when people did not want her to be so honest. Her openness was wonderful as she knew stories of the things Anthony found.

Stories came full circle at the end. My heart ached for the endings at times. Other times I was cheered by those endings.

This is not a book to be overlooked or forgotten. It is a wonderful story full of magic and love. It is a keeper!

[Because facebook has very unfairly blocked my blog, Punya Reviews..., from being promoted on their platform, I'm using booklikes as a "gateway" of sorts so I have a link to promote. It's been over 7 months but I tried for the first 4 months to reach them through any means I could find without any luck whatsoever. Doesn't look like I'll get the block removed anytime soon, if ever. More on what happened can be found here.]

LINK to my promo spotlight post for Daughters of the Sea on Punya Reviews...:

https://punyareviews.blogspot.com/2021/05/promo-spotlight-daughters-of-sea-by-hr.html

Violet's grandmother devises a way to bring Violet home. Needless to say, Violet is not happy about being back home. There are several things Grandmother Daisy neglected to tell her. One of the things is that she has a boyfriend who Violet finds dead the next morning in their driveway. Remembering the past, Violet is determined to solve the murder and to protect her grandmother from the police. So she stays and learns more about her family's past as well as the town's past and others' pasts.

I loved this! I had a lot of questions which were answered through the story (not always as quickly as I wanted them answered.) I had a hard time putting this down. I loved Violet and Grandmother Daisy as well as Emerson, the cat. The bookshop is fantastic! I want one like that. The secondary characters have good guys and bad guys. How many will stay throughout the series remains to be seen. I'm liking the triangle with Violet, Nathan, and David. This will be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm wondering how some of the confessions at the end will affect future stories. I'll have to read more to find out.

TITLE:  Other People's Pets

AUTHOR:  R.L. Maizes

________________________

DESCRIPTION:

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La La’s world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father—a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality—La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father’s accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her father’s luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father’s legal fees the only way she knows how—robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family’s valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force—searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it’s a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

Other People’s Pets examines the gap between the families we’re born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

________________________

REVIEW:

A very cute, entertaining and sometimes emotional story.  I loved all the animals.  The humans - some people should just not be parents.

PS:  I just wish the author had chosen some other name other than the juvenile and silly "La la" for her main character.  

So, this started off so good and then around the 30 percent mark started to flounder. Coates is a great writer, the story just drags. I started to get impatient while reading and then the story felt like it was stuck at a certain point. The ending is abrupt as well. 

"The Water Dancer" follows Hiram Walker. A son of a slave and the master of the house, Hiram dreams of being "Quality." Hiram also dreams of his father looking at him the way he looks at his half-brother Maynard. As Hiram gets older and is being groomed to take care of Maynard, a tragedy unfolds leaving Hiram realizing that he needs to get away and get freedom in the Underground. The book follows Hiram as he goes through trials and tribulations along with some magical realism thrown in. 

Hiram was an interesting character, but I started to grow bored with him towards the end of the book. The book flip flops around regarding freedom and the Underground and then weirdly sticks on a romance for the the last 40 percent of the book. I really wish we had gotten more of a glimpse into the character Sophia's mind.  

Not too much to say about other characters, they don't seem very developed. Hawkins and Corrine just talked like riddles and I got tired of reading their dialogue.

The writing at first evoked a lot of feelings in me, but once we get to Hiram's escape and then capture again the book just dragged from then on. Also the whole Underground that is described in this book made zero sense to me and I started to get irritated while reading.

Not too much to say here besides feeling disappointed. Maybe tighter editing could have helped smooth things out.