New Year's Resolution: One To Keep (Rive...

New Year's Resolution: One To Keep by Ev Bishop is a fantastic contemporary romance with a holiday theme. This is a fairly quick read, perfect for those with limited reading time. Ms. Bishop has provided readers with a well-written book furnished with outstanding characters. Sophie is a little quirky, but in a fun way. She meets Jesse, un-suave but lovable. Sophie and Jesse's story is packed with drama, humor, spice and more humor. I enjoyed this book from cover to cover. New Year's Resolution: One To Keep is part of the River's Sigh B&B Series but can be read as a standalone. This is a complete story, not a cliff-hanger.

New Year's Resolution: One To Keep (Rive...

Ha! I love a romance that's filled with humor. We start off with Sophie and Jesse in the same bar sitting alone and toasting themselves for deciding to be single forever. They've both had too much too drink, and even though neither of them are casual one night stand kind of people they try. And they both chicken out. I really liked that. 

They spend the next few days getting to know each other, riding quite the roller coaster of attraction and irritation with each other. There's a lot of baggage for them to work through, but I felt the story line flowed smoothly and believably. 

You'll find Sophie refreshingly honest, even when she's confused about her own emotions. Jesse is alternately sweet and frustratingly "man" when he's trying to figure out his own deal. 

The only character that confused me in this story was Stella. She started off nice and then had a night of total witchery if you know what I mean. It was the classic "I like him so I'm going to sabotage you" routine and it was so obvious I don't think Sophie should have fallen for it. 

Anyway, I'd give this a movie rating between PG-13. They don't, but there's foreplay that's more than PG. The story itself gets a solid 4 from me. 

1-5 scale and what it means:

1: I couldn’t even finish it / just plain bad

2: I hope I didn’t pay for this / disappointing

3: I didn’t hate it, but it was still missing something / forgettable but inoffensive

3.5: On the line between good and ok / like, not love

4: Solid mind candy / worth reading

4.5: So very close to perfection! / must read

5: I could not put it down and I’m still thinking about it! / a true treasure

Movie Ratings in relation to my review:

Clean--Hallmark movies, some kissing, no nudity, no sex on or off "screen"

PG--Some innuendo but nothing kids don't hear every day, sex is all closed door

PG-13--some language (swear words not related to sex), more talk about sex, heavy petting, removal of clothing on screen, but sex is closed door. 

R--swearing (can be related to sex), feels like the whole story is about the sex and not the relationship or some other plot

This year I really want to go back to my reading, so here we go!

I will not be blogging much, if at all, for the rest of the year. So here's what's up, reading-wise.

Continuing my journey through Elizabeth Bear's backlist, I just finished her excellent debut, Hammered. I'll review the trilogy it begins as a whole when I've read the other two books.

As far as current reading goes, I'm not really reading Bitterblue at the moment, and am finding Hild a slow read, but fully intend to finish it this year. Frederica should be finished fairly soon, and then I think I'm taking a break from Heyer- there's a point where they blur together and can't be enjoyed as much as they deserve.

Unread but next on the deck are Scardown (the sequel to Hammered), Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches, Julius Fucik's Report from the Gallows (I had a lot of trouble getting ahold of the less common, uncensored edition of this, as well as avoiding giving money to the publishers, whose politics I don't share, but have finally managed to order a secondhand copy with the assistance of a relative in the UK), and Ippolito Nievo's Confessions of an Italian/The Castle of Fratta (which may end up being read next year, but which I am looking forward to a great deal/flipping through in my spare time).

My big New Year's resolution is to read War and Peace. Being a Russian major, I probably should have done this already, and I generally like big thick novels (Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are all favorites), and I've seen two movies of it and skipped around a lot in the book (Andrei's parts are interesting), but somehow I never could just sit down and read it straight through.

So come the New Year, I will be blogging my way through War and Peace. Watch this space.