A light, fluffy traditional regency romance, with colorful characters and a touch of paranormal. Maylene, her mother and aunt run a house that holds seances. There they are visited by several characters that want to talk to their dead relatives or find lost love ones. Socrates -what a name for a hero!- Hyatt is a distrusted rake that is there with his soon-father-in.law to find his lost fiancee.

I liked the banter between Maylene and Hyatt. I also liked that there is never a dull moment; there is always a seance, or a ball, or a walk in the park, or a short trip to Bath. And it is never just Maylene and Hyatt alone, but always surrounded by the secondary characters.

It is a mostly clean romance, meaning, no more that kisses. But also "mostly" because there are several mentions of mistresses (like Hyatt's) and more than a few less-than-chaste kisses between Hyatt and Maylene. Their attraction to each other is very passionate.

I did not like the way they ended up telling each other they love the other. Like, it was a bit out of nowhere. They are discussing and fighting and trying to deny their attraction, and then they are confessing their love and discussing their marriage. That part was a bit MEH.

A light, fluffy traditional regency romance, with colorful characters and a touch of paranormal. Maylene, her mother and aunt run a house that holds seances. There they are visited by several characters that want to talk to their dead relatives or find lost love ones. Socrates -what a name for a hero!- Hyatt is a distrusted rake that is there with his soon-father-in.law to find his lost fiancee.

I liked the banter between Maylene and Hyatt. I also liked that there is never a dull moment; there is always a seance, or a ball, or a walk in the park, or a short trip to Bath. And it is never just Maylene and Hyatt alone, but always surrounded by the secondary characters.

It is a mostly clean romance, meaning, no more that kisses. But also "mostly" because there are several mentions of mistresses (like Hyatt's) and more than a few less-than-chaste kisses between Hyatt and Maylene. Their attraction to each other is very passionate.

I did not like the way they ended up telling each other they love the other. Like, it was a bit out of nowhere. They are discussing and fighting and trying to deny their attraction, and then they are confessing their love and discussing their marriage. That part was a bit MEH.

Depression is not a tidy ailment, but a spectrum of difficulty, from fairly mild levels of distress and disconnection through to the desire to die, sometimes acted on. For non-sufferers, depression is often equated with melancholy, angst, feeling a bit sorry for yourself and other ideas that are way off the mark, often culminating in an impression that you ought to be able to pull yourself together. Depression is a complex illness, and furthermore it is an illness that kills people.

 

New Age books tends to go in for a lot of warm, fuzzy affirmation. Like attracts like, we are told. Think positive thoughts. For the depressed person, this has already ceased to be a realistic option. Often as a consequence, ostensibly spiritually uplifting material can, for a depressed person, just add to that sense of failure and alienation which is already dismantling you.

 

Cat Treadwell knows about depression, and this really shows in her writing. This is someone who has walked dark paths repeatedly and come back with some significant insights.

 

The first time I read Facing the Darkness, I was, by my standards in a pretty good place - for me (only mildly depressed, by medical standards). I found the book helpful and it was good to read. Coming back to it in states of more serious depression, I appreciated being able to just pick it up and dip in at random. Depression is not conducive to good concentration, often. I would suggest that for a person whose depression is mild to moderate, this is a really helpful book and well worth having on the shelf.

 

If you are seriously depressed, wanting to self-destruct, to stop breathing, to crawl into a small, hidden space and never come out again, you won’t reach for any kind of help. You’re probably not reaching for anything just to make sure you can’t pick up something sharp and dangerous. If you’re in that place and fighting to keep going from one breath to the next, then the best place for this book is in the hands of anyone who is trying to be with you through that. It offers insight. If you’ve taken Cat’s ideas on-board really thoroughly when in a more viable state, you might be able to draw on them in times of absolute crisis, but that’s going to come down to your nature more than anything else.

 

It is so important to talk honestly and openly about what depression is and what it does to people. It is so very important to have realistic literature that actually deals with what depression means. In writing from the heart and with a deep honesty about personal experience, Cat has made a powerful contribution to what needs to be a large and on-going public discourse.

 

If you, or someone you love walks the dark roads sometimes, or lives along them, this is book worth investing in. It isn’t a comfortable or easy read, but that’s rather the nature of the beast.

 

(And, my other half, Tom Brown did the cover illustration)

I sailed though this book.

 

A fun, if light hearted crime book about Prisoners on death row, Their choice of Last words, Meals, and also choice of weapons and the crazy things they say when strapped to the death chair. I found this to be a really informative yet funny book most the lingo used all in all a really Interesting topic for a book that made me pick it up. With only 50 pages it was a very light read.

Okay, there is A LOT going on in this novel. Elements of Arthurian legend, Faust, mermaids, Greek myth - there is a lot to keep track of, and there were moments in the novel that I could feel some of the threads slipping away from me. But I have to say that I was completely entranced by this story from the very beginning. Even when I wasn't quite sure that I was keeping track of all the fantastical bits, I was always eager to see where Gavin's story was going to take him next. I loved the writing, and I definitely plan to read the next in this series