Thursday, March 31, 2011

Blood Red Road - by Moira Young

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book!!  I know that it is supposed to be a Young Adult type of book, but as a 40-something year old woman, I thought that this book was exciting, thought-provoking and action-packed.  I have read that this book is to be made into a movie - now that is a movie I would definitely see!  A few aspects of the book were far-fetched and a little unbelievable, but it is supposed to be a futuristic, dystopian setting.  I suppose a few weird, mutated creatures would not be that uncommon.  For anyone who likes fast-paced, action with a little bit of romance mixed in, I definitely recommend this book! I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series to find out the continuing story of Saba and her brother and sister.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Coach From Warsaw by Irene Magers

I won this book from the Member Giveaways at Library Thing.

This was a fantastic book!  A little bit of romance, a little bit of intrigue, a little bit of history.  I was drawn into this story immediately, and it kept my attention throughout the entire book.

This is a story of Dorrit, who, with her father, escapes czarist Russia to settle in Berlin.  At the beginning of the book, Dorrit is a teenager, who becomes suspicious of her father's stories of why they happened to keep moving from city to city as soon as someone took too much notice of her and her beauty.  The secret finally comes out when she is getting ready to wed her beau, Baron Johann von Renz.  Her father reveals that he is not actually her father, but was married to her mother, who had an affair with Alexeyev Romanov, who was the son of a Russian grand duke, with direct blood ties to the czar. She learned that this man was actually her father.  Both he and her mother died when she was young, and her "father" took her away from Russia so that the parents of Alexeyev would not try to take her away from him.  He shortened their last name so that he would be harder to trace. 

Dorrit meets her husband, who is taken with her the moment he sets eyes on her.  They marry and honeymoon in Spain where he saves the life of a little boy.  They have two sons together, and when the war starts in Germany, Johann, a surgeon, decides to enlist as a field surgeon and goes off to war for two years. 

I don't want to give away any more information, so I will stop here, even though there is much, much more to this very intriguing book.  I see that there are two more books in this series and I am very much looking forward to reading these two books as well.  I definitely recommend this book to everyone!!

Encounters in Paris: A Collection of Short Stories

I have never read a collection of short stories incorporated into a book before, so this was a new experience for me.  I found this book very interesting; I was able to really connect with the characters in a very short time and I loved the fact that it presented issues such as infidelity and betrayal and things that are present in today's society.  I am looking forward to reading more of Ms. Moncel's works and I will be recommending this story to friends.