Book Review Thursday - 7/11

And after a week's hiatus, I'm back with 3 more books!

Glazed Murder by Jessica Beck is the first in the Donut Shop cozy mystery series. The format seemed very familiar to me and it turns out that this Tim Myers guy writes the Pizza mysteries that I like by Chris Cavender. Wierd.

Suzanne is going into her donut shop to make the donuts in the middle of the night when a body is dumped out of a car right in front of her shop. It ends up being a friend of hers from the shop and he was murdered. Because she found the body, she feels obligated to investigate.

The book also includes recipes for donuts at the end of most chapters. Reading it made me want donuts! lol

The formula was very familiar after having read the pizza mysteries, but it was a pretty good book for a cozy mystery.

The House at the End of Hope Street by Meena van Praag was a novel that I found through my library's website. It is the first published novel for the author and it is a very sweet book.

After a very bad experience at school, Alba is walking through Cambridge and comes across the house at 11 Hope Street that she never knew existed. The woman of the house invites her in to stay, but tells her that she has 99 nights to turn her life around before she must leave the house. The house itself is magical with occupants of pictures able to hold conversations (a la the pictures in Harry Potter) and ghosts and things that appear when they are needed or the house thinks that they are needed.

The other occupants of the house are having hard times of their own. Peggy is the woman of the house and the house has told her that her time is up. Greer is an actress who has left her cheating fiance and Carmen has run away from her marital troubles.

This was a very enchanting book and I really enjoyed reading it! Reality has to be suspended to an extent, but it also makes the reader wonder what the house would suggest for her (or him) in order to bring her (or him) through a rough patch in life. And there is a bonus section at the end of the book that tells who the women in the pictures are throughout the house and how they made their mark on history. I would highly recommend this book!

Don't Go by Lisa Scottoline is the second novel by the author that I have read. While Dr. Mike Scanlon is serving the country in the Middle East during the war, his wife Chloe is at home dying. He has about a month left on his tour when he gets the news that she has passed away and that his daughter is with Chloe's sister. When he returns to the States to bury his wife, the baby doesn't know him and the sister protects the baby by keeping her from Mike. Mike also finds out the Chloe had been drinking a lot which was something she had never done before. He is distraught by everything he learns and it seems that he is happy to return to the war to finish his tour.

During the last month of his tour, he decides to stay for another tour and another year after he learns that Chloe was 4 weeks pregnant when she died. He ends up losing his arm just before returning home. And he doesn't adjust well to being back.

I think there were quite a few things wrong with this book. Chloe's sister and her husband take over raising the child and the husband who is a lawyer has Mike sign over custody of the baby to them instead of just getting a power of attorney so that they can take care of the baby. Then, they don't want to give her back to Mike. Well, surprise, surprise, it is because they were never able to have children of their own - a fact mentioned in the first chapter of the book. Mike spends a lot of time listening to the sister instead of following his own instincts and I wanted to give him a good shake a few times. I don't think that I will be reading any more of Scottoline's books after this one.