What more does a girl need than a pile of books and a bowl of chocolate? Let’s talk about what we’ve been reading and feeding our inner chocoholics.

There are books you love and books you hate. And then there’s book you love to hate.

These are none of those.

Today’s books are books are full of elements that mostly get on my nerves, but I finished them anyhow. They got under my skin because I finished them anyway and I needed to figure out why.

Does that even make sense? I think it does, in an odd bookwyrm-y sort of way. Do you do that to? Finish books that don’t necessary ping all the right buttons because there’s something in there that keeps you hooked?

Just so you know, links below are Amazon associate links, so if you buy anything through them, I will get a couple of pennies from that.

Constance

In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.

I started this one because of a reading challenge that I was participating in. Not necessarily the best way to pick a book, I’ll grant, but it is a good way to motivate oneself to try something out of the ordinary, so there’s that.

The premise and the story follow very much of a ‘Twilight Zone’ sort of pattern. The characters were interesting, but to be honestly I really didn’t like any of them. They were well written and interesting enough I wanted to find out what happened to them. That isn’t the same as savoring time in their company, which is really what I’d rather do when I read.

Early one, I could see there would be a twist ending and that’s what kept me going through the ‘things get worse and then ger worser’ of the middle of the book. (Well, that and it was part of a challenge I wanted to complete) I wanted to see how hard the twist was going to go and if I’d predicted it right.

The answer was mostly. So, it was a satisfying twist in that I was surprised, but not so surprised that I wanted to throw the book across the room.

Well written, with an interesting storyline, this is a great read for those who love darker, twisty sci-fi. I’m not really that reader, though. (And to add insult to injury, due to a technical glitch, I didn’t even get challenge credit for the book! Sigh.) You might find it up your alley though.

The School Mistress

An impoverished young woman. A lonely father of five. Will they be able to resist when a cadre of optimistic children start matchmaking?

Set in 1910, this one qualifies as an historical romance. I like historical. But truth is, these days, I’m not so much of a romance reader (or writer). The angst that seems to prevail in the genre, just isn’t a happy place for me at the moment. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just not my flavor of the day, so to speak.

This sweet romance hit all the tropes that usually make me cringe: impossibly sweet and good heroines who have no actual flaws; impossibly kind, rich and handsome heroes who have no actual flaws; darling children with a tragic backstory, who have no actual flaws (are we seeing a theme here?); love at almost first sight that just appears like a unicorn and hangs around.

The story had a very ‘Sound of Music’ vibe, minus the Nazis of course. Very sweet, very gentle, with all the angst and conflict happening outside the actual romance itself. I think that’s what kept me reading. While it might technically be considered a flaw in plotting romance, the conflict is all supposed to be about the romance, for me it saved the story, and I found myself nibbling at it, like a forbidden Hershey chocolate bar, getting little hits though the day, never thinking I’d actually finish the whole thing.

This was a sweet—very sweet, sometimes too sweet—little tale that was just right during some weeks that were rather sour in real life. I’d definitely recommend it to fill that sort of Hallmark movie sort of need.

When I last checked, the book was free, so you might want to go ahead and indulge.

Do you have any books that were definitely not your usual fair, but you finished anyway and they have stuck with you? Tell me in the comments.

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