What Are You Reading Between the Covers? - #16

This review is long overdue. I always thought I could work through anything, but a death in the family has taken a toll on me in the past week. Three books to discuss today -- Richelle Mead's Succubus on Top, A Line of Cutting Women edited by Beverly Mcfarland, Margarita Donnelly, Micki Reaman, Teri Mae Rutledge, et al., and The Queen's Governess by Karen Harper.

I reread Richelle Mead's second book in the Georgia Kincaid series. It'd been awhile since I read the first one. Like many series, I waited for the new books to come out and then got distracted, but was pleased that there are a bunch of books for me to catch up on. The second book was just as entertaining as I remembered it. Georgia Kincaid is a succubus with a romantic dilemma; she's in love with a human and can't be intimate with him for fear of killing him. In this story, Georgia sets out to discover the source of a new drug her friend and coworker, Doug is hooked on. She gets more than she bargained for and that's all I will say. I'm not a book spoiler! Mead also created a misfit bunch of angels and other characters in the series, which are highly entertaining. I recommend this book and the rest of the series, if you like paranormal romances.

I switched gears drastically after the paranormal romance and dove into A Line of Cutting Women, a collection of short stories written by women that greatly moved me. The short stories cover all topics of womanhood, including the harsh ones like rape. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Woman's Studies. It is a gem.

There were a few stories that stuck with me after I finished the collection. One was Linda Hogan's Crow, which deals with the topic of aging and being alone. That story was followed by Sandra Scofield's Loving Leo, a tale of an elderly woman still holding on to her indepence. Shirley Sikes also contributed a memorable story, Falling off the Matterhorn, about a woman coming to terms with terminal breast cancer. It touched me because my mother is a 24-year survivor of breast cancer. It brought back painful memories for me of being thirteen and wondering if my mother was going to die - very good writing. There really were too many good stories in this collection to mention them all here, so I will leave you with one more -- Nighthawks by Carolyn Barbier. The woman in the story is a survivor of a terrible boating accident and makes the difficult decision to terminate her life support. I cried. This book is full of strong women and strong voices. I loved it!

After reading some shorts, I tuned into a historical novel, The Queen's Governness by Karen Harper. I've been on a Queen Elizabeth I kick since I watched a documentary about her a few months ago on cable. Karen Harper put many hours of research into this novel to make it as historically accurate as possible. I was surprised to learn of the discrepancies in some of the names/events that have been recorded in history. Her Author's Notes section was quite informative about her research. She did a wonderful job of detailing Queen Elizabeth's tumultuous childhood and her fight for the throne of England. This book was a wonderful read.

That's all for today.

Happy writing and happy reading to all!