Review: The Next Always by Nora Roberts



Courtesy of Amazon

Title: The Next Always (Inn Boonsboro Trilogy)

Author: Nora Roberts

ISBN: 9780425243213

Pages: 324

Time It Took Me to Read: 8 days

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Nora Roberts. That woman knows how to write a book. She puts out a good 3-4 books a year and hasn’t really slowed down. In fact, I think she’s sped up.

This is a new miniseries she likes to put out between her single titles. They’re usually predictable because they center around a family or group of friends of the same sex, who own a business or have a romantic hobby. Then, you watch each person in this group fall in love. They are all some variation on this storyline and they tend to run together. You can’t tell one book from another and can’t tell who ends up with whom when it’s been awhile since you’ve read them.

This book is the first in the trilogy, centers around the opening of a B&B owned by three brothers, Beckett, Owen, and Ryder Montgomery and their widowed mother, Justine. Now, let me say, I am a tad frustrated this B&B doesn’t exist. It sounds gorgeous and a place I would love to stay. I think Nora Roberts thinks of romantic places that women would just eat up and asks herself “Well, if three women/men worked there…”

Beckett is the first to fall in love and I kind of see all the characters as characters in a horror-romance movie. You can figure out who’s going to go with whom because the characters who are going to fall in love show up in the first book. Beckett has always been smitten with Clare, who owns the local bookshop, is widowed and mother to three boys under the age of ten.

The book flows and isn’t overally formulaic. It dwells on the gorgeous details. You can really see Roberts doing her thing when the characters describe how they’re going to decorate this gorgeous B&B that doesn’t exist (And I’m still pissed about).

Even if it doesn’t follow a formula, there is absolutely no suspense. It was a decent book but I didn’t read it all that fast (8 days is looooong). There’s nothing wrong with it but it just didn’t excite me. Romance readers in general like the predictability of the couple falling in love at the end. I enjoy it once and awhile and after finishing A Stolen Life, I needed it. I do find that I get bored easily with her books, though.

 If it takes me over a week to read a book, I like it but I don’t love it. I read her books because I read her. That’s it. I’ll probably read the rest in the series but you won’t see me rushing out to get them.

Grade: B

Review: A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

Courtesy of  LA Times.com

Title: A Stolen Life
Author: Jaycee Dugard
ISBN: 1451629184

Pages: 288
Time It Took for Me to Read: less than 24 hours

You know I like a book when I read it quickly. There are so many other distractions in my life (if you own an iPhone, you understand) and a book that inspires me to sit down and read…well, that is an enthralling book.

This was a surprising read for me but not surprising at the same time. I love a good crime memoir but I had slightly low hopes for this one. First off, this poor girl (now a woman) has a fifth-grade education. Second, there is a high probability that this was ghost-written. I am not against ghost-written books but my limited experience with them has not been good. For the most part, they suck.

However, Jaycee Dugard’s experience trumps any lack of writing ability. Dugard was famously taken from South Lake Tahoe in 1991. She endured eighteen years of captivity in the hands of her captor, a deranged, delusional convicted sex offender. She was found after a pair of Berkeley campus officers noticed something odd and acted on their female intuition and instincts.

Her perspective is captivating and explains how someone could be bound like emotional handcuffs, instead of physical ones. A good book is not always the most entertaining but also makes you ask yourself the hard questions. Jaycee was positive in even the worst of circumstances and focused on what she has rather than what she has lost out on. I am blessed and Jaycee probably would’ve preferred my life to hers. However, I complain a lot more than she was allowed to. She was thankful for the roof over her head and food to eat and I stress about stupid things. Her story created an appreciation of my own life in me.

While this will never win a Pultizer, it served the purpose she had for this book. She wrote it as part of her therapy and as a way for her kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, to not longer hold any power. I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and gained a little fragment of a life lesson. Bravo, Jaycee. Bravo.

Grade: A

Welcome to Read It Hard!

Welcome to my own little piece of the Internet called Read it Hard! I decided to start a reading blog for two reasons: I love to read and I love to write. My love for reading goes way back. We’re talking more than 20 years of sheer love for books and libraries. I've loved writing almost as long. So, I decided to make my own blog about reading and books to start conversations and state honest opinions on the books I’ve read.

So, let's read it hard.