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The Golem and the Jinni
RECOMMENDED: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker is $2.99! This is a fantasy historical and reader favorite. Carrie reviewed this book in June 2013 and really liked it. She says it doesn’t have romance as its primary plot, but it’s a beautiful read:
I loved this book, but not so much for the love story. I loved the mythologies, the settings, and the characters. I love books that let me see into another world, and this book gave me that feeling many times. The characters were all mesmerizing. I felt like I was in each setting, meeting these real people.
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a strange man who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian Desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.
Struggling to make their way in 1899 New York, the Golem and the Jinni try to fit in with their immigrant neighbors while masking their true selves. Meeting by chance, they become unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures, until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful menace will soon bring the Golem and the Jinni together again, threatening their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.
Marvelous and compulsively readable, The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of folk mythology, historical fiction, and magical fable into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.
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Hate to Want You
RECOMMENDED: Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai is still $1.99! This angsty contemporary romance has been recommended on several podcast episodes and received an A grade from Redheadedgirl:
So much angst. So much pathos. EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO MUCH.
Alisha Rai, one of contemporary romance’s brightest stars, makes her Avon Books debut with the first novel in the sexy Forbidden Hearts series!
One night. No one will know.
That was the deal. Every year, Livvy Kane and Nicholas Chandler would share one perfect night of illicit pleasure. The forbidden hours let them forget the tragedy that haunted their pasts—and the last names that made them enemies.
Until the night she didn’t show up.
Now Nicholas has an empire to run. He doesn’t have time for distractions and Livvy’s sudden reappearance in town is a major distraction. She’s the one woman he shouldn’t want . . . so why can’t he forget how right she feels in his bed?
Livvy didn’t come home for Nicholas, but fate seems determined to remind her of his presence—and their past. Although the passion between them might have once run hot and deep, not even love can overcome the scandal that divided their families.
Being together might be against all the rules . . . but being apart is impossible.
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Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
RECOMMENDED: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb is $2.99! Sarah gave this one a B:
What I appreciated most about this book was not just the behind-the-scenes detail of what therapy is, and what it can and can’t do, but the examination of what the work of therapy is about, and how that work for both doctor and patient has changed over the years.
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world—where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives—a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys—she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell: about desire and need, guilt and redemption, meaning and mortality, loneliness and love.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, pulling back the curtain on the therapeutic process and offering the rarest of gifts: an entertaining, illuminating, and quite possibly life-changing account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
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The Alice Network
RECOMMENDED: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn is $2.99! RHG gave this one a B+:
This book has a lot of my catnip: lady spies, a dual chronology, and a host of people trying to put their lives back together after a war.
If you read and loved Code Name Verity this is a book for you.
In an enthralling new historical novel from national bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.
1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.
1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.
Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.
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Several of my characters are in therapy, so the Gottlieb book is a must read. Click!
Ooh, THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI and the Alisha Rai are both great (Rai’s Forbidden Hearts series is what got me back into reading contemporary romance after a long hiatus.) I think Rai has basically described the series as Wegman’s plus daytime soap and ooh boy, does it deliver.
Is that the Lori Gottlieb who wrote a whole book about how women are too picky about men and should settle? (Googling. Sounds like she’s got a more promising topic now, I hope.)
MAD ABOUT EWE by Susannah Nix and KEY CHANGE by Heidi Hutchinson are free. They are #1 and #3 respectively in the Common Threads series that is somehow related to Penny Reid’s Knitting in the City books.
ACTING ON IMPULSE by Mia Sosa is $1.99, first in her Love on Cue series. Sarah DNFed this but I think there are other fans of the series around?
Really enjoyed the Wrecker and the Rai, despite not thinking I would in both cases. I despised that Gottleib book, but my mom among several others I know, found it really helpful. Idk how to predict mileage on that one. I would say if you have any capacity for critical thought and/or if you have a limited tolerance for smug self pity you should steer clear, but that doesn’t explain how anyone could like it. Because I can’t.
@Hannah Bloom, THANK YOU!
@kkw I saw a lot of Goodreads reviews that echo your feelings. It’s one I’m skipping…
The Devil and the Heiress by Harper St. George is 1.99, A- https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/the-devil-and-the-heiress-by-harper-st-george/
Thirding (or fourthing?) both the Wecker and the Rai – The Golem and the Jinni is one of my all-time favorites, and I’ve been meaning to reread the Rai series for a while now. Maybe once I get through a few in my stack it will still be fresh in my mind to revist 🙂