Tag Archives: Love Stories

Harrowgate by Kate Maruyama

Synopsis: When Michael comes home to meet his infant son for the first time, his wife Sarah doesn’t seem like herself, refusing to leave the apartment and spending all her time with an older postpartum doula known only as Greta. Review: So creepy! Harrowgate had a lot going for it–claustrophobic atmosphere, eerie premise, and menacing secondary characters. It’s no spoiler to tell you that Sarah isn’t all there, but this is a ghost story with an agenda beyond delivering scares. As spooky as it is,…

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Bodies of Water by T. Greenwood

Synopsis: When aging Billie receives a phone call from Johnny, once her next door neighbor’s little boy, now a grown man with problems of his own, she is forced to recall the love of her life and how it ended in tragedy. Review: Before I even discuss the actual story, I really really need you to know that Bodies of Water is so crazy good that three things happened to me: I had to stop and catch my breath three quarters of the way through…

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All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill

Synopsis: Two teens travel back in time to stop their best friend from building a time machine, in the hopes that they can save the world before it is too late. Review: Breathless, I tell you, I was breathless as I sped through All Our Yesterdays. I loved it. What I most appreciated was that the love triangle wasn’t a matter of Team This vs. Team That. There was real depth to the romantic dilemma faced by Em, because the way that time travel is…

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Love and Other Distractions edited by Christiana Miller

Synopsis: A collection of short stories on the theme of love written by an eclectic group of Hollywood screenwriters. Review: The short stories in Love and Other Distractions are as delightfully varied as I’ve ever seen in an anthology. A fundraiser for the charity Kids Need to Read, the collection shows how different writers can be one from another. Shelly Goldstein’s ‘The Vagina Dialogues’ takes a witty, refreshing look at the way women talk about love, while ‘Full Moon Fever’ by comedian Doug Molitor will…

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Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Synopsis: A bad boy surviving foster care and hoping to get custody of his younger brother falls for a troubled young woman covered with scars and no memory of how she got them. Review: Honestly, I don’t know why I kept readingPushing the Limits. I didn’t think Noah was that great a guy, and Echo’s helplessness really got to me. I didn’t get why her scars were such a huge deal, socially speaking, and it bugged me how contrived some of the conflicts were. Yet…

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The Twelve Days to Christmas by Michele Gorman

Synopsis: Hannah thinks her boyfriend is about to pop the question at Christmas–but she doesn’t know what her answer will be, and she only has twelve days to figure it out. Review: Hannah, the protagonist of Michele Gorman’s Misfortune Cookie, is back and just as adorably befuddled as ever. Back together with Sam, who is finally residing in Hong Kong, she has a feeling he’s getting ready to propose, which brings up all of the fears and anxieties she never quite dealt with during their…

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The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Synopsis: After a fatal accident claims her best friends and her boyfriend, Mara Dyer starts over and finds love in Miami, only to find herself haunted by PTSD and what may be the ghosts of her dead boyfriend. Review: I was drawn in by the supernatural aspect of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, but put off by the Twilightesqueness of the love story between Mara and Noah. The whole “he’s a bad boy with a bad reputation and a big vocabulary” thing really bothered me.…

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Bewitching by Alex Flinn

Synopsis: A 500-year-old teen witch crosses paths with a reverse-Cinderella. Review: Bewitching is Alex Flinn’s latest fairy tale retelling and I just loved it. She sets the Cinderella story in a Miami middle school, then frames it with the story of Kendra, a girl who became an eternal witch during the plague of 1666. Kendra tells us two stories of her own, both fairy tale retellings that can stand alone as lovely and poignant tales, and also shed light on the larger story. Structurally it’s…

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Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Synopsis: Girl falls in love with vampire. Review: I know, I know, I’m a total latecomer to Twilight. And honestly I never would have picked it up if it weren’t for my dear friend’s commentary at Reads4Tweens. I also never would have read it if I hadn’t been able to get it for free for my Kindle from the library. I’ve never been that into vampires or romances. It wasn’t written as badly as I thought it was, but there were still some chunks that…

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Synopsis: Against the backdrop of a dreamlike traveling circus, two magicians pit their powers against each other in a battle royale complicated by the transcendent love growing in spite of the rigid constraints of the game. Review: I had low-ish expectations for The Night Circus. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the weird plot description, and the glowing reviews had me suspicious that the book was all superficial charm. I could not put the book down. I was utterly transported into the world of the…

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