The Running Bibliophile

In an effort to meet my reading challenge on Goodreads.com, Second Best created by Francine Pascal is one of four books I read in the Sweet Valley Twins book series. It is the sixteenth book in the series.  Growing up, these books targeted kids eight years old up to twelve years old and in third grade through seventh grade. However, I think they have changed the target ages to younger age groups because children are learning to read much earlier and growing up a lot faster than when I was kid. Second Best (Sweet Valley Twins #16) deals with seventh grader Dylan McKay feeling like he is second best to his younger brother Tom McKay, who is in the sixth grade. Tom is the popular kid who does well at everything he does . . . making friends, playing sports, and getting good grades. When Dylan learns that he hasn't been invited to Kimberly Haver 's party, but his brother has, Dylan decides to run away. The first thing I have to mention that I never noticed until I ...

I belong to a couple of book clubs, and one of them reads a bit of everything. It's this book club that chose It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover as one of three book selections for the December Book Club Meeting. Normally, we only have two selections, and we can choose to read one of them or both of them. I decided to go with the aforementioned book because it takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, and Boston is one of my favorite cities to visit. With that being said, I wasn't too sure I'd like this book because we had read another one of Colleen Hoover's books, and it was just okay. Anyways, despite the heavy topics in It Ends With Us , I ended up loving the book. Topics included spousal abuse, accidental death by gun, and homelessness. It does include some graphic scenes, so it may be too upsetting for people to read if they've gone through any of this in their life. At the very end of the novel, the Collen Hoover explains that the book is semi-autobiograph...

Back in October, my local library system, which has 16 libraries throughout the county, had their semi-annual book sale where all proceeds help the library system. I was originally supposed to be in Nashville for the weekend but had to cancel my plans at the last minute, so I decided to go to the library sale instead. Browsing through the books, I came across a book that I loved in middle school called Horseback Summer (Horse Crazy # 1) by Virginia Vail. I didn't even hesitate, I grabbed the book and bought it for old times sake. Now if I can only get my hands on the rest of the series! There was some drama in my neighborhood earlier this week and knowing that there might be some additional drama tonight, I decided I needed to read something that wouldn't be too dramatic or to difficult to read. It was a perfect time to read Horseback Summer (Horse Crazy # 1) . As I began, it was exactly as I remembered and brought back all those fuzzy wuzzy feelings of my childhood. ...

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins opens with single mother Nel Abbott being found dead at the bottom of a river, an apparent suicide that immediately raises questions. Nel had been investigating the deaths of other women who were also found in the same river over the centuries, making her own death feel unsettling from the very start. Her sister, Jules Abbott, is called back to town to identify the body and to take responsibility for Nel’s teenage daughter, Lena. Jules is forced to confront both her strained relationship with Nel and the dark history surrounding the river and the town itself. When I first heard that Paula Hawkins was releasing another novel titled Into the Water , I was genuinely excited. I really enjoyed The Girl on the Train , and because of that, I expected her second novel to be just as gripping, if not better. I intentionally avoided reading reviews for Into the Water because I didn’t want my expectations shaped by other readers’ opinions. Unfortunately, I ke...

Has a book ever impacted you so deeply while growing up that you desperately wanted a sequel? P.S. I Love You (Sweet Dreams, # 1) by Barbara Conklin was one of those books for me. I recently checked out the reviews for P.S. I Love You on Goodreads.com, and much to my surprise, a couple of people mentioned that there was a sequel.  I immediately began searching for Falling In Love Again (Sweet Dreams, #23) by Barbara Conklin on Barnes & Noble and Amazon, my usual go-to sites for used books. Both sites listed the book as temporarily out of stock, which was the second time I’d run into that issue while hunting for a used title. At that point, I was starting to panic because I really wanted to find out what happened next. Then I remembered I’d previously ordered a few used books from ThriftBooks. I searched their site but couldn’t find the book at first. After adjusting my search terms, I finally located three available copies. Unfortunately, all of them were listed in onl...

During a school book fair in middle school, I stumbled upon a teen romance series called Sweet Dreams . Each book in the series is actually a stand alone book. In addition, each book in the series is written by a different author with many of the authors penning several throughout the years.  I believe the first book I picked up was The Golden Girl (Sweet Dreams, # 169)  by Jane Ballard, which was about a teenage girl who wins a contest to become the Trent's Department Store spokesperson. I loved the book and began reading more and more books from the series, which started in 1981. One of the books, The Popularity Plan (Sweet Dreams, # 2)  by Rosemary Vernon was one that I desperately wanted to read but had trouble finding. I finally gave up looking in my college years. Fast forward 15 years . . . buying used books on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com had become a popular thing, and they were making it easier to find them. ThriftBooks.com was advertising The Popul...

With Crooked House coming out in theaters soon, I knew I had to reread the book before watching the movie, and I was glad that I did. I didn't remember anything about the book going into it, but as I read, bits and pieces started coming back to me. Reader beware ... this mystery is one of Agatha Christie's stand alone books that is not part of any of her popular detective series ... so no Hercule Poirot & his little gray cells, no Miss Marple, and no Tommy & Tuppence. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series is my favorite so at first I was a bit disappointed that he wasn't in this particular book. The book begins with the narrator, Charles Hayward, meeting Sophia Leonides in Egypt during the European War, which we know better as World War II. Charles instantly falls in love with Sophia but since it is too soon for him to propose to her, they make plans on meeting in England once the war is over to see if they are both still available and interested in eac...

Looking at the cover of Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, I didn’t have especially high expectations going in since it had a similar look and feel to the covers of Emily Giffin novels. There was also the fact that many of the people I knew who were raving about Me Before You tend to have very different reading tastes than I do. The emotional journey you take with the characters is a difficult one because the story centers around Will Traynor, a man who becomes a quadriplegic after a devastating accident. Struggling to cope with how drastically his life has changed, Will falls into a deep depression and no longer wishes to live. Louisa Clark is hired by Will’s parents to serve as his day-to-day caregiver and companion in the hope that she can help change his mind about assisted suicide. At first, Louisa has no idea about Will’s plans until she overhears his mother discussing it with Will’s sister. Determined to help, Louisa begins researching activities and experiences that might give...

One of the book clubs I belong to decided to read In the Woods  by Tana French .  It's the first book in her Dublin Murder Squad series as well as her debut book. Honestly, I'm not really sure what all the hype surrounding this book is about, and I was especially surprised to learn it won an Edgar Award Winner. To begin with, at least 100 pages could have been cut. I've never read a mystery novel where so little happened over so many pages. On top of that, French spent a lot of time insisting that Detective Adam "Rob" Ryan and Detective Cassie Maddox were best friends, but it felt forced. The friendship came across more like a high school or college friendship than an adult one. Of course, the author had them sleep together, and Rob ended up acting like a complete jerk afterward. He didn't want a relationship with Cassie, yet instead of being honest with her, he basically blew her off. When Cassie tried talking to him about it, he acted immature and sulk...

When A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness was published in February 2011, I kept picking it up and putting it back down at the bookstore. I was unsure if I'd like the book or not and didn't want to pay full price on a hardcover book.  Fast forward to the day after Thanksgiving, and my mom and I were doing our ritual Black Friday shopping and stepped into Barnes & Noble. A Discovery of Witches was on sale at 40% off, and I had a membership card that would give me another 10% off. I also had a coupon that would give me yet another 20% off. I finally decided I would buy the book. However, my mom wanted to buy it for me as a Christmas present, so I let her. It wasn't until July 2012 that I actually picked up the book to read, and I instantly fell in love with it. There isn't a way to describe what genre it belongs to because it is a cross over of sorts ... fantasy, paranormal, historical fiction, a bit of science fiction, romance, and a bit of action. ...

All the Missing Girls   by Megan Miranda  starts off in the present day, jumps two weeks ahead, and then starts going backwards one day at a time.  From there it goes back to present day and then three months into the future. I'm not sure how I felt about the structure of the book. I didn't particularly care for the format, but if she had told it any other way, we would have know the entire plot, with the exception of the ending, within the first half of the book. Because of the way Megan Miranda wrote the book, it started off slowly and maintained the slowness through out most of the book. It wasn't until the last third of the book that it got really interesting. At that point, I had trouble putting it down, which is the reason I gave it 3 stars out of 5. As far as the characters go, I didn't feel like we really got to know any of them. They seemed so two dimensional. Even with them being two dimensional, I found both Daniel, Corrine, and Annaleise to be ...

It  by Stephen King takes place in the town of Derry where there is something terrible lurking in the storm drains and sewers that takes the shape of children's worst nightmares and hunts them down. The adults in Derry are oblivious of what is lurking in their town. Join the Losers Club as they fight  It  as children and promise to come back to kill it if needed as adults. With the remake of the movie It coming out in the fall, I decided to read the book by Stephen King because I wanted to see the movie but not without first reading the book. In the month of May, I began reading It , and it took me four months to read it ... 4 months! Now, I did take a one week break where I read three other books, but the length of It was a bit too long for my liking. In the version I read, it was close to 1,500 pages! With that being said, I'm not sure that anything could have been cut from the book because it would have lost that wow factor for me. It's hard to be...

After Gina Royal picks her children, Brady and Lily, from their Wichita, Kansas school, they come home to an unknown SUV that has crashed into their garage and police swarming their yard. Fast forward to four years later, and Gina, Brady, & Lily are on the run with new identities. Stillhouse Lake written by Rachel Caine kept me interested from the get go. There were very few slow moments on top of it. It was a quick, easy read that felt like the author wrote it with the possibility of it being turned into a movie, and it definitely was written with the typical thriller formula. This is why I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. The ending in wrapped up for the most part with the exception of one cliff hanger, which in my opinion isn't really much of a cliff hanger. From what I've read on Goodreads.com, many people are complaining about the "cliff hanger" and refusing to read the next book in the series because everything wasn't wrapped up in a nice little bow....

Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens is about Lindsey young mother who is in an abusive marriage, both verbally and physically, and decides to sneak out one night with her daughter Sophie and leave her husband Andrew. Fast forward eleven years, her now ex-husband is released from prison. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Lindsey is convinced that she is being watched. Her boyfriend is attacked, and her house is broken into. Is her ex-husband doing all of this or is there someone else out there seeking revenge? I randomly picked up this book at the library and checked it out last weekend knowing that I really didn't have time to read it. However, it kept calling to me so I ignored all the other book related commitments I'd made and began reading Never Let You Go this past Wednesday. At first, the book was engrossing ... I just couldn't put it down and really wanted to take time off of work so I could read it but that just isn't an option for me. Approximately halfway...