Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks

This is a very typical Nicholas Sparks book. It's told by a women recounting her great love of many years ago, and, of course, there is tragedy.

I think I like Nicholas Sparks' movies a lot better than his books. The books are so short that I feel short-changed. It's like he just jumps into "and they looked across the room and fell in love minutes after arriving at the inn." He has good ideas, but he rushes through the stories to crank them out, and they just don't compare to a true, well written love story. He just seems a step above Harlequin.

I'll get the movie when it comes out on DVD, and I just know I'll like it better than the book.

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

I just love Harlan Coben. His book "Tell No One" is in my top books ever read. Every story he writes is amazing. I had the chance a few years ago to hear him speak at a local library, and I was so surprised to find him charming, funny, and very down to earth. You would never know what he wrote if you just met him on the street.

So, what does he write? Fantastic mystery stories that keep you on the edge of your seat.

This book is about a family with a teenage boy who is going through those tough teenage years. The parents make the difficult decision to put spyware on his computer to monitor everything he does, and they end up getting more than they bargained for.

At the same time, there's a parallel story unfolding of a duo of serial killers, seemingly unrelated to the teenage boy.

Finally, there's the male elementary school teacher, loved by all, who one day makes a flippant comment to a young girl. That one comment changes the lives of the teacher, the girl, and those around them forever.

This book has some violence in it, so it's not for the faint hearted. But it's a great, great story that has and ending where everything is explained and pulled together. I love that. There's nothing worse than reading an entire book just to have a lame ending (see "Keeping Faith!"). This doesn't disappoint - either in the story or in the ending. Great book.

Here's the Story by Maureen McCormick

I was so excited that Marcia Brady wrote a book. I read Greg's book years ago and loved it, so I was really looking for more behind-the-scenes dirt.

Overall, I was disappointed in the book and wouldn't recommend it. It's Maureen's life story. While it has some interesting times, mostly it's all about drug abuse with her trying to make herself look as good as possible along the way.

Maureen comes off as very conceited and arrogant. She talks many times about how beautiful she is, how smart she is, how she can learn lines quicker than anyone else, what a great singer she is, etc. It gets really, really old.

The parts about her family were interesting and tragic, and it doesn't sound like even now anything has been resolved in a positive way. That's sad. But it's hard to tell what the real truth is, given how she writes about herself.

I wouldn't say I'm sorry I read it, but it wasn't much of a read.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

This is the second book in the "Twilight" series, and I loved it even more than the first book. I read this book in one day. There's no way I could have put it down. I guess that's the joy of being unemployed.... I have the time to read!!!

This is again the story of Bella (the teenage girl) and Edward (the vampire). This story is much different than the first, in that Edward isn't part of the book for quite a while. It explores Bella and others in the community and reveals some secrets that they would just as soon have kept to themselves.

This series just keeps getting better, and I can't wait to read the third book.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this, because it's about a vampire. I'm not much into fantasy stories. Harry Potter was okay, but I got bored with it after a couple of books. I didn't like "Interview With A Vampire" at all. But, I kept hearing about this series, and it seemed like women my age were really getting into it.

I'm sooooo glad I read it. Oh, my goodness.

This is the story of a teenage girl who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father years after her parents' divorce. She meets Edward at school, and they fall in love. Only problem is that Edward and his family are vampires. There are dangerous forces around them who cause lots and lots of trouble, and trying to figure out what will happen with all of that kept me turning the pages of this book.

I can't put my finger on why this is so good, but it is. It really is. Don't let the fact that it's about a vampire turn you off. It's so much more than that. It's a great, wonderful, sometimes very scary story that you won't be able to put down.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

WOW. This book made my list of favorite books of all time. I read it in one day and could not have put it down for anything. I gave it to my friend Deb the next day, and she read the whole thing that day as well.

This is the story of a family that has a sick daughter. Her only chance to live is to have a bone marrow transplant, so the parents decide to have another child in hopes that that child is a match. She is.

The story is really of the second daughter, the one born to save her older sister. Her whole life has been a series of medical procedures, none of which are necessary to HER, but all of which are done in hopes of saving her sister.

One day, the younger sister has had enough. She hires an attorney to represent her in her quest to have no further procedures done.

You can imagine what that does to her family.... the mother who is fighting every day to save the older daughter. The older daughter, who will most certainly die if the younger daughter refuses further medical procedures.

As with all of Jodi Picoult's books, she does a great job of showing every side of the story. You can relate to the mother, the daughters, the attorney, the social worker....all of them. With each page, you hope for a great outcome in which they all get what they want.

The ending of this story is incredible. It made me gasp, and it made me cry. It made me want to call someone who had read the book just to talk about it, but it was midnight and not many people are up to discussing books at that hour.

Get this book. Buy it today. Clear your calendar for eight hours, and sit down with it. You won't stop once you start, I promise.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

This was the first book I read by Jodi Picoult, and I was hooked. What a great story.

The book is about two families who live next door to each other. They each have one child. One has a son, and one has a daughter. They raise the children together, and they dream of the day when their children will fall in love and get married to each other.

As teenagers, the children begin to date each other, and one night the girl dies. The whole story is really whether the girl died of suicide (as part of a suicide pact with the boy) or whether the boy killed her.

What happens to these two families is tragic. The story is told from the point of view of each of the characters in the book, so you can really see how each person feels and what they're thinking. It's very well written and a fantastic story. I highly recommend this book.

Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult

This is the third book I read by Jodi Picoult. Although it was a good story, it's my least favorite of hers so far.

This is the story of Faith, a little girl who is living through her parent's divorce. She begins to hear the voice that she calls "My Guard." Those around her come to believe that she's actually hearing the voice of God.

The story is really what happens to Faith and her mother when word gets out about Faith's voices. It's a compelling story, and I really liked it, but the ending was just odd for me. I was just disappointed in how it ended, so that kind of soured me on the book.

The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright

This is the story of a couple who have been married forever, and as the book begins, they die the same night, next to each other, holding hands. The story is of the aftermath of their deaths. Their children find letters that the husband wrote to the wife, every Wednesday, for the duration of their marriage.

The letters reveal that their parents had lives that the children never knew about, and it shows the children how human their parents actually were. There were ups and downs, as there are in any marriage, and those times are documented in those hundreds of letters. I think every child believes their parents are only alive in their roles as parents, and this book shows the true, full lives of people who are parents and so much more.

It's a beautiful story of love and family. The book is quite short, but it packs the story in nicely. If you like Nicholas Sparks and those types of stories, then this would be something you would like.

Lean, Mean, Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

I've read all of this series and have really liked them. They're about a female bond agent who constantly gets involved with criminals, most of whom are trying to kill her for one reason or another. She has two love interests: Joe, a cop she's known her whole life, and Ranger, one hot smokin' hunk of a man who also is in the bond business. She struggles with her feelings for both men while trying to keep herself alive enough to have dinner with her dysfunctional New Jersey family every Friday night.

These stories are fun and easy to read. They're great for an afternoon on the beach or while on a plane, giving you something to do that's entertaining yet easy to put down and come back when you need to.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I read "The Kite Runner" last year by this same author, and I absolutely loved it. What a great story. They made a movie of it, and the movie actually was very close to the book. They did a nice job with it.

So I was excited to read "A Thousand Splendid Sons." I have to say, it was a good story, but I didn't like it as much as "The Kite Runner."

This book is about a family in Afghanistan, going through the wars and upheavals of that area of the world. There are two sons fighting in the war and a daughter left behind. The mother is a central character whose emotions pretty much take over the whole family. It's a compelling story, for sure, and a good read, but I would recommend "The Kite Runner" more than this one.