Twilight of Avalon: A Novel of Trystan and Isolde by Anna Elliott

If you pick up this novel expecting a story along the lines of the 2006 film Tristan and Isolde, or the Wagner opera by the same name, you may be surprised to find that this one is nothing like a courtly medieval romance despite the cover blurb that mentions friendship turning to love.  Elliott returns [...]

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A.D. 62: Pompeii by Rebecca East

It’s no secret that I like time travel themes (see my reviews of Mary Modern and The Mirror).  This one sends bookish Harvard grad Miranda back to the first century Roman empire, and lands her in the ocean near the doomed city of  Pompeii.  Caught in a fishing net, she is soon sold to a wealthy slave owner, Marcus [...]

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Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Miranda is a typical teenager, worried about homework and boys, until the day the meteor smashes into the moon and knocks it closer to the earth, setting off a chain reaction of tsunamis, climate change and even volcanoes that shroud the earth in ash.  Miranda and her mother and two brothers must go into survival mode, [...]

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The Killer’s Wife by Bill Floyd

This is Floyd’s first book, and unfortunately it shows.  The plot centers on Leigh Wren, mother of a young son and ex-wife of a serial murderer who is sitting on death row.  After moving to Cary, NC to start a new life, Leigh is accosted one day in the grocery store by the father of one [...]

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What I Was by Meg Rosoff

This coming of age story is a quick read, and in fact Meg Rosoff  has previously published in the young adult category.  This one straddles the line between young adult and adult fiction.  Nearing 100 years old, Hilary looks back upon his life and the time he spent in the 1960′s  at St. Oswald’s, a [...]

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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner definitely clarifies the dividing line between Booklove’s classifications of “Liked It” and “It Was OK”.  I will not waste much time with the plot, because if you haven’t heard or seen the movie by now, you’re probably living under a rock.  Briefly, though, for those rock dwellers such as me, the plot [...]

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Sarah’s Key by Tatiana DeRosnay

There’s no denying that the subject of this book is disturbing and tragic.  In 1942, on the orders of the Germans, 4500 Parisian police rounded up almost 13,000 French Jews, almost one third of them children, and herded many of them into the Vel’ d’Hiv’, a stadium used for bicycle races.  After being held there for [...]

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