What I Am Reading: An American Marriage

Posted on August 9, 2018

I just finished this book. It was a story. I can’t say it was good one or a bad one, it was just a story. The same story you would hear at any Thanksgiving, family gathering, or chit chat around the table at a repast.

The book is written from a first person point of view of the three main characters, which means there are no chapters, just Celestial, Roy and Andre. These are also the main characters. I only kept reading it in hopes that Roy would break out of prison and come home and kill Celestial. No such luck. However, let me sum this up for you the way you would hear it from your two cousins, Keke and Lashunda.

LaShunda: Girl, did you hear about Roy and Andre? Well, you know they went to college together up in Atlanta. Roy married that girl, Constellation.

Keke: You mean Celestial.

LaShunda: Whatever. Anyhoo, Roy caught a case and got 15 down in Folsom. While he was gone, Andre moved in on Constellation. Thing was…Roy got out early. He drove all night to Atlanta, and whipped Andre’s ass.

KeKe: Girl no!

LaShunda: Uhmm…hmm. Then got in his car and drove all the way back to Eloe. He didn’t even bother to sleep with Constellation, that’s how mad he was at both of them. Him and his Daddy own a barbershop now and Roy is with that girl Davina. I hear she notarized the divorce papers when Constellation finally sent them.

KeKe: Celestial. Her name is Celestial. Hey, after the divorce, did she marry Andre.

LaShunda: Girl Naw. She is pregnant with Andre’s baby, but they ain’t married. Roy is doing good too.

KeKe: Ain’t that something? (Pauses) Oh here comes Luella with them canned greens she tried to fob off as her own. 

Yep. That’s the whole story.

I was waiting for that moment when you could feel the author’s pain in the words. I longed to feel the agony of Roy’s pain, but it wasn’t there. at one point, I felt bad for Andre who had loved Celestial his entire life. Truthfully, I don’t think that girl even knew how to love herself.

The book made Oprah’s Book Club for 2018. My book club read it too. Who knows, you may enjoy it as well.

Let me know your thoughts if you have read this.

What I am Reading: Dangerous Curves Ahead

Posted on August 4, 2018 Updated on July 18, 2018

WARNING: Dangerous Curves Ahead: BWWM Romantic Suspense (Dangerously Curvy Book 1) Kindle Edition

What I’m Reading: Back To Life

Posted on August 3, 2018

When up-and-coming novelist and freelance editor Karen Mullings leaves the States to relocate to England, where her older brother lives, she is not in the market for love. After three marriage proposals, none of which came to anything, she has sworn off relationships while she gets her life and her heart back in order, and for the most part, she’s been very successful. Until she meets Peter van der Meulen, a Dutchman who teaches English in a secondary school in Leeuwarden, and suddenly her calm and ordered life is topsy-turvy again. He’s handsome, which doesn’t hurt, but it’s his gentle, quiet spirit, his intelligence, his romantic nature, not to mention the heat that grows between them, that batter away at the walls she has erected around herself. And she cannot withstand his allure.

No more can Peter stop himself from wanting the delectable and enchanting Karen. A widower of some four years, he had been unhappy in love for a while before his wife’s death from cancer. He doesn’t expect that an accidental meeting in an Amsterdam hotel will introduce him to the woman who will reawaken his heart. From the moment she bumps into him, forcing him to hold on to her to stop her from falling, Peter is hooked, and over the next few months, he finds ways to keep her close, while he opens his heart to love again. She bewitches him and he could not be happier to find himself under her spell.

Available on Amazon.