Firefly Lane

Dates Read: December 2011
"A Book is Good Company" reviewed this book and it sounded good so I picked it up from the library. I was a little intimidated by the size (approximately 500 pages) and it took me about 100 or so pages to really get into the story (for the first couple hundred, I was reading to find out what happened, but I wasn't "into" it or anything). After the halfway point, I was hooked and could not put it down (until the last few chapters when I had to put it down to find a tissue!)!! Amazing chick lit book about female friendships!! I loved this book!

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
Hannah (On Mystic Lake) goes a little too far into Lifetime movie territory in her latest, an epic exploration of the complicated terrain between best friends—one who chooses marriage and motherhood while the other opts for career and celebrity. The adventures of poor, ambitious Tully Hart and middle-class romantic Kate Mularkey begin in the 1970s, but don't really get moving until about halfway into the book, when Tully, who claws her way to the heights of broadcast journalism, discovers it's lonely at the top, and Katie, a stay-at-home Seattle housewife, forgets what it's like to be a rebellious teen. What holds the overlong narrative together is the appealing nature of Tully and Katie's devotion to one another even as they are repeatedly tested by jealousy and ambition. Katie's husband, Johnny, is smitten with Tully, and Tully, who is abandoned by her own booze-and-drug-addled mother, relishes the adoration from Katie's daughter, Marah. Hannah takes the easy way out with an over-the-top tear-jerker ending, though her upbeat message of the power of friendship and family will, for some readers, trump even the most contrived plot twists.

The Litigators

Dates Read: November - December 2011
I love Grisham books.  It takes about 100 pages to get into the story, but once I'm into it, I'm stuck and am anxious to finish this book. This story was a little predictable in some parts, but it had some twists and turns as well and the ending was not exactly what I had expected. Good read if you like Grisham's books.

Summary: (summarized from Amazon.com)
The partners at Finley & Figg—all two of them—often refer to themselves as “a boutique law firm.” Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who’ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. And then change comes their way. More accurately, it stumbles in. David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks away from his fast-track career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender, and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our boutique firm. Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he’s suddenly unemployed, any job—even one with Finley & Figg—looks okay to him. With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practice much law. It almost seems too good to be true.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

Dates Read: December 2011

Bobby saw the Percy Jackson movie so when we were thinking of a series to read (after we finished The October's) we decided to buy the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. This series, is an easier and faster read than the Harry Potter series (written at an easier reading level), but it has a lot of the same themes as HP. There are good guys, bad guys, people who change sides, mortal enemies, and exciting adventures. The series is the hero quests of Percy Jackson, a demigod (one parent is a Greek mythology god and another is a mortal), and his friends. I never studied Greek mythology so I was not familiar with all the characters, but it was still a fun and interesting read. The series ended with an opening for a new series, Heroes of Olympus, and I look forward to reading those books, too!

Summaries: (from Wikipedia.com)
The Lightning Thief (book one):  Percy and his friends go on a quest to prevent a war between the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.


The Sea of Monsters (book two): This book chronicles the adventures of thirteen-year-old demigod Percy Jackson as he and his friends rescue his satyr friend Grover from the Cyclops Polyphemus and save the camp from a Titan's attack by bringing the Golden Fleece to cure Thalia's poisoned pine tree.

The Titan's Curse (book three):This book charts the adventures of the fourteen-year-old demigod Percy Jackson as he and his friends go on a dangerous quest to rescue his friend Annabeth Chase and the Greek goddess Artemis, who have both been kidnapped.

The Battle of the Labyrinth (book four): Fictional demigod Percy Jackson, who is fifteen years old by the end of the book, tries to stop Luke Castellan and his army from invading Camp Half-Blood through Daedalus's labyrinth by trying to find Daedalus and convince him not to give Luke Ariadne's string, which would help Luke through the Labyrinth.

The Last Olympian (book five):  The Last Olympian revolves around the demigod Perseus Jackson as he leads his friends in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus.

The Best of Me

Dates Read: November 2011
Despite the fact that someone always dies, I love the books that Nicholas Sparks writes! And this book was no different! A great romance with a Nicholas Sparks plot twist thrown in!

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
"Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen."

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.

Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?