Review: IF YOU ONLY KNEW by Kristan Higgins
Yep, that’s my review.
Read an excerpt: here
Jenny Tate is the consummate New Yorker. A celebrated dress designer with access to the posh lifestyle- Jenny has it all. She even has a sickeningly cordial relationship with her ex-husband and his perfect wife. How modern. Nothing says closure like forced cheerfulness so you don’t seem bitter at an ex’s current wife’s baby shower!
Jenny decides to open a new page in her life and moves back upstate to be closer to her family and open a dress shop. While her sister’s life starts to unravel, Jenny may find a few other hearts in need of mending.
Rachel Carver, nee-Tate, is living the ultimate Stepford existence in Cambry-on-Hudson, NY; A loving husband, three adorable daughters (triplets no less), Mommy and Me Swim sessions...But the dream life gets flipped upside down by the ultimate betrayal. As Rach tithers back and forth on the right next step, she discovers more about herself than she ever realized existed.
4 ½ Red Roses
My Favorite Part of this Book: Call me a glutton for punishment but I enjoyed the emotionally wrecking scenes where Rachel had to confront her husband on his wrong doings. They were so filled with emotion I felt myself getting worked up, too!
Let me preface my final thoughts on this book with the following: I don’t cry. I am pretty desensitized and disenchanted when it comes to emotional/sappy scenes in books (ignore the oxymoron of me running this book blog and focusing on HEAs). I am just not that girl who wears her emotions on her sleeve (even in private).
That being said- IF YOU ONLY KNEW was so god damn affecting, I felt physically drained 3/4s through. I wanted to scream, and cry, and vented to my best friend how upset I was with Adam (Rachel’s husband). I stayed up all night and straight through to work the next morning reading because this book truly swept me away. I just couldn’t escape the feelings this book evoked and as I am not use to many books inspiring this, I couldn’t get enough! I recall an actual physical ache in my chest- my heart was in my stomach. This book is on par with Lisa Kleypas’ Sugar Daddy (my favorite contemporary of all time).
I think at the heart of it, we have an incredibly realistic book. Jenny’s love interest isn’t this dashing prince charming who rides in on a white horse and finds the way she eats, blinks, breathes intoxicating. He actually thinks she’s a little crazy when they first met. He was a bit of a dickhead, actually. There were no rose-colored angles- raw characters with plenty of flaws I found myself in.
The only thing keeping this from being a full 5 star read is that the writing style was difficult to follow at times. It was told from two perspectives (either sister) in alternating chapters (which I fucking hate 99% of the time)- oddly enough, once I became engrossed in both characters’ individual story, I didn’t find it as distracting/annoying. What did get me was with the writing style was that I found myself confused between reality and sarcastic day dream a lot- it was a little more work keeping everything straight. Also, the middle of this book was so spectacular that the final 20% paled in comparison and brought the story down as a whole for me.
There’s so much I could say about this book. From the excellent writing, to realistic characters, to the devastation left in the absence of its’ palpable suspense- IF YOU ONLY KNEW is going down as a favorite and go-to recommendation.
IF you want heart, triumph, laughs and love then you want IF YOU ONLY KNEW.
Jenny decides to open a new page in her life and moves back upstate to be closer to her family and open a dress shop. While her sister’s life starts to unravel, Jenny may find a few other hearts in need of mending.
Rachel Carver, nee-Tate, is living the ultimate Stepford existence in Cambry-on-Hudson, NY; A loving husband, three adorable daughters (triplets no less), Mommy and Me Swim sessions...But the dream life gets flipped upside down by the ultimate betrayal. As Rach tithers back and forth on the right next step, she discovers more about herself than she ever realized existed.
4 ½ Red Roses
My Favorite Part of this Book: Call me a glutton for punishment but I enjoyed the emotionally wrecking scenes where Rachel had to confront her husband on his wrong doings. They were so filled with emotion I felt myself getting worked up, too!
Let me preface my final thoughts on this book with the following: I don’t cry. I am pretty desensitized and disenchanted when it comes to emotional/sappy scenes in books (ignore the oxymoron of me running this book blog and focusing on HEAs). I am just not that girl who wears her emotions on her sleeve (even in private).
That being said- IF YOU ONLY KNEW was so god damn affecting, I felt physically drained 3/4s through. I wanted to scream, and cry, and vented to my best friend how upset I was with Adam (Rachel’s husband). I stayed up all night and straight through to work the next morning reading because this book truly swept me away. I just couldn’t escape the feelings this book evoked and as I am not use to many books inspiring this, I couldn’t get enough! I recall an actual physical ache in my chest- my heart was in my stomach. This book is on par with Lisa Kleypas’ Sugar Daddy (my favorite contemporary of all time).
I think at the heart of it, we have an incredibly realistic book. Jenny’s love interest isn’t this dashing prince charming who rides in on a white horse and finds the way she eats, blinks, breathes intoxicating. He actually thinks she’s a little crazy when they first met. He was a bit of a dickhead, actually. There were no rose-colored angles- raw characters with plenty of flaws I found myself in.
The only thing keeping this from being a full 5 star read is that the writing style was difficult to follow at times. It was told from two perspectives (either sister) in alternating chapters (which I fucking hate 99% of the time)- oddly enough, once I became engrossed in both characters’ individual story, I didn’t find it as distracting/annoying. What did get me was with the writing style was that I found myself confused between reality and sarcastic day dream a lot- it was a little more work keeping everything straight. Also, the middle of this book was so spectacular that the final 20% paled in comparison and brought the story down as a whole for me.
There’s so much I could say about this book. From the excellent writing, to realistic characters, to the devastation left in the absence of its’ palpable suspense- IF YOU ONLY KNEW is going down as a favorite and go-to recommendation.
IF you want heart, triumph, laughs and love then you want IF YOU ONLY KNEW.
Ecstasy Wears Emeralds by Renee Bernard –Review-
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| Read an excerpt: here Buy at Amazon: Print: here | Kindle: here |
From the first page I knew this book would be riddled with characters my heart could bleed for. Ms Bernard has the special gift of not only making her characters feel authentically real, but making readers want to feel for them almost the minute they step onto the page. Gayle and Rowan will go down as one of my favorite historical romance couples ever. Their relationship and interactions felt very genuine. And I’ve been CRAVING a good romance with a Doctor lead for a while. I could gush about this book for forever, but I think I’ll just get to my review and outline what made this book work for me.
At the beginning of the story, readers find themselves in the middle of a house call Dr.Rowan West is attending to. Fatigued beyond belief and pushed to his emotional limits, Rowan does all he can to ensure comfort for one of his favorite patients and then proceeds home for a few hours’ sleep before he starts the cycle of endless calls and sometimes heartbreak at the unfavorable results all over again. But when he arrives home, his butler informs him a lady visitor has been awaiting his return. The persistent head ache Rowan had been enduring is about to get some more fodder!
Enter, Miss Gayle Renshaw. The orphaned great granddaughter of a knight with a hefty inheritance and some decidedly unladylike ambitions for her time. Gayle’s only surviving relative believes she’s traveling for some worldly polish and a French trinket or two, when really, she’s waiting in the salon of a bachelor Dr.West with an outlandish proposition and the intent to blackmail should she not get her way.
A female apprentice? A female physician? Rowan’s mind is reeling as he takes in the proposal the strange woman in his home has offered him. He knows that no one in his profession would seriously consider a woman capable of anything other than child bearing, maintaining a household, and switching out bed pans in a nurse’s uniform, but the mysterious Gayle will hear nothing of it and is determined to apprentice under the wing of a respected London doctor so that she may apply for medical school with unquestionable and indisputable credentials; or bring said respectable doctor down in a flame of reputation-destroying scandal if he does not comply.
With little choice and an alternate plan to bury Miss Renshaw in a sea of medical texts and laboratory work, Rowan agrees to take Gayle on as his ‘assistant’ and discreetly give her the education she has asked for. His plan however backfires, and not only can Gayle handle everything he throws at her with -albeit exhausted- grace, but she seems to thrives on it and her passion for the medicinal arts becomes evident with each challenge she overcomes. As maddening as Gayle’s stubbornness can be sometimes, Rowan can’t help but respect her; He also can’t help his deep, ludicrous attraction for her.
As Gayle works on breaking down barriers and resisting her arousing teacher, Rowan is busy trying to determine who wants to do harm to him and his group of friends known as the Jaded. The treasure they brought back with them from India is causing more harm than good as anonymous threats are made and lives become endangered. There’s so very much to lose on both sides, so very much at stake, but just maybe, fate has something else in mind and dreams can expand to include an unyielding love between a doctor and his apprentice.
Rita's Rating:
My Favorite Part of the Book: Is actually one of the saddest parts of the book. In a last ditch effort to dissuade Gayle on her hazardous path, Rowan bring her on a call he’s been dreading for a long time. A beloved patient has neared his end and as Rowan predicted, Gayle’s emotions got the better of her and he lashes out on her while trying to teach a lesson. The passing of the patient is just so potently written; I seriously started to tear up. It was beautiful. All the characters’ pain was so palpable and genuine that I couldn’t NOT feel it. It was sad, but very well done. I got the same feeling I did as when Doby died in the last Harry Potter book! It’s not pretty, but it’s special when an author can do this to a reader.
Ecstasy Wears Emeralds is one of my favorite books from 2011! Bernard’s got the goods. This was my first book by this author, but I can assure you it will not be the last. This book had so many elements in it, such as social classism, male chauvinism, a mystery sub plot, enjoyable character camaraderie, ect that it can strike a chord with so many different readers. I did end up skimming over some of the sex scenes, though. Not that they weren’t written well, but there were quite a few and they were all pretty thorough so maybe I just wasn’t in the mood (no pun intended) for all that smex in that sitting- especially when I was so interested and invested in the plot. I’ll probably be thankful for said scenes later during a future re-read, but I just wasn’t into them at that point (they were very steamy from what I gleaned). Also, the ending was a bit lack-luster for me. I wanted it to go off with a bigger bang and I feel like there were many mini climaxes towards the middle end that once I got to the real climax at the end I needed more of a UMMPH. You guys know I love action-so I wanted more- but it may be just right for some. But seriously, with such exceptional characters- both primary and secondary, a winning plot, very tangible emotion and passions, how come you are still reading this review and not out waiting on line at your local bookstore with your copy? It’s such a special read, truly something to be remembered.
A special thanks to
The author for
Sending an ARC for review
Want more Renee Bernard? You’ll have to beat me to her latest release, Passion Wears Pearls:
‘My One and Only’ by Kristan Higgins –Review-
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| Read and excerpt: here |
Being a top-notch divorce attorney certainly helps skew your view on the whole institution of marriage. Throw in a failed marriage of your own that didn’t even make it to a full year and you’ll find it very easy to look on at the world in Harper-colored lenses. Infamous and loathed by the divorcees (at least on the losing side) of a town in Martha's Vineyard, Thirty *mumbles* year old Harper James is driving even the local priest to shaking his head in hopelessness at her dry wit and second skin of cynicism. Fanciful and naive dreams of a perfect marriage were left to the just-out-of-college, newlywed Harper. But now, she has traded in the title of ‘hopeless romantic’ for ‘habitual realist’. A much older and wiser Harper doesn’t see the point in dwelling on failed marriages and crushed dreams and has the ultimate formula to a happy life: 1 superhot, slightly wet behind the ears, rat tail having, firefighter boyfriend + 2 ½ years in a committed relationship + some wicked hot sex = time to say “I Do”.
While in the midst of laying out a very compelling marriage proposal (and when you read the book, proposal is just the word for it), Harper gets a call from her sometimes flighty but oh so loveable sister, Willa. Looks like Harper wasn’t the only one doing some proposing, because Willa calls to inform her big sis that she’s getting hitched (for the third time). She wants Harper to be her maid of honor and travel down to Montana for the wedding. Harper couldn’t be more thrilled... [insert sarcasm here]
The wedding is in a few weeks, so besides being on a time crunch to convince her sister to not marry some guy she just met, Harper won’t have a lot of time to prepare herself for seeing her ex-husband of 12 years- who also happens to be the groom’s brother and best man.
The whirl wind that swept up an ambitious Nick Lowe 12 years ago when he married Harper James may be coming back to cause more destruction as Nick travels to Montana for his brother’s wedding. Being the best man, Nick has a responsibility to his brother to make sure the next few weeks go by with as little conflict as possible; but how can anyone expect Nick to do his job when his ‘stunted’ ex-wife jumps into the fray and tries to talk her sister into backing out every chance she gets?
The weekend of the wedding will hold a lot of fortunate happenstances. (Superhot boyfriend, meet crazy sexy ex-husband.) The best man and maid of honor are destined to butt heads during the festivities leading up to their siblings’ big day, but what sort of hazards await the not-couple when they must travel cross-country together with a dog and a horde of repressed memories?
Nick and Harper never got over one another despite how much time has passed and maybe the road trip down memory lane will be just the thing needed to convince the exes to make peace with the past and embrace their One and Only.
My Rating:
My Favorite Part of the Book: Is surprisingly enough, the road trip reflections where we get all the backstory and emotional rehash we could ever want. Usually, when books have these flashbacks, they can be lengthy and start to fell like one big info-drop after another. I can never really enjoy them. When I realized that most of the backstory would be told during the road trip, I cringed and thought “Well, there goes the book.” Higgins delightfully surprised me by executing the reflections wonderfully. I was absorbed by my interest in the characters past. I had to stop reading around these parts so I could run some errands, and a more distracted shopper at Pathmark you’d never find. The road trip reflections were well crafted and stayed with me even after I finished reading.
This book was like 27 Dresses meets Sweet Home Alabama. Higgins has an infectious writer's voice and the book was one filled with pizazz and personality. Nick was very interesting but at first, I thought he would be more of a prop than a protagonist. As the story progressed, however, his vulnerability shines through and you want to pat him on the back for knowing what he wants and going balls-to-the-wall to get it.
Harper reminded me a lot of the pragmatic, sometimes stick-up-the butt-ish women we see in romantic comedies like the ones I mentioned above. She was a BOSS. But she was also as vulnrable or even more so than Nick. Yeah, it takes balls to propose to your boyfriend and give him an ultimatum, but as you read, you see she's covering up her fear of abandonment with a mask of practicality.
Harper was a character that you instantly liked and simultaneously rolled your eyes at when she said things like:
Harper was a character that you instantly liked and simultaneously rolled your eyes at when she said things like:
“Sometimes our minds just need time to accept what our hearts already know”
The book didn’t only have lovely protagonists, but a strong supporting cast and intriguing settings. If this latest is anything to go by, Higgins will be a permanent fixture on my bookshelf. Her unique style and relatable characters will certainly enchant her to romance readers everywhere.
[I received the galley for
[I received the galley for
this book through Netgalley]
*Check out another Higgins novel, ‘The Next Best Thing’
*And in the spirit of second chance romance and movies, check out the classic movie ‘The Philadelphia Story’. One of my all-time favorites with some debonair 1940’s Man Candy (Mmm, James Stewart)
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