StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce

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Summary: A clever thief is hiding as a ladies' maid in a snow-bound castle in this excellent young adult fantasy novel.

This young adult fantasy novel was one of the best novels I've read. It combines so many elements that I absolutely adore - teen novel, moral conflict, magic, politics, danger and a fast-moving plot. I thought the writing was excellent.

"It was the perfect night to drive us all inside; the heavy sky had finally resigned itself to rain - an ugly, sleety mess that made the roaring fire very welcome. I fingered the beaded trim of my bodice. Tart me up like a lady-in-waiting, but I was still a street thief from Gerse at heart, counting the rings on my neighbors' fingers, the exits in the room." 

This sentence tells so much.  Digger escapes from the Greensmen, the Kings' Guard, and hides with four nobles. She ends up as the maid to Lady Merista, and is snowbound in the castle with the family's guests. Everyone thinks Digger is Lady Celyn and they are unaware of her secrets. Until one guest recognizes Digger and her talents, and blackmails her into spying on the family for him. The tension, the danger, the secrets just keep building and building. I won't give much away, but this book was fabulous! I immediately looked for the sequel on my Nook, but it's not available yet. I am eagerly awaiting it.

If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern

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Summary: An unhappy, busy woman meets her nephew's imaginary friend. 

I didn't care for  Cecelia Ahern's The Gift but a friend convinced me to read another book by her.

I'm glad I did. Now I understand much more about Cecelia Ahern's writing style. Maybe it's an Irish thing, but Ahern writes about modern magic. Not the modern magic that Patricia Briggs does, but special situations that might seem real for a moment.

In If You Could See Me Now, Ivan is the adult imaginary friend suddenly assigned to Elizabeth's nephew Luke. And then Ivan becomes assigned to Elizabeth too. Elizabeth is 34 years old, single, and utterly responsible. Every inch of Elizabeth's house is spotless and perfect; nothing out of place, messy or colorful. Elizabeth has adopted her alcoholic sister's son Luke, and is constantly bailing Saoirse (pronounced Sore-shaw) out of jail, paying her rent, buying her food and clothes, loaning her money and helping her again and again despite Saoirse's theft and insults.

Saoirse and her father knew how to pull those strings and so she remained their puppet. As a result, she was alone, raising a child she never wanted, with the love of her life living in America a married man and father of one.

Poor Elizabeth. And the story unfolds in two parts, we see Elizabeth as a young girl, hoping that if she is just good enough, her mother will come back and stay and that her mother will keep her fanciful promises. So as an adult, Elizabeth is very careful to never use her imagination or encourage Luke too, since dreaming only leads to pain.

Elizabeth is furious when Ivan appears to Luke and Elizabeth won't put up with any nonsense. Yet in a few days, Elizabeth meets a nice looking and care-free young man, also named Ivan. We, the readers, know that Ivan is invisible, but Elizabeth never does.  We find Ivan challenging Elizabeth to be silly, choose color, watch falling stars and play with dandelions. Ivan's presence brings joy and laughter to Elizabeth's life, teaching Elizabeth how to open her heart.

As Elizabeth starts to enjoy life, her painful memories start flooding back. She sees the parallels between Saoirse and their mother, and we understand a little more about how little Lizzie became responsible and repressed Elizabeth.

And yet Ivan and Elizabeth start falling in love. Their relationship is a tender precious thing (yet I never felt manipulated as a reader), but we learn that an adult woman could never have a fulfilling relationship with an imaginary man. In trademark Ahern narrative style:

When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters, a table leg breaks, or a picture falls off the wall, it makes a noise. But as for your heart, when that breaks, it's completely silent.

Enjoyable, modern romance and fantasy, and it felt "Irish."

Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn

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Summary: Summoned to be the king's fifth wife, Zoe Ardelay runs away to discover her role in the family she had always believed abandoned her, in this new fantasy novel.

Sharon Shinn is one of the most talented authors I read, since she can create entire new worlds that make sense in a believable way. In Troubled Waters, Shinn creates a new world that fascinated me, based loosely on feng shui principles or perhaps zodiac signs.

Each of us have blessings bestowed upon us at birth which remain with us, and our characteristics are also divided into five categories: hunti (wood/bone); sweela (fire/mind); coru (water/blood);  elay (air/soul); and torz (earth/flesh). At any time you can visit a temple to pick a random blessing to give you divine guidance about a current task, problem or event. It's interesting - do people adopt characteristics of their element and do people treat them like their element, so they become that way, or are people destined to act and behave as their elements?

Inside this new world of Shinn's, we have Zoe - the daughter of a fire (sweela) man and a water (coru) woman. Fire and water don't normally mix, but Zoe is the best and worst of her elements. Flexible and powerful, like water; hot-tempered yet warm and affectionate like fire, Zoe is content to let things happen to her, rather than actively forcing something. Her passivity annoys me, but the story develops around her and she seems strangely reluctant to become the head of her family - the coru prime.

After her father's death in exile,  Zoe is escorted to the capitol to become the king's fifth wife. During a traffic jam, Zoe "escapes" and lives a casual, almost vagrant, life alongside the river. On her way to work one morning, she is robbed and attacked by thugs.  For her safety, she leaps into the river and is carried away underneath the city, protected and nurtured by the water. Realizing that she has an extraordinary connection to water - the trait of her mother's family, Zoe leaves her life at the riverbank to take her place as the prime - the head of the family. Once she's connected with her mother's family, Zoe is summoned to court for her official duties as prime and is mired in court politics and a budding romance with a hunti nobleman.

In typical Sharon Shinn fashion, a restless woman discovers her own strengths in a fish-out-of water situation and romance is secondary to the heroine's growth and the exquisitely executed details of Shinn's fantasy worlds. Troubled Waters is no exception.

If you're not a fan of fantasy fiction, and you think feng shui is baloney, you won't like this book. But I consider it one of Sharon Shinn's best, also reminiscent of the Kristin Cashore novels, where political intrigue could topple a monacrchy.

How Not to Make a Wish by Mindy Klasky

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Summary: An under-employed single woman is granted three wishes by a genie.

Be careful what you wish for... you just might get it.

Kyra Franklin rubs a prop lamp and an actual genie appears. Kyra first asks for a better job, and gets one as stage manager for Landmark Theatre, a groundbreaking theatre in Minneapolis. I love reading about local places, even if the Landmark is not an actual theatre here.

Director Bill Pomeroy is producing a "gender-shifted, iron-bound, water-stained, flashlight-lit, hip-hop-supertitled, heartbreaking production of Shakespeare's classic love story," - Romeo and Juliet. The set designer becomes Kyra's ally, and Kyra and John deal with the crazy director's ever-changing and more outlandish plans. Kyra is run ragged keeping up with the plans but is enthralled with Bill's vision and creativity.

When Kyra encounters her ex, a guy she refers to a TEWSBU (The Ex Who Should Be Unnamed), Kyra uses another one of her wishes to drop thirty pounds. The genie generously and spontaneously adds a cup size too. Kyra's new body alarms her roommates and her father, who stage an intervention because they believe she's anorexic.

And finally Kyra wishes that leading man Drew, who's playing Juliet (gender-bending play, remember?) is in love with her. Kyra couldn't look past his pretty face to his personality. After Drew is bitten by the love bug (or love genie), Kyra thinks she has it all. Hot sex with a hunk who worships her new body? Sign me up. But Kyra becomes annoyed at Drew's puppy-dog eyes, constant hovering, and his frequent use of the word, "Dude!"

Kyra will likely never be hired again if this play is launched, she can't get any work done with dumb-but-gorgeous Drew hanging around, and writing in her mandatory food diary is getting old.

How will Kyra solve this? It's a fun read, even in its implausibility.

What would you wish for?

Fire by Kristin Cashore

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Summary: The last remaining human monster struggles with the moral dilemma about using her powers to save the kingdom.


Kristin Cashore creates worlds so distinct that you can't helped being sucked in. This book is a companion piece to Cashore's novel Graceling, which you have to read if you haven't already. The two can be read independently of one another, because they take place on opposite sides of the mountain that separates the two kingdoms.


Fire, the last remaining human monster, is summoned to the capitol city to use her mind-reading and mind-controlling powers to determine which people are aligned against the king or for the king. Having lived with the cruel capriciousness of her father, also a human monster and advisor to the king, Fire is scared of her own power as she realizes that there is a fine line between using her talents for the right cause and truly becoming a monster. 


The love story which develops with the king's brother, Brigan, who's the head of the king's army, is a tender, awkward, careful love. This is a young adult book, but as in many YA books, this one is for late teens, not tweens by any means. 


You'll be fascinated by this new world, and I'm sure, will also eagerly await the next book by Cashore. 

Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon

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Summary: Cinderella’s Fairy godmother seeks a chance to redo a mistake she made 300 years ago.

That sweet old lady who smiles at you as you rush by is not someone’s doting grandmother, or an active senior, but a banished fairy, forced out of Fairyland because she did the unthinkable – she fell in love with a human.

To make matters worse, Lil fell in love with Cinderella’s prince instead. No, no, no, you can’t change the story, so of course Lil is exiled.

Fairy Godmother Lil was supposed to change Cinderella’s life forever when she transformed the abused maid into a vision of loveliness, but Lil had been dreaming of the prince too, and when Cinderella got cold feet (glass slippers, remember?), Lil went in her place. And Lil has been suffering alone ever since.

We meet Lil when she’s reached her lowest point, barely eating enough to stay alive and working in a used bookstore. Then Veronica walks in. Veronica is a flamboyant hair stylist (but not flamboyant in the the NYC way you're thinking) and Lil thinks she would be a perfect match for her boss George. Lil is supposed to help people find true love, and sets out to make a match between her George and Veronica. Maybe she can redeem herself that way.

This book dragged on in spots, constantly emphasizing Lil’s loneliness and exile. Every other chapter takes place in Lil’s modern life, while opposing chapters explore Lil’s early life in fairyland and how she came to fall in love with the prince. This book was about 20% too long.

Lil was so welcomed by humans that I just kept wanting to say, “Take some Prozac and move on.” That’s a dreadful thing to say to someone (even a fairy) with depression, but I kept reading in the hopes that Lil would finally make a perfect match and get to go home to her sister and fairy friends.

She sets them up, helps them pick out clothes, and the very last chapter of the book deals with the morning after the modern ball.

The surprise ending redeemed this book, although I did feel that this should have been more of a Young Adult novel, instead of adult fantasy fiction. 

Replay by Ken Grimwood

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Summary: A journalist gets to repeat his life over and over again.


On the third week of October 1988, journalist Jeff Winston dies of a heart attack in the middle of a droning conversation with his wife and “wakes up” alive at age 19, back in his old college dorm room in 1963. He realizes he must now replay the next 25 years of his life. A few smart sporting wagers and 12 million dollars later, Jeff thinks he is set for life. Until he dies again on the same third week in October in 1988. And again and again and again.

As Jeff replays his lives, he encounters his wife Linda in many forms and many different ways. Jeff uses his journalist’s knowledge of major newsworthy events to make slight alterations in his favor and plays a major role in the Kennedy assassination, with surprising results. Careless conversation where Jeff inadvertently tells the future are giggle-inducing while the birth of Jeff’s daughter inspires Jeff lives out all the various permutations that readers would expect: successful financial decisions, sexual abandon and drug use, isolation in the woods, scientific exploration, meditation. Until one day in one of his lives, he meets Pamela, another replayer.

While this is a fantastical (yet philosophical) thriller, it is also a romance, as Jeff experiences the joy of being with someone who truly understands him.

Jeff and Pamela enjoy the rest of their lives together, until that same third week in October in 1988. They find each other again, though at different points and with different memories. Why are they replaying? Will it end? What’s the point of it all?

Replay is for anyone who has wondered about our purpose, our paths, our choices as humans. But it’s also great fiction. Easy to read, well-written and perfect for a book club as it will spark hours of “what if” conversation.