39. Pause by Kylie Scott

listened on Audible/Original

narrated by Andy Arndt

Unabridged audio (6:17)
2021
only on audio - guessing around 225
Adult Romance of the Steamy Variety
Finished 4/15/2021
Goodreads rating: 3.90 - 679 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary USA

My comments: The book cover is deceiving.  This is not how I picture Leif at all - yes, he has long hair and tattoos.....

     Another too-good-to-be-true romance, but particularly well done, I think.  Leif, the male protagonist, was absolutely perfect: wonderful, smart, funny, articulate, built, and handsome.  The way their relationship began,, him rescuing her from a car crash that put her in a coma for seven months, was unusual and a great differenct to most of the silly romances heavy on the steamy parts.  Up to the point of the accident, Anna's marriage has been okay.  But while she's in a coma her husband has an affair with her best friend...yada yada yada...HEA.  Feel good kind of story.  It was narrated by Andy Arndt, one of my very favorite narrators.  Steam factor quite high in places.

Goodreads synopsis:  An unpauseable new romance from New York Times bestselling, Audie Award winning author Kylie Scott!
          When Anna wakes up from a coma after a car crash, she discovers life has gone on without her. Her husband has been unfaithful—with her best friend—and she’s been long since replaced at work. While her old life is a distant memory, her new life feels like an empty shell. Then she meets the stranger who saved her life during the crash, and he changes everything.
          Leif Larsen—tattooist, joker, and player—has his own scars thanks to the crash that put Anna in a coma. Helping her move on from her failed marriage, and create a new life, sounds like a perfect distraction. So when he needs a new roommate, he invites Anna to begin her new life with him.
          Although their lives may have been put on pause, together they just might find a way to heal.

41. Crime on the Fens by Joy Ellis

DI Nikki Galena #1
listened on Audible
2010 Joffe Books
285 pgs.
Adult Mystery - Police Procedural
Finished 5/1/18
Goodreads rating:  4.19 - 3407 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: Contemporary Lincolnshire, England

First line/s:  "A night wind blew along the alleyway, bringing with it the smell of ozone and red diesel. Nikki Galena leaned back against the rough brickwork of the derelict warehouse and wondered how many other women of thirty-six would feel quite so comfortable in such unpleasant surroundings."

My comments:  Read with a thick lilt and including a few references I was unsure of, (the cabra?  Cabra?  since I read it I didn't know if it was a proper noun place or an improper noun place) I enjoyed this mystery (not loved, but liked). Perhaps not the most exciting or surprising that I've ever read, but entertaining nonetheless, more in the characterizations than anything else.

Goodreads synopsis: 
THE DETECTIVE DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she’s seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She’s got tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she’s been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she’s out. 
HER PARTNER DS Joseph Easter is the handsome squeaky-clean new member of the team. But his nickname “Holy Joe” belies his former life as a soldier. He has an estranged daughter who blames him for everything that went wrong with their family. 
THEIR ADVERSARY is a ruthless man who holds DI Galena responsible for his terrible disfigurement. 
The town is being terrorised by gangs of violent thugs, all wearing identical hideous masks. Then a talented young female student goes missing on the marsh and Nikki and Joseph find themselves joining forces with a master criminal in their efforts to save her. They need to look behind the masks, but when they do, they find something more sinister and deadly than they ever expected . . . 
THE SETTING
The Lincolnshire Fens: great open skies brood over marshes, farmland, and nature reserves. It is not easy terrain for the Fenland Constabulary to police, due to the distances between some of the remote Fen villages, the dangerous and often misty lanes, and the poor telephone coverage. There are still villages where the oldest residents have never set foot outside their own farmland and a visit to the nearest town is a major event. But it has a strange airy beauty to it, and above it all are the biggest skies you’ve ever seen.

61. Family Tree by Susan Wiggs

read on my Kindle
2016, William Morrow
368 pgs.
Adult "romance" CRF
Finished 11/3/16
Goodreads rating:  4.07 - 2,001 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary rural Vermont

First line/s:  "I can't believe we're arguing about a water buffalo."

My comments:   Okay.  This is definitely a "romance fiction."  Not my cuppa tea. At all.  That said, there were components of the book that I liked.  The way it was written, back and forth - from "now" to "then."  The setting, rural Vermont.  I liked the premise of coming out of a coma, of having brain injury, but I had mixed feelings about Annie's slow (and fast!) coming around after being asleep for a year. I am also not a cook, but I think all the cooking talk would be a huge plus for some. A quick, easy read...nothing to figure out, every scenario ending in pretty much the expected way.  A well-written romance for lovers of that genre.

Goodreads synopsis:  For readers of Kristin Hannah and Jodi Picoult comes a powerful, emotionally complex story of love, loss, the pain of the past—and the promise of the future.
          Sometimes the greatest dream starts with the smallest element. A single cell, joining with another. And then dividing. And just like that, the world changes.
          Annie Harlow knows how lucky she is. The producer of a popular television cooking show, she loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Manhattan home they share. And now, she’s pregnant with their first child.
          But in an instant, her life is shattered. And when Annie awakes from a year-long coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she's lost.
          Grieving and wounded, Annie retreats to her old family home in Switchback, Vermont, a maple farm generations old. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, Annie slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago: the town where she grew up, the people she knew before, the high-school boyfriend turned ex-cop. And with the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.
          Family Tree is the story of one woman’s triumph over betrayal, and how she eventually comes to terms with her past. It is the story of joys unrealized and opportunities regained. Complex, clear-eyed and big-hearted, funny, sad, and wise, it is a novel to cherish and to remember.