Book Review: Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College

Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College by Loren Pope
Publisher: ‎ Penguin Books
Release Date: 4th ed. edition, August 28, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Choosing the right college has never been more important—or more difficult. For the latest edition of this classic college guide, Hilary Masell Oswald conducted her own tours of top schools and in-depth interviews, building on Loren Pope’s original to create a totally updated, more expansive work. Organized by geographic region, every profile includes a wealth of vital information, including admissions standards, distinguishing facts about the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and what faculty say about their jobs. Masell Oswald also offers a new chapter on how students with learning disabilities can find schools that fit their needs. For every prospective college student searching for more than football and frat parties, Colleges That Change Lives will prove indispensable.
 
Fully revised and updated by education journalist Hilary Oswald, Colleges That Change Lives remains the definitive guide for high school students (and their parents) who are looking for more in their college education than football, frat parties, and giant lectures. Building on the foundation of landmark author Loren Pope, Oswald spent more than a year visiting 40 colleges, speaking with students, faculty, and alumni to create these vivid and concise portraits. 
 
Featuring a new introduction, a new Required Reading section, and a new chapter on learning disabilities, the book is organized into five geographic regions (Northeast, South, Midwest, Southwest, Northwest) to make for easy browsing, and urban, suburban, and rural campuses are all featured. There’s also an alphabetical index of colleges. Each profile includes admissions standards as well as relevant statistics to make your decision easier, including where the school ranks in post-graduate grants and fellowships, what percentage of students go on to graduate school or further education, distinguishing facts about the curriculum, percentage of professors who have terminal degrees in their field, even what activities are available to students and what they’re likely to do on weekends.

My oldest son will be starting his senior year of high school in the fall and has only recently shown an interest in choosing a college. Meanwhile, I’ve been freaking out about it since his sophomore year! One of my friends recommended this book to me. She and her son used it to choose his college a few years ago and he’s been really happy with his choice.

This book explores small liberal arts colleges that you may have never heard of but are still excellent schools. I went to a big state school (Go Mizzou!) so I didn’t know much about how liberal arts colleges worked before reading this book. The book is divided into sections by region – South, Midwest, etc. and there are a handful of colleges included for each. I liked that the write-up for each college was a narrative, not charts and graphs. The author includes quotes from both professors and students about their experiences with the school. I felt like it was a balanced view of the schools with both positives and negatives mentioned.

I learned a lot from this book. Not every college in this book requires a super high GPA or SAT score. Some of them are even “test-optional”, a concept that I hadn’t heard of before. Being smaller schools – it seemed like the average enrollment was somewhere around 3,500 so students get a lot of support at most of these schools. Most have financial aid programs as well. And there are so many different educational philosophies, unlike the fairly standard state school format.

When I bought this book, my son was planning on majoring in linguistics and wanted to study abroad at some point in his college career. Several colleges in this book would be ideal for that. (Note the post-its I used to mark the ones I thought would be the best. There are a lot!) Since then, he’s decided to major in music education and probably will go to a school close to home. However, I have three more kids, including another son who will be starting his junior year in the fall, so I’m glad I read this book. I found it educational and I’m glad I now have a good background on what liberal arts education is all about. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: June 1, 2021
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

Malibu Rising ostensibly takes place on just one day in 1983 at a party thrown by Nina Riva, a famous surfer and model. However, there are flashbacks throughout filling us in on the Riva children and their parents. Their absentee father is the famous singer Mick Riva. Nina, the oldest, raised her younger siblings – Jay and Kit also surf and Hud is a famous photographer. The party at Nina’s gets wilder and wilder as the night goes on, eventually spinning completely out of control. The Riva children’s lives have been pretty chaotic over the years as well.

This is the first Taylor Jenkins Reid novel that I’ve read. Everyone raves about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six. I can only assume that they are a lot better than Malibu Rising. This book fell flat for me. I understood what Reid was trying to do but she didn’t quite get there. It was the party that got to me the most. I think it was supposed to be a satirical and perhaps humorous statement on how famous people lack self-awareness and can be quite horrible. But the antics of the party-goers were too over the top for even me to suspend disbelief and I didn’t really find them to be funny. I also thought the dialogue was stilted and simplistic. I did like the plotline about the siblings’ childhoods and their relationship with one another. That could have been developed more and the entire party thing scrapped and it would have been great. All that being said, I will try either Daisy or Evelyn at some point so don’t @ me Taylor Jenkins Reid stans! (Just kidding – feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.)

From Page to Screen: Where’d You Go, Bernadette

The book Where’d You Go, Bernadette is mostly an epistolary novel so I wondered how that would transfer to the screen. How do you make a movie out of emails, letters and faxes? In this case, the writers of the movie changed the structure of the plot quite a bit. The book is a mystery – thus the name Where’d You Go, Bernadette. The reader journey along with Bernadette’s family, trying to figure out where she went and why. In the movie, the viewer is with Bernadette the whole time, there is no mystery, no suspense.

My husband, who did not read the book, watched the movie with me. He thought it was pretty good. I thought it was okay. For some reason that I can’t put my finger on, Billy Crudup gives me the creeps. I don’t like him in The Morning Show and I didn’t like him in this. He plays Bernadette’s husband, Elgin. Emma Nelson, who plays Bernadette’s daughter Bee was wonderful – I think this was her first movie – she’s going to have a great career. Cate Blanchett plays Bernadette. Of course, Cate is a fantastic actress but I thought she was miscast. I wasn’t buying her as Bernadette – I kept thinking, “Well, that’s Cate Blanchett in a wig pretending to be a zany woman.” And Kristen Wiig was dreadfully underused as Bernadette’s frenemy Audrey.

There’s so much going on in the book that had to be left out of the movie. I think the writer did a good job cutting out what wasn’t essential – you can only pack so much into under two hours. Where’d You Go, Bernadette would be an ideal book to turn into a limited series. If all the subplots were included, I think you could easily get several episodes out of it and preserve the mystery. Of course, we would have to recast the entire thing, except for Emma Nelson. I think maybe Sandra Bullock for Bernadette? And for Elgin…who can pull off nerdy, but is also good-looking? George Clooney? Ed Norton? Let me know who you think it should be. Kristen Wiig can stay as Audrey if they expand her role to be what Audrey was in the book. She’s not nearly snobby or annoying enough in the movie.

Overall, this was an entertaining movie on its own merits but if you’ve read the book, you’ll probably come away wishing for more.

(I streamed this movie for free on Hulu.)

Book Review: Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Release Date: August 14, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle — and people in general — has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence — creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.

A once-famous Los Angeles-based architect, Bernadette Fox has been living in suburban Seattle, as a stay-at-home mom for many years now, ever since her husband took a job as a big wig at Microsoft. She doesn’t fit in with the pretentious moms, who she calls “gnats”, at her daughter’s middle school. She and her husband promised their daughter Bee a trip to Antarctica as an eighth-grade graduation present and Bee is determined to hold them to that promise. Just the thought of being on a cruise ship triggers Bernadette’s already barely controlled anxiety. Before you know it, Bernadette is gone.

Why did I wait so long to read this book?? Where’d You Go, Bernadette has the satirical humor that I love if it’s done right. And it definitely is in this book. The moms at Bee’s school remind me a bit of the snobby moms in Big Little Lies. The author wrote for the TV show Arrested Development if that gives you an idea of the kind of comedy she employed. It’s not a frivolous book though. There are some heartbreaking moments – there has to be when a child’s mother goes missing. The way Bernadette’s husband reacts when he finds out about some of her antics she’d kept hidden from him made me mad at him on her behalf.

The story is told in modern-day epistolary fashion through emails, faxes and other supporting documents. It’s the perfect format. I don’t think it would be half as good written in a typical narrative.

Once again, there are several reviews on Amazon complaining that this book is not realistic. I really wish people would stop it already. It’s satire! Suspend your disbelief and enjoy. I sure did!

Audiobook Review: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
Publisher: Recorded Books
Narrator: Ali Ahn
Release Date: January 14, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once? 

Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved – five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

When sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song has a crush on a boy, she writes him a love letter. She never sends them – she tucks them away in a hatbox her mother gave her. Her mother passed away a few years ago and now her older sister Margo is going off to college out of the country, leaving Lara Jean in charge of helping her dad with her younger sister Kitty.

One day at school, when Peter Kavinsky, the hottest boy in the junior class, tells her he received a letter from her, she realizes that all of her letters have been sent! Including the one to her sister’s boyfriend Josh. When Josh confronts her about her letter, she tells Josh that Peter is her boyfriend and she’s over him. Luckily, Peter wants to make his ex-girlfriend Genevieve jealous. Lara Jean and Peter decide they can each get what they want if they pretend to be boyfriend/girlfriend.

I watched the Netflix movie based on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a few years ago and thought it was cute. For some reason, it popped into my head last week and I decided to listen to the audiobook. Since it’s been so long since I watched the movie, I can’t really make any comparisons between the two other than to say that I enjoyed the book as much as the movie. I liked that the high school kids had the same maturity as real high school kids. I have two high-schoolers right now so I’m familiar! Lara Jean is sweet and naive, as some kids are, without being cloying. I loved her character. Her sister Margo could be an overbearing pill but aren’t all older sisters? (I’m an oldest child so I can say that!)

The only part that’s not entirely believable is that someone could send all those letters out. How did they know all the boys’ addresses? Unless Lara Jean addressed them even though she wasn’t going to send them? Anyway, just let that part go and enjoy the story. There are two more books in the series and I plan to listen to both. Yes, this is a young-adult book, but I think it appeals to all ages.

Book Review: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Independence Day is a strange one this year. It’s hard to celebrate “independence” when our rights are being stripped away day by day. (I’m talking about the overturn of Roe v. Wade in case that’s not clear.)

I looked through my backlog of books I need to review (have I mentioned how behind I am?!) to see if there was an Independence Day-related book I could review and post today. I do love a theme! There are some serious non-fiction books about voting rights and race issues in this country that I’ve read recently but I decided to go with a more light-hearted choice because it’s enough already. Enjoy!

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: May 14, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations.

The President’s son does not get along with his contemporary across the pond, Prince Henry. When they accidentally get into a little scuffle in the public eye, their teams decide that the best damage control would be for them to appear to be BFFs in public. You can probably guess what happens from there. Of course, they must keep their budding romance secret. It could be bad for both their families if word gets out.

I’ll say right off the bat that if you want to enjoy this book, you must recognize it for what it is – a rom-com not wholly based in reality. It definitely simplifies the way American politics works and from what I understand it gets the succession line to the throne in England and other Royal facts wrong too. But this book is supposed to be fun, not a political science textbook, so I let all that go.

I loved the chemistry between Alex and Henry. They write emails back and forth to each other that were really funny. Especially Henry’s droll humor. He is the epitome of charming. And when they are together, it got pretty steamy. Reading about two young men being open and vulnerable with each other just made me feel good. This is the first book I’ve read by Casey McQuiston – I’ll definitely be reading more.

PS: I just learned that Red, White & Royal Blue is being made into a movie!  Check out this link to see pics of the actors they cast as Alex and Henry. Holy smokes – so hot! It will air on Amazon Prime, release date TBD. Yay!

Weekend Ramblings – July 2, 2022

Hi friends! I accidentally took a six-month vacation from blogging. I have a lot of reviews to catch up on! I’ve been MIA because I really needed to focus on my health. I’ll copy and paste what I posted on my personal Facebook page a few months ago:

As of today (January 25, 2022), I’m on the waiting list to have a double lung transplant at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. The average wait time is 2-3 months but theoretically, the call could come at any time. At which point, I have been instructed to head for St. Louis within 10-15 minutes of receiving the call. I’ll be in the hospital for 2-3 weeks and then moving to some sort of temporary housing in St. Louis to rehab for three months before I can move back home. Travis will stay with me in St. Louis while I’m in the hospital and once I’m out, my dad will move to St. Louis to be my main caregiver as I’m required to have someone with me 24/7. McElhany family stress level is high but joyful. This is a good thing. It will be worth it in the long run. My bags are packed.

It’s been five months and I still haven’t gotten the call but what can I do but keep waiting? In the meantime, I’m just living life as normally as possible. I probably won’t post many updates here about this journey but you are welcome to follow me at the Facebook page that I specifically created for updates: Live Lung and Prosper

Now back to the book reviews!

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Book Review: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Publisher: ‎ Berkley
Release Date: May 11, 2021
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
 
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
 
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
 
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Alex and Poppy are total opposites. Somehow it works to make them best friends but not lovers. People You Meet on Vacation aspires to answer the age-old question – can men and women ever be just friends? Sound familiar? That’s because the author was inspired by the movie When Harry Met Sally. It even starts out with Alex and Poppy getting to know each other on a road trip. However, Alex is way nicer than Harry at much more reserved.

After Alex and Poppy bond on their road trip home from college, they decide to start taking a trip together every summer – as friends. They don’t really see each other in person in between summer trips because their lives are so different. Alex becomes a high school teacher in the small town they grew up in and Poppy moves to New York City to write for a travel magazine.

Something happened on their trip two years ago and they lost touch. After all that time with no contact, Poppy convinces Alex to take another trip with her. She actually doesn’t have to try that hard to get him to agree and this is where the book lost me. I found the way they reconnected to be a forced plot point. It just doesn’t seem likely that Alex would agree to go on a trip without any discussion of their issues or catching up at all beforehand. And once they got on the trip, I couldn’t feel much chemistry between them.

For a rom-com, I thought it was lacking in com. I like romances with more humor. Maybe it was because Alex is supposed to be kind of a boring, humorless person? I’m not sure. I know this book got a lot of hype when it came out and people loved it but it was just not my cup of tea. I’m not going to write Emily Henry off just yet though. I’ve heard her other books are better so I’m going to check at least one more out. If you’re a fan, which one would you recommend?

Book Review: Marley by Jon Clinch

Marley by Jon Clinch
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: October 8, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

“Marley was dead, to begin with,” Charles Dickens tells us at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. But in Jon Clinch’s “masterly” (The New York Times Book Review) novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge.

They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition manifests itself in a fledgling shipping empire. Between Marley’s genius for deception and Scrooge’s brilliance with numbers, they amass a considerable fortune of dubious legality, all rooted in a pitiless commitment to the soon-to-be-outlawed slave trade.

As Marley toys with the affections of Scrooge’s sister, Fan, Scrooge falls under the spell of Fan’s best friend, Belle Fairchild. Now, for the first time, Scrooge and Marley find themselves at odds. With their business interests inextricably bound together and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, forged documents, theft, and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley’s ghostly return.

Most everyone is familiar with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Even if you haven’t actually read the book, you’ve probably seen at least one version in a movie. Marley is a prequel of sorts with the main character being Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner. The book starts when they meet at a boy’s boarding school, where Marley is already bad news. Scrooge is a naïve boy that he takes advantage of without Scrooge even knowing it. Their lopsided relationship continues when they go into business together. Marley makes all the shady business deals while Scrooge handles the books, blissfully (maybe willfully) unaware that most of their business is unseemly at best.

One of the most horrible businesses they are involved in is slavery. When Scrooge becomes engaged to Belle, her father tells him he won’t consent to her marrying him until Scrooge and Marley are divested of the slaving business. Scrooge sets to work on that much to Marley’s consternation. Scrooge is actually a sympathetic character for most of the book. He loves money and accounting but he loves Belle too. It’s Marley that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

This book is actually darker and gloomier than A Christmas Carol. A couple of parts are downright horrifying. And that’s what makes it so good. A Christmas Carol is a wonderful book of course, but it’s a spare novel focused on Scrooge and his redemption. Not much is made of the other characters. Luckily for Clinch, there is a lot of room to be imaginative. And he fills in the space wonderfully. Scrooge’s sister Fan and his fiancé Belle are full-fledged characters in their own right. I haven’t read much Dickens but my friends who have tell me that there are Easter eggs related to other Dickens novels throughout. I’m sure they are fun to come across for Dickens fans.

My book club read this book and had mixed reviews as a whole but I really liked it. I was impressed by Clinch’s creativity in crafting Marley and Scrooge’s backstory. Recommended.

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Book Review: No Words by Meg Cabot

No Words by Meg Cabot
Publisher: ‎ William Morrow
Publication Date: October 12, 2021
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Jo Wright always swore she’d never step foot on Little Bridge Island—not as long as her nemesis, bestselling author Will Price, is living there.

Then Jo’s given an offer she can’t refuse: an all-expense paid trip to speak and sign at the island’s first ever book festival.

Even though arrogant Will is the last person Jo wants to see, she could really use the festival’s more-than-generous speaking fee. She’s suffering from a crippling case of writer’s block on the next installment of her bestselling children’s series, and her father needs financial help as well.

Then Jo hears that Will is off-island on the set of the film of his next book. Hallelujah!

But when she arrives on Little Bridge, Jo is in for a shock: Will is not only at the book festival, but seems genuinely sorry for his past actions—and more than willing not only to make amends, but prove to Jo that he’s a changed man.

Things seem to be looking up—until disaster strikes, causing Jo to wonder: Do any of us ever really know anyone?

No Words is the third book in the Little Bridge Island series but it’s fine to read as a stand-alone. The series has recurring characters but not a continuing storyline.

Jo Wright is the author of the popular Kitty Katz children’s books. When she’s invited to the first Little Bridge Island book festival, she hesitates to accept because best-selling author Will Price lives on the island and she does not like him one bit. Her agent assures her that he won’t be there so Jo decides to go. Guess who’s there when she gets there? That’s right – Will! He wants to make things right with Jo, if she’ll let him.

No Words was a fun, quick read. Meg Cabot is on the board of the Key West Literary Seminar so not only has she attended book festivals as an author, she’s been involved in organizing them as well. I feel like No Words gave me a little inside scoop about the literary world, which I loved.

Will writes Nicholas Sparks-type books (although Meg has said that he’s not based on a real author) and there are excerpts from Will’s book, The Moment because Jo is reading it. Those were filled with really funny, over-the-top melodrama. I loved how she satirized that type of book.

I felt like the chemistry between Will and Jo was a bit forced but overall, I enjoyed No Words. Meg Cabot is comfort reading for me. Her books give me a warm, fuzzy feeling when I’m reading them and No Words was no exception.

Other Megan Cabot books I’ve reviewed:

The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries #1)

All-American Girl (American Girl #1)
Ready or Not (American Girl #2)

The Boy Next Door (Boy #1)

Avalon High

Airhead (Airhead Trilogy)
Being Nikki (Airhead Trilogy)
Runaway (Airhead Trilogy)

Size 12 is Not Fat (Heather Wells #1)
Size 14 is Not Fat Either (Heather Wells #2)
Big Boned (Heather Wells #3)

Queen of Babble (Queen of Babble #1)
Queen of Babble in the Big City (Queen of Babble #2)
The Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (Queen of Babble #3)

Abandon (Abandon Triology)

(I received a complimentary copy of No Words for review.)

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