Two Reviews

I've finished two books this weekend.  One was on my Kindle (The New Girl) and one was an audiobook (The Viscount Who Loved Me) I was listening to on the Hoopla app.  I was very happy with the audiobook and less so with the Kindle book.   That's how it goes though, sometimes we pick up a book thinking we are going to love it and then it's just not our thing.  That's ok...I'm positive it will be someone else's thing.  One thing I refuse to do, is bash a book in the review.  I will simply state what I did and didn't like and maybe how I might have liked it better.  I'd be interested to see what you guys think of these two reviews.  One of a book I didn't like as much (3 star rating) and one of a book I loved (5 star rating.)  Let me know in the comments!

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The New Girl by Jillian Adams

I found this book to be a bit slow and it seemed to jump around quite a bit.  I was confused as to what was going on for much of the book and I almost thought it was going to turn out to be a bully romance at one point.  

That being said, I think there was definite promise here.  It could have been a much better story, if we'd seen a bit more of the situation with the main character's mother and how that had affected her prior to coming to the school.  I also think that the friends could have been explored a bit deeper than they were.  I am taking into consideration that this is book one in the series, and if I decide to read the rest, I'm hoping we get more background into some of these things.

The writing itself was very descriptive and I liked that, I just wished I'd seen a more clear sense of what the story was about.

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The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn 

I love that each of these books centers around a different Bridgerton sibling, but that we still get to see how the previous siblings are doing as well.  I love this kind of family series that allows us, as readers, to mature and grow along with the characters.  It makes the reader feel a part of this world, sort of an honorary Bridgerton.

Antony's story is the second in the series, and I found it quite a bit deeper than the first book in the series.  Covering phobias on both the male and female main characters, there was a lot of emotion and trauma to deal with.  I think the author did a very good job, and I really appreciated the afterword from the author about Antony's fear covered in the story.

Because it is far too often not the case, I also very much appreciated the positive light that surrounded stepmothers in this particular story.  The relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter was painted with caring and love and though she was called by her first name, she was quite obviously a very real mother to our main character.

I've still not seen any of the episodes of the new TV Show based on this series, so my reviews are only of my thoughts on the books.