How to Sell a Haunted House

 

I really have no clue why my sleep deprived mind choose How to Sell A Haunted House since I do not like horror stories. Good thing I found the "horror" humorous and was not even slightly scared. 

Warning spoilers ahead. 

Louise is happy with her life except for the drama caused by her parents favoring her irresponsible younger brother whom they baby. Despite that she focuses on raising her daughter and being the best single parent she is able to. All that changes when her brother calls to inform her that both her parents have died in a car accident. Horrified at both of them being gone Louise quickly bundles her daughter off to his father so she can fly home and help deal with the estate. 

I was expecting jump scares of things not making sense and a normal house. The house was far from normal and considering it was full of creepy dolls and odd looking puppets it was very obvious that one of the dolls or puppets was behind the "haunting." Personally I have never had a fear of dolls coming alive to kill me so maybe that is why the story did not scare me in the slightest. The writing was super fluffy with far too much time spent on naming each puppet or doll individually. The injuries were not believable, like getting bite to the bone by a dog on the ankle then still able to get up and run. Deep scratches but the hospital not tending to that. Just seemed out of whack with what would really happen in reality. 

The Crown

 

The Crown is the fifth and final book in The Selection series. I am so glad to be done with the series, parts of it were painful to read and the story was drawn out way too much. 

Sadly Eadlyn did not get more bearable and continued to behave like a spoiled brat. I really wanted her to mature and become into her own instead of just demanding people conform to her every whim. Everything was super predictable about her as well, she made all the same mistakes over and over. Did not care for anyone else but herself. Ignored good advice from her family and was willing to use anyone she could to get what she wanted.

Like the last story the writing stayed consistent with Eadlyn's character. The story was way too drawn out though with minor problems being blown up into major problems. It made no sense and was just drama. At least no love triangle was in this story.

 

Wanted: Perfect Partner is one of Debbie Macomber's early works. I really like the slapstick humor and light nature of Mrs. Macomber's early work.

Meg is perfectly happy with life of running a bookstore and being a single mom to her teenage daughter. Lindsey has other ideas for her mother though and decides to put a personal in the newspaper finding her mother a date without telling her. Somehow the teen talks her mother into meeting a man she has been corresponding with and a whirlwind of trouble soon follows. 

Nancy is determined to play matchmaker for her bachelor elder brother. Instead of admitting she is searching for love for him Nancy just sets Steve up on a blind date. Not wanting to hurt the woman's feelings by not showing up he goes to explain everything. Soon though he finds himself tugged into Meg's life whether or not he wants that. 

This is a short story less then two hundred pages but it is complete. Some small character development but mainly laughs that kept me reading. 

The Heir

 

I had hoped I would continue to like The Selection series with The Heir but I should have stopped once America's story ended. 

Eadlyn is one of the most annoying, bratty, spoiled, and rude characters I have ever read. I will give this she is consistent and does not have moments of breaking protocol on how horrible she is in the story. Most of the time I just want to shake her and tell her to stop being such a brat. Despite that I do realize she has a heavy burden on her shoulders, becoming the first ruling queen of a country that has had male rulers since it was found. Also it does not help that everyone spoils her, maybe if she was not so pampered she would have a chance at a more normal life. 

The writing held through the same as the selection and it was nice to see the story told from the point of the person choosing. I feel like I know none of the boys most of the story focused on Eadlyn going poor me why do I have to do this and people should just love me. Just for the sake of finishing the series I will stick with the story and see if the library has The Crown available to borrow. 

 

Like many other people I did Kickstarter for Mr. Sanderson's four secret books. Tress of the Emerald Sea was the first book released. 

I believe I have read some of the novels in the cosmere universe but I do tend to struggle with them. I am not really sure why since I do enjoy Mr. Sanderson's story telling. Tress's story was no exception, at times I struggled and had to step away from the story. 

One of my favorite overall things is the chapters had titles, I love chapter titles. I also appreciated how the chapter titles font color changed as the story progressed. 

Despite being part of the Cosmere Universe Tress's story is stand alone. I really like Tress, she showed a lot of growth and clearly did not want to conform to the social norms of the time. Despite this I do see Tress as coming off as too powerful and overcoming things easily at times. Yet every time an obstacle occurred Tress continued to make the same mistake of trying to tackle it herself despite having friends who were eager to help her. 

It is clear that Mr. Sanderson is not big on writing love stories and this was partly a love story. I do like that he tried and thought of keeping a fairy tale feeling despite adding in some twists of his own. At times the story did drag on and I struggled to continue to reading. 

 

All the Pretty People was last week's Free Friday and I love a good mystery so I gave it at try. 

Willow has never been the same since her best friend disappeared one summer while her family was vacationing on an exclusive island. Terrified the same fate would bestow one of her daughters Willow's parents bundled them all up and quickly left the island never to return until ten years later when her youngest daughter decides to get married on the island. 

The main character, Willow, was not my favorite she felt so flat. Her sister goes missing and she manages to stay calm enough to investigate despite having no formal training and supposed PTSD from the disappearance of her best friend years earlier. Drake the other main character lost his sister and gave up the will to live except for finding her. He is described as angry and dangerous but never comes off that way.

Despite the lacking main characters I like the mystery with all the twists and turns as information was slowly revealed. I had a guess between two people at the end on who the killer was and while I did guess right for one of them I appreciate not being able to figure it out easily. 

69 Million Things I Hate About You

 

69 Million Things I Hate About You was a Free Friday recently so I decided to give it a try. It is an easy read and I pretty much read it in two sittings. 

Parts of the book were unbelievable, immature, but flat out funny. Kiersten hates being perfect for her boss but needs the job. Upon learning she has a windfall of money coming in she decides to pay her boss back with some well deserved pranks. Most of the pranks are immature but funny. I did laugh a lot at the antics in the book. If you are easily offended this is not a story for you and it could be triggering for people who have dealt with sexual harassment in the work force in the past.