Carole Bellacera

The complex relationships of two Olympic ice skating dance teams give different views of skating for the gold. American skaters Kerry and Adam are out of gold medal contention, or at least Kerry thinks so, skating one last Olympics for the benefit of her partner, Adam, who is in love with her even after their personal relationship ended long ago. For Russian skaters Elena and Mikhail, Elena is driven to win gold by any means, to the point that she has demanded to be paired with Mikhail to accomplish her goal, much to Mikhail’s chagrin. In Russia, he isn’t given a choice. However, he sees the opportunity to gain asylum in the U.S., and he has information that he hopes will help to barter his escape from the ties his home country binds him with. Lucky for him, Kerry’s brother works with the C.I.A.

Even before he approaches Kerry to ask for her help, the chemistry between them sizzles, and yet a personal relationship is out of the question knowing what lies ahead of him.

The story follows their cross country trek to win Mikhail’s freedom from Russia, from his overbearing partner, and from a haunting past. Mikhail and Kerry discover they have much in common along their personal journeys to the Olympic dream. Followed by the Russian mafia and people with their own personal agendas to stop them, this is a thrilling tale that kept me reading to find out how it all unfolds. Ms. Bellacera does a brilliant job of creating well-rounded characters that you cheer for and boo for. There are even moments when you feel sorry for the antagonist—well almost.

In the interest of disclosure, there were many editing snafus. My favorite one was an errant search and replace, where the letters t-u-n-a were replaced with c-a-v-i-a-r and “whole word” clearly wasn’t selected. This created one spectacular word that stopped me dead in my tracks until I was able to solve the puzzle of what that word was meant to be. There was also one section of the story that stretched my imagination beyond belief – while the bad guys chased after Kerry and Mikhail, they had an uncanny ability to know exactly where they’d stopped. The truck stop for food I could buy, but later, when they switched cars, it didn’t make sense to me how the bad guys 1) knew they had stopped to do that, and 2) knew – traveling across the width of the entire country—which car lot and in which city they stopped (this also turned into a copyedit error—which city did they stop in?). That “bad guy” scene wasn’t necessary to the story or to the plot.

That being said, the occasional editing errors did not stop me from enjoying the story as a whole. It was a very entertaining read and I would highly recommend it.
… (meer)

I did enjoy this. I didn’t read the synopsis before embarking on it…or if I did, I didn’t remember it, so I didn’t know what to expect, and it was a wonderful surprise.

This book starts off in the early ‘50s, with 18-year-old Lily Rae Foster about to go off to college. Her strict upbringing has enforced a ‘conservative’ approach to relationships with boys, and she dumps her high-school boyfriend when he tries to ‘go too far’. However, she wastes little time before finding herself pregnant to handsome, but rough-around-the-edges childhood friend, Jake. Forced into an early marriage, two people find themselves together but alone. Jake is the son of a mother, disenchanted with her marriage, and a violent father. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Lily loves her dysfunctional, husband deeply, but she has to fight for her independence, sometimes her safety, and does her best to do right by herself and her children.

Carole manages to make you hang on to every word; and what lovely words…the Kentucky-flavoured turn of phrase is delightful, especially to this Brit’s ‘ears’, and brought a smile to my face. But, what really keeps you glued to the pages—or rather ‘who’—is Lily and in some respects, Jake. Lily is loving and forgiving, but she nevertheless stands her ground; although her college education was cut short, her intelligence, determination, and sheer gutsiness sees her through disappointment and humiliation. Jake is a drunk who thinks the world owes him a wife who should do nothing but please her man in every respect. But, like Lily, the reader can see a glimmer, albeit a faint glimmer, of a man who probably does love Lily and hates himself for his treatment of her. Whether or not she can change him remains to be seen.

If I had to pick one thing I didn’t like, it would only be the recipes and photographs between certain chapters. The recipes belonged at the end, if they had to be there at all and the colour photographs (lost on a black-and-white Kindle) were distracting. If they were meant to depict the characters, they had more of a tendency to destroy my own images of them. I would have preferred them not to be there.

This is a lovely story, spanning 25 years with a spunky heroine and nostalgic references to the ‘50s and ‘60s and an 'I wonder if' ending. Terrific.
… (meer)

If you enjoy reading super depressing and fairly disturbing stories...then this is the book for you. It certainly was NOT for me. I'm not sure what I really expected after reading the synopsis, but this wasn't it... I think it was the last sentence of the synopsis that hooked me - "But, as is always the case after a storm passes, you will also find life beginning anew." Yeah...maybe a couple of the stories have a victorious ending, but the vast majority of them just left me feeling extremely uncomfortable. Also, even though the synopsis makes it seem as if at least half of the stories are storm related, most of them are about abusive spouses and horrible human beings. I guess having gone through the big tornado on April 27th of last year, I was looking for an anthology that focused on the sunshine after the storm and how the human spirit and "Mother Nature" have an incredible ability to bounce back from adversity. If that's what you're looking for too, then don't look here...

Note: I received this in a member giveaway on LibraryThing. All of the above is 100% honest.… (meer)

A fairly well done anthology with storms of some kind as the running thread. Short stories, poetry and imagery made for an interesting combination but my overall enjoyment was slight. I thought some of the short stories wordy and obvious, my favorite being "The Wait" by Farah Ghuznavi.
I'm also discovering I like the idea of poetry with it's sparsity of words and it's imagery more appealing than the reality. Though I quite enjoy Haiku. My favorite of the poems was "Tornado Brewing" by Carol Alexander, I think due to childrens viewpoint.
The included imagery was, sadly, hard to enjoy on my first generation nook.… (meer)