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Although On the Beach by Nevil Shute is not on my original list of Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away, it is a book that I had heard about a bunch of times before adding it to my cart and accidentally buying […]
We are getting closer to the finish line with our first list of 10 Books I am rereading before giving them away with this week’s book, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. When I first started this list I had high ambitions about […]
The latest book in my series 10 Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away Part 1 is the namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I am most of the way through my list of books to read and will be posting Part 2 coming up pretty soon. I had books set out for both part 2 and 3 but everything got shuffled back together when we were packing for our move so I will have to create new lists.
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Once again I didn’t really remember much about this book before reading it again but I was pleasantly surprised. The Namesake is about a family from India that moves to the United States and how they navigate living in a new country with all of the different ways of doing things. The reader starts out in India with the story of the parents’ lives there and move to the United States with them. As the story progresses there are births, marriages, deaths and many more life events that change and shape all of the characters. The story focuses on the son Gogol later in the book and how he navigates life at college and with holding onto the traditions of his parents while also growing up in a completely different country from them.
The namesake is very well written and I read it very quickly because I just couldn’t put it down. I last read this when it first came out maybe around 20 years ago and it hit differently this time now that one of my kids is grown up and out of the house and my parents are much older. This is a great book for people of all ages to read and get a different experience out of.
I absolutely loved this book and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to read. I am however not sure if I will keep it or not. It is very good but I also could get this one from the library very easily and I am not sure if I need to read it again. Space is tight at our new house so I will keep this one for now and reevaluate once I have my books unpacked and I have read through a few more lists of books.
Look out for new book reviews most Fridays from now until the end of 2024. The next couple of books are When The Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka and On the Beach by Nevil Shute.
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Number 5 in my Rereading Books Before I Give The Away Part 1 series is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. This book has been around for a while and I forgot how much I liked it the first time I read it. There […]
March is upon us and it is time for new monthly goals. This year my focus is on finishing up projects that I have so it should come as no surprise that my main goal for March is to work through my project backlog. I […]
The fourth book in my first Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Series was “We’ll Meet Again” by Mary Higgins Clark. As usual I am writing a brief review of the book with my decision to either keep the book or give it away. To read my other book reviews click the link for my original Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away post and all of them will be listed out.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
This book is a mystery about a woman named Molly who is just getting out of jail after being falsely convicted of her husband’s murder. She has amnesia and can’t remember anything from the night her husband Gary was killed except for a mysterious sound she can’t quite remember but seems familiar. She was discovered by her housekeeper Edna asleep in her bed the next morning with her husband dead in his office downstairs.
After jail Molly resumes her old life in her house, reconnects with her friends and Edna comes back to work for her as a housekeeper. Molly runs into an old high school friend Fran and the two of them hatch a plan to figure out who the real killer of Molly’s husband is. Fran is an investigative journalist and immediately gets to work interviewing everyone.
Many sticky situations and plot twists happen during the investigation and you find out who the killer is with a great reveal that made me remember how much I liked this book. I would definitely recommend “We’ll Meet Again” for anyone who loves a great plot twist! I am going to look for more books by this author at the library and see if I like them as well. Originally I was going to keep this book because it was so good but realistically now that I know the plot twist I’m not so sure. I may be satisfied with reading other books from this series so my verdict has changed too…
VERDICT: GIVE AWAY
My next review will be posted Thursday 1/25 about Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.
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We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
I reread The Beach House by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge as part of my Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Part 1 early in my stack of 10 books. As with my other books, I wanted to do a brief review of […]
At the end of September, faced with a mountain of books I had not read in almost a decade, I decided to start sorting through my books and reread any of those that I was unsure of keeping. I originally created this list of ten […]
When I created my post about rereading books kept in storage for too many years I wasn’t sure whether I would actually have time to read the books on my list. My post “Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Part 1” was an attempt to get started with a small pile of books from the many boxes in storage since our move eight years ago. I reluctantly started “Pearl Cove” by Elizabeth Lowell and it was hard for me to get back into reading it but once I got going I remembered how much I love this book.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
“Pearl Cove” is a typical action adventure romance novel set in the Pacific surrounding a murder at a pearl farm. This is the third book in the series and I have no idea where I bought it or why I haven’t read the first two books but I will definitely look at my library to see if they have the first two. I may even purchase them from a second hand store if I like them, but I am not sure yet. I am supposed to be narrowing down my collection right?
The book is set in both Australia and Seattle focusing on the pearl trade and the murder of the creator of a rumored rare black rainbow pearl that is highly coveted. I will whole heartedly admit that I knew nothing of pearls before reading these books, or that Seattle had a pearl district. I have not yet done any research into the pearl trade in Seattle but I will tell you that this book gave me more respect for the humble pearl as a piece of jewelry. There are enough facts about pearl growing in this book to keep it interesting and the plot behind the pearls fits really well with the story. It does make me wonder more about the pearl trade in general and if more modern technologies have made pearl seeding easier. A quick google search did reveal that black rainbow pearls are a real thing and that they are beautiful. The would fit in very well with our Midnight Rainbow aesthetic over at Oscoey Shop.
As far as the plot of the book goes, it fits in with a fairly standard romance novel, but I feel like I am missing quite a bit of back story by not reading the first two books. I am going to read the first two books before I comment on any of the continuity between them but from what I understand, the main characters Archer Donovan and Hannah McGarry in this book have previously met in another book. Hannah was married to Archer’s deceased half-brother which provides some conflict in their relationship. Their relationship in this book is strained and then magically better after a misunderstanding is cleared up which I feel is pretty typical of romance novels.
Overall I liked both Archer and Hannah but I felt like their characters could have had more depth. I am not sure though if that was because I didn’t read the first two books or if it was to keep the book at a shorter length. There was some macho man behavior going on with Archer but honestly this time around it didn’t bother me nearly as much as when I was reading Ecotopia. With romance novels I come to expect that sort of writing much more than with a more serious piece like Ecotopia.
I am not sure if I would recommend these books or not. I know that is kind of a cop out but I really feel like I should read the first two before passing any judgement so this review will be pretty short. I did not realize this was a romance novel when I added it to my list. My memories were more of the action/adventure parts of the book, of which there is plenty, but be fair warned this is technically a romance novel. I would definitely recommend starting with the first book in the series, “Amber Beach“, if you want a more complete read but as it is, “Pearl Cove” does stand alone as a great read!
Stay tuned for our next book review from our list, An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne.
Pearl Cove by Elizabeth Lowell
An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne
When I was in early high school I read this book called “Ecotopia” by Ernest Callenbach. It had been recommended to me by my dad during a period of time when my family was headed towards chaos. At the time the book was eye-opening for […]
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