The first one is from my Verified Purchase Review Group, and it’s for Phoenix Incandescent Endeavor Series Book 1, by A.E.M. Will also share both in Esme’s Senior Salon:
I opened this book club read with some trepidation, as Fantasy is not my usual reading genre. However, the book is well written and easy to read, and would appeal to old and young alike. I think it was a good choice for my initiation into Fantasy!
Charlotte Locklear was raised by her parents Audrey and Isaac in a magic castle/hotel, where she now works at the front desk. She does not possess her father’s magic weaver powers, but in order to gain these abilities she knows she has to marry into the magical world and have all her previous memories erased. Her parents arrange a ‘coming-out’ ball for Charlotte, a kind of last chance to choose between keeping her memories and living in the human (danes) world or choosing magic and love and being ordered to get married to a weaver sooner than she would have liked.
Her parents invite several suitors to the ball, for Charlotte to choose from. She is escorted to the ball by her humanoid eagle friend Beau, but without giving away too many spoilers, tragedy strikes and the evening does not go as planned.
Four stars for a very imaginative read!
The second one ‘This is Going to Hurt’ by Adam Kay, is a best-seller memoir and perhaps the funniest but also the most heart-breaking book I have ever read. Mr Kay tells of events during his time as a junior doctor working in the NHS.
Working in the NHS as I do, I could immediately identify with so many of Mr Kay’s anecdotes. Starting off my career as a ward clerk back in 2002, all the admin staff and nurses on the ward dreaded the two changeover days in February and August when all junior doctors moved to another speciality. Nowadays it’s only once a year, but you still do not want to be a hospital in-patient on that day and be seen by a junior doctor (if a consultant isn’t about) who knows absolutely nothing about his/her new speciality!
Mr Kay’s wit is biting. He’s seen it all and done it all, and writes in a terribly funny world-weary way. However, it’s no secret that he does not work as a doctor anymore, and in the book he gives the heart-rending reason why. I can vouch for every word this author has written, as I’ve had 16 years of seeing it all for myself.
5 stars for the humour, and for actually telling the truth about what goes on behind hospital doors. So often hospital staff are reprimanded for any warts-and-all disclosures, but now Mr Kay just writes for TV and film. This is one dreadfully funny man.
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This book follows the lives of two people of Irish descent. Paul arrives in Brooklyn in 1895 aged 19. He meets and is captivated by Maeve whose parents arrived two decades earlier but met tragic ends. She develops a fondness for the innocent Irishman but is forced to deceive him. On discovering the deception he leaves Brooklyn, eventually joining the gold rush to the Klondike and, later, Alaska. Throughout the years thoughts of Maeve are never far away.
