Let me start off by saying that, with The Ivy Years series, Sarina Bowen became #1 with a bullet on my list of favorite contemporary authors. Her blend of humor, sensitivity, romantic instinct, steam, and generally good writing really came together in a fantastic series. The Fifteenth Minute is no exception in technical merit. But, to me, it had issues that weren’t so in its predecessors. A lot of them have to do with the underlying premise, which I’ll get to more in a minute. […]
Four years in four days
I can recognize a sensation when I see it. Sarina Bowen’s tag blew up this summer with positive reviews for her series, The Ivy Years, and after more minor prodding on Facebook, I decided to change the status on when to read these from “Later” to “Now.” All four stories feature couples who are in some capacity part of the Fake Harvard Harkness varsity hockey universe. Each book excels at portraying characters who behave as real people would, in situations both mundane and extraordinary. These […]
There Should Have Been Too Much Sadness In This Book, But It Worked Very Well
When I finished reading The Year We Hid Away I commented on Goodreads that the struggles these characters face should make this one unreadable, but Bowen has a knack for writing believable characters in unbelievable circumstances. I was completely absorbed in the world of Bridger and Scarlet Normally the topics at hand in The Year We Hid Away would be found in darker, grittier fiction – not the Romance Novel department. Bridger, who we met in The Year We Fell Down, is in his junior […]
An Interesting Romance Told Well
I rely wholeheartedly on the advice of fellow Romance readers as I continue to broaden my reading horizons. There is simply too much good stuff available to waste time with the bad stuff. Cannonball Read has been hit with a couple of reviews for Sarina Bowen’s The Ivy Years series, a Contemporary/New Adult romance series set at a prestigious university in Connecticut. The reviews have been nearly unanimously positive. I of course downloaded the first one to my Nook and when trapped without my copy […]
In which I return from a lengthy vacation and dive head-first in to the New Adult genre.
I’ve been away for a month on a lovely vacation. Mountains, beach, Boston, family, and 10 great books. And now I’m back to reality. Laundry, unpacking, back to school shopping, and book reviews. I’m not sure I can take it. Because I read a 5-book (well, actually, 4 novels and one novella) series, I’m going to start my reviews there. Even though they were the last books I read, and the freshest in my mind, and I should probably try and remember what happened in those […]
Even More New Adults in Romantical Situations
So many “new adult” romances, so little time. I recommend The Ivy Years series by Sarina Bowen and will be looking into her back catalogue. Taking place at a New England college, Harkness, the stories are not light and yet avoid melodrama. These are young people coming into their own and figuring out who they want to be. Each story features at least one character who is an athlete, mostly they are involved in hockey, but there are also soccer and basketball team members, and […]