4.5 stars Corey Callahan was expecting to go to prestigious Harkness College as a varsity hockey player, but instead arrives there in a wheelchair, after ending up partly paralysed from the wait down after an accident on the ice. Her cheerful new roommate doesn’t seem to mind that they have to stay in a handicap-accessible room away from all the other Harkness freshmen. If having to re-assess all her hopes and dreams about college wasn’t difficult enough, Corey also falls head over heels for the […]
When We Attempt Big Things Some Times We Screw Them Up.
This book has proven difficult to review. I finished it 5 days ago and have been avoiding the review. I also read the first ten percent of the book and put it down for a few days to recalibrate my expectations. I had known from our romance readers group on Facebook that there were problems with this, the fifth book, in the Ivy Years Series. What are the problems and what were the expectations? Let’s discuss. If you’ve been reading along with those of us […]
Those Harkness Dorms Sound Fantastic
In trying to review this book I now know why some of you wait to review these series in one fell swoop instead of individually. In praising this effort from Bowen I find myself tempted to just repeat myself from previous reviews. In the fourth book in the series, Sarina Bowen has found her sweet spot and is continuing to write feminist bent romance and in many ways appears to be gunning to be the Courtney Milan of the contemporary new adult genre (as much […]
Warning: Spoilers After this Title
I’m not trying to be cute here, but 15 minutes into reading The Fifteenth Minute, I became very uncomfortable. This is an accurate representation of my face – my smile morphed from anticipatory to a rictus grin of horror. I love Bowen’s previous installments in The Ivy Years series, though I’m less enchanted with her Gravity series. I pre-ordered The Fifteenth Minute and was very excited. But then I read about DJ’s drama and suddenly I was much less excited. I did my best to […]
I want to grow up to be like Rikker’s grandma.
I have been continuing with The Ivy Years books by Sarina Bowen and they continue to be delightful. Delightful feels like such a weird word to use about a series that focuses on such relatively heavy topics and subjects. As I’ve discussed previously The Year We Hid Away and The Year We Fell Down each tackle heavy topics with a deft hand, and The Understatement of the Year, the third full novel in the series, does the same, this time venturing into the dynamics of […]
The Good Guy and the Not Dumb Blonde
I wasn’t planning on reading Blonde Date immediately after finishing The Year We Hid Away. But I had a book hangover and spending some time with the ancillary characters that were to be featured in their own novella seemed to be the perfect plan. One of my few complaints about The Year We Hid Away was that we didn’t get to spend much time at all with other characters or parts of Harkness College, and Blonde Date fills that gap well. The story is the […]