3 books, one post

This book made me go into a kind of funk. Normally when I read I just flow along the pages and get lost in a book but I didn't with this one. Maybe it was that it hit too close to home a few times (the same night I read about a dog fight in the the book my own dog was attacked by a German Shepherd) but I just wasn't happy reading this book. Then, about half way through, a friend (who has very similar book tastes to me) said she hated the ending, so I was dreading that. I can't go into the story without ruining it, but I will say the one redeeming factor of this book was how poetic the language was. The chapters told from the dog's point of view were beautiful. So I would recommend it and would give it maybe 3 stars.

Tawny, I think you'll like this one. The writing style was very similar to The Time Traveler's Wife. I also found a lot of similarities in the story. Same kind of relationship (little girl having a friendship with a middle aged man who she ends up falling in love with years later when she is an adult). Same sense of "yeah right" (instead of the man being a time traveler he is an imaginary friend). And, just like I liked The Time Traveler's Wife, I really liked this book. It had some language and 1 sex scene that was quite tame.The story: Jane is a little girl with a father who doesn't see her often and a mother who sees her but doesn't pay attention to her. So she has an imaginary friend, Michael, who she eats ice cream with and who is kind of a father figure to her. Then he leaves and tells her she won't remember him but she does. Years later, when she is in her 30s, he comes into her life again. And that's where the love story begins. Really sweet, really thoughtful, a good read.

I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about President Jackson. Like, did you know that he actually killed a man in a duel over something the man had said about his wife, Rachel? And that him killing a man wasn't what made him lose the presidency the first time he ran?So the story: Rachel is in a crappy marriage but is stuck because it's illegal for a woman to ask for a divorce and even if it hadn't been it was literally unheard of for people to even get divorces and even then they had to be due to something really bad like adultery. So Rachel is stuck in this marriage and then she meets Andrew Jackson, who pretty breathes awesomeness. So then she does get divorced but only because she admits (falsley) to being and adultress. Crazy, I tell you. So the book is basically the story of their marriage and his rise to the presidency and the effects her first marriage has on said rise. Some of the passages got flowerly and mushy so I skipped over them (try reading just the adjectives, you still get the gist without the gag), but I liked the book as a whole. The ending will bring you to tears.