Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans. From the acclaimed author of the “swoon-worthy… rom-com” (The Washington Post) Dear Emmie Blue.

On a snowy evening in March, thirty-something Noelle Butterby is on her way back from an event at her old college when disaster strikes. With a blizzard closing off roads, she finds herself stranded, alone in her car, without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone.

All seems lost until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together, until morning arrives and the roads finally clear. The two strangers part, positive they’ll never see each other again but fate, it seems, has a different plan. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence.

With plenty of charming twists and turns and Lia Louis’s “bold, standout voice” (Gillian McAllister, author of The Good Sister), Eight Perfect Hours is a gorgeously crafted novel that will make you believe in the power of fate.

 

 

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Emily Bestler Books (S&S)

 

 

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Ruthie – ☆☆☆☆
I really enjoyed this sweet, serendipitous, and sexy story, which all started with a snowstorm.

Noelle and Sam spend a night together after their journeys are disrupted by snow. And here starts a connection which we see slowly unfold and turn into a most unexpected source. Whilst the chances that they should meet are really small, I subscribe to the idea that life is stranger than fiction, and this book skirts along the limits in a really clever way.

It is impossible not to want the two of them to find a way to be together, even if they live completely different lives.

A lovely read, thank you, Lia Louis!

 

 

LIA LOUIS lives in the United Kingdom with her partner and three young children. Before raising a family, she worked as a freelance copywriter and proofreader. She was the 2015 winner of Elle magazine’s annual writing competition and has been a contributor for Bloomsbury’s Writers’ and Artists’ blog for aspiring writers. She is the author of Somewhere Close to Happy, Dear Emmie Blue, and Eight Perfect Hours.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis to read and review.

The House Guests by Emilie Richards

Two women. Two families. Two lifetimes' worth of secrets.

In the wake of her husband’s sudden death, Cassie Costas finds her relationship with her teenage stepdaughter unraveling. After their move to historic Tarpon Springs, Florida, Savannah hates her new town, her school and most of all her stepmom, whom she blames for her father’s death. Cassie has enough to contend with as she searches for answers about the man she shared a life with, including why all their savings have disappeared.

When Savannah’s rebellion culminates in an act that leaves single mother Amber Blair and her sixteen-year-old son homeless, Cassie empathizes with the woman’s predicament and invites the strangers to move in. As their lives intertwine, Cassie realizes that Amber is hiding something. She’s evasive about her past, but the fear in her eyes tells a darker story. Cassie wonders what the woman living under her roof is running from… and what will happen if it finally catches up to her.

 

 

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Harlequin

 

 

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Sarah – ☆☆☆
This is an almost painfully slow story about four people sharing a house in Florida. The house belongs to Cassie and her stepdaughter, Savannah. The houseguests are Amber and her son, Will. Cassie invites Amber to live with her after Savannah steals Amber’s savings.

I really struggled with this book. There are a couple of storylines here that should be exciting. Cassie is digging into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of her husband, Savannah’s father. Amber is running from something – and for the longest time, readers don’t know what. However, both of these storylines drag along without any building tension. Interspersed between are scenes where Cassie and Savannah struggle with grief, relocating, and being poor(er) than they are accustomed to. Cassie reads as slightly useless, and Savannah as spoilt, so I found it really difficult to have empathy for either of them. Amber and Will are much more likeable, but Amber is too secretive and guarded for readers to ever connect with.

With too many characters and too many narrative perspectives, this book becomes unwieldy. I was unable to keep the additional supporting characters straight. Cassie’s family members, her husband’s previous colleagues, the men Cassie and Amber date, Savannah’s friends… It is all a bit much in a single story. There are a couple of revelations at the end that should have been exciting, but they just weren’t. I’m a fast reader and I read just about everything. It isn’t often that I pick up, put down, and avoid a book as much as I did this one.

 

 

USA Today bestselling author EMILIE RICHARDS has written more than seventy novels. She has appeared on national television and been quoted in Reader’s Digest, right between Oprah and Thomas Jefferson. Born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Richards has been married for more than forty years to her college sweetheart. She splits her time between Florida and Western New York, where she is currently plotting her next novel.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of The House Guests by Emilie Richards to read and review.

The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson

A triumphant and touching debut about the unlikeliest superstar you’ll ever meet.

Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.

There’s also another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s new plan that his single mom, Sadie, wasn’t ready for: he wants to find the father he’s never known. Determined to put a smile back on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face up to her own messy past, get Norman to the Fringe and help track down a man whose identity is a mystery, even to her.

Julietta Henderson’s delightfully funny and tender debut takes us on a road trip with a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a long time to come, and teaches us that—no matter the odds—we must always reach for the stars.

 

 

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MIRA (Harlequin)

 

 

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Ruthie – ☆☆☆☆
4.5 stars of poignant writing

This is a book which I started at 6am in the morning and didn't stop until I had finished it – it was a good thing I was on leave! I really did just read it from cover to cover – even taking it with me whilst I grabbed some breakfast, and waiting till I had done to get dressed. I say this just to warn you that you will just get so involved that you may forget other responsibilities.

When thinking about how to review this book, I realise just how rich the story is, and how much I know about the people that we meet along the journey to Edinburgh. There are wonderful vignettes of incidents which lend themselves perfectly to explaining what can happen when on a trip. But whilst the journey and arrival is important, it is in the very first few pages that the scene is set to give us cause to be concerned about how anyone on the front cover could suggest that this will be a funny book – and yet it really is, in a rather English understated, raconteur, or even observational comic way!

My absolutely favourite bit was when Norman's mum, Sadie, flicks through Jax's texts to her, him being the cheeky kid that he was, and yet the one who knew that reassuring her that Normie was safe was the right thing to do. But there are many fabulous parts to this clever, funny, and immensely readable book – I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

 

 

Julietta Henderson is a full-time writer and comedy fan who splits her time between her home country of Australia and the UK. The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman is Julietta’s first novel.

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson to read and review.

How to Survive a Summer by Nick White

A searing debut novel centering around a gay-to-straight conversion camp in Mississippi and a man's reckoning with the trauma he faced there as a teen.

Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to “cure” homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he’s forced to face his past—and his role in another camper’s death.

As he recounts the events surrounding his “failed rehabilitation,” Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer. With a masterful confluence of sensibility and place, How to Survive a Summer introduces an exciting new literary voice from the American South.

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Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Angela – ☆☆☆☆☆
I don’t read a lot of literary fiction. I tend to stick to romance, having eclectic tastes when it comes to the many romance sub-genres. However, one of my co-reviewers on the blog asked me to request How to Survive a Summer via NetGalley and I was in the mood for something different over the Memorial Day weekend, so I queued it up on my Kindle and dove right in. Suffice it to say, I’m glad I did because I was enthralled with the poignant story that White has penned.

While How to Survive a Summer is fiction, White’s writing style reminds me of the autobiographies I read during my sociology and criminal justice courses in college. The book is written from Will’s point of view and the manner in which he moves from the present to the past and back again, the way flashbacks and memories are integrated in the story, it gives the book such an autobiographical feel that I had to remind myself more than once that it was indeed fiction. I found myself caught up in Will’s anxiety when confronted by ghosts from his past, his awkwardness as he attempts to embark upon a new relationship, and the rollercoaster ride of emotions he experienced as he returns to Mississippi to lay his ghosts to rest once and for all, only to discover that not all of them were willing to be buried… or should be.

Despite being a fan of romance, the relationship that Will and Zeus begin to develop was probably my least favorite part of the story. I actually tended to read and dump those scenes as they didn’t feel crucial to Will’s current journey. So much so that when my co-reviewer pointed out details about Zeus’s transgender status that seemed implausible, I actually had no recollection of them and upon re-reading those scenes, I had to agree with her that they didn’t match what I knew of transgender individuals and their sexuality – while I don’t pretend to be an expert, it may be a sticking point for some readers. Ultimately, I was too caught up in Will’s tale of how he survived that traumatic summer of his teens, how it impacted his life, the journey he took to reconcile his memories, what he learned about himself and the others who were at the camp that summer, and the outcome of his road trip home to Mississippi. I apologize for the vagueness of my review, but I’m trying not to spoil anything for potential readers. I’m not really sure who to recommend How to Survive a Summer to because of the autobiographical feel of the writing style and the past-to-present flow of the storyline will be a turn-off for many of those within my circle, but if these are not sticking points for you and the subject matter is one that interests you, I suggest downloading the sample and giving it a read because by the time you reach the end of it, you’ll know whether or not you want to continue on Will’s journey with him – I know I did.

Nick White is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio State University. A native of Mississippi, he earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His short stories have been published in a variety of places, including The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Indiana Review, Day One, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.

Connect with Nick

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of How to Survive a Summer by Nick White to read and review.