Four Books

The four books that I have read this week are Mary Balogh's The Proposal, Patricia Briggs' Cry Wolf, E. L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, and Lisa Scottoline's Come Home.  One thing they have in common is that I intend to read other titles by these four authors because I liked all four books.

They're very different of course.  The Proposal is a Regency novel of class differences and love overcoming them, extremely well written and romantic.  Cry Wolf is a fantasy of werewolves and pack politics with, interesting to me, a dominant - submissive role as part of the pack's relationships.  Fifty Shades of Grey is being touted as porn but isn't in any way, a mature novel, for sure, of a young woman who wants to love a man who can only love her if she is the submissive to his dominant, which involves chainings and beatings. Come Home is an intense mystery that really did make me want to skip parts so I could get to the end; I actually looked at the last two pages halfway through to make sure a particular character was part of the ending.

What makes them the same is that first, each is well written and, second, each centers upon a normal woman in unique situations.  Even Anna, the Omega werewolf, is basically a woman trying to figure out how to adapt to a situation beyond her control. The women are well developed characters and the plots drive them into areas outside of their usual environment. 

I usually read several books a week and I'll keep you posted on what I'm reading.  During lunch at the shop I'm currently reading Fear by Michael Grant.  It's the fifth book in a series which started with Gone, when all the children under 15 are trapped in a bubble away from all adults.  I'll be reading other books at home and that's going to require a trip to the library.