Michelle Sanderson may appear to be a strong, independent woman, but on the inside, she’s still the wounded girl who fled home years ago. A young army vet, Michelle returns to the quaint Blackberry Island Inn to claim her inheritance and recover from the perils of war. Instead, she finds the owner’s suite occupied by the last person she wants to see.

Carly Williams and Michelle were once inseparable, until a shocking betrayal destroyed their friendship. And now Carly is implicated in the financial disaster lurking behind the inn’s cheerful veneer.

Single mother Carly has weathered rumors, lies and secrets for a lifetime, and is finally starting to move forward with love and life. But if the Blackberry Island Inn goes under, Carly and her daughter will go with it.

To save their livelihoods, Carly and Michelle will undertake a turbulent truce. It’ll take more than a successful season to move beyond their devastating past, but with a little luck and a beautiful summer, they may just rediscover the friendship of a lifetime.
*Blurb from Goodreads*

I am not normally a big reader of chick lit, however I’m a big fan of Susan Mallery. With that in mind, I decided to take a chance on this book. While I’m still not a big fan of the genre as a whole, I still am a dedicated fan girl of Mallery.

Michelle is coming back home after ten years of being in the Army, she is wounded and looking to come back to the Inn where some of her happiest memories reside. But knowing that Carly, her ex-best friend is working there doesn’t make coming home any easier. Michelle isn’t ready to face her injury, deal with her time in the army and now Carly slowly taking things over at the Inn.

Carly has a young daughter to support, and her job at the Inn is her one true passion, but she worries that now Michelle is back, she is going to lose her job, her home, and her livelihood. But when an outside force pushes Michelle and Carly to work together, they just might be able to put their past behind them and find a way to not only work together, but find in each other the best friend they both so desperately need.

Let me first say that this book is first and foremost a chick-lit book. While it does have some romance parts, they are few and far between and definitely take a backseat to the friendship between Carly and Michelle and their own individual growth as women and friends. The romance reader in me knew what I was getting into, and still ended up feeling let down. While both Michelle and Carly do end up getting their HEAs, that aspect of the story takes place off page and behind the scenes.

That being said, I really enjoyed watching as Carly and Michelle had to each get over their own crap, get over the past and move on. While their history as friends didn’t paint a very pretty picture for either of them, they were also young and dumb and had a difficult time getting past that. I was glad to see that they didn’t let it fester for too long though. It was obvious they needed to hash it all out and come to terms with it, and once they did they were able to move forward.

I liked the way that Mallery dealt with Michelle’s PTSD and war injuries. That aspect of the book was absolutely amazing and so well done. I love that the very real issues surrounding war vets wasn’t glossed over or ignored completely, and instead we watched as Michelle struggled to come to terms with what she had to do to stay alive during times of war. It came across as a realistic and heart breaking and incredible portrayal of life after active duty. There were so many times I just wanted to pull Michelle into a hug and rock her to sleep.

I also really felt like I connected with Carly. She was a fierce mama bear who had to pull herself up from nothing in order to make a life for herself. His history with Michelle’s mom and the scorn of the town had me wanting to wrap her up as well and shield her from the nastiness that she occasionally was subjected to in the book. The strength of her character was amazing throughout, and I was glad to see her stand tall and do what needed to be done for herself and her daughter.

All in all while this isn’t my normal genre, I am glad I read this book. The friendship between Carly and Michelle was both hard and sweet. Although the romance reader in me wanted more on that front, I did enjoy the overall story. Fans of the chick-lit genre will definitely want to go out and pick up this book!
I give Barefoot Season a B

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Review – Barefoot Season by Susan Mallery is a post from: The Book Pushers | Book Reviews | Book Chatter

Blurb is from The Book Depository:

“Lara has always had an over – active imagination. Now she wonders if she is losing her mind. Normal twenty-something girls just don’t get visited by ghosts! But inexplicably, the spirit of Lara’s great aunt Sadie – in the form of a bold, demanding Charleston-dancing girl – has appeared to make one last request: Lara must track down a missing necklace Sadie simply can’t rest without. Lara’s got enough problems of her own. Her startup company is floundering, her best friend and business partner has run off to Goa, and she’s just been dumped by the love of her life. But as Lara spends time with Sadie , life becomes more glamorous, she dresses in beautiful vintage frocks and their treasure hunt turns into something intriguing and romantic. Could Sadie’s ghost be the answer to Lara’s problems and can two girls from different times end up learning something special from each other?”

I’m a fan of Kinsella’s Shopaholic series and her stand alone, Can You Keep A Secret. Her other stand alone novels I have been very disappointed with. Sad to say, I felt the same about Twenties Girl.

My main problem: I had no liking for the main characters, Lara, and the ghost of her Great Aunt, Sadie. I thought Lara was extremely weak and had no backbone to speak of. To be blunt, she was a complete ninny!

Lara leaves her job and takes all of her bank savings, and enters into a new Head Hunting firm with her best friend Natalie, who is a ‘headhunter’, without doing thorough research or background checks on Natalie. I admit, you instinctively believe what your BF tells you, but you don’t just enter blindly into a new business venture without checking the details for yourself. Especially after putting all of your live savings into it. That stuck me as extremely stupid.

So, Natalie ups and leaves to go abroad, leaving Lara who is inexperienced to run the firm. The firm is floundering and Lara doesn’t try and go after Natalie, she just bumbles along with no experience with disastrous results.

The other main character is Sadie, who is a ghost. Sadie appears at her own funeral, where only Lara can see her which is never explained. Yup, this is a story that is sort of paranormal, but is very much chick lit. IMO, a recipe for disaster as there are no explanations regarding how Sadie came to be. In a way, I wish Sadie never came to be. She was ‘unbelievably’ annoying in this book.

Between her and Lara, I had to put the book down numerous times in sheer exasperation. Sadie acted like a petulant child where she mostly screamed in Lara’s face, ordering Lara to do her actions for her. I felt as if I were reading about two children in this book.

Lara was very child-like regarding her ex-boyfriend. He clearly didn’t want her, yet Lara spied on him, stalked him and blindly swore that he still loved her. I felt embarrassed just reading about her feelings and reactions towards him. Where was her self respect? It gets worse though. Lara conspires to get back with Josh, her ex-boyfriend, by telling Sadie to use her powers on Josh. Oh yes, Sadie has special powers where she is able to command people to do exactly what she says by shouting and screaming in their ears. Sadie does what Lara wishes, and they get back together. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

While we have Lara finding the necklace, acting bat shit crazy over her ex boyfriend and trying to keep the business afloat, we have another sub-plot regarding the actual hero of the story, Ed, who I thought was kinda boring but nice. And even that avenue was annoying. Lara is only dating him because Sadie wants to. Yup, that’s right. Lara is dating Ed, so Sadie can pretend that she’s dating him. And Lara must say and do exactly what Sadie does as it’s Sadie’s man. *rolls eyes* And the only reason that Ed starts to date Lara in the first place is because Sadie makes him.

All of these sub-plots come head to head towards the end, but I was just glad the book was finishing. I may sound harsh, but I’m just disappointed with the whole slew of characters and their personalities.

In the end, we do find out the reason why the necklace was so important to Sadie and I admit, I did find it very sad and heart warming. This is the only time that Lara really starts to shine. I just wished she was like this from the beginning.

If you want a strong heroine, don’t read this book. If you want to read about a heroine who only gets a backbone in the last four chapters of the book, then read this book. If you want to read about a ghost who is extremely annoying, then read this book.

I give Twenties Girl 2.0 out of 5.

Twenties Girl is available from The Book Depository.co.uk (52% off) and from The Book Depository.com

Review: Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella is a post from: The Book Pushers | Book Reviews | Book Chatter