Confessions of a Contractor

Confessions of a Contractor by Richard Murphy brings us into the world of a contractor. Henry is a contractor that sometimes gets involved with his female clients. This time he has gotten involved with two women at once, who happen to be former best friends. Drama ensues. I really enjoyed this book. I was fascinated by the details and hints on hiring and maintaining a good relationship with your contractor. The complex relationship between a contractor and his client is something I had never considered before. It was a very unique idea for a book and very entertaining. The romance aspect told from the man's point of view was refreshing. This was a fairly light read and I recommend it to anyone looking for a something different with a bit of romance. 4 stars.

First Daughter

First Daughter by Eric Van Lustbader was not the kind of book that I normally read. I do like suspense and mystery at times though so I thought I'd try something different. The book is about a loner investigator, Jack, who had a hard life growing up and has the scars to prove it. He is called to help in the investigation of the president-elect's daughter's disappearance. This book has a lot of plot twists and many characters, which made it a little confusing to follow. It was a pretty good story, although I think it fizzled out at the end. Overall, it was a pretty good book and held my attention despite the many twists. I would recommend the book to anyone who likes suspenseful crime novels. 3.5 stars.

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

The Wednesday Sisters is the story of 5 women and their friendship over the years. This book started off a little rocky. There are 5 main characters and not much of a description of each one or introduction to the story. It seems like you are just thrown into the story right from the first page and that was confusing to me. But once I learned more about the characters and got to like them and became interested in their lives, the book grew on me. One thing that bothered me was the historical references in the book. It seemed like Clayton was trying to chock the book full of references to things that happened throughout the 60's and 70's in order to give the reader a better sense of the time period. But to me, that didn't work and seemed to be "trying too hard". But once I overlooked that and began to care about the characters, I really enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the characters' plights to maintain strong friendships, raise families, and their efforts to become published writers during a time when women were considered inferior to men. I wanted to know more of what happened to these women over their lives up until the present. I wanted to know more at the end of the book. I recommend this book to women, mothers and people that enjoy writing with the hope of being published someday. A good, quick easy read. 4 stars.

ARCs

ARCs are Advanced Reading Copies, which are books that you can get for free for reviewing books for publishers or other websites. As I mentioned before, I am Early Reviewer on Librarything. I also recently signed up for the First Look Program on Barnes and Noble.com. You can read more about places to get ARCs on this book blog. Happy Reading!