Sharlene M

Yes, I love Edsel Bronfman. We've all known an Edsel. Kind of a nice but pathetic nerdy guy that everybody pretty much ignores. Edsel is plugging along with life when he answers a phone call and learns he has won an all expenses paid three-day weekend at Sandscapes condominium in Destin, Florida. The only catch is that he has to listen to an hour-long presentation on Sandscapes and the charm of Destin. Oh, and the prize is for Edsel and a companion. Or so he thinks. Now Edsel has yet to have a date, unless you count a brief encounter with Mary Day McCauley back in high school where he may or may not have lost his virginity. So who could he possibly know well enough to consider asking them to spend the weekend in beautiful Destin. As if this isn't enough excitement for one day, the receptionist in his building, Sheila McNabb, strikes up a conversation with him on the way to lunch and the plot unfolds from there. As Edsel becomes more comfortable with Sheila, his personality begins to blossom and soon a number of attractive young women find something worthwhile in Edsel.

Daniel Wallace does an excellent job in developing his characters, from Edsel to Sheila, Edsel's impossible mother, Muriel, and his next door neighbor, Thomas Edison. As Edsel's life unfolds, all kinds of possibilities open up. Will Edsel find a soul mate to spend the all expense paid weekend in beautiful Destin, Florida? No spoiler here. I hope you enjoy this delightful novel as much as I did.

I'm not going to take up space retelling what the books is about; but let me start by saying that I gave this book five stars which is a rating I usually reserve for something akin to "To Kill A Mockingbird." No, this is not a Pulitizer Prize Winner but I can tell you that I had a hard time putting it down and that counts a lot for me in a book. The characters are extremely likeable and I found myself wanting things to work out for the best for them. The ending was surprising and the author didn't leave the reader hanging. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I will look for some of the author's previous novels. Thank you, BookBrowse, for introducing me to a new author.

I tried but I just could not get into this book. Not sure what it was; science fiction; fantasy, an adult fairy tale. I'm just not sure. The only think I liked was the description of the relationship between the boy and his family. That was well developed.

I had great hopes for this book as I thought the subject matter held a lot of possibilities, the story of a poor man in China who earned his living as a junk collector and made a hope for the abandoned infant girls that he found. Indeed, the author did a good job of making the subject of the story, Benfu, come to life and enables the reader to identify each of the daughters who became part of Benfu's life. But overall, I found the dialogue to be stiff and, to me, the story did not flow smoothly with a predictable ending. My initial impression was that this was a first-time author so I was surprised to see that she had other books to her credit. Although the subject matter was good, the author's writing style did not intrigue me enough that I will read future books in the series.

I was really looking forward to reading this book since I enjoyed The Nanny Dairies by the same authors, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. But as someone else mentioned, with a change of names, you have the Monica Lewansky story all over again. The subject was painful to me then and reading the book was equally painful. I kept asking myself how Jamie could fall so deeply in love in such a short time and imagine a future together with so little commitment on Greg's part. You had to read a lot more into the affair than was evident within it's pages. It was interesting to see the impact this affair and the outcome played on family members and others connected with the story. I hadn't considered that previously. Basically I'm just wondering why we had to rehash this painful topic once again.