3 in 1 Review: Holiday Fix-It & Forget-It Cookbooks

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This review will be 3 books in 1 post.  All are cookbooks and by author Phyllis Pellman Good.  They are in the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook line that are recipes made in a slow cooker.

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Fix-It and Forget-It Holiday Main Dishes and Sides
Author: Phyllis Pellman Good

31 Main Dishes
19 Side Dishes
One section on Tips

Features recipes from easy to intense. Intense meaning more ingredients and prep time. Easy meaning easy to find recipes and easy prep time.

Some recipes have pictures of the completed recipe as a guide and hint of what can be created.

Easy to follow recipes that aren’t very complicated for beginners.

Tips include ideas for after dinner gifts, dinner invitations and color themes, and dinner traditions to be shared with guests.

I am a huge cookbook fanatic.  I may not be the best cook, but if it is easy and sounds good, you can bet I am going to try it.  I also love slow cooker recipes.  I love the ability to Fix-It and Forget-It.  This one featured some great dishes and sides that would be great for the holidays, but also great year round.  I have already included a few of them for my dinners for the upcoming holiday week!

Fix-It and Forget-It Holiday Sweets and Desserts
Author: Phyllis Pellman Good

50 Sweet Recipes
One section of Tips

Features recipes from easy to intense. Intense meaning more ingredients and prep time. Easy meaning easy to find recipes and easy prep time.

Some recipes have pictures of the completed recipe as a guide and hint of what can be created.

Easy to follow recipes that aren’t very complicated for beginners.

Tips include ideas for after dinner gifts, dinner invitations and color themes, and dinner traditions to be shared with guests.

I never realized how many desserts can be made in a crock pot!  I didn’t think breads or candy apples could be accomplished with one.  This book features step by step recipes on creating these treats with some even having little effort/prep time.

Fix-It and Forget-It Holiday Appetizers, Finger Foods and Beverage
Author: Phyllis Pellman Good

31 Appetizers, Snacks, and Spreads
18 Beverages
One section of Tips
Features recipes from easy to intense. Intense meaning more ingredients and prep time. Easy meaning easy to find recipes and easy prep time.
Some recipes have pictures of the completed recipe as a guide and hint of what can be created.
Easy to follow recipes that aren’t very complicated for beginners.
Tips include ideas for after dinner gifts, dinner invitations and color themes, and dinner traditions to be shared with guests.
This cookbook was great for giving ideas for snacking and drinking.  I loved all the appetizers and dips that were provided.  I am a huge cheese fan and this book gave me some new ideas for dips to use all year.  While some of the recipes focus on holiday theme, I did think that most of them could be adapted for all year long.  It also had some that would be great for Superbowl weekend and birthday parties. The beverage recipes range from original apple cider all the way to coffee.

RATING FOR ALL THREE
Outstanding book that will stay on my bookshelf for rereading!

Review: The Stranger by Kyra Davis

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The Stranger, Just One Night Part One
Author: Kyra Davis
Genre: Erotica/Romance
ISBN: 9781476711102
Review E-Book Copy provided by NetGalley

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

Kasie knows who she’s supposed to be. But one passionate night with a mysterious stranger will teach her who she wants to be. 

You should sleep with a stranger, her best friend whispers in her ear as they take to Vegas for one last pre-wedding fling. Despite her best intentions, when Kasie Fitzgerald enters the casino and sees him, a man whose tailored clothes belied a powerful, even dangerous, presence, she loses herself to the moment. Maybe it’s the dress, much shorter than she’d ever normally wear, or the Scotch, but something makes her give herself over to him more completely than she’s ever done with a man before.


It was supposed to be just one night. But right as she’s thinking she wants more, he shows up in her office with an agenda. As the billionaire CEO of a company that’s engaged her PR firm, his demands just became her reality…and he desires so much more than just some attention in the boardroom.

MY THOUGHTS

I am having problems writing this review not because of the writing from the author, but from a major plot point that irks me.  Why are the last few books I have read about one person cheating on another? I don’t like this happening in real life and I certainly don’t like it in my books.

Kasie is engaged to a man named Dave.  While Dave is orderly and not quite passionate in the bedroom area, he is stable and compatible.  When her friend suggests they go to Vegas, she also tells Kasie to have fling with a stranger.  I didn’t find her friend to be to supportive and frankly a lousy friend for suggesting this.

Kasie meets Mr. Robert Dade at the Blackjack table.  They make a wager and Kasie loses.  She now must pay up by having a drink with him at the bar.  Things progress from the bar to his room and leads to a wild and passionate filled escapade.  After the deed is done, Kasie takes off and leaves him alone.

Upon returning to her regular life, she falls back into the role of nice and sweet.  She is not wild and doesn’t like people getting the wrong idea about her.  Mr. Dade contacts her company and requests Kasie to work on his file.  When they meet to discuss the plans of the work she will do, Robert throws out how they are going to be doing it again.  He teases her through the meeting and she leaves.  When she shows up early for a regular meeting with his company, they do the naughty again in his office. She tells him this is the last time. She has just been out shopping for engagement rings with Dave.

This is where I couldn’t read any further.  While the writing wasn’t bad and the author did pretty well with the building of the story, I just couldn’t continue reading about the affairs.  Kasie had plenty of chances to break it off with Dave, but she never says a word to him.  To me, cheating is wrong and I just didn’t like reading about someone doing this.

If a reader doesn’t mind escaping into the fantasy world for a bit that involves cheating, then by all means give this book a try.  The writing is good and the characters are just okay, but this is one story I just didn’t love.

MY RATING

       
I did not like this book at all!
DNF

Review: A Night of No Return by Sarah Morgan

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A Night of No Return
Author: Sarah Morgan
Genre: Adult Romance
ISBN: 9780373131044

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

Money, charm and sensual skills don’t make up for a heart colder than ice…

Wild parties, wanton women, relentless work—nothing helps tycoon Lucas Jackson escape his dark and haunting past. Arriving at his rural castle in a snarling snowstorm, he craves only complete isolation.… But it seems oblivion can take an unexpected and highly intoxicating form!

Personally delivering the vital file left on her boss’s desk, secretary Emma Gray starts to seriously regret her dutiful overtime mission. She never expected the dark side of the usually controlled Lucas could generate such a primitive, powerful—and entirely inappropriate—reaction.

MY THOUGHTS

I have never been a big reader of the classic Harlequin line and I usually only read the Nocturne books in their serial lines.  For some reason though, the summary drew me in and I decided to give them a try.

The first third of the book is about Emma and Lucas being trapped in a fancy castle that Lucas owns with his partners/friends from work.  There is a bunch of narration in the first third of this book to set up the story that will follow in the rest of the pages.  While I appreciate some initial set up in a story, this one was heavy on it. I liked the mystery of why Lucas was the way he was.  I actually liked Lucas better than Emma character-wise.  Emma seemed dull and at times a little dense.  If this man who is drinking and telling a someone to leave several times while his anger is simmering below the surface, you would think a smart woman would back off at least.  Nope, she continued to push and he pushed right back with sexual need.

The next part of the book is after the do the naughty in front of a fire.  It is about Emma traveling with her boss Lucas out of country to a company party and meeting.  They are trying to move past what they did and trying to bring the relationship back to the professional level.  Lucas repeatedly tells Emma that he doesn’t do love and family.  He is a use them and leave them type of man.  He starts to reveal reasons of why he is like this to her and solves a little bit of the questions on this.

The last part of the book is Emma setting Lucas up to deal with his reasons in not finding love.  I didn’t like the way she went about it and it didn’t seem real plausible.  I am suppose to believe that one night of dealing with something is going to change years of guilt and blame?  It just didn’t feel right for me.  I still couldn’t feel happy about the outcome of this story when I finished the last page.  The chemistry wasn’t that great — mainly because I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy Emma’s role that much — and the ending was not only rushed but far fetched too.

I will say though that this book served as a fluffy romance that was also a quick read.  Something I was initially looking for but wanting more for the next read.

MY RATING

If the library doesn’t have it, don’t worry about reading it!

Review: The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski

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The Shadow Society
Author: Marie Rutkoski
Genre: Young Adult
ISBN:  9780374349059

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

Darcy Jones doesn’t remember anything before the day she was abandoned as a child outside a Chicago firehouse. She has never really belonged anywhere—but she couldn’t have guessed that she comes from an alternate world where the Great Chicago Fire didn’t happen and deadly creatures called Shades terrorize the human population.

Memories begin to haunt Darcy when a new boy arrives at her high school, and he makes her feel both desire and desired in a way she hadn’t thought possible. But Conn’s interest in her is confusing. It doesn’t line up with the way he first looked at her.

As if she were his enemy.

When Conn betrays Darcy, she realizes that she can’t rely on anything—not herself, not the laws of nature, and certainly not him. Darcy decides to infiltrate the Shadow Society and uncover the Shades’ latest terrorist plot. What she finds out will change her world forever . . .

MY THOUGHTS

Borderline love/hate with this story is the only way I can explain my feelings on this book.  Its dark and different than what I am used to reading which was refreshing in the way that I got to step out of my box with it.

The characters were the main thing for me that kept me from rating it higher.  I think the main problem I had was that some characters were not needed to make this story great while others weren’t used enough.  Another problem is the cliched new boy who is dark yet sexy.  The plot was interesting enough that I didn’t need some of the problems of love triangles and cliches to lure me in.

Like other reviewers have said about this read — you will either love it or hate it.  Some will think it had the perfect balance and others will say it lacked in balance.  I, felt that it was walking a fine line between being great or it being bad.  This is the type of read that you will more than likely have to choose for yourself in forming an opinion.

MY RATING

Okay book, but it left me wanting more!

Review: Mistletoe Cowboy by Carolyn Brown

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Mistletoe Cowboy
Series: Spikes & Spurs #5
Author: Carolyn Brown
Genre: Romance
ISBN: 9781402270154

SUMMARY
(From Goodreads)

‘Tis the season for… 

A matchmaking grandma on a long-disantance mission 
Mistletoe temptation in every doorway 
A sexy cowboy with a killer smile

When Gran Presely agrees to sell Creed Riley the Rockin’ C Ranch for a song at Christmastime, he can hardly believe his good fortune. There’s just one little catch-her tantalizing granddaughter Sage is part of the deal…

MY THOUGHTS

It is the season for Holiday romance!  I enjoy curling up by our fireplace with a roaring fire, cup of cocoa, and a sexy romance to read.  I was looking forward to reading Mistletoe Cowboy by Carolyn Brown this holiday season because I usually love anything by this author.

Unfortunately, this was not one of my favorites by this author.  I couldn’t get into the plot and Sage was not a favorite character for me.  She was snotty and stand offish.  I just couldn’t bring myself to care about her turmoil and personality.  Creed was a little more likable, but he was still on the dull end of the spectrum.  When these two are put together in an unlikely situation, the chemistry fizzled and never really took off for me. This book has a bunch of stereotypes including speech that kept me from truly enjoying it.

While I consider this a light and fluffy read for the holidays,  I don’t consider it a feel good romance that filled that reading hunger I was looking for.  It wasn’t a book I couldn’t stop reading and it wasn’t one I kept wanting to finish until the last page.  Others might enjoy this type of read, but I wanted a little more substance and chemistry in my reading.

MY RATING

If the library doesn’t have it, don’t worry about reading it!