Ponder Post: Until You Loved Me

How do I pick the books I read? It varies but this one was a random choice in a grocery store. I'd flown down on the spur of the moment to help out my son in southern California when he had an emergency appendectomy while his wife and two daughters were away visiting family back in Ohio. I'd packed hurriedly to get on the next available flight, taking only the book I was currently reading. Post-surgery my son slept more than I had anticipated and consequently I ran out of reading material. So on a grocery store run, I picked up Until You Loved Me ©2017 by Brenda Novak. My criteria? It was not too big and bulky to carry on a plane since it would fit in my handbag – unlike those larger sized trade paperbacks. It had a decent size font. It was a dollar cheaper than the other  paperbacks. I liked the bright yellow purse and jean jacket combination on the cover. I know – these are all truly in depth, valid, literary criteria.

I was very lucky. My book choice was a resounding winner. Yes, it was a romance novel genre but the heroine was an intelligent woman, not a ditz, and the hero was an upstanding guy, not a womanizing jerk. The basic scenario is spelled out on the book cover so I am giving nothing away here. A workaholic scientist, Ellie Fisher, has a liaison with a professional football player, Hudson King – a behavior uncharacteristic for both of them. Despite taking responsible precautions, Ellie becomes pregnant. Hudson has no family of his own having been abandoned on a street corner as an infant. This child, if he can be convinced is indeed his, could be his only family.

How these two people support each other and work through the logistics of the situation is believable and mutually respectful. A pregnancy is rarely a vehicle for plot advancement in a romance novel so this was unique. I liked the writing style, the speed of story advancement, the depth of the characters, and the bit of a back story probing into the mystery of Hudson's parentage. Most of all I liked both Ellie and Hudson personally and was rooting for each of them equally. One does not usually give a five star rating to romance novels since they are generally not considered high class literature. I would make an exception for Until You Loved Me. One does not always need to feast on filet mignon. A well prepared, juicy hamburger can be just as satisfying. Read this book. It will not disappoint.

Ponder Post: A Drunkard's Path

Drunkard's Path by Clare O'Donohue is the second book in the Someday Quilts Mystery series. I reviewed the first in the series, Lover's Knot, in my post for 9/9/17. In the first book I was overcome by the huge cast of characters – all the members of the Friday Night Quilt Club. By the second book I was more familiar with them and so that was not such a hurdle. In the first book a dead body was not found until far into the book. The corpse was found much sooner in A Drunkard's Path. Even though these mini-gripes of mine were fixed in the second book, still, A Drunkard's Path was not stellar. The mystery and clue revelation is adequate. The back story of the budding romance the main character Nell has with the police chief progresses at a snail's' space from the first to the second book. The quilting references are really fun for me as a quilter. But overall the book was just so-so.

The front cover really bugs me about this and other books in the series. The book is titled after a quilt pattern. The cover of the book has a quilt on it. Wouldn't it make eminent sense to have the picture on the cover be a quilt in the same pattern as the book title? Perhaps this might even educate the readership, quilting and non-quilting. A drunkard's path pattern is made up of square with a quarter circle of a contrasting fabric inset in the corner. A complementary square with the two colors reversed is also sewn. The following sample block is made up of sixteen such squares in a classic arrangement. The crooked path they form is like that of a staggering person who has had too much to drink and is a bit tipsy.

Those quarter-circle squares can be oriented in a myriad of ways. This quilt below shows twelve different options. See if you can pick out how those quarter-circle squares were arranged in each case.

I did check the third and fourth books in the series out of the library. They became overdue and I renewed them but not before accruing a fine I had to pay. I still have not read these books and they are due again. I think this may be word from above that I should give up on this series, at least for now. I will be returning The Double Cross and The Devil's Puzzle unopened. The cover photos do not match the title quilts anyway.