Ivy Pembroke's A Dog Called Jack was full of delightful surprises. When I requested it on NetGalley, I was looking for a cozy, comforting read. And it was, but I didn't expect all the depth this book delivered. This novel achieves a wonderful balance between giving readers a relaxing read and giving its characters realistic—often tough—situations to deal with. It's heartfelt without being trite, sweet without feeling saccharine. And the humor is gentle; you find yourself chuckling momentarily, but it never breaks the flow. Christmas Street's residents are surprisingly diverse. They are a variety of ages, sexual orientations, ethnicities, and stages in life. I love that this actually mirrors my own little cul-de-sac. I loved watching 8-year-old son Teddy break through the crotchety…

"It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harboring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un. Yikes! Soon Allan and Julius are at the center of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Needless to say, things are about to get very, very complicated."  I'm super excited to be part of the TLC Book Tour for Jonas…

"English teacher Dexter feels like he's being taunted by the universe. Every last one of his friends is settling down with their other halves, while Dexter spends his evenings marking schoolbooks with his ginger cat for company. After another wedding ends in a drunken disaster, Dexter is musing on the situation and wondering what he's going to screw up next, when he gets the shocking reminder that he's not the centre of the universe. An alien spaceship has landed on the continent and when first contact is made, it's anything but friendly. Humanity's numbers dwindle immediately, and the survivors are left to do exactly that - survive." The Third Wheel was a one-sitting read for me! Two-headed aliens invade Earth, a…

"When her fiancé’s private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, Allison Carpenter miraculously survives. But the fight for her life is just beginning. Allison has been living with a terrible secret, a shocking truth that powerful men will kill to keep buried. If they know she’s alive, they will come for her. She must make it home." Whoa, Freefall was quite the gripping page-turner! I needed to know more! What was going on, who could be trusted and who couldn't? I had all kinds of ideas about how things would pan out, but I didn't actually know what was up until the very end. My only complaint about the book is that a couple of the women characters gave off a…