❤📚 ❤ ❤️🛳️👰 💔💔💔 Two Romances and a Memoir of a Divorce

    I like Katherine Center's romance books because she is committed to the genre and the good things it does. The Shippers is a romance book, but also a story of self-discovery and finding the courage to say hard things. JoJo Burton is about to get married to a disinterested man in his mother's appalling wedding dress. Her best friend from childhood, Cooper Watts, shows up at the last minute. And then guess what happened? This is a fun book, but it doesn't avoid painful topics: abandonment, defensiveness, men behaving in predatory ways, balanced with men quietly caring for those they love without seeking credit. 

~Chose love over fear~

Katherine Center

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    To me, a good memoir is one where someone is willing to be vulnerable about their experience and has processed it enough to reach some conclusions. Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden is that kind of memoir. Her husband leaves her and their children at the start of COVID. They lived and worked in New York City and chose to move to their house on Martha's Vineyard. Belle's story was an old one; a phone call informed her that her husband was cheating. He left his newly 50-year-old wife for someone younger. She never saw it coming. Devastated, she tries to piece together a new life. This memoir is not a revenge piece. I found Belle's account generous toward her husband, as she explored and sought to understand why. It was sad, but also hopeful. The divorce was a brutal one.

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    I found Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson on a list of books with books in them. This was a fun Rom-com. It reminded me of the movie You've Got Mail. The main character, Savannah Cade, is an assistant book editor at a small publishing house in Nashville. She has many problems in all areas of her life. Because rent is so high, she lives with her overachieving, bossy sister and her fiancé, who is also Savannah's ex-boyfriend. Her direct boss at work doesn't like her and only gives her the toughest clients. Savannah’s hope is to get her own book published and a romance editor is interested, but her novel needs revision. A mysterious someone found her manuscript unattended and started to edit it. Savannah is incensed and also intrigued. Hijinks follow.

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