Tidying Up a Long Life-A Review of “Bernice Runs Away” by Talya Tate Boerner

As the title suggestions, Bernice decides to run away from home-but Bernice is not a child, but a delightful and quirky 80 something year old with a family, a home and friends that love her. Why would a senior citizen decide to leave everything and everyone she knows to go on an adventure?

Bernice is a widow and lives alone with her cat in the house she and her husband first moved into when they were married. She has the support of her church friends and her good friend Marlene. Her daughter wants her to move to Atlanta and live in a carriage house she is building on her property so she won’t be alone. But, of course, Sarah, her daughter, never thought to ask Bernice if moving in with her was something she wanted to do. And it isn’t.

Bernice is tired of her old life. She reminisces about her summers as a teenager spent at Lake Norfork and her first love, John Marvel, who broke her heart. She decides she will move to the Lake and try to change her life.

She uses the techniques set out in Marie Kondo’s organizational books (which I personally don’t care for) but in a humorous way so it was not preachy like Marie can be, to decide what is important for her to keep and take with her to the Lake. She uses these techniques throughout the book.

Once at the Lake she makes new friends and discovers more about herself and what has been bothering her deep down over the years. She gets a new haircut, gets some answers about her teenage love, and sorts her family issues out. The author does a great job by making the story realistic, not magically giving Bernice all the answers she wanted but having her grow as a person and basically, tidy up her past and present life.

I truly enjoyed this book and read it in a day. It is not a thriller or a mystery book. It is purely a sweet family story starring a plucky 81 year old who reminds me of my own mother. I highly recommend this book. I give it 5/5 stars.

Thank you to One Mississippi Press and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this ARC.

An Interesting Take on Fairies

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, is my first review for NetGalley after being away from reading and reviewing for three years and I am glad I picked this book to review.

Professor Emily Wilde is an expert researcher on the subject of the Fairy Realms (sorry, I am American and spell it Fairy instead of Faerie) and is looking to expand her knowledge and perhaps a better spot on the faculty of her college by exploring the Far North in search of elusive Hidden Ones- a type of mystical high class fairy and putting a new entry in her Encyclopaedia she hope to publish soon.

Like many academics, Emily is better at books and research then she is dealing with people. She is an introvert after my own heart. When she goes to the North realms, she will need to learn to relate to the townspeople in order to accomplish her goals and to survive. Along with her is her wonderful not-just-a- dog, Shadow, and a surprise guest; her academic and smoking hot rival, Wendell Bambleby.

Emily meets various human and non-human beings on her explorations, learns more about Bambleby and about herself. The story is told through journal entries with footnotes, which for the action scenes, tends to dull the excitement in this reader’s opinion. In some ways, I wish the author had used both journal entries and straight forward storytelling so the tension and action are not dampened down. The format also has the book start slowly but not enough to lose my interest.

I think the author is planning a series of Emily Wilde books which I will definitely read when they come out. I want to learn what happens next for Emily and Wendell, and I love Shadow. I want to thank Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

WOW ! Three Years have passed!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

It has been three years since I have contributed anything to my book review blog. Pitiful, I know.

I could blame COVID, but that would be untrue. What happened was I became addicted to a mobile game called Rise of Kingdoms. Warning: do not play Rise of Kingdoms unless you want to spend all your time (and some money) playing a phone game! It is addicting, fun, but overall, too much of a time waster for me.

I went cold turkey and quit last week. Why? It dawned on me finally what I have been wasting my time doing, and I missed reading good books.

So, back to reviewing books for NetGalley and my own selections.

A review is so to be coming! Feels good to be back