A Potpourri of Opinions

The Lost Summers of Newport Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White Publication date: May 17, 2022 by William Morrow & Company Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 4 🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary:  2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class--famous for the lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia "Lucky" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse. 1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbroth...

With a new blog one must take the time to introduce themselves. 😀 I've worked in museums and libraries since 2012 and have been a librarian/branch manager at several different public libraries since 2018. As a librarian I feel I am partly expected to have some kind of literary influencer presence outside of work.   During the pandemic a group of random women banded together and created the blog With A Book In Our Hands. Someone sponsored the domain name and we flooded social media on a weekly basis. We covered all genres and it was pretty remarkable. Sadly, as time went by, the enthusiasm for the blog waned and we lost several of our founding members. That, coupled with an exorbitant amount of technical issues, inclined me to think about taking the lead on my own blog.  I am fortunate that in my position I have been able to host virtual author chats with some AMAZING authors. Debut authors, USA Today bestselling authors, New York Times bestselling authors, and internatio...