Tag: romance

Audible with Andrea…

…Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

I think most of us can related to Penelope Featherington. I know I can. For all my extroverted traits, I was never the bell of the ball. I was never considered pretty or popular in my school years. Like Penelope – that didn’t bother me most of the time. Like Penelope – sometimes it bothered me a lot. Loving someone from afar who doesn’t love you back is pretty relatable too. What isn’t is that person suddenly falling in love with you like Colin did with Penelope. Don’t get me wrong – it’s the romantic fairy tale thing I wanted to happen for Penelope – it’s just not what happens in real life. In my experience the person who doesn’t notice you tends to continue not noticing you in that way. the great thing is – I don’t think Penelope was waiting around for him to come to his sense and notice her romantically. She was out there building a life and a bank account for herself. LOVE that – work it girl. Even when she got her dream scenario she knew she had to stand up for her previous life and what was hers. She also recognized that Colin wasn’t this perfect person she built up in her mind and loved him for who he actually was. I liked that too. Over all a pleasant listen and trip into Penelope and Colin’s world. Of all the characters in the series I think I relate best to Penelope in a lot of ways.

Reading with Rachel…

…In Five Years

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Hi everyone! I’m Rachel and I love to read books and give unsolicited book recommendations to my friends. Andrea recently read In Five Years by Rebecca Serle after I wrote a blurb about it on my Instagram, and I’m so glad she did! She’s asked me to write to all of you what I thought about the book and why I suggested others read it. Enjoy!


In Five Years is a charming book that follows Dannie, a goal-oriented New Yorker who has her life planned out to the minute. Her career as a successful lawyer, her recent engagement, and her entire future are planned out meticulously. Until they’re not. Dannie’s plans are shaken up when she has a vivid dream where she finds herself in a foreign apartment next to a strange man and a seemingly very different life than the one she left behind in the real world. Once she wakes, Dannie can’t help but ponder on this dream and the feeling of fate that seeped from it. The rest of the story follows Dannie as she navigates the next five years of her life with her fiance, free-spirited best friend Bella, and to her surprise, the strange man from her dream who has materialized in her real life. 


I’ll be honest: this is not the typical kind of book that I reach for on the shelf. I found this book for a cheap price on Amazon while buying other books in my favored genres of mystery/thriller and bought it on a whim. It’s a pretty short book at around 250 pages so I figured I’d read it for a fun and light read before I moved on to my more heavy subject matter books. After reading the first few chapters of In Five Years I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t the cliche romance novel that I was expecting at all. In fact, I hesitate to even label this book a romance novel. It certainly has romantic elements and the author is tricky, as she writes the first few chapters to make the reader believe this story will revolve around romantic relationships. But I would put this book into the simple genre of: friendship. This is a story about the depths of friendship between Dannie and Bella. I don’t want to give anything else away because I want any future readers to have the pleasure of the surprise of this story, so I’ll leave it at that. This story explores how a friendship can survive the ups and downs of adulthood, can change even the most well thought out plans, and can have lasting impacts that can influence an entire life. It’s a beautiful story and a very sad one. I cried during this one, but they weren’t all tears of sadness. I hope that you enjoy this book as much as I did!

-Rachel