Book Review: Love, Lucy

Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball is an autobiography set from when Lucille Ball was a little girl to the early 1960's.  The book was published in 1997 (8 years after Lucille Ball's death), and was published by Berkley (both of Ball's children decided that this needed to be released.)

The biography starts off with a forward from Lucille Ball's daughter, Lucie Desiree Arnaz.  She talks about how she found the manuscript when she was going through some things that she had of her mothers.  She also mentioned how her mother never released this was because she didn't want to hurt her ex-husband, Desi Arnaz.  She talked about the love and respect that they both had for each other.  Lucille chronicles her earlier years from when her father died when she was 4, to moving to different relatives while her mother tried to figure out how to support her family to living with her grandparents as a big family.  She also talked about how she modeled but really wanted to be an actress and how she dealt with rejection before going out to California and her rise to stardom.

One of my favorite things about the autobiography, was how Ms. Ball looked at the hardships in her life and she would find the lesson in it.  When she went though a bad situation where a well known director was enthralled by her and wanted to leave his wife but Lucy decided to not pursue a relationship because it could have hurt his children, the wife found out about it and made it so that Lucy wouldn't get any parts in A movies (which led to her title the Queen of B) during that part of her career.  But what I found so interesting was that she never named names, she accepted that was going to happen in her career and instead of giving up she put her all in every roll that she got.  For about half of the book, was on her life with her first husband Desi, whom she did I Love Lucy with and a few movies.  She talked about the passion and love, but she also talked about their dysfunction and difficulties.  One thing, which I felt was important, was that Lucy didn't lay all of the blame on Desi, It wasn't all his fault, she looked at where they both went wrong, she didn't play the victim but she didn't make him out as the villain.  The last few pages talk about their divorce, and Lucy's marriage to her second husband, Gary Morton (whom she was with till her death).  I loved how she talked about how Gary and Desi would golf with each other, how they were all apart of their children's lives.  She said something that I just thought was so powerful, and that was, "I'd rather have my children grow up in two loving house holds instead of growing up in one miserable home."

I loved this book, when I finished it, it left me with such a wonderful warm fuzzy feeling that I couldn't help but be happy.  I honestly think that that this should be required reading for high school students, especially girls.  Lucille Ball is the definition of classy, funny, smart, witty, and just all around a great woman.  She didn't sing her praises she didn't place blame on anyone else.  It just made me happy to read about one of my favorite actresses and comediennes.  I recommend this book to everyone and anyone.  Even if you don't think that you'd like it because you're not a big biography reader, you will.  It was so easy to get through and really hard to put down.

Rating:
5 out of 5 stars

Book Review: No Mercy

No Mercy by Sherrilyn Kenyon

No Mercy by Sherrilyn Kenyon is another exciting book that ties both Kenyon's Dark-Hunter and Were-Hunter world.  While in all of her books since she has included the three different types of hunters there is usually a mention or involved in one of the books, but this is the first time that two different types were involved romantically.  Again Kenyon brings her love of history, mythology, humor and suspense with a spice of romance into another one of novels.  This is of course a romance novel but Kenyon has through the years kind of underplayed it and had made it more suspenseful.

The story follows two of Kenyon's characters who have either have had a part of have been mentioned in previous books.  These are characters that we were already familiar with and loved.  The two characters are Dev and Samia.  Dev is a were-hunter who is a bear and Samia is a Dark-Hunter.  These two should never mix in a romantic setting but unfortunately it has happened.  Which is a common theme in the Dark-Hunter series by Kenyon.  Dev is a Were-Hunter who is of mix breeding, his father is an Arcadian and mother is a Katagarian.  He is special because he was chosen by the fates to be a Arcadian sentinel.  Which means he is supposed to hunt the Katagarians.  Because of this knowledge Dev has always been weird and different.  Samia is an ancient Amazonian Queen murdered by her own sister, wishing to take her crown.  As she watched her husband and toddler daughter get murdered she vowed revenge selling her soul to the very goddess Artemis that she served in her mortal life.  Like all Dark-Hunters she was given a gift, but her gift is more her curse than anything else.  She can see a persons past just by touching them.  Because of this her sex life had been seriously lacking.  Dev is special to her because when she touches him she gets nothing making him a safe zone.  With the addition to the romance between Dev and Samia, there are up against what is called a super daimon.  Which is a daimon that has adapted to be able to go into the sunlight, which leaves the Dark-Hunters at a large disadvantage because they aren't allowed to go into the sun still.

Again when it comes to Sherrilyn Kenyon it's hard for me to be objective.  But I do have to say, this book wasn't nearly as memorable as some of her other books.  It was still good and I enjoyed reading it, but almost two months after finishing it and finally writing the review, there really isn't a whole lot of parts that sticks out to me.  One of the few parts that I do remember is in all honestly is the tale of Dev and Samia's pasts.  They are both heartbreaking and you definitely feel their pain, Sherrilyn Kenyon is a very good story teller when it comes to expressing painful experiences.

So in the end, I still enjoyed the book, but like I said, it wasn't as exciting as some of Kenyon's other books, but if you're a fan of the Dark-Hunter Saga by Sherrilyn Kenyon this is a definite must to have to read and to have in your collection.

Rating:
3.5 out of 5

On Deck:
Death at Seaworld by David Kirby
The Warrior by Kinley MacGregor
Keeper of the Crystal Spring by Naomi and Deborah Baltuck

So just as a quick note, I was thinking about doing video reviews to go with my written review.  Tell me what you all think.

Bakers Dozen 3

So this one was hard for me decide, mainly because I love everything that this author writes.  But I decided it wouldn't be fair if I put on this list 'Anything by Sherrilyn Kenyon.'

So I picked Night Play by Sherrilyn Kenyon.  The reason I picked this book instead of some of her other ones is because of the lead female character Bride was described as a full figured woman.  I don't mean a size 10 either, no Sherrilyn Kenyon wrote a character who is a size 18 and is beautiful and makes the hunky Vane's head turn and drool.  So many romance writers don't go there when it comes to women and their figure and Kenyon made it so all women of different shapes and sizes can be happy with their body in these books.

Now the story itself is another instalment of the Dark-Hunter series and I believe it was one of the earlier releases (I think it was the 5th or 6th one) of this series, but it is the first full novel for the Were-Hunter series.  The character Vane did make an appearance in a previous Hunter series book, so it was very pleasing to read his story.

I think another reason why I picked this story is because Kenyon wrote more about the Were-Hunter's and their mythology and history that binds this race to the Greek Gods.  As a sucker for mythology this was a nice change up from a lot of the stories that I had been reading at the time.  I was starting to slowly get into romance after reading nothing but one author so it was a nice change.  I believe I started reading the Dark-Hunter series when I was 16-years-old.

Even though all of Sherrilyn Kenyon's stories (except for her Chronicles of Nick series) have love scenes, they aren't saturating the whole story.  I love how all of the characters are written and I especially love the characters Bride and Vane, they do get mentioned in some of Kenyon's later novels so its kind of like you get to keep in-touch with a long lost friend.

I couldn't do this list without a Sherrilyn Kenyon novel and even though it was kind of hard to pick just one, I decided on Night Play mainly based on the character Bride because despite her "size" she was beautiful and strong and everyone wants a really hunky man by her side regardless of appearance.