It’ll probably be no big surprise for you to hear that I enjoyed reading The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheevers by Julia Quinn and The Pleasure Trap by Elizabeth Thornton tremendously. In fact, I reread both books a week after finishing them just to relive certain well-written scenes in both books.

In The Secret Diaries, the heroine Miranda has long been secretly in love with the older brother of her best friend, Viscount Turner, since the tender age of ten when the dashing young gent kissed her hand and solemnly promised that she would someday grow into herself and become as beautiful as she was already smart. Even as Turner’s marriage suffered and he became an embittered widower, she never stopped loving him.

Turner has always admired her intelligence, but he has become dark and broody, and cynical about the emotion called love. As he emerged from his own personal prison, he found himself intrigued by and drawn to Miranda.  Being distrustful of love, he let himself be persuaded that it was just lust and desire that drove him to take her innocence and honour that make him take her to wife. How is a woman going to convince a man who doesn’t believe in love that it was really love the feel for each other? I’m not going to give the plot away here, so you’re going to have to read the book yourself.

Before I jet off to Auckland tomorrow, here’re the backlogged reviews I promised of these two Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms by Mercedes Lackey. I’m diving straight into the things I love about these great stories. Actually I couldn’t find faults with them, but anyhow, here goes … 

My first revelation of how Ms Lackey intends to retell some well-loved fairy tales in her own way came when the heroine in The Fairy Godmother, whose life is a perfect mirror of Cinderella’s, was rescued by a fairy godmother herself and offered the chance to be an apprentice. The unusual premise of breaking from the Traditional fairy tale path got me curious about how the story will turn out, further to what the back cover promised. 

So by the time Elena got herself a disbelieving, sullen and arrogant prince to transform into a honourable and chivalrous champion, I was rooting for a happy ending for her. I simply refused to believe that romance would bypass the young but intelligent godmother altogether since she has wrought about quite a few happy endings. But what a way Ms Lackey chose to end the story. There was fantasy, magic (big time!), evil sorcerers, romance and chivalry — all the stuff I loved growing up, so it is small wonder indeed that her fresh twist to a long familiar story found new fans, myself included. 

While trying to recoup from all that travel, I popped by Amazon for a little visit, also in the interest of work.  We’re benchmarking shopping carts this week, you see.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the new look that this superstore has unveiled. And it looks rather festive too.

So, of course I logged in to have a little tour, and update my wishlist and recommendations.  Must say that the remodelled Amazon looks slicker and much improved. I promised myself I’ll be back for more.