Dominika's Reading Challenge

This week it's going to be a book from an author I love that I haven't read yet - and I'm very happy about it, because I've just bought  Leverage in Death by J.D. Robb and I simply can't wait to read it! I love this author, I read all the books in the series so far and I loved all of them, so I'm sure I'm going to love this one, too. I'm so excited!

I finished reading this trilogy yesterday and I'm very happy that I can say I enjoyed it very much!  It was a fantasy story set on three islands: Capri, Corfu and Ireland. Six main characters, all unique and with special powers, go on a quest to get three stars, defeat a mad goddess and safe the world. It was exactly as unrealictic and predictable as it sounds - and still, I had great fun reading it. My favourite was the second book, Bay of Sighs. Not only I really liked Annika - she was so sweet and charming, a real pleasure to read about - but also the story was exciting and emotional and I simply couldn't stop reading! The least interesting for me was the last book, Island of Glass - I struggled a bit at the end, but I managed to finish it. I didn't see the point of many of the scenes and the ending was too fairytale-like for me. I liked the first part, Stars of Fortune, I enjoyed the story, but I wasn't a huge fan of the main heroine, she seemed very passiv

I am very happy with this week's challenge - a trilogy! I had no problem with choosing the right one. I've been waiting for months to find some energy to start reading: The Guardians Trilogy by Nora Roberts. The three books in the series are: Stars of Fortune,  Bay of Sighs and Island of Glass. I'm quite nervous. I usually like Nora Roberts' trilogies very much, but a few of them were quite awful. The last I read, The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy, was simply horrible, I could hardly finish it. I think that was the main reason why it took me so long to start reading this one - I was afraid I would hate it. I really hope I'm going to love it! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

As I couldn't remember this book at all, I reread it and now I get it why I forgot it so completely. It's beautiful - it's a bit like reading a very long and mysterious poem in prose, but it was a book about nothing. There are some eccentric members of family, some strange neighbours, some more or less important objects, some half-cooked love story, a bit of magic - all this mixed togethed and served in a wonderful poem-prose. I've just finished reading it and I already don't remember most of it.  Definitely not for me and I'm not going to read this book ever again.

My challenge this week is to read a book I was supposed to read in school but I didn't - well, such a book doesn't exist, as I read all my books. But, as I discovered lately, I don't remember some of them. So I decided to reread one of them and I chose: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz I remember that I enjoyed that one and I hope rereading it will be a nice experience for me. We'll see! :)

I'm quite surprised this book appears on so many classic romance lists, because I'm not even sure if it was a romance.  It's a story of beautiful Marguerite, called the most intelligent woman in Europe, who married a very stupid, but extremely rich man, Sir Percy Blakeney. Their marriage is not a happy one, they are disappointed in one another and they hardly even speak.  Marguerite is blackmailed into helping a French agent to discover the identity of a mysterious English hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Then, feeling guilty about what she'd done, she goes to France to save the great man. I had two main problems with this book: first, most of the plot didn't make any sense whatsoever. Why did the Pimpernel's people keep writing notes to one another, why didn't they simply talk? They were oficially friends, why didn't they visit each other? All this plot at the ball was stupid. Next - Marguerite went to France to help her hero and she did absolutely

I can't believe it's already week 6 of my reading challenge! And that I'm still excited about it :)  This time I got "a classic romance" and I went to Goodreads lists to check which of the classic romances I haven't read so far. And the first book I came across was: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy I've watched the movie, so I know the story, but for whatever reason I've never read the book. It's high time to do this! I hope I'm going to enjoy this book.

It was a romance without any romance and I don't know who was more surprised when the hero suddenly proposed to the heroine - Becky or me. I truly didn;t expect it, although I knew that  something like that simply must happen at the end of this kind of a book. Becky is one of the most passive and dull heroines I've ever read about and the Baron is so arrogant and unpleasant that it was quite difficult to keep reading at times. Becky spent a few years being literally a slave of her stepmother and stepbrother. The Baron helps her escape and employs her as his mother's nurse, where Becky is kind of a slave again, as the Baroness forgets about little things like wages or time off. Everybody, from the Baron to servants, keep repeating how boring and unattractive Becky is, plus the Baron has a mistress, who is beautiful and charming and who practically lives with him. And suddenly, completely out of the blue (for me, at least), the Baron decides to marry Becky and it's t