Yech and Double Yech

I know this blog is called books we love to share, but I think I need to make room for books we need to issue warnings.  "Don't read this!!!!"

So really I have no one to blame but myself and Amazon reader reviews.  I saw this book "How I Came to Sparkle Again" by Kaya McLaren and it looked like saccharine, but it was about a woman who'd lost her sense of who she was and returned to a ski town in Colorado to heal.  I ignored my better judgment partially because of the ski town thing.  The other thing that drew me was a review from an author I'd been wanting to read based on some book club reviews and perusing Amazon's recommends.  I had been keeping Kristin Hannah's book "On Mystic Lake" only wish list and she loved the book.

Well I barely got through the Sparkle book but I managed to finish it.  Felt like watching The Hallmark Channel and I was ashamed.  So then I thought "who is this Kristin Hannah?" and decided to read her book out of a weird kind of curiosity.  I couldn't believe it - the plot lines were nearly identical!  I think there may actually be a genre for it:  woman's husband cheats on her, she returns home to find herself, and meets a recently widowed man with a troubled daughter who desperately needs someone to help her cope with her mother's death.  Woman steps in, they fall in love, and she stays in the town she thought she left behind forever.

I only got about 10% through the Mystic book when I skipped to the end to confirm my suspicions.

So please don't read these books.  Please.