Two FREE books caught my interest this morning.

The first one is courtesy of the BookRunes daily email.

Celtic Cross was in my downloads for 2015. If I remember right, I did like it and would have shared it if I was blogging back then. It should be a good read. Historical Fiction.

The second one is courtesy of the BookBub daily email.

Her Last First Kiss is new to me. Liz Isaacson does show up in my read list but not as often as some authors do. I can’t remember if I liked her style or not. Some write deeper than others and I prefer deeper, personally. I think Liz’s style may be in a lighter vein. We will have to read this and check it out to be sure.

I have been reading some of the novellas from yesterday and it’s served as a reminder as to why I prefer full length novels.

Summer of Dreams is the first one to be checked out and I loved it. Every now and then a book comes along that lights-up-the-room and this book did that for me, in the beginning at least.

A successful novella will set an even pace from beginning to end. Difficult to do it seems. The common fault is time spent developing the story with a sprint to the end, before running out of pages. The sudden and hurried conclusion spoils whatever the book had going on for itself in the beginning.

That’s what happened here. The beginning of the book was awesome.

Novella format is great when the storyline doesn’t have much going for it and it would be a stretch to make it fit the Novel length. In my opinion, it’s a shame to waste a good idea on a Novella when a longer format could do it justice – leaving a satisfied reader.

The sneak peak at the sequel was disappointing too. It followed one of the other characters, ten years in the future. There was no resolving of the unfinished business in the first book.

Aside from the disappointing ending, it was well worth the read. The characters were great. I loved the way they think, and the resulting interactions between the three of them. Dry humor with audacious characters is the best.

Historical fiction.

One brilliant young woman with a military father disapproving of her engineering dreams.

A brilliant young man seeking an engineering education in the only avenue open to him, Officer Academy training.

The two are thrown together because the accumulation of his misconduct demerits has him facing expulsion and possible imprisonment. He must work to reduce that number to graduate in a few weeks. His reduction assignment is to build a working pump for a fountain in a ‘birdcage.’ That’s what her father called it when he requested military engineering help for his daughter.

Her colorful and resourceful cousin is part of the awesome threesome and between them, life is full of trouble.

Check out Summer of Dreams to see what you think.

Happy Reading!