Drums of Autumn

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3**

Oh my god! Seriously? Oh, sorry. Forgot that I was having this conversation in my own head.

This whole book was an oh my god! Jamie and Claire are living happily in the Colonies (mind you, this is the 1760s-1770s). They manage to get away from Jamie's Aunt Jocasta who wants to make him heir to her plantation, even though neither he nor Claire would be comfortable taking it and the slaves that come with it. So, they settle on a mountainside in North Carolina. Although, all the descriptions of their little homestead sounds almost idyllic. I'd live there and I'm so much a city girl.

But then Roger and Brianna discover an article that announces Jamie and Claire's deaths. So Brianna decides she has to go back to warn her mother. There was also a serious curiosity about meeting her biological father. But she doesn't tell Roger, her boyfriend, that she's going back. He figures it out, follows her back in time six weeks later and all sorts of chaos ensues.

There are some points where I felt like I was floating on cloud nine and all happy about what's happening, and then there were those points where I found myself shaking with either anger or fear. I'm so ready to absorb this next book. It's just such a great series.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4 * Book 5 * Book 6**

This was an odd book. We get a bunch of new characters, like Ojo the Unlucky, Unc Nunkie, the Patchwork Girl (Scraps), and a slew of supporting characters that are unusual.

Unc Nunkie gets petrified, so Ojo (his nephew) goes on a quest to find the items the Crooked Magician needs to make a potion to reverse the petrification. He takes Scraps, the Patchwork Girl that was made by the Crooked Magician's wife (by use of the Powder of Life), along on his journey.

Naturally they get into interesting and absurd adventures, just like every other character in every other Oz book. But I think by this point, I'm getting a little tired of the formula for these books. I enjoy the new characters and their interesting stories, but I wish that there wasn't all these introductions of strange people who reside in the land of Oz.

I still enjoy this series, and it seems like my four year old is interested in the story too.

Heart of Darkness

I know I'm supposed to blog about this, but I honestly don't know how. I just really didn't get this book. I mean, there's supposed to be allegory and something about man's darker nature, but I just didn't get it.

Marlowe is the character who tells this story about his time as the captain of a steamboat on an African river. It was a really disjointed story that made very little sense. The writing was pretty terrible, with sentences that just go on and on.

I retained almost none of the story, except that apparently Marlowe is perfectly ok with lying to a woman about her fiance's final words, which brings into question the validity of everything he had said up until that point.

I don't know. I'll probably never read this again and I only read it now because I had to for school.

Nanny Returns

**Book 1**

I'm not going to lie to you guys. This book was a bit of a disappointment after the wonderful and emotional book that is The Nanny Diaries. This was more of a "let's tie up those loose ends and throw in a bunch more complicated story on top of it" books.

So, Nan is back in New York after twelve years away. She's married to the Harvard Hottie from the first book (his name is Ryan by the way), and she's trying to start a consulting business...during the beginning of the recession. Ryan wants babies, Nan does not feel she's ready, especially after the disastrous end to her relationship with Grayer X.

And then Grayer comes back into her life. Granted, he's completely wasted when he shows up on her doorstep, but he's angry and wants to know why she left him all those years ago. He also has a younger brother named Stilton (seriously, what's with the weird names?). Mr. and Mrs. X are finally over. How they'd managed to make it that long, I'll never know. Grayer's world is essentially collapsing around him and Nan is forced to step back in to help him, and herself, find something resembling peace.

I felt like this book was a bit of a forced venture. It seemed to be an effort to please the fans, but the story lines just didn't come together in a very coherent way. I was hopeful this would be a good book, but, like I said, I was disappointed.