I read the following because they were on the long list of nominations for the INSPY awards, but I must say that they were just so-so, fair to middling.

An Unlikely Suitor by Nancy Moser. I’ve read other books by Ms. Moser, and enjoyed them, but after I waited for over 180 pages for the unlikely suitor to show up, I was tired and a bit cranky. Then, I thought the aforementioned suitor was a cad and and a liar, and I found it difficult to suspend disbelief for the multiple fairy tale romances that took place in the last half of the book. If you’ve got a better disbelief suspension mechanism than I do, and if you don’t mind a male romantic lead who leads two young women to believe he’s in love with them at the same time, you might like this one better than I did.

On Hummingbird Wings by Lauraine Snelling. Gillian, the protagonist, is a self-centered corporate b— who hasn’t visited her mother in California in five years. Or is it more? Gillian can’t remember exactly. Gillian’s only sister, Allie, has a husband and two teenage children, but she takes care of mom who lives in the next town over. Allie, however, is a whiner, and according to Gillian that’s the cardinal sin. Mom is domineering and set in her ways, and now she’s decided to die despite the fact that her doctor says she has no life-threatening ailments. Mom seems to have passive-aggressive down to an art form. If all three of them sound like unpleasant people who deserve each other, they are. Or else I was in a bad mood when I read this story of two daughters trying NOT to take responsibility for caring for their aging mother. I just wanted to tell all three of them to grow up and get over themselves. At least the love interest in this one is a good guy. But Gillian doesn’t deserve him.