My mom looooooooves her Kindle. Sure, she plays games on it nearly as often as she reads on it, but she reads on it a LOT, and she loves it that she doesn’t need to lug a bag of books on trips anymore. (So does Dad, since he’s the one who had to play pack mule most of the time!)
Unfortunately, since her Kindle was an early model, it’s starting to fall apart. It’s the push-button kind, not the touch-screen kind, and the buttons don’t work all that well anymore. She definitely needs a new one, and so when Amazon had Kindles on sale for Black Friday weekend, I grabbed her a new one. Yay!
Now I need help filling it. Yes, she’ll re-download her files to the new device as soon as she gets it set up, but she should have some new reads, right?
The challenge is finding things she’ll enjoy without breaking the bank. I have some money to play with, but the lower the price, the more I can buy.
Here’s what she likes. First and foremost: no graphic sex or violence. Sex scenes are okay if they’re not detailed, but she prefers a closed door (or no sex at all). Violence should be mild or off-page and never gory or descriptive.
For genre, she likes sweet or inspirational romance and cozy mysteries. She likes Christian romance that isn’t overly saccharine, and she loves stories with humor in them, even if they aren’t precisely “comedies.” She likes stories with older heroes/heroines and generally prefers contemporary settings rather than historicals (though modern/recent historicals set within the past 100 years or so would be great). She likes small towns, beach settings, Southern locations, and plays on words. Of course, a book that combines any of those things would be especially great.
For romance specifically, Harlequin Heartwarming and any inspirational line would be a couple of good examples.
A few of her favorite authors/stories:
The Thursday Next series
The Southern Sisters mysteries
Tracy Brogan’s Crazy Little Thing
(One caveat: Mom spent most of her career as a writer and editor and doesn’t have much patience for subpar editing. Even less than I do, and that’s saying a lot! So if you love a story despite the errors, it’s probably not a good choice for her.)
So help me out here! Tell me about any great reads that fit her needs and don’t cost the world. I’ll grab up as many as I can afford. And as always, feel free to pimp out yourself.
shaeconnorwrites 