Book Review: "Previously Loved Treasures" by Bette Lee Crosby and a Question

I received this book for free from author in exchange for a fair and honest review.
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Ida is in a bad place. Her husband of many years has just died after a long illness. She's in a rambling old house by herself, and she's a little short on cash after paying all the medical bills and expenses. She starts to devise a way to bring in money, but none of them are enough to support herself.

She doesn't have family to speak of, just a son who walked out of their lives when he was 19 that she hasn't heard from since.This is something that she's felt regret and sadness over since it happened. She decides to hire a private investigator to find him.

Between bills and private investigators money is incredibly tight, so Ida takes on boarders. She quickly fills the house with an odd assortment of characters, including her not so nice brother in law Max.She gets a one-two punch of good news and bad news from her private investigator. The bad news is haven't been able to find her son, and the little the investigator gleans is not encouraging; good news is you have a granddaughter!

There is love and loss and grief and hardship and jerks and lovely people and a little magical shop all in one little book.


This book started slowly for me, but it picked up. There's an interesting plot twist that I didn't expect about a quarter of the way into the book. I like it when a book surprises me. A thing that seemed strange to me was the cost of things. Not at Previously Loved Treasures itself, because it's a magical store, but when they'd talk about how much things cost in different parts of the book everything seemed really cheap! Not a bad thing, but I kept thinking man, those are good prices. Though this is a part of a series (this is the second) I didn't feel like I was missing anything from not having read the first book. I give it a 3 out of 5 overall!

Does anyone else's local public library have an adult summer reading program? Mine does and I take it WAY too seriously. (I always say that I'm not a competitive person unless it's something I feel strongly about the subject matter. So you put me some kind of reading or pasta eating contest I'm going to thrown down.) 

In this program you get one point for every book you read of your own choosing, and you get 2 points for every book that you read from a list they provide. Then for each point you earn you get a ticket to put in a bucket that represents a few different prizes. Like last year (when I also went bananas) I won a 2 night stay at a local kind of extended stay hotel. I still haven't used it, because the hotel is literally 3 miles away from my apartment but it will be fun to stay in a hotel and eat someone else's continental breakfast for no real reason. 

I don't know what the prizes are this year but I'm sure I will once again put way too much effort and stress and brain power into a contest that is designed for crazy people like me. So does anyone else participate in a program like this? Are there prizes?