Wow!  It feels so good to be back here again.  How I’ve missed this place, and the reading community I’ve come to love.  I love a good book, but it’s so much better when I can talk about those books with others who also simply love a good romance, in any genre!

There are two good reasons why Happily Ever After Romance and Keeper Bookshelf went missing. I’ll give a brief explanation because, in truth, my absence was not by choice.

In the fall of 2023, I fell (over my cat *sigh*).  At the time, it didn’t seem too bad, although I did need help getting back to my feet again, but I could walk without pain… so I didn’t do what I should have immediately done, gone to the ER.  I’ll spare you the gory details and memory of the weeks that followed as I was slowly being paralyzed from that fall.  It turned out that I had broken my tailbone, along with a few other injuries, in that fall.  Within two months, I had two spinal fusion surgeries.  Within one heartbeat, my life changed forever.

I spent almost all of 2024 in a rehabilitation facility, recovering, healing, and learning to walk again.  I’m not going to lie, it was hard.  Yet, in December of 2024, I was able to return home to a far different life.  Still learning, still recovering, but at least in my own home with the people who mean the most to me.  Today, I feel good.  Thankful to be alive and typing this.  I’m told that with work, I’ll one day be able to navigate with just a cane, but for now, I use both a wheelchair and a walker to get around.  To be honest, the fear of another fall has held me back… getting past that fear is a larger hurdle than I could have ever imagined.

Since my return home in December of 2024, I’ve been reading my own books and eARCs while posting those reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and Book Bub.  Which brings me to the next part of this rough and rocky journey.  While I was off healing and recovering… I lost two of my websites.  Yeah.  Talk about adding insult to injury!  Details don’t matter, but we (actually, my son) got one of those sites back… this one, Happily Ever After Romance.  And, since reclaiming what was mine, I’ve been working to get this site to a point where I could get it back online… it ain’t perfect, but it will get there.  I’ll be adding new content, trying to recreate two blogs into one – but it will take time.  Unfortunately, Keeper Bookshelf no longer exists, at least under my control.  If you should ever see Keeper Bookshelf online (if not referenced here by me)… trust me, that’s not me.  KB was my first book blog, more than a decade of my life went into that place.. now gone.  But, life goes on, and so does my love of a good romance, and talking about them here with you.  

So.  That’s what happened to me.  Time to shake it off, and get on with living life to the fullest… which includes reading as many books as possible!  🙂