Weekly Book Haul.....August 9, 2015

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea, Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews, The Sunday Salon is a new facebook group I've joined and Monday Mailbox is hosted by Marcia to be Continued.

I seriously cannot believe it's already August.  This summer went by so fast.  I'm seeing lots of Facebook posts about back to school shopping, and soon will come the barrage of kids in their first day of school clothes.  Part of me misses those days, and part of me is happy that I'm not hemorrhaging money at Target and Hollister right now!

I went to grocery shopping at Safeway yesterday and saw this.  

So annoying.  Can't we just enjoy the last few weeks of summer and the first few weeks of back-to-school without having Halloween shoved down our throats?  Maybe it's part of living in Arizona, where it stays hot all the way through Halloween that makes me get so irritated with this.  But man, it makes me rage-y.

I just finished Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica (hope to have the review up tomorrow) and it was sooo good!!  I'm giving away a copy on my blog.  Go to the home page and the entry form is on the right sidebar.  A Nurse and A Book

Added a few good books this week.  And I'm joining a Readathon Challenge called Bout of Books.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

NetGalley

Too Close to Home by Susan Lewis......Jenna Moore finally feels that she and

her family are exactly where they should be. Leaving busy London behind, they’ve moved to the beautiful, serene Welsh coast. There Jenna, her husband, Jack, and the couple’s four children have found a little slice of heaven. In the house of their dreams, Jenna and Jack are ramping up for the launch of their new publishing business, and the kids are happier than they’ve ever been, wandering the wild, grassy moors that meet white sand beaches and wide ocean.

But a fissure cracks open. The once open and honest Jack suddenly seems to be keeping secrets, spinning intricate lies. And fifteen-year-old Paige has become withdrawn, isolating herself from her family and her new friends. Frightened of the darkness enveloping her family, Jenna struggles to hold her loved ones together. But a cruel disturbance has insinuated itself into her home, threatening to take away everything she holds dear.

Edelweiss

Second Helpings at the Serve You Right Cafe by Tilia Kiebenov Jacobs....What if the world didn’t want you to go straight? Out on parole after

almost ten years in prison, Emet First is repairing his shattered life. He has friends, a job, and his first date in a decade. The young woman, Mercedes Finch, is lovely but wounded. When her deranged brother learns about Emet’s past, he will stop at nothing to destroy him—and suddenly Emet has everything to lose. 

In the Mail

Summer by Summer by Heather Burch....When Summer took a job as a

nanny for a couple vacationing in Belize, she imagined it would be a fresh start before starting college in the fall. And while she adores her charge, Josh, she can’t say the same for her employers’ oldest son, Bray. He’s cocky, inconsiderate, and makes her feel she’s a chore he has to put up with. In short, he’s everything she dislikes in a guy.

Bray had a plan for the summer: party, hang out with friends, and forget all the responsibilities waiting for him back home. But every time he’s forced to be around Summer, her dour, serious mood sets him off. Not to mention she has a habit of picking up on what he already knows is wrong with him.Then the two find themselves on a dive trip gone wrong, stranded on a remote island. As they focus on survival, their differences melt away, and they find being together may be what both needed all along.

A Giveaway - Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica

I'm giving away a copy of Mary Kubica's, Pretty Baby!  And it is a page turner!!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

The S Word by Paolina Milana

What They Say.....In accordance with her Sicilian Catholic family’s unspoken code, Paolina Milana learned at an early age to keep her secrets locked away where no one could find them. Nobody outside the family needed to know about the voices her Mamma battled in her head; or about how Paolina forged her birth certificate at thirteen so she could get a job at The Donut Shop; or about the police officer twenty-six years her senior whose promise to her Papà to “keep an eye on her” quickly translated into something sinister. And perhaps that’s why no one saw it coming when—on the eve of her sweet sixteen, pushed to edge—Paolina attempted to take her own mother’s life. 

Raw and compelling, The S Word is the true story of a girl who nearly suffocates in the silence she was taught to value above all else—until she finally finds the strength to break free of the secrets binding her and save herself.

What I Say.....I usually am not a huge fan of memoirs.  But this one read so easily that I actually had to turn back to the cover to make sure that it wasn't a novel.

Paolina has learned to keep her family's secrets.  Her mother's mental illness, her father's inability to read or write basic English, and the fact that she has gotten a job as a 13 year old girl.

Watching Paolina navigate an overly interested police office, while juggling school and trying to escape her mother's watchful, crazy gaze, I was struck by her story.  Not at how unique it was, but at how there are probably lot's of Paolina's out there, making this story absolutely un-unique, and yet no less sad.

Although her childhood was not any type of picnic, I do have to say that it probably contributed to her success.  I think many of us were driven to succeed just as a form of escape.  

I was struck by her friend's words (written in her acknowledgment), "When are you going to stop wishing for a better past?".  I think that is something I need to practice in my own life.  Don't look back.

I do wish there had been a little afterward written that caught us up on her brother and sisters, and her father and mother.  I would have liked to know more about how they all turned out.

It was a great read - finished in a day.  I would definitely read this author again.

Weekly Book Haul....August 2, 2015

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea, Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews, The Sunday Salon is a new facebook group I've joined and Monday Mailbox is hosted by Marcia to be Continued.

I had a great week.  Lots accomplished at work, read a lot, and drum roll.......I actually went to the gym a few times!  Since I've moved, I'm now five minutes away from one of my best friends, so we can work out together.   This is great because I can talk myself into staying home every night of the week.

NetGalley

The Betrayal by Laura Elliot.....Nadine and Jake Saunders were married in

their teens. Tied to one another by a night of passion that resulted in a pregnancy neither could turn away from. 

Now, years later, their children have all flown the nest and the pact they made as teenagers – to give one another the freedom to pursue their own dreams – has resurfaced. 

But freedom comes at a price …

While Nadine and Jake begin to untangle their lives from one another, Jake embarks on a passionate affair with a beautiful woman, Karin Moyes. What he doesn’t know is the dark history Karin shares with Nadine.

As lust spirals into dangerous obsession, Jake must break free from Karin. But he must also ask himself how well he ever really knew Nadine. What secret is she hiding? The truth, when it is revealed, could destroy them all.

The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman.....A brilliant, deeply

dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches—perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents' death in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace's harrowing past returns with a vengeance.
 
Both Grace and her newest patient are stunned when they recognize each other from a recent encounter. Haunted by his bleak past, mild-mannered Andrew Toner is desperate for Grace's renowned therapeutic expertise and more than willing to ignore their connection. And while Grace is tempted to explore his case, which seems to eerily echo her grim early years, she refuses—a decision she regrets when a homicide detective appears on her doorstep.
 
An evil she thought she'd outrun has reared its head again, but Grace fears that a police inquiry will expose her double life. Launching her own personal investigation leads her to a murderously manipulative foe, one whose warped craving for power forces Grace back into the chaos and madness she'd long ago fled.

Rooville by Julie Long....Even after thirteen years in Southern California,

Owen Martin can feel the corners of his squareness still sharply evident. He’s a TV weatherman bored by the beautiful climate. He wants to coach basketball but all the kids play soccer. And he seems to be the only person who thinks a fruit smoothie is a poor substitute for a vanilla shake. When he’s fired from his job, Owen is relieved to head home to Iowa, to the town his ancestors founded and the simple life he knew before his father died. He can’t predict the atmospheric pressure he's about to encounter, which, as any meteorologist knows, is the key catalyst for change. . . .In his absence, Martinville has become the center of the Transcendental Meditation movement and host to all things alternative. There are golden domes for mass meditations, a vegan café where the burger joint stood, and all the shop doors around Town Square now face east. But far worse than anything is the danger to the Martin family farm. In a town divided between “Regulars” and “Roos” (gurus), Owen is clear where he stands until he falls for a levitator instead of the down-to-earth girl he had in mind. With old customs and open-mindedness clashing like warm and cold fronts, Owen gets caught in a veritable tornado. Can he save the farm, get the girl, and reunite the town? Maybe . . . if he’s willing to embrace a change in the weather.

In the Mail

Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica....She sees the teenage girl on the train

platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated. 

The Witch of Lime Street by David Jaher....The 1920s are famous as the

golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics—and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. 

Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee.  Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified.  Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini.

David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other’s orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?

What I Wrote

If I Could Turn Back Time by Beth Harrison

If I Could Turn Back Time by Beth Harbison

What They Say....Thirty-seven year old Ramie Phillips has led a very successful life. She made her fortune and now she hob nobs with the very rich and occasionally the semi-famous, and she enjoys luxuries she only dreamed of as a middle-class kid growing up in Potomac, Maryland. But despite it all, she can't ignore the fact that she isn't necessarily happy. In fact, lately Ramie has begun to feel more than a little empty. 

On a boat with friends off the Florida coast, she tries to fight her feelings of discontent with steel will and hard liquor. No one even notices as she gets up and goes to the diving board and dives off...

Suddenly Ramie is waking up, straining to understand a voice calling in the distance...It's her mother: "Wake up! You're going to be late for school again. I'm not writing a note this time..."  

Ramie finds herself back on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, with a second chance to see the people she's lost and change the choices she regrets. How did she get back here? Has she gone off the deep end? Is she really back in time? Above all, she'll have to answer the question that no one else can: What it is that she really wants from the past, and for her future?


What I Say....This was such a cute book.  Ramie is living the good life, out on a yacht, celebrating her upcoming birthday.   One of her best friends and partner in crime announces her pregnancy, leading to a moment of discontent for Ramie.  Although her career is going very well, she still hasn't found "The One", leading her to wonder if she's done her whole life all wrong,

A tipsy walk off the plank, and next thing she knows, she is waking up in her childhood bedroom, being woken up for her last few days of high school.

As Ramie tries to take in everything that is happening, she realizes she may have a chance to redo some of her teenaged decisions.  The biggest one is breaking up with her high school boyfriend, Brendan.

Seeing Brendan brings back a lot of the excitement of first teenaged love, complete with teenaged hormones.

Going back in time also gives Ramie a chance to have some heart to hearts with her father, who she knows will die in two years.

The setup was really great, and I even started to think that maybe the real reason that Ramie came back in time was to help change her father's fate.

Towards the end of the book, Ramie makes a jump skip to another point in time to see where her life would be if she HAD married Brendan.  Spoiler alert, it's not good.

As a woman about the same age as Ramie, I loved this book.  I think we all tend to look back and think, 'what if?".  But hopefully, real love is still out there for me, just like it was for Ramie.

Current Goodreads Rating 3.52  - I gave it 4 stars.

Thanks for the ARC copy for an honest review!