Sunday, August 2, 2015

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 ReviewsThe 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 cafĂ© 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






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Saturday, August 1, 2015

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!



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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Weekly Book Haul.......July 26, 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 ReviewsThe Sunday Salon is a new facebook group I've joined and Monday Mailbox is hosted by Marcia to be Continued.

Amazingly, I didn't get any review copies this week.  My mailbox and email have been empty, and I am actually okay with that.  

Sometimes book blogging begins to feel like a not very fun job, with looming deadlines.  And reading is one of the things I love best, so I don't want to turn it into a chore.

But I can't lie....I did buy a few things.  

What I Bought

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chaining....The first kidnappings happened two hundred
years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away.

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil.

But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?

The School for Good & Evil is an epic journey into a dazzling new world, where the only way out of a fairy tale is to live through one.

Fat Chance by Nick Spalding.....Meet Zoe and Greg Milton, a married couple who have let
themselves go.


Zoe was a stunner in her high school days, but the intervening decades have added seventy pounds, and removed most of her self-esteem.

Greg's rugby-playing days are well and truly behind him, thanks to countless beers and fast food.

When Elise, a radio DJ and Zoe's best friend, tells them about a new competition, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn their lives around. Fat Chance will pit six hefty couples against one another to see who can collectively lose the most weight and walk away with a large cash prize.

So begins six months of abject misery, tears, and frustration—that just might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them—in another laugh-out-loud look at the way we live now from bestselling author Nick Spalding.

Lemongrass Hope by Amy Impellizzeri.....Set in the past, and present, LEMONGRASS HOPE is a
captivating and unpredictable love story, with a dose of magical realism and time travel, that fans of authors such as Audrey Niffenegger, Alice Hoffman, and Toni Morrison will appreciate and embrace. Like Liane Moriarty's The Husband's Secret, Lemongrass Hope weaves together ordinary lives and events to tell an extraordinary tale of connection, loss, renewal, and of course, hope. As Kate Sutton's decade-long marriage to Rob erodes and unravels, Kate fears that the secrets she guards from the world, including Rob's emergency room proposal, and a whirlwind love affair from her past, have always doomed her fate. When she unwittingly receives a glimpse at what her life could have been like had she made different choices all those years ago, it is indeed all she could have ever wanted. A confirmation of her greatest hope, and her greatest fears. LEMONGRASS HOPE will draw you in with characters so relatable and real, you will cheer for them one moment and flinch the next. A tale that invites you to suspend disbelief-or perhaps decide to believe once and for all-in the potent power of love and connection over time and choice. Oh, and the dress. There's this lemongrass dress . . .

What I Wrote




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Saturday, July 25, 2015

Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper.....written by Hilary Liftin




What They Say....Actress Lizzie Pepper was America’s Girl Next Door and her marriage to Hollywood mega-star Rob Mars was tabloid gold—a whirlwind romance and an elaborate celebrity-studded wedding landed them on the cover of every celebrity weekly. But fame, beauty, and wealth weren’t enough to keep their marriage together. Hollywood’s “It” couple are over—and now Lizzie is going to tell her side of the story.

Celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin chronicles the tabloids’ favorite marriage as Lizzie Pepper realizes that, when the curtain falls, her romance isn’t what she and everyone else thought. From her lonely holidays in sumptuous villas to her husband’s deep commitment to a disconcertingly repressive mind-body group, Lizzie reveals a side of fame that her fans never get to see. Full of twists and turns, Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper is a breathless journey to the heights of Hollywood power and royalty and a life in the spotlight that is nearly impossible to escape.


What I Say....This was a great poolside book!  I was so hooked that I read it straight through over a day.

The story is obviously based on the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise whirlwind courtship, which ended in a shocking Mission Impossible style divorce.  I remember when that was all the tabloid rage, and I read them all.  I do love my celebrity gossip.  It's my thing.

We all had the same questions.  Was Katie forced into Scientology? Was she brainwashed? Was she a zombie?  Did she fake her pregnancy? Was it all for publicity?  It seemed like everyone had a theory. And just when you were thinking it was real, you had Tom jumping on couches, leaping on cars, or Katie's scientology handler telling her how to answer interview questions, "You adore him.".

I'm not 100% sure if this book was all the writer's imagination, or whether she has a source, but it was definitely a compelling read.  This book answered a lot of those questions, and honestly, it seemed to address a lot of the things that we saw.

Except, now I wonder if Katie Holmes's dad really did broker her initial introduction to Tom Cruise....that was one piece of the story I don't remember ever hearing.

Well, either way, all that matters is that Katie got out.  Although she really doesn't look any happier now.  This book was a great reminder that although we think celebrities have such great lives, they actually give up a lot.  In Tom Cruise's, I mean Rob Mars, case, it seems like he also gave up his ability to feel or experience a real life.

A fun read for a summer day!

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Beautiful Girl by Fleur Philips



What They Say....Seventeen-year-old Melanie Kennicut is beautiful. Her entire life revolves around this beauty because her overly controlling mother has been dragging her to casting calls and auditions since she was four years old. According to Joanne Kennicut, Melanie was born to follow in her footsteps.

But Melanie never wanted this life. When a freak car accident leaves her with facial lacerations that will require plastic surgery, she can't help but wonder if this is the answer to her prayers. For the first time in her life, she has a chance to live like a normal teenager--at least for a little while--away from the photo shoots and movie sets that have dominated her entire existence.

But after Melanie allows her best friend to come to the house to see her, Joanne decides to hide her daughter in Montana for the remainder of the summer. There, Melanie won't be seen by anyone they know, and her face will heal in time for the scheduled surgery in late August. Joanne’s plan backfires, however, when Melanie meets Sam, a Native American boy hired by the home's owner to tend to the property. Sam is nothing like the Hollywood boys Melanie knows--he¹s poor, his father's a drunk who possesses a bizarre gift inherited from a Kootenai Shaman, and his only brother disappeared into the mountains after the death of their mother eight years before.

What transpires over a mere 36 hours after Sam and Melanie meet changes both of their lives in ways they never thought possible.

Part of the Booksparks Summer Reading Challenge!  I've gotten so many great books from them this summer that it's been hard to keep up!




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