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Weekly Book Haul.....January 10, 2016

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.

My youngest daughter was home for a week before starting back to school in Illinois on Monday.  So last week was a whirlwind of getting hair done, eyebrows waxed, dinners with family and just generally running errands every night after work.  I loved having her home, but she cost me a fortune!  I just kept telling myself to grit my teeth and enjoy the time.  I love having daughters but I think they must be much more expensive than sons.

This week, for the first time, I made a conscious decision not to finish a book.  It wasn't necessarily the author, because I normally love her, but the subject matter was boring, and I couldn't get into it.  I found myself looking at it on the end table like work, not like I couldn't wait to get back into it.  I'm not going to lie, it still doesn't feel right and I feel incredibly guilty, but it was a resolution I made, so I feel like I've got to give it a try.

I'm looking forward to at least a few changes for 2016!

NetGalley

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin....The New York Times 

bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife returns with a triumphant new novel about New York's “Swans” of the 1950s—and the scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.

Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends—the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a high-profile husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman—a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.

Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan's elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe's powerful circle. Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls “True Heart,” Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller—even when the stories aren't his to tell.

Truman's fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he'll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years. The Swans of Fifth Avenue will seduce and startle readers as it opens the door onto one of America's most sumptuous eras.

Hide Away by Iris Johansen.....Iris Johansen's beloved forensic sculptor Eve

Duncan is back and now the stakes are higher than ever. Dramatic changes are on the horizon for Eve and Joe Quinn and their relationship may never be the same. 

Faced with the task of protecting Cara Delaney, a young girl with ruthless enemies who want to see her dead, Eve takes her away to the remote Scottish Highlands where they join Jane MacGuire in search of a hidden treasure. 

But nowhere is far enough away to protect Cara from danger. With enemies closing in from all sides, Hide Away is a high-octane thriller that fans will not want to miss.




Nookietown by V.C. Chickering.....Recently divorced, 40-something single-

mom, Lucy, is lonely, bored and craving physical connection. 

So, when her trusted long-time married friend, Nancy, begs Lucy to sleep with her husband to save her marriage, Lucy goes for it. It's such a success, the two friends invent a town-wide underground barter system whereby Nancy's married girlfriends sub-contract Lucy's divorcee friends to sleep with their husbands so they don't have to as often. It's a win, win, win- for a while. Then it all goes to hell in a hand-basket.

Laugh-out-loud funny, emotionally provocative and at times racy, V. C. Chickering's Nookietown is a story of risk-taking, marriage, honesty and desire, and what one woman rationalizes in order to get what she wants. 

A bunch of great books, but I have to admit, I am interested in Nookietown just for the cover.  I thought it was hilarious!

Ask Him Why by Catherine Ryan Hyde

What They Say.....From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes the stunning and emotional story of a young soldier’s unthinkable act . . . and the bonds of a sister and brother’s love.

Ruth and her little brother, Aubrey, are just teenagers when their older brother ships off to Iraq. When Joseph returns, uninjured, only three and a half months later, Ruth is happy he is safe but also deeply worried. How can it be that her courageous big brother has been dishonorably discharged for refusing to go out on duty? Aubrey can’t believe that his hero doesn’t have very good reasons.

Yet as the horrifying details of the incident emerge, Joseph disappears. In their attempts to find him, Ruth and Aubrey discover he has a past far darker than either of them could imagine. But even as they learn more about their brother, important questions remain unanswered—why did he betray his unit, his country, and now his family? Joseph’s refusal to speak ignites a fire in young Aubrey that results in a disastrous, and public, act of rebellion.

The impact of Joseph’s fateful decision one night in Baghdad will echo for years to come, with his siblings caught between their love for him and the media’s engulfing frenzy of judgment. Will their family ever make their way back to each other and find a way to forgive?

What I Say.....I love Catherine Ryan Hyde, and usually her books are an easy win for me.  But this one dragged on a little.  I think mostly because I'm sick of hearing about Bowe Bergdahl - first the Serial podcast, then this book.  I wasn't that interested in the first place, to be honest.

So this issue may have been mine - especially since I see it has a high 4 rating on Goodreads, but I just had a hard time getting into it.

The main theme was the entire family didn't know how to communicate and kept their feelings to themselves, but this also made the narration of the story very flat, and didn't pull me in emotionally like most of Hyde's books.  

So this is the first official unfinished book of 2016.  And it's killing me, with my compulsive need for closure.

Current Goodreads Rating 4.05

Weekly Book Haul....January 4, 2016

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.

So the holidays are over.  I usually make it a point not to make New Year's resolutions, but for some reason this year, I was moved to make a few, most in regards to my blog and my reading. 

Here they are, in no particular order.

1.  I upped my Goodreads Reading Challenge to 60 books this year.  It's been 50 for the last two years, but I hit 54 in 2015, so I think 60 is do-able, particularly if I keep my next resolution.....

2.  Decrease my TV and internet/Facebook time and increase my reading time.  I feel like I literally stare at my phone for hours, refreshing and surfing.  Even with my iPad right beside me, I stare at my phone.  Case in point, I just took a break from typing this blog to check my phone.  It's an addiction.

3.  If I start a book and don't want to pick it up and continue reading it within a week, I'm not finishing it.  I actually got this from my friend, Windee, who is very wise.  I struggle with not finishing a book, no matter how much I'm not enjoying it.  I have an almost compulsive need to finish reading a book util the end.  Which then delays me from reading other books, because I'm avoiding that book.

4.  To update my blog appearance and headers.

5.  To show more of my true self in my reviews.  I won't be mean because I have admiration for anyone who has written a book and gone through the work to have it published.  But I haven't wanted to be part of the blogger/author wars, so I haven't always used my real voice in my blog for fear of being seen as a blogger that publishers don't want to deal with.  And I think there have been times where I could have shown my true voice.

With the holidays, I haven't added a whole lot to my overflowing TBR pile, but here they are.

NetGalley

Smart Girl by Rachel Hollis....Brilliant designer Miko Jin is a hopeless

romantic. She’s spent most of her life falling in love over and over again…with the men she finds in the pages of her favorite novels.

When Miko meets Liam Ashton, it’s love at first sight. At least, for her. Sure, the two of them are polar opposites, and yes, he seems to be dating someone new each week. But Miko knows what true love is and that you can’t rush it—after all, what she lacks in real-world experience, she makes up for in book smarts. With novels as her guide, and her best friends by her side, she knows she can get Liam to love her back. But just like any good romance novel, fate has a few plot twists in store. Will Miko get her own happy ending? Will she find the strength to stand up for what she deserves even if it means breaking her own heart?

After You by Jojo Moyes

What They Say....How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places neither they nor we ever expected.

What I Say....I loved Me Before You.  I actually read it on a flight to Hawaii and embarrassed myself by sobbing uncontrollably in front of an airplane full of strangers.  But I think I was one of the few that wasn't clamoring for a follow up book.  

But once I saw it had been written, how could I resist?  I do love Jojo Moyes, and I'd read anything she's written.  

This one wasn't my favorite though.  I think I would have rather left the story at the end of Me Before You.  In my mind, Louisa had gone on to live a meaningful, daring life that Will challenged her to.

To see that she is back to living a completely uneventful life was a pretty big letdown.  It was actually depressing me.

The introduction of Lily is a new twist, and her story was really heartbreaking.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but when she was close to rock bottom, and her father's friend appeared to help her, I kept thinking, "Please don't be a bad guy, please don't be a lech."  Of course he was.  I actually became more invested in Lily's story than Lou's.  I almost think the book could have been written from her viewpoint.

This was a good book, and I'm glad that Louisa found peace.  But what did you think?  Are you glad there was a sequel?  Or would have been happy with the ending of Me Before You?