Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Review: Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Lost Lake
by Sarah Addison Allen


The first time Eby saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard.  Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a lifetime ago.  Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby's past.  Her husband, George, is long passed.  Most of her demanding extended family are gone.  All that's left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.

It's a lot, but it's not enough to keep Eby from calling this her final summer at the lake, and relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand.  Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness and heartbreak and loss.  Now she's all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope, too, thanks to her resilient daughter, Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward.  Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer. . . and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.

One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren't sure they needed in the first place: love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended.  Can they find what they need before it's too late?

At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places. 




My Thoughts:  I loved this book from the cover to the story line.  For me, one look at the cover evoked thoughts of the south and the mystery and magic that is a part of of good  Southern fiction.  The main characters, Kate and her daughter Devin, were very sad in the beginning, as Kate's husband had died.  She had been walking around in a fog for a year, but when she came across an old postcard from Lost Lake something in her woke up.  Without telling her mother-in-law, who had basically been controlling her life for the last year, she packed up her daughter Devin for a road trip.  

Eby, Kate's aunt, was planning on this to be her last summer of running Lost Lake.  Her husband had passed away and many things were dilapidated and in need of repair.  When Kate shows up after so many years had passed, it starts to bring back old memories.  Some of Eby's summer regulars start to show up and together they determine to stop Eby from selling out to a real estate mogul who wants to turn the area into a resort.  

There are some magical, mystical elements to the story - like the alligator that speaks to Devin and only she seems able to see.   He wants her to find a box that he claims will save them and Lost Lake.  Devin herself is a little magical, as only a child can be, with her wise-beyond-her-years attitude and flair for dressing.  Kate and Wes' relationship is also magical - the first boy she ever had feelings for and almost kissed - meeting him again at Lost Lake.

Being at Lost Lake was almost as if time had stood still - the cabins, the lake, the path through the woods.  Makes me remember a lake we would go swimming at when I was a kid, that still holds a little magic in the memories when we go back today. 

Devin looked out over the water.  They didn't look like knees.  They didn't even look like roots.  They looked like the ancient spires of Gothic buildings sticking out of the top of the water, like there was a church under the lake and she and Bulahdeen could only see the top of it. They were clustered in a section close to the bank, no more than a foot or so out of the water.  She got as close to the edge as possible and looked down.  The water moved slightly, and she thought for a moment that she saw a flash of something electric blue at the bottom.  But, then again, the water was so murky that it was hard to tell just where the bottom was.  She didn't see any evidence that the alligator had been here, or that whatever it was he might want her to find was hidden anywhere.  She even put her hand over her good eye and looked around.   (p175, Lost Lake)

I haven't read anything else by Sarah Addison Allen, but Garden Spells has been on my TBR list forever.  I really must read some more of her work as I enjoyed this one immensely.




Purchase Links:






About the author: New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction -- a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature -- because, as she puts it, "I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate." 

After graduation, Allen began writing seriously. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut "spellbindingly charming." The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.

Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.

Her published books to date are: Garden Spells (2007), The Sugar Queen (2008), The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010), The Peach Keeper (2011) and Lost Lake (2014). (from Goodreads)

Author Links:


Sunday, June 22, 2014

On Writing

I am having trouble sitting down to write reviews.  I started back to college 2 weeks ago (after being out of school for 15+ years) and am taking a required English class.  I have been struggling with the first writing assignment (due tomorrow) and because of that have not been sitting down to write anything!   I believe that I have finally wrapped up that writing assignment (whew) so hope to get caught up on reviews now.  I apologize if I have promised a review and missed my posting date.  Hopefully things will start to flow again!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Review: Autumn in Carthage by Christopher Zenos

Autumn in Carthage
by Christopher Zenos

Nathan Price is a college professor with crippling impairments, seeking escape from his prison of necessity.  One day, in a package of seventeenth-century documents from Salem Village, he stumbles across a letter by his best friend, Jamie, who had disappeared six months before.  The document is dated 1692 -- the height of the Witch Trials.  The only potential lead: a single mention of Carthage, a tiny town in the Wisconsin northern highland.

The mystery catapults Nathan from Chicago to the Wisconsin wilderness.  There, he meets Alanna, heir to an astonishing Mittel-European legacy of power and sacrifice.  In her, and in the gentle townsfolk of Carthage, Nathan finds the refuge for which he has long yearned.  But Simon, the town elder, is driven by demons of his own, and may well be entangled in Jamie's disappearance and that of several Carthaginians, As darkness stretches toward Alanna, Nathan may have no choice but to risk it all. . .

Moving from the grimness of Chicago's South Side to the Wisconsin hinterlands to seventeenth-century Salem, this is a story of love, of sacrifice, of terrible passions -- and of two wounded souls quietly reaching for the deep peace of sanctuary.  






My Thoughts: I find that the more I enjoy the book, the harder it is to write the review - and this book falls into that category.  I really liked Nathan.  He was an accomplished professor, seemed to be well-liked by his peers and his students, but was still flawed with some unnamed mental disorder.  Rather than diminishing his capabilities though, I thought this gave him a greater understanding as to the differences in people and while it may not have made him more accepting, it gave him a different viewpoint.  I loved this passage in one of the earlier chapters, upon overhearing a group of young men discussing a date who had claimed she was bipolar - and laughing about the world being full of crazies.
We are not less than you, you cowardly little snot. We are more than you. We live every day in a world made by and for you, with burdens that would bring you to your knees -- and still manage to outperform you. (p18)
So anyway, Nathan travels to Carthage, Wisconsin in search of his friend Jamie.  He is not sure what he is looking for and comes upon a town while friendly enough, seems to be harboring secrets and mysteries at every turn.  In Alanna he finds a kindred spirit, and is almost afraid to hope that they might have a future together.  She slowly lets him in on the town's big secret, which is that they are time travelers.  

The author has written this book in such a way, as time travel does not seem farfetched at all, but just an alternate life style.  It was not "science fictiony" at all and fit well with the demeanor of the community and the location.  While Carthage seemed like any number of other small communities you might find in the midwest, there were subtle differences that made you realize it was special, wealthy.  The author was so descriptive in telling about Carthage and the surrounding countryside, that I had to look online to see if a Carthage, Wisconsin really existed. (It does not.)

You meet a lot of characters early on in the book, and if you don't pay attention to the chapter subtitles, you might become confused as to who is narrating. The narrators all bring their own flavor to the story, as they should with their different viewpoints.  

I liked the tie-in of Salem and the witch trials.  If Carthaginians and their abilities were discovered, people might very well treat them as they did the so-called witches in Salem. Salem was a very misunderstood community, but there were a few who took in the misplaced Carthaginians, with their funny dress and accent, and helped them remain as inconspicuous as possible.  

The novel wrapped things up in the end, very satisfactorily for me, and I am very glad that I read this book. I wonder if there are any other books in the works regarding escapades of other time travelers in this community. 


~I received a complimentary copy of Autumn in Carthage from Rebecca at The Cadence Group in exchange for my unbiased review.~





Sunday, June 8, 2014

Review: The Hollow Ground by Natalie S. Harnett

The Hollow Ground
by Natalie S. Harnett

Inspired by the real-life deadly coal mine fires in now-infamous Centralia, Pennsylvania, and the equally devastated town of Carbondale, THE HOLLOW GROUND  is an extraordinary debut novel with an atmospheric, voice-driven narrative and an indelible sense of place.  Already being compared to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird, this evocative story about family and the nature of love between a parent and child introduces a stunning and powerful new voice in literary fiction.

It’s 1961, and the ground is burning beneath eleven-year-old Brigid Howley’s feet.  The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced Brigid and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the Black Lung stricken Gramp.  Tragedy, though, is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the “curse” laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish and Irish-American coal miners.  But the weight of this legacy now rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.  In the aftermath, decades’ old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet.

Filled with compelling characters, rich prose, engrossing historical detail, and an extraordinary sense of time and place, THE HOLLOW GROUND is exquisitely crafted and tells an unforgettable story that is certain to move readers. 


My thoughts: Brigid is the narrator of this story, set against the backdrop of the Appalachian coal mine fires of the 1960's.  I had never heard of these fires and found them fascinating, devastating and unbelievable. Brigid tells how her Aunt's house, where they had been living, becomes uninhabitable as the fire nears and literally hollows out the ground beneath their feet. Her family is forced to move to a nearby town and move in with their Grandma and Grandpa.  The fires are raging beneath this town as well.  

I liked Brigid as a narrator.  She didn't sugar coat anything and she also did not feel sorry for herself or her circumstances.  Her family is very dysfunctional and she if basically raising herself.  As secrets continue to be revealed, including the answers to a murder mystery, what she thought she knew about her family also continues to change. 

I really liked this book.  The background was such a stark contrast to the voice of Brigid.  I read this book awhile ago and the story has really stayed with me.  This was a debut book for Natalie Harnett and I look forward to seeing what else she writes in the future.

"Auntie?" I shouted through the sliver of screen visible where the window was open.  There was no answer.  The flecks of snow had thickened to flakes that had a tinge of yellow to them.  The color was odd and pretty all at once and I couldn't decide if it reminded me of something sick or of something lit up just barely by sun.  Dying light, I decided, remembering a poem Auntie had read to me.  And then I got afraid. (The Hollow Ground, p20)


~I received a complimentary copy of The Hollow Ground from Get Red PR and Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.~

Purchase Links:





About the author:  NATALIE S. HARNETT is an MFA graduate of Columbia. She has been awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship, a Summer Literary Seminars Fellowship, and a Vermont Studio Center Writer’s Grant, and was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction. Harnett has been published in The New York Times, The Madison Review and The MacGuffin. She lives on Long Island with her husband and toddler. 

Author Links:


Saturday, June 7, 2014

And Yet Another Loss


Some of you may remember that we just had our dog, Boomer, put down 10 days ago.  This morning I went upstairs to my bedroom and found our cat, Frankie, had passed away.  We got her back in 2000 when she was about a year old.  She was a very gentle cat, especially when my son was a toddler.  He could lay on her and pull her around by her tail and she would just let him.  She had a very distinctive meow and beautiful green eyes.  Frankie - you will also be missed. 

Friday, June 6, 2014

Cover Reveal: A Beauty so Beastly by RaShelle Workman (Giveaway)


A Beauty so Beastly
by RaShelle Workman

Genre: Fractured Fairy Tale
Book 1 in the Beastly Series
Release date: July 3, 2014


“For your vanity, your cruelty, and your cold unfeeling heart, a curse I leave upon you . . .”

What happens if the beauty is also the beast?

The stunning Beatrice Cavanaugh is considered American royalty. She has everything except the ability to love. Cursed on her eighteenth birthday, she becomes more beastly than ever, having a newfound craving for raw meat, and an undeniable yearning for the night. Bitterness is her only companion.

After accusing a maid of stealing, a disgustingly kind and exquisitely handsome guy named Adam shows up asking Beatrice to drop the charges against his mother.

Infuriated by his goodness, Beatrice vows to break him. Destroy him. Make him hurt the way she hurts. So she agrees. On one condition: Adam must take his mother’s place as a servant in the mansion. 

Because Beatrice won’t stop until he’s more beastly than she is.







Special Note: A BEAUTY SO BEASLTY will be available for 99 cents until its release date on July 3rd! Then it'll go up to $2.99. So pre-order now!





About the author: RaShelle Workman is an international bestselling author. She writes fractured fairytales with bite and young adult science fiction that's out of this world. RaShelle likes cherry pie, movies, family adventures, and chocolate. If you want to get on her good side, send chocolate. RaShelle's sold more than 500,000 copies of her books worldwide. Sleeping Roses, Exiled, Beguiled, and Dovetailed have foreign rights contracts with a Turkish publisher. 

Her books include:


Sleeping Roses

Exiled
Beguiled
Dovetailed
Blood and Snow (1-12)

The Cindy Chronicles

Vampire Lies (Blood and Snow Season 2)

Short stories:

Rose, Undercover

Cindy Witch

The Hunter's Tale

Gabriel
After the Kiss
Zaren's Travels

Author Links: Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest / Blog


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Monday, May 26, 2014

Blog Tour: Synchrony by Cindy Ray Hale


This is my stop during the blog tour for Synchrony (Destiny #2) by Cindy Ray Hale. This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours . The blog tour runs from May 5 till May 25, you can view the complete tour schedule hereI am running a few days behind for this blog tour and for that I apologize.  I read both the first book in this trilogy, Destiny, as well as Synchrony which is book two.  I have shared my thoughts below.


Destiny
(Book 1 of Destiny Trilogy)
Cindy Ray Hale


Genre: Contemporary Romance, YA


Destiny Clark, a young Mormon girl living in Tennessee, is wildly infatuated with Isaac Robinson, the headmaster's son at her Baptist high school. When they're cast together in the school's production of Les Misérables, Destiny is horrified to find that she has to be publicly humiliated by acting out her true feelings of rejection onstage. 

As their rehearsals begin, Destiny realizes the unimaginable: Isaac has developed deep feelings for her despite their religious differences and the fact that he has a girlfriend. 

But will they be able to find their place amongst the backbiters of their ultra-conservative world?

Weaving around Destiny and Isaac's alternating viewpoints, Destiny is the first book in a series inspired by the characters of Les Misérables and explores heartbreak, self-discovery, intolerance, and love.




Synchrony
(Book 2 of Destiny Trilogy)
Genre: Contemporary Romance, YA
Release Date: April 8, 2014

When her parents discover she’s been sneaking out with Isaac Robinson, the forbidden Baptist boy, Mormon girl Destiny Clark decides it’s time to keep their relationship quiet. As their relationship moves to shakier ground, Destiny discovers that Isaac has a terrible secret, and she is left completely shattered.

The moment Destiny feels all hope is lost, Preston Nelson, her longtime church friend and Isaac's bitter rival, arrives like a beacon of light. It isn't long before two separate disasters strike for Preston and Destiny's best friend, Hannah. As Destiny helps them through their issues, she discovers that sometimes the best way to forget about your own problems is to help a friend in need.

Just as her heart begins to mend and her friendship with Preston begins to heat up, Isaac walks back into her life, threatening to rekindle the feelings she’d hoped to bury forever. Will Destiny and Preston find the synchrony they so desperately need, or will she find a way to forgive Isaac and return to his outstretched arms?





My thoughts: I am going to review these books as one.  Because I read them back to back I am not sure where the story ended and the second one picked up.  I liked these books and the whole lover's triangle between Destiny, Isaac, and Preston.  Barring the religious undertones, I bet you can find at least one triangle like this in every high school in America.  

Destiny is only 15 when the book starts and is a Mormon attending Bethel Baptist  High School.  Her family are the only Mormon's that attend and they were former members of Bethel Baptist Church.  When they converted, a lot of their friends didn't understand and broke off the friendship.  While her brother Michael seems to be very well-liked, Destiny doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere. At the start of the school year she only has two girls that she calls friends, and one of them turns out to be Isaac's cousin.  

There are actually two more books coming out, Complexity - book 2.5 and Harmony - book 3.  I am going to have to read these because I want to know what happens with these three!  There is also some smaller stories going on - one with Destiny's best friend Hannah and her boyfriend and another with Destiny's little sister Olivia, and a would be suitor.  Both could be explosive all on their own.

Now that I have shared what I liked about the books, I do have to let you know about something that bothered me.  I am a born-again Christian and felt a little bit like the Christians in this book weren't represented very well.  They seemed to be the ones who were unaccepting, rumor mongerers, druggies, and having pre-marital sex.  The Mormons on the other hand, all had close knit families, watched out for their siblings, dressed conservatively etc.  And it wasn't until Isaac, (Christian) decides to learn more about the Mormon religion that he is portrayed in a much better light.  I understand that this is central to the story line, the different religions and the conflicts between the two, but you don't run into very many good Christians in this story. Meanwhile, even though the Mormons are breaking some house rules, there is no comparison to what their Christian counterparts are doing.  I am wondering if some of this is going to change in the next books though and look forward to finding out. 


You can watch the book trailer here:




Are you Team Isaac?




Or Team Preston?



About the Author:  Cindy Ray Hale lives in a little slice of wooded heaven near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and children. She spends way too much time following up-and-coming musicians on YouTube and dreams of joining their ranks one day. She’s a bit of a health food nut and can’t live without her daily green smoothies. She tries to stay sane as she juggles writing with four kids, staying active on social media, and keeping up her book blog at http://cinnamoncindy.blogspot.com/. In addition to writing and self-publishing two Young Adult Contemporary novels, she has also written articles for "New Era" magazine and The American Preppers Network.

For more information on The Destiny Trilogy and Cindy’s upcoming books visit http://destinybycindyhale.blogspot.com/ or follow @CindyRayHale on Twitter.

Author Links: 
Website /  Website for destiny /  Blog / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Google+ / Pinterest



There is a tour wide giveaway for the blog tour of Synchrony. These are the prizes you can win:

- A $25 Amazon Gift Card (INTL), and a Destiny Swag Pack which includes: a signed copy of Destiny, a signed copy of Synchrony, a Destiny bookmark, a Destiny magnet, a Destiny keychain, and a Synchrony keychain.

- An ecopy of My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century by Rachel Harris and a swag pack

- A Camp Boyfriend swag pack by JK Rock

- An ecopy of Definitely, Maybe in Love by Ophelia London.



For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:

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Saturday, May 24, 2014

Book Blitz: The Middle Eye and Devil Eye - both by Rebecca Jean Downey - with a giveaway!

RebeccaJeanDowney
TheMiddleEyeCover

The Middle Eye
by Rebecca Jean Downey

 When eleven-year-old Rosa Garcia disappears from an El Paso, Texas playground, Penny Larkin, a newly-certified remote viewer, is hired by Sheriff Leo Tellez to find her. The FBI believes she's a runaway, but this is the second time Rosa has been kidnapped, and Leo fears she's been taken by a sexual predator. Penny's lingering memory of fighting off a rape attempt by her foster father clouds her thoughts and prevents her from locating the kidnapper quickly. The sheriff, who rescued Rosa from a homeless man five years earlier, is up for reelection and seeks to curry public favor by finding her again. His deputies claim Penny is a charlatan and a waste of the department's money. When Penny can't locate Rosa promptly, Leo boils with frustration and fires her. Penny refuses to give up, and soon discovers the bloodcurdling kidnapper's hideout. With time running out, Penny sets out alone to rescue Rosa.

Will Penny find young Rosa and exorcise her own demons in the process, or will she fall into the clutches of a Russian child-trafficking ring?


Buy the book




DevilEyeCover

The Devil Eye
by Rebecca Jean Downey

When the U.S. Marshal wants to stop a sale of firearms to Mexico, he asks Penny Larkin to use her remote viewing skills to track down New Mexico gunrunner, Juan Rico. Penny is sworn to secrecy because the marshal believes a law enforcement officer is involved. She can't even tell her boyfriend, El Paso County Sheriff Leo Tellez.

Penny heads off to Columbus, New Mexico alone, and winds up stranded on the Interstate during a dust storm. She is forced to use her own gun to hold off a gang of men trying to hi-jack her car. A man winds up dead and New Mexico State Trooper Johnny Trejo, arrests Penny on suspicion of murder. When Leo comes to rescue Penny from the clutches of the law, he brings Adriana, the beautiful twin sister of Alejandra, Leo's dead wife. Penny is desperate to get out of jail to defend her relationship with Leo, but when she is finally free, she must keep her word to the marshal and find Juan Rico, first.

On the trail of Rico, gun traffickers kidnap Penny and drag her across the Mexican border, along with their guns. This means certain death for Penny in a country where women often go missing. A rescue by the U.S. Marshal or even Sheriff Tellez is unlikely since no one knows where she is. Will Penny escape the grasp of ruthless gunrunners? The answers can be found in Devil Eye!



Buy the book



AuthorPhoto
About the author: Rebecca Jean Downey has a way of pulling you into her stories. You don't want to put the book down until you make sure her characters survive! She graduated from the Indiana University School of Journalism, covered police and court beats as a newspaper reporter, and has since had a life long fascination with law enforcement and criminal behavior. Rebecca read Sherlock Holmes in elementary school, and has devoured hundreds of mystery novels over her lifetime. She finally realized that her home in El Paso, Texas—lying on the cusp of two countries—was a perfect backdrop for sharing the haunting headlines generated south of the border in Mexico.

Today, Rebecca is a speechwriter for the President of The University of Texas at El Paso and Director of Development for the College of Health Sciences.

Author Links:
Facebook | Twitter | Website | Blog


More about Rebecca's Books

Rebecca's novels introduce the reader to a psychic technique called controlled remote viewing, developed in the 1970s by the CIA when the agency suspected that the Soviet Union was conducting psychic spying on the United States. The US Army and the CIA utilized Stargate until the end of the Cold War when the US Government declassified it.

Today, remote viewers help law enforcement agencies and individuals locate missing persons and solve cold cases.

As a remote viewer herself, Rebecca found writing about Penny Larkin’s adventures to be therapeutic.


Click on the giveaway banner below to enter to win a copy of "The Middle Eye" or "Devil Eye" !
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Thursday, May 22, 2014

Sad Day



BOOMER
8/16/2003 - 5/22/2014

You were the best dog and will be dearly missed. 

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan



Here is the second review book for the BookSparks 2014 Summer Reading Challenge.  I don't know about you - but it hasn't felt like spring around here yet, let alone summer!  We saw snow earlier this week - Winter, I am so over you!

Love and Other Foreign Words
by Erin McCahan

Josie lives her life in translation.  She speaks High School, College, Friends, Boyfriends, Break-ups, and even the language of Beautiful Girls.  But none of these is her native tongue.  And Love?  The most foreign language of all.  So when being fluent in True Love becomes the only way to avert a sure catastrophe, Josie is forced to examine her feelings for the boy who says he loves her, the sister she loves but doesn't always like, and the best friend who hasn't said a word -- at least not in a language Josie understands.  

Insightful, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is an irrepressible love story about sisters, friends, boys, and how it feels to find someone, at last, who speaks your language. 



My thoughts: I loved Josie!  She was funny, smart, loyal - but it was probably her quick-wit and dry humor that endeared me to her the most.  I wish that I could be as quick with the comebacks.  As her family says, she is 15 going on 30 - and she juggles as much as some 30 year olds.  She is a sophomore in high school in the afternoon, but as part of an accelerated program she is also a freshman in college in the mornings.  She plays volleyball, runs track, and is very close with her family - which include two older sisters.  

She is okay with her oldest sister's husband, but when her middle sister comes home engaged, she has a hard time finding anything to like about him.  She spends the majority of the book trying to find reasons to make her sister break up with him, or at least to make her family see that they are not right together.  She is enthralled with languages and believes that everyone has their own language, and you won't really fit in if you don't speak their language. 

This made me think about the situations that I find personally to be the most uncomfortable - and when it comes down to it, it is because I don't feel that I will be able to speak the right language to fit in.  Knowing this, I think it will make me approach some situations differently - and without such trepidation.  

Something else that she wrote that stuck with me is "It's easier to hate than to hurt."  Just think about that for awhile and I am sure you will come up with an instance that you could apply this to your own life.  I am passing this book along to my daughters.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookSparks PR in exchange for my unbiased review.~


Purchase Links:
Kindle:
Paperback: 




About the author: Erin McCahan is the author of the YA book I Now Pronounce You Someone Else (Scholastic, June 2010). 
Erin’s debut novel was a 2010 Cybils Award finalist. She grew up in Michigan and worked extensively 
with teenagers before beginning her writing career. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. 

Author Links:
Facebook / Website / Twitter / Goodreads








All the books for the challenge:
May:
Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan
Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

June:
The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri
The Revealed by Jessica Hickam
The Walk In Closet by Abdi Nazemian

July:
Elly in Love by Colleen Oakes
After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Serenade by Emily Kiebel
Queen of Hearts Vol. 2 by Colleen Oakes


August:
Gravel on the Side of the Road by Kris Raddish
The Curse of Van Gogh by Paul Hoppe
Wild Within by Melissa Hart

Add-ons
My Last Kiss by Bethany Neal
In Bloom by Katie Delahanty






Cover Reveal: Harp's Voice by Cassie Shine

I’m so excited to take part in the cover reveal for HARP'S VOICE (Harp's Song #2) by Cassie Shine! Check out the cover below, and let us know what you think in the comments. Then be sure to enter the giveaway for a chance to win a signed copy of HARP'S SONG or HARP'S VOICE (winner's choice), and a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card!

HarpsVoice_cover

Harp's Voice
(Harp's Song #2)
by Cassie Shine
Publication Date: June 24, 2014

Single-minded to the point of near seclusion, Harp Evans' only goal was to move away from her abusive mother, and start a new life at college.  Now a freshman at a prestigious university, Harp continues to struggle letting people in, including her ex-boyfriend -- Connor Williams -- who has always stood by her, especially after her mother exposed a devastating secret about Harp's origin.

While Harp figures out how to navigate her relationships, especially with her mom, Anne, she will have to exorcise her own demons and face challenges with uncompromising courage, including reuniting her broken family -- the family that was shattered by the acts of one man.

After almost twenty years, is it possible for people to change their minds and open their hearts?  More importantly, is Harp strong enough to pull them all back together?


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About the author:  Cassie Shine released her debut young adult novel, Harp's Song in November 2013, finally finishing the short story she started in her college creative writing class. . . many, many moons ago.  She has always Been an avid reader and lover of music (yes, she was in the high school marching band).  While she has a weak spot for all things teeny bopper, especially boy bands, she also loves classical, country, rock and well, pretty much everything.

After living in St. Louis for more than ten years, she and her husband packed up a U-Haul and headed west.  They currently live in Orange county, CA with their furry kids Finnegan and Molly.

Author Links: 
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