In Samantha’s Mailbox:
Title: When Girlfriends Step Up
Author: Savannah Page
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: A novel about love and support, and learning that with enduring friendships, no woman is ever alone.
Robin Sinclair is young, determined, and has a promising career at a small publishing house in Seattle. Even though she considers herself unlucky in love, Robin still dreams of eventually meeting Mr. Right and having a happily-ever-after kind of life. And at twenty-five, the world of opportunity is wide. But it’s been a difficult year filled with trials…and it’s only just begun.
While long-time friendships are finally on the mend, and things are starting to look up again, Robin is faced with her biggest challenge yet. She’s single and pregnant.
Uncertain now of her future and scared of being alone, Robin must re-examine her life and choices, and summon the courage to step up.
With the love and support of her best girlfriends from college, especially her best friend and roommate, Lara, Robin will learn that when the going gets tough, the best of friends become family. And, perhaps, with their encouragement, Robin can mature and gain the confidence needed to become a single mother. And, who knows about being unlucky in love. Things are suddenly getting interesting with Robin’s attractive co-worker, Bobby.
This is an endearing story about maturity and perseverance. It’s a story about friends coming together as family, about finding the strength within and around, and about writing your own happily-ever-after. About what happens when girlfriends step up.
Title: Alberta Clipper
Author: Sheena Lambert
Received: From Sheena Lambert
Synopsis: Christine Grogan is a beautiful 28-year-old meteorologist with a loving family, great friends and an exciting career working for an international investment bank. So why does she spend every January 20th crying like her heart might break? As everyone around her appears to be moving on with their lives, Christine wears her past like a pair of concrete shoes. Can nothing, or nobody help her shake them?
Mark Harrington thought he had all he ever wanted. Head of the bank’s Irish operations, he has the career, the house and the relationship any 39-year-old would wish for. But when his seemingly perfectly-planned life suddenly strays totally off course, Mark is confronted with the fact that he isn’t actually in control at all…
…and that he is crazy in love with Christine.
Insider trading, rambunctious Christmas parties, overnight conferences, the modern office environment has it all. But it can also be the stage for a simple, modern love story.
ALBERTA CLIPPER is that story.
It is a story of guilt and forgiveness, trust and betrayal.
And absolute, unconditional love.
The story of two people, each floundering in their own lives, who might just be able to save one another.
Title: Love or Money?
Author: Carrie Stone
Received: From Carrie Stone
Synopsis: How does a successful, money-driven woman act when her world is turned upside down and her values are brought into question? Felicity Harroway is about to go on a journey. A long distance one.
Housewife and best friend Zara is also about to undertake new changes with a baby on the way. Just not quite in the way she’s expecting. For husband Steve isn’t as honest as he appears…
Can Felicity’s anxious and downtrodden mother Glenda guide both women in the right direction? Will fellow friend Sylvia lead by example and find happiness with her celebrity boyfriend?
Join the four women as they battle with the trials of work and relationships, and begin to question the all important dilemma… Love or Money? Or can you have both?
Title: Calling Me Home
Author: Julie Kibler
Received: SheKnows
Synopsis: Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship.
Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It’s a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.
Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle’s guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.
Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.
Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper–in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle’s first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.
Title: Caramel Magnolias
Author: Tess Hardwick
Received: From Booktrope
Synopsis: Ten years ago, Cleo Tanner lost her first and only true love in a fateful motorcycle accident and now leads a quiet, isolated life in Seattle. Sylvia, her best friend from college, is trapped in a loveless marriage, blinded by her desire to have a child.
Both women are living passively on the sidelines of life, longing for that which they cannot have..until Cleo has an unexpected encounter with an adoption agency owner just as Sylvia suffers from another failed in-vitro procedure. Not long after, Cleo is approached by a detective because her phone number found at the same location a missing teenage girl was last seen. As the investigation unfolds, both women find their hearts – and lives – at risk.
A toast to friendship, mended hearts, and new beginnings, Caramel Magnolias reminds us it’s never too late to reawaken the heart.
In Sara’s Mailbox:
Title: After the Rain
Author: Karen White
Received: Penguin Publishing
Synopsis: From “one of the best new writers on the scene today” (The Huffington Post) comes the sequel to Falling Home, a novel set in the picaresque town of Walton, Georgia, where one woman is about to discover that the best journey is the one that brings you home.…
Freelance photographer Suzanne Paris has been on her own since she was fourteen—and she has no intention of settling down, especially not in a tiny town like Walton, Georgia. She’s here to hide out for a little while, not to form connections. Her survival depends on her ability to slip in and out of people’s lives, on never staying in one place for too long.
But no one in Walton plans on making things easy for Suzanne. For one thing, it’s a town where everyone knows everyone else—and they all seem intent on making Suzanne feel right at home. For another, Suzanne can’t help but feel drawn to this tight-knit community—or to the town’s mayor, Joe Warner, and his six kids. But Suzanne can’t afford to stick around, even if she’s finally found a place where she belongs. Because someone is looking for her—someone who won’t stop until her life is destroyed…
