Book Review: The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell
Reviewer: Samantha I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Summary: Still grieving the death of her prematurely delivered infant,…
Book Review: If I Say Yes by Brandy Jellum
Reviewer: Michelle I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Summary: Elizabeth Lewis was the child of Hollywood’s darling couple,…
Book Review: The Perfect Location by Kate Forster
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary:
Three glamorous actresses gliding through a life lived on the silver screen. One Hollywood Blockbuster. One perfect location.
Rose Nightingale is an English actress recovering from a bad marriage, who wonders if her dream being a mother will ever come true.
Sapphira De Mont is the world’s most beautiful movie star,
but hides a secret addiction and the deepest of grief imaginable.
Calypso Gable is a young star on the rise trying to escape
her mum-manager’s clutches and find her independence.
As they come together on set in the Italian hills, they are faced with their biggest battles yet, but they soon learn that friendship is the greatest weapon a woman can have.
Review:
The Perfect Location is a cute story that brings together a range of different characters. Sapphira’s story was the most interesting for me to read about, because she had such a secret life hidden from everyone, even those closest to her. I connected the most with Calypso, probably due to her age, but each woman brought an element to the story. The book was pretty long and dragged for me at parts, but the parts I found intriguing I really enjoyed reading. I just wish a lot of the unneeded plot points were cut out so my interest was held longer. Still cute, but not for you if you are looking for a quick read.
3 stars
Book Review: Grim edited by Christine Johnson
Reviewer: Andrea I received a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. The Summary: Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a…
CLP Blog Tours Book Review: Unwell by Marie Chow
Marie Chow is now on tour with CLP Blog Tours and Unwell
Summary:
How do you tell your child that you won’t be there when they grow up? UNWELL is the raw, honest story of a mother who writes to her unborn child, sharing her decision of choosing not to be a mother. She doesn’t choose abortion. Nor does she consider adoption. Instead, she decides to give her child a fighting chance in life, without the angst and drama that’s shaped her own bittersweet life.
With a poignant lack of emotion, the young mother shares her life story. As the child of Asian parents who moved to America early in her life, the mother shares how her life disintegrated after her parents’ divorce. From upper middle class suburban to sharing her mean aunt’s house to a one bedroom apartment in a shabby neighborhood, this mother endures the indignity that comes with the change of status. From her father’s absence to her mother becoming a married man’s mistress, her story reads like a tragic Victorian novel set in the 21st century, but that’s where the similarity ends—she is definitely not a shy country miss and she certainly did not take the easy way out.
This amazing story chronicles the life of a woman who fought for everything she got, faced her demons and made the hard choices. Her fortitude and candor are disarming, her avant-garde views strangely endearing. You’ve never read a book like this and probably never will again. Get your copy today and take the literary journey of a lifetime. Through this glimpse into the life of a woman of integrity, sacrifice and love, you’ll feel her pain, live her failures and cheer for the meager joys that come her way. But the one thing you’ll never do… is forget her. Or her story.
Review:
When I first started reading Unwell, I was trying to figure out just where the book would take us. Was this a suicide note? Was it being written to a baby who wouldn’t make it after birth? Did the mom plan on putting it up for adoption or just walking away from the family? That air of mystery drove this story from beginning to end, where it all comes together in a beautiful resolution to the book, and made me close with my Kindle with feeling after I read the last word. It’s a very touching, realistic and raw story, and quite captivating throughout.
4 stars
In My Mailbox: Week of May 19
Title: The Curvy Girls Club
Author: Michele Gorman
Received: Notting Hill Press
Synopsis: A funny, heart-warming story about overcoming the prejudices we hold, no matter where we tip the scales.
When the pounds start falling off Katie, founder and president of London’s most popular social club for the calorie-challenged, it seems like a dream come true. But as the overweight stigma recedes and her life starts to change, she faces losing more than the inches around her waist. Everything that’s important to her – her closest friends, boyfriend, and acceptance into the club itself – are at stake in a world where thin is the new fat.
Title: The No-Kid Club
Author: Talli Roland
Received: Talli Roland
Synopsis: At almost forty, Clare Donoghue is living child-free and loving it.
Then her boyfriend says he wants kids, breaking off their promising relationship. And it’s not just boyfriends: one by one, her formerly carefree friends are swallowed up in a nonstop cycle of play dates and baby groups. So Clare declares enough is enough and decides it’s time for people who don’t have children to band together. And so the No-Kids Club is born.
As the group comes together—Anna, who’s seeking something to jumpstart a stale marriage, and Poppy, desperate for a family but unable to conceive—Clare’s hoping to make the most of the childless life with her new friends. But is living child-free all it’s cracked up to be?
Title: Right Click
Author: Lisa Becker
Received: Lisa Becker
Synopsis: Love. Marriage. Infidelity. Parenthood. Crises of identity. Death. Cupcakes. The themes in Right Click, the third and final installment in the Click series, couldn’t be more pressing for this group of friends as they navigate through their 30’s. Another six months have passed since we last eavesdropped on the hilarious, poignant and often times inappropriate email adventures of Renee and friends. As the light-hearted, slice of life story continues to unfold, relationships are tested and some need to be set “right” before everyone can find their “happily ever after.”
Title: The Breakup Doctor
Author: Phoebe Fox
Received: Phoebe Fox
Synopsis: A broken leg requires an orthopedist. A broken car requires a mechanic. And a broken heart requires a specialist too. The Breakup Doctor is now in.
Call Brook Ogden a matchmaker-in-reverse. Let others bring people together; Brook, licensed mental health counselor, picks up the pieces after things come apart. When her own therapy practice collapses, she maintains perfect control: landing on her feet with a weekly advice-to-the-lovelorn column and a successful consulting service as the Breakup Doctor: on call to help you shape up after you breakup.
But when her own relationship suddenly crumbles, Brook finds herself engaging in almost every bad-breakup behavior she preaches against. And worse, she starts a rebound relationship with the most inappropriate of men: a dangerously sexy bartender with anger-management issues—who also happens to be a former patient.
As her increasingly out-of-control behavior lands her at rock-bottom, Brook realizes you can’t always handle a messy breakup neatly—and that sometimes you can’t pull yourself together until you let yourself fall apart.
Title: I Like You Just the Way I Am
Author: Jenny Mollen
Received: St. Martins Press
Synopsis: By the actress, writer, and one of the funniest women on Twitter, an outrageous, hysterical memoir of acting on impulse, plotting elaborate hoaxes, and refusing to acknowledge boundaries in any form
Jenny Mollen is an actress and writer living in Los Angeles. She is also a wife, married to a famous guy (which is annoying only because he gets free shit and she doesn’t). She doesn’t want much from life. Just to be loved—by everybody: her parents, her dogs, her ex-boyfriends, her ex-boyfriends’ dogs, her husband, her husband’s ex-girlfriends, her husband’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriends, etc. Some people might call that impulse crazy, but isn’t “crazy” really just a word boring people use to describe fun people? (And Jenny is really, really fun, you guys!)
In these pages, you’ll find stories of Jenny at her most genuine, whether it’s stalking her therapist (because he knows everything about her so shouldn’t she get to know everything about him?); throwing a bachelorette party so bad that one of the guests is suspected dead; or answering the eternal question, Would your best friend blow your husband on a car ride to dinner if she didn’t know you were hiding in the backseat?
I Like You Just the Way I Am is about not doing the right thing—about indulging your inner crazy-person. It is Jenny when she’s not trying to impress anyone or come across as a responsible, level-headed member of society. With any luck it will make you better acquainted with who you really are and what you really want. Which, let’s be honest, is most likely someone else’s email password.
Book Review: Pressed Pennies by Steven Manchester
Reviewer: Andrea I received a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. The summary: Rick and Abby grew up together, became best…
In My Mailbox: Week of May 5
Title: The Right Design
Author: Isabella Louise Anderson
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Interior designer Carrie Newman could not have envisioned a more perfect life for herself. She had a great job doing what she loved, wonderful friends, and a close relationship with her sister and brother-in-law. Add in an amazing man who she’d hoped would soon become her husband, and her life was perfect. Until one devastating decision ruins her relationship and changes the course of her life.
Determined to make a new start, Carrie leaves Texas and heads to Palm Beach to pick up the pieces of her shattered and broken life. The last thing she expects is to find herself attracted to her first client at her new job—Brad Larson, who has proven himself time and time again to be caddish.
But there’s something beneath the surface of Brad’s arrogant exterior that keeps her craving more of him—something almost sweet that Carrie can’t seem to resist.
Is Carrie ready to take another chance on romance? And will this new design of her life prove to be the right one…?
Title: Chez Stinky
Author: Susan C Daffron
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Kat Stevens is a slightly insecure, mostly bored technical writer who likes her cat a lot more than her boss. She hasn’t laid eyes on her great aunt Abigail since she was eight, so she’s stumped when she inherits Abigail’s house in the small hamlet of Alpine Grove.
Kat’s uncomplicated life gets decidedly less so when she discovers the inheritance comes with some hairy conditions: four dogs and five cats that her aunt wanted her to love as her own. Of course, the house smells like a barn–with a touch of antique skunk–and, naturally, has serious roof issues. And that’s before the three-legged cat gets stuck in the wall and the shower goes kablooey.
When Kat meets Joel, an unemployed techie type with no love lost for his sister, Kat looks past his obvious flaws, given his timely and desirable skill set: a talent for fixing things (and his own tools).
Despite out-of-control dogs, cat fights, dust dinosaurs, massive spiders and an old grizzled hippie passed out in the yard, Kat discovers the tranquility of the forests of Alpine Grove starting to seep into her soul.
Title: The School Run
Author: Sophie King
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Meet Harriet, Pippa, Evie, Nick, Kitty and Martine as they battle the daily school run. Share their ups and downs during one life-changing week, as they face relationship dilemmas, family dramas, secrets and lies…all leading to surprise events which cause their lives to collide.
‘There is a lot for women to relate to here.’ Katie Fforde
Harriet doesn’t know whether she’ll still have a marriage by the end of the week. But as she waits for her husband’s decision about their relationship, does Harriet have more choices of her own than she realised?
Pippa is waiting too – for the results of medical tests that could bring devastating news about her health and future. But could it be Pippa’s own actions that threaten all she holds dear?
Evie is struggling with her high-pressure job on a magazine and dealing with two step-daughters who hate her. But when her husband disappears can she rise to her biggest challenge yet?
Widower Nick worries about his teenage daughter, Julie, as they approach the anniversary of her mother’s death. Can Nick keep his guilty secret about how she died?
School teacher Kitty needs a man. At least that’s what her friend Mandy tells her. Can she win Mandy’s bet to find one by the end of the week?
Martine is unhappy as the au pair for a famous TV couple. Will she find her escape with a married man?
Meanwhile, Betty watches on, determined to find the hit and run driver who killed her young son…
Seven people living different lives, but their paths are destined to cross in ways they could never have imagined.
Title: Cure For the Common Breakup
Author: Beth Kendrick
Received: Penguin
Synopsis: Welcome to Black Dog Bay, a tiny seaside town in Delaware known as “the best place in America to bounce back from your breakup.” Home to the Better Off Bed-and-Breakfast, the Eat Your Heart Out bakery, and the Whinery bar, Black Dog Bay offers a haven for the suddenly single.
Flight attendant Summer Benson lives by two rules: Don’t stay with the same man for too long and never stay in one place. She’s about to break rule number one by considering accepting her boyfriend’s proposal—then disaster strikes and her world is shattered in an instant.
Summer heads to Black Dog Bay, where the locals welcome her. Even Hattie Huntington, the town’s oldest, richest, and meanest resident, likes her enough to give her a job. Then there’s Dutch Jansen, the rugged, stoic mayor, who’s the opposite of her type. She probably shouldn’t be kissing him. She definitelyshouldn’t be falling in love.
After a lifetime of globe-trotting, Summer has finally found a home. But Hattie has old scores to settle and a hidden agenda for her newest employee. Summer finds herself faced with an impossible choice: Leave Black Dog Bay behind forever, or stay with the ones she loves and cost them everything….
Title: Love and Other Foreign Words
Author: Erin McCahan
Received: BookSparks
Synopsis: Can anyone be truly herself–or truly in love–in a language that’s not her own?
Sixteen-year-old 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–the only people who speak that are her best friend Stu and her sister Kate. So when Kate gets engaged to an epically insufferable guy, how can Josie see it as anything but the mistake of a lifetime? Kate is determined to bend Josie to her will for the wedding; Josie is determined to break Kate and her fiancé up. As battles are waged over secrets and semantics, Josie is forced to examine her feelings for the boyfriend 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.
Title: Pressed Pennies
Author: Steven Manchester
Received: Steven Manchester
Synopsis: Rick and Abby grew up together, became best friends, and ultimately fell in love. Circumstance tore them apart in their early teens, though, and they went on to lives less idyllic than they dreamed about in those early days. Rick has had a very successful career, but his marriage flat-lined. Abby has a magical daughter, Paige, but Paige’s father nearly destroyed Abby’s spirit.
Now fate has thrown Rick and Abby together again. In their early thirties, they are more world-weary than they were as kids. But their relationship still shimmers, and they’re hungry to make up for lost time. However, Paige, now nine, is not nearly as enthusiastic. She’s very protective of the life she’s made with her mother and not open to the duo becoming a trio. Meanwhile, Rick has very little experience dealing with kids and doesn’t know how to handle Paige. This leaves Abby caught between the two people who matter the most to her. What happens when the life you’ve dreamed of remains just inches from your grasp?
PRESSED PENNIES is a nuanced, intensely romantic, deeply heartfelt story of love it its many incarnations, relationships in their many guises, and family in its many meanings. It is the most accomplished and moving novel yet from a truly great storyteller of the heart.
Title: Rock My World
Author: Julie Shackman
Received: Julie Shackman
Synopsis: A charming romantic suspense thriller with a paranormal twist
Ruby Cameron is an ambitious reporter for a local paper where she is fed scraps of news, and lives with a man whose “idea of living dangerously is to leave the heating on when we pop out to the shops”. But after catching her squeaky clean boyfriend in flagrante delicto she ups sticks and moves into her own small home, only to discover the ghostly presence of a cheeky rock star who becomes her confidant as the dynamics of her small town, and her feelings about her dashing new boss, begin to throw up more questions than she can answer. Will Ruby discover who she really is, and perhaps more importantly, who she wants to be?
