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In My Mailbox: Week of January 15

In My Mailbox: Week of January 15

Title: Death on Heels
Author: Ellen Byerrum
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: D.C. style scribe Lacey Smithsonian always swore she would never go back—back to Sagebrush, Colorado, that scruffy hard-luck Western boomtown where she’d earned her reporter’s spurs. But then three young women are murdered, their bodies left barefoot on lonely country roads, and the accused is her old boyfriend, Sagebrush rancher Cole Tucker. Lacey cowgirls up and heads out West (in her best cowboy boots) to prove Tucker’s innocence. And perhaps to resolve the last of her old feelings for the man she had loved and left. Naturally, Lacey’s plan doesn’t sit well with her current beau, private investigator Vic Donovan, who has his own history (and game plan) in Sagebrush.

Tucker takes one look at Lacey and kicks over everyone’s game plan: He abducts her in a daring courthouse escape into the badlands of northern Colorado. On the run from the law with her old flame, in stolen vehicles and on horseback, with Vic and the posse in pursuit, Lacey’s world turns upside down. Who can she trust? Tucker or Vic? The law or her own feelings and her reporter’s instincts? Caught between two men, with a vicious killer on her trail, Death on Heels is a whole new—and potentially fatal—frontier for this fashion reporter.

Title: Dogs Have Angels Too
Author: Sarah Cavallaro
Received: From Sarah Cavallaro
Synopsis: In the dog-eat-dog world of recessionary New York City, the irrepressible Miss Pink leads a pack of down-on-their-luck women, who ultimately find hope in the most unlikely of places: an over-crowded animal shelter, where unwanted pets are routinely abandoned to their grim fates. Miss Pink, a former marketing executive and divorcee who’s intermittently homeless herself, makes it her mission to find homes for a growing bevy of cuddly canines. Her “adoption walks” bring her to meet a series of fellow New Yorkers, all of whom are struggling with their own personal and financial crises. In other words, they are all uniquely ripe or recruitment in Miss Pink’s master plan- which she’s devising on the fly, by the seat of her favorite pink pants!

Title: Sarah’s Key
Author: Tatiana De Rosnay
Received: Via SheKnows Book Club
Synopsis: Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

On Tour: Princess of Park Avenue by Daniella Brodsky

Daniella will be on tour January 16-February 6 with her novel Princess of Park Avenue How far would you go to forget Mr. Wrong? Anyone…

Unscripted by Natalie Aaron and Marla Schwartz

Natalie Aaron and Marla Schwartz are on tour with CLP Blog Tours. Unscripted follows loveable heroine Abby Edwards, who works as a reality TV show producer. Abby has been currently burned in a relationship, and has given up on dating. True love couldn’t possibly be true in the land of LA. Abby throws herself into her work, but friction in her friendship with BFF Zoe throws her world off balance. It doesn’t help that her new boss is deliciously hunky but she can’t decipher his attitude towards her. And then there’s the ex-boyfriend, a screenwriter who has just hit it big with a movie based “loosely” on their relationship. Abby needs to get a handle on her life, and learn that not everything will follow a script. But can she rewrite her own reality for success?
I had so much fun reading Unscripted! Aaron and Schwartz have both worked as producers, and the behind the scenes peeks readers will get are hilarious and border on unbelievable. I absolutely lost it during the scene where the “bachelorette” who submitted her tape as a joke and had no interest in LA went all diva on the workers and decided fame wasn’t something to ignore. The romance between Abby and boss Will was written in a really sweet way. I loved seeing the characters get a second chance ten years later. I didn’t so much like BFF Zoe, she just gave me an ick feeling and I wondered why Abby would put up with that. Strangely, I had a friend that had a lot of Zoe qualities and she tested my patience one too many time. That friendship has since been severed. I was wishing that Abby would see the light with her, but the other two friends were great additions to the cast! Overall, Unscripted is a fast-paced read that chick lit fans must get their hands on! I’m happy to say that Unscripted is my first Favorite of 2012!
[Rating: 4.5]

On Tour: Year of the Chick by Romi Moondi

An awkward family homecoming at Christmas.

A humiliating public weigh-in, with two judging parents as the audience.

The announcement of a deadline for arranged marriage doom.

And that’s just the first two chapters.

In “Year of the Chick,” Romi Narindra must find love before her parents find her a husband. This is a difficult task in a world where self-consciousness is at an all-time high, and dating experience at an all-time low.

Severely lacking in seductive skills and uninspired by her corporate job, Romi turns to what she loves, by writing about her quest to find love on her brand new blog.

From whiskey-breath scum bags to uni-brow creeps and everything in between, Romi and her wingmen come up empty time after time. Just when giving up seems like the thing to do, she meets a fellow writer unexpectedly.

On the Internet.

So will it be arranged marriage doom, or an Internet affair that’s not as creepy as “To Catch a Predator”?

Time will tell in the “year of the chick,” a twelve-month quest to find love….tick-tock.

In My Mailbox: Week of January 8

In My Mailbox: Week of January 8

Title: Chasing Rainbows
Author: Kathleen Long
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Bernadette Murphy likes her life. Really, she does. What’s wrong with carrying around an extra ten pounds from fertility treatments? Or having your dog kicked out of obedience school? Again? What’s that saying about the devil you know? For Bernie, it’s the devil she never expected that changes everything.

Her father’s sudden death leaves a gaping void in her life and is one in a series of events that rock her world. Her husband leaves for another woman, and her best friend announces an unplanned pregnancy at the age of forty-one. Bernie’s behavior goes from acting out to out-of-hand, and she finds herself in trouble at home, out of work and banned from the mall after a confrontation at the cosmetic counter.

When her mother discovers her father’s book of cryptograms, Bernie realizes his encoded lessons in living might be exactly what she needs to survive. From dealing with her family’s grief and bonding with her best friend’s thirteen-year-old daughter, to dieting, dating and mindless almost-sex with the landscaper, Bernie discovers what her father always knew.

In life, you either choose to sing a rainbow, or you don’t.

For Bernie, the singing is about to begin.

Title: Forged in Fire
Author: Trish McCallan
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Beth Brown doesn’t believe in premonitions until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a commercial airliner. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the man she’d watched die the night before.

Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities. When Zane and two of his platoon buddies arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his teammates’ corpses. Then she arrives—a leggy blonde who sets off a different kind of alarm.

As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth will need to open herself to a psychic connection with the sexy SEAL who claims to be her soul mate.

Title: Favorable Conditions
Author: Kathleen Kole
Received: Via CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Can you imagine being forty-five, your last child has moved on to college and the time is ripe for you to blaze a new trail into your future? Pat Keegan can. Well, except for the tiny detail that all her preconceived notions about how that future was going to shape up are completely out the window. Pat was under the impression that once her child rearing years were complete she and her husband would walk hand in hand toward a rose colored future. Fat chance. Before their daughter had even been accepted by a College, he was blathering about needing space to rediscover himself and made quick strides to the nearest exit. Suddenly, Pat is divorced, rattling around her large house and asking the empty rooms, “What now?” She knows she has to carve out new dreams – after all, forty-five is a far cry from the end of the line – But how? Join Pat as she jumps feet first back into the world outside her door, takes on a new business venture, is pursued by a much younger man and has to muddle her way through more emotions that she knew she had – all to finally attain her goal of rediscovering who she is and what she wants from the next phase of her life.

Title: Idol Hands
Author: Cynthia Hill
Received: From Cynthia Hill
Synopsis: Tara can pinpoint the moment when everything in her life changed: it was when she fell in love with Aidan Forrest – who just happened to be a part of the biggest boy band in the world, Idol Hands. She spent two years as his “secret girlfriend,” hiding from the media to protect his career, until he broke up with her, breaking her heart, and leaving behind a secret that Tara has never shared. Fourteen years after their breakup, she’s in a bad marriage, and a dead-end job. When she sees a television documentary in which Aidan confesses that he still loves her, she makes a life-changing decision: she leaves her husband to go and find Aidan. With no real plan of attack it’s not going to be easy, but Tara knows that she can’t give up.

Red Hot Libery by Devin O’Branagan

Red Hot Liberty by Devin O’Branagan is the sequel to Red Hot Property, which I have not read. It can be difficult to read a sequel without knowing the characters and situations from the first book. I did struggle a bit with not being able to relate to all the plot points along the way for that reason, but it didn’t completely hinder my reading experience. The book follows Molly O’Malley, who works in real estate and has a slew of personal problems. She is being sued by a former client, her new assistant is hot and comes with a British accent, her tween daughter is acting like a tween, and her dogs are depressed. There is a lot of focus on the dogs in this book, which sometimes seemed odd, but O’Branagan belongs to the Dog Writers Association of America and is a big advocate for animal rescue, and it’s interesting to see how she can translate that passion into her books. Another quirky character is Liberty True, who doesn’t trust the government and believes in many conspiracies. All these sub plot points can be a bit overwhelming at times, and I again wonder if I could have gotten a better grip on the story if I had read the first book. The conspiracies that Liberty True talks about were really intriguing to me, and I actually looked up quite a few on the internet. Overall, I liked this book and even the writing style, but there was a lot going on and a lot of characters to keep track of. I would still recommend Red Hot Liberty, but I would suggest you read Red Hot Property first.
[Rating: 3.5]

On Tour: Unscripted by Natalie Aaron and Marla Schwartz

  Natalie and Marla will be on tour January 9-30 with their chick lit novel Unscripted As a producer on a reality dating show, Abby…

Happy Birthday by Danielle Steel

Happy Birthday was the first book I’ve ever read by Danielle Steel. I know, right? Weird. As much as I’ve always heard her name and seen one of her zillion books on the shelves, her latest is my first. I think I had some pretty high expectations going into the novel, and they weren’t quite met. I enjoyed the book, but I wasn’t particularly wowed by the story or characters.
Readers follow three characters: Valerie Wyatt, who reminded me of a sort of Martha Stewart type. She has a successful TV show and is the “queen of gracious living.” Her life is filled with a busy schedule, lots of money, workouts to keep trim, plastic surgeons to look young…but she can’t face the very real fact she is turning sixty. Then we follow Valerie’s daughter, chef and owner of a happening restaurant and who is utterly obsessed with her work. But she is depressed that she is turning thirty, and has nothing to show for it besides her restaurant. No husband, no children, until….And then there is Jack Adams, twelve years retired from the NFL. Fifty year old Jack prefers her women young and flexible…until a particular move leaves Jack with his back thrown out. Feeling old and washed up, and slightly pathetic, Jack realizes that he wants to make some changes in his life. Scenarios unfold that bring these three characters together is some surprising, some predictable ways. I thought the book was nice and it flowed easily from scene to scene, but nothing really captured my attention or stood out for me. I closed the book thinking it was all right. Would I recommend it? Sure. I don’t think it’s something that needs to be catapulted to the top of your list, but you might enjoy a few lessons these characters learn.
[Rating: 3.5]

Challenge 2012:Post Reviews:January

January Reviews  Please note this is not the sign up page. To sign up, click here To see what challengers are reading, click here Only…