Hot Water by Erin Brockovich and CJ Lyons
I received a copy of Hot Water by Erin Brockovich and CJ Lyons in exchange for an honest review. This book is a follow up…
In My Mailbox: Week of October 30
In My Mailbox: Week of October 30
Title: Hot Water
Author: Erin Brockovich with CJ CLyons
Received: From Leyane @ FSB Media
Synopsis: No stranger to balancing an intensely demanding work schedule with the stresses of keeping her family together, AJ Palladino now faces another challenge: she is leaving her young son home with her ailing parents so that she can travel to the site of a new case involving a nuclear power plant in peril. And it will take all her skills to keep her cool while the action and tension build to a fever pitch.
Colleton River, a new, one-of-a-kind nuclear facility designed to create medical isotopes with the potential to save millions of lives, has recently been plagued by a series of unexplained mishaps. The accidents have caused the locals to protest the plant, drawing the attention of an anti-nuclear protest group as well as several home-grown terrorists who sense an opportunity to sow fear and chaos. The plant’s owner, Owen Grandel, has traveled from South Carolina to West Virginia to personally ask AJ for help. AJ knows she’s going to have her hands full investigating the accidents and calming the situation at the plant. What she doesn’t foresee is her simple business trip turning into disaster, with her family coming apart at the seams in her absence—and her young son disappearing. While AJ tries to find her missing child, she also discovers what caused the “accidents.” Soon the plant begins hurtling towards nuclear catastrophe, with AJ stranded at ground zero. But can she save her son, herself, and the community—and prevent a nuclear meltdown before it’s too late?
Title: Too Much Trouble in Paradise
Author: Michelle Betham
Received: From Michelle Bethan
Synopsis: Molly Parker is a DWAG – a darts wife and girlfriend. Or rather, she’s an ex-DWAG after divorcing Paul “Bad Lad” Parker, a professional darts player and the self-pronounced Geordie pantomime villain of the sport, after catching him aiming more than his arrows in the direction of more than a few very willing glamour models.
So, leaving her life – and her ex-husband – behind in their native North East of England, she moves to the Canarian island of Tenerife with her best friend Fran, putting the past behind her, determined to start a whole new life abroad.
Within months of arriving on the island she finds herself engaged to her Spanish boyfriend Antonio – a handsome Canarian bar owner – and with their whirlwind wedding just weeks away she’s the happiest she’s been in a long time with a great job at a Timeshare complex, fantastic friends, and a lovely little home in a country she’s fallen completely in love with.
But what Molly didn’t bank on was her ex-husband turning up out of the blue declaring his undying love for her and begging her to come back to him – and not just because his darts were suffering! His unannounced arrival turns Molly’s new and seemingly perfect life upside down as she suddenly has to face up to feelings she’d thought were long gone, and make decisions she never thought she’d have to make as her whole world is thrown into total confusion. Does she stay in Tenerife and marry her wonderful, romantic, drop-dead-gorgeous Spanish fiancé? Or does she give the man she’d once loved but who’d treated her so badly another chance? Days in the sun or darts – it’s the choice she has to make. Throw in a Bolton-born lounge singer and a Take That tribute act, a famous TV actor with a reputation as a shameless flirt, and a major darts tournament that throws up more than it’s fair share of surprises, and all of a sudden Molly Parker’s life really is ‘Too Much Trouble in Paradise’ – a story of new beginnings, second chances, sun, sea – and darts!
Title: Growing Up Beautiful
Author: Lori Jones
Received: From Lori Jones
Synopsis: In the summer of 1986, three young American models are chosen to join a modeling agency in Europe’s fashion capital of Milan. United as roommates by chance, Star, Joanne and Casey soon find their dreamed-of careers as models taking paths as different as their personalities.
Star, who leaves behind a waitress job along with a handful of crumpled up dollar tips, sees her beauty as a way to move to the top of Milan’s social strata.
Joanne, raised in a privileged lifestyle, is expected to continue an Ivy League education, which doesn’t interest her as much as a young photographer she meets on a casting.
Casey is a naive seventeen year old who is ready for adventure, even the dangerous kind.
Together, these three learn the funny, unexpected and sometimes ugly truth about growing up beautiful.
Rock Bottom by Erin Brockovich & CJ Lyons
One of my favorite thriller writers, CJ Lyons, teamed up with environmental and consumer activist Erin Brockovich to create the dramatic thriller Rock Bottom. The story follows heroine AJ Palladino, an environmental activist and single mom to a son with a disability, David. When AJ returns to her hometown of Scotia, West Virginia, she is thrown into the middle of a mystery. The well known lawyer who had hired her as clerk to assist in his new case has died- and it looks like he could have been a homicide. When the lawyer’s daughter, Elizabeth, determinedly takes on the challenge of finding his murderer, AJ becomes involved. The story plays out in twisty sub-plots: David’s father and his past with AJ, the mining company that could be poisoning the town, the mystery behind AJ’s parents and their refusal to speak to her, and more.
Write what you know is a big piece of advice that authors often give, and it is clear that is what Brockovich and Lyons did. While I did enjoy all the mystery/thriller aspects, some of the environmental talks left me a bit confused. I don’t know much about saving the environment and the toxins and mining machines, etc, so I felt a little drowned when the book became heavy on those subjects, simply because I couldn’t grasp what was being talked about. But I did enjoy the suspense, and trying to figure out who killed the lawyer along with AJ and Elizabeth. I loved David’s character and the positive outlook the little boy had. The ending was shocking and unexpected to me, yet I thought it summed up the message the story wants you to get from reading. This is the first in a series from Brockovich and Lyons, and I do think I would give the second novel a try.
[Rating: 3.5]
In My Mailbox: Week of February 27
In My Mailbox: Week of February 27
Title: Tales From the Yoga Studio
Author: Rain Mitchell
Received: From Rubyna Mansuri @ FSB Associates
Synopsis: The yoga studio is where daily cares are set aside, mats are unfurled, and physical exertion leads to well-being, renewal, and friendship. An aggressively expanding chain of Los Angeles yoga “experience centers,” has Lee and her extraordinary teaching abilities in its sights. They woo her with a lucrative contract, a trademarked name for her classes, and a place for her handsome musician husband. But accepting the contract means abandoning the students at the homey studio Lee runs in L.A.’s Silver Lake district- and leaving behind four women whose friendships are suddenly more important to her than retirement benefits and a salary increase.
Tales from the Yoga Studio is an insider’s look at the current obsession with yoga, told with enough humor, wit, and warmth to charm and delight readers, whether or not they’ve ever done a Downward Dog.
Title: Everleigh in NYC
Author: Cathleen Holst
Received: From Cathleen Holst
Synopsis: Cheating boyfriend aside, Everleigh Carlisle picks up the shattered pieces of her life, determined to put them back together. On a whim, Everleigh and her BFF Christina visit a voodoo priestess while celebrating Mardi Gras in the Big Easy, where an unspoken wish is granted, unknowingly altering the course of Everleigh’s life. Two years later, her dreams are set to come true when she lands her dream job as a columnist for New York’s premiere fashion magazine, Trés Magnifique. Everleigh’s life quickly becomes complicated when her ex re-declares his love for her, and she meets Robert Cates, only to discover three things: 1)She is extremely attracted to him. 2) She has the bizarre ability to hear his thoughts. 3) He is her new boss. Everleigh takes a long awaited bite from the Big Apple, but are her eyes bigger than her appetite?
Title: Rock Bottom
Author: Erin Brockovich & CJ Lyons
Received: From CJ Lyons
Synopsis: Ten years ago, Angela Joy Palladino left home as a pregnant seventeen-year-old in trouble. Now, after winning and losing a career as an environmental activist, dubbed by the media as “The People’s Champion,” she hopes to start over by taking a new job with a lawyer who is fighting to stop mountain top removal mining.
As a single mom of a special needs nine-year-old boy, Angela is happy for any work she can get, even if it means returning to the West Virginia hometown she left in disgrace. But when her new boss turns up dead and his daughter’s life is threatened, Angela discovers that her own secrets aren’t the only ones her mountain hometown has kept buried.
Hitting rock bottom, Angela must face the betrayal of those once closest to her and confront the harrowing past she thought she had left behind.
Title: Little Miss Teacher
Author: Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Received: From Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar
Synopsis: Told through the eyes of Candace Turner, a high school English teacher straight out of college, Little Miss Teacher details one woman’s struggles through the important initial stages of her career and her life as a grown-up. While teaching her students about writing and literature, Candace learns her own lessons about life. As she worries about fitting in with the faculty and conquering piles of essays to grade, Candace also pursues an old crush. Through her endless attempts to succeed in both her job and life, she has many adventures within and outside of her classroom walls. Ultimately, Candace hopes to finish the school year with a feeling of triumph at having touched the lives of her students… and having survived.
In the vein of both Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus’s The Nanny Diaries and Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, Little Miss Teacher is a story about a young woman dealing with the ups and downs of work and life. In experiences that are sometimes amusing and sometimes sad, Candace endures everything from chaperoning the prom to helping a friend deal with a problem. In her earnest, self-conscious, conversational manner, Candace gives a voice and an all-access pass to the often embarrassing life of a young educator.
