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Save Me by Lisa Scottoline
Chick Lit Review

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

I received Save Me by Lisa Scottoline via the SheKnows Book Club. The synopsis had me eagerly tearing into this book – a mother who has to choose between her own daughter and her daughter’s bully during a school fire? I had goosebumps just thinking about ever having to be in that situation. I wasn’t sure what to expect, how the story would unfold, and the fire ended up happening right away. Rose McKenna makes her snap decision, and the rest of the book follows her life the days, weeks, and months after the fire and how her decisions continues to affect not only her, but the entire suburban community. I of course won’t tell you more than that, but I will say read this book! It was so fabulous I did not want to put it down for any extended period of time. I thought this might be a sad book, and even mentioned something on Twitter about having my tissues handy, but I don’t think I cried at all. It just really made me think, made me feel for so many characters, and kept me on my toes throughout. I wasn’t expecting the political scenario that emerges, but I loved it! There were a few editing errors I found, and I noticed multiple characters (not living in the same town) had the same farewell which I thought I was a little odd, but overall a really fantastic book that you won’t want to miss out on!
[Rating: 4.5]

April 12, 2012
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In My Mailbox: Week of January 15
Chick Lit Plus

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.

January 16, 2012
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SheKnows Book Lounge
Chick Lit Plus

SheKnows Book Lounge

I am so excited to finally announce the launch of the new SheKnows Book Lounge! I was asked last year by superstar Crystal Patriarche to…

January 1, 2012
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The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore
Chick Lit Review

The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore

The Arrivals is the debut novel from Meg Mitchell Moore, and I was truly impressed by her writing style. The story follows Ginny and William Moore, whose grown children suddenly start appearing at their Vermont home with all their troubles. Oldest child Lillian comes with her two young children after finding out her husband was unfaithful. Stephen comes with his pregnant wife Jane, whose pregnancy complications put her on bed rest at the Moore’s home. The youngest, twenty-nine year old Rachel, flees from New York after a painful breakup and even more devastating miscarriage. Ginny and William are suddenly overwhelmed with their children and their problems, and must figure out how to help each individual through their issues. The story, which is told through multiple points of views along the way, teaches lessons of love and family, of strength and forgiveness, and that the job of a parent is never over.
I really enjoyed The Arrivals. Like I stated earlier, I was impressed with the writing style Meg brings to the book. There are scenes where she abruptly stops one story, switches to another, then goes back to the original. I found these mini-cliffhangers delectable and they kept me on edge. I couldn’t help but think of my own mother when I read this book. Not too long ago she told me how much she still worries about each of her kids’ happiness, even though we all are grown now. It made me think about how much goes into being a mom or dad, and the unconditional love some are so lucky to receive. The only real issue I had is that I kept feeling that Ginny was so put out with Lillian, but would give her right arm for Rachel. I didn’t fully understand why it seemed to come off that way, and was the only thing holding me back from really getting immersed in the full story and all the characters. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book, I would recommend it, and I’m grateful for the SheKnows Book Club that has provided me so many great reads throughout the year.
**Please join us on Thursday, November 17th from 5-8pm PST at the SheKnows Book Club to chat live with Meg Mitchell Moore!**
[Rating: 4]

November 16, 2011
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In My Mailbox: Week of October 2
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of October 2

In My Mailbox: Week of October 2

Title: What’s Your Number?
Author: Karyn Bosnak
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Bosnak, the woman behind the popular “Save Karyn” Web site (she also penned a book by the same title), makes her fiction debut with the tepid tale of Delilah Darling, a woman on the cusp of 30 who loses her job and sleeps with her heinous former boss in an entanglement that’s the 20th notch on her headboard. It’s a painful realization, as she’d just read in the New York Post, that the average person has 10.5 partners in their lifetime. Fearing she has more than reached her quota, Delilah takes off on a cross-country trip, determined to find “the one” among the 20 of her former lovers. But she soon discovers that the men of her romantic past “an inmate, a rehab patient, a dog-obsessed Amway salesman and a Muppeteer among them” aren’t exactly life-partner material. Clever chapter breaks that feature maps and voice-mail transcripts are fun additions, but the story” hobbled by limp humor, razor-thin characters and phoned-in prose” takes too long to find its inevitably happy ending.

Title: The Arrivals
Author: Meg Mitchell Moore
Received: From SheKnows Book Club
Synopsis: An empty nest fills back up with alarming speed in Moore’s promising debut. Five years have passed since the last of their kids have left home, and Ginny and William Owens have settled into a comfortable rhythm at home in Burlington, Vt., that’s unexpectedly disrupted. Their exhausted and defeated daughter, Lillian, shows up with three-year-old Olivia, three-month-old Philip, and without her husband. Within days, Lillian’s brother, Stephen, and his pregnant wife, Jane, arrive for an unannounced visit that will turn into a summer-long stay. Daughter Rachel, still working in New York, is teetering on the edge of financial and emotional disaster, and will also end up in Burlington in short order. Moore finds a crisp narrative in the morass of an overpacked household, and she keeps the proceedings moving with an assurance and outlook reminiscent of Laurie Colwin, evoking emotional universals with the simplest of observations, as in “the peace you feel when you are awake in a house where children are sleeping.”

Title: Don’t Let Me Go
Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Sometimes a child knows better…

GRACE
Ten-year-old Grace knows that her mum loves her, but her mum loves drugs too. And there’s only so long Grace can fend off the ‘woman from the county’ who is threatening to put her into care. Her only hope is…

BILLY
Grown-man Billy Shine hasn’t been out of his apartment for years. People scare him, and the outside world scares him even more. Day in, day out, he lives a perfectly orchestrated silent life within his four walls. Until now. . .

THE PLAN
Grace bursts into Billy’s life with a loud voice and a brave plan to get her mum clean. And it won’t be easy, because they will have to confiscate the one thing her mum holds most dear . . . they will have to kidnap Grace.

Title: Better Off Without Him
Author: Dee Ernst
Received: From Dee Ernst
Synopsis: Mona Berman is an expert at Happily Ever After – after all, she’s a best-selling Romance writer and happy endings are what she does best. So when her husband of twenty years leaves her for somebody 15 years younger, 20 pounds lighter, and French, she’s got a lot of adjusting to do, both personally and professionally. Lucky for her she’s got three savvy teen daughters, a few good friends, and Ben, the world’s sexiest plumber, to help her along the way.

First she decides that her next book will be the anti-romance – her heroine finds the best part of her life AFTER getting dumped. Next her daughters tell her she needs to start practice dating, and summer at the Jersey shore is the perfect place for that. She’s also juggling her soon-to-be-ex, a loony aunt, and a match-making neighbor, while Ben is sending her romance-driven imagination into overdrive. Can Mona’s life imitate art? Can she write her own happy ending?

October 2, 2011
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Author Profile: Laurie Frankel
Chick Lit Authors

Author Profile: Laurie Frankel

Author Name: Laurie Frankel

Website: http://www.lauriefrankel.net/

Bio: Laurie Frankel lives in Seattle where it’s sometimes hard to find a day on which to take an author photo without an umbrella. Originally from Columbia, Maryland, she often fails to understand why it won’t stop raining here. Then it becomes summer in Seattle, and she remembers why she loves it. She teaches writing, literature, and gender studies at the University of Puget Sound. She roots for the Orioles and the Mariners (and thus is often very frustrated during baseball season). She makes good soup. She lives in the city with her wonderful husband, her wonderful baby, and her wonderful border collie. The Atlas of Love is her first novel.
Titles: The Atlas of Love
See my review of The Atlas of Love
Visit Laurie’s Blog! http://lauriefrankel.blogspot.com/
Bio Retrieved from lauriefrankel.net

April 6, 2011
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