Author Profile: Shelly Bell
Author Name: Shelly Bell Website: http://shellybellbooks.com/ Bio: Shelly Bell started reading at three years old. In elementary school, the librarian gave her books to test…
A Year to Remember by Shelly Bell
Shelly Bell is currently on tour with CLP Blog Tours and A Year to Remember. Sara Friedman is tired of being single, and something inside her snaps at her younger brother’s wedding. His big day also happens to be her twenty-ninth birthday, and Sara drunkenly announces to 300 wedding guests that she will be married by her thirtieth. When someone so kindly records her “speech” and puts in on YouTube, Sara goes viral. With a national morning show offering to help her one year journey of finding a husband and her best friend Missy backing her up, Sara dives in head first into the dating game. She accepts blind dates, tries her hand at internet dating, and finds the meaning of soul mate where she least expects it. Sara also happens to be a food addict, and has struggled with her weight throughout her life. She is determined to shed the pounds while she searches for her Mr. Right – but will thin equal happiness?
I loved the beginning of this book, and was immediately hooked by Sara’s story. Even though I have never struggled with weight or had an unhealthy relationship with food, I still felt like Sara was very relatable, which makes for a great MC in my eyes. The ending of the book took a different turn. While I knew Sara was struggling with food and that was clearly part of the plot, the ending seemed to only focus on that, and I found my interest waning a bit. But I still highly enjoyed this book, and I would recommend!
[Rating: 4]
On Tour: A Year to Remember by Shelly Bell
Shelly will be on tour July 23-August 13 with her novel A Year to Remember When her younger brother marries on her twenty-ninth birthday, food…
Future Tour: A Year to Remember by Shelly Bell
Shelly will be on tour July 23- August 13 with her novel A Year to Remember When her younger brother marries on her twenty-ninth birthday,…
Shelly Bell Fundraiser
SHELLY BELL HOSTS FUNDRAISER
During 25th Annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week,
Themed Everybody Knows Somebody, Feb. 26-March 3
Observing 25 Years of Working for a World Without Eating Disorders
Farmington Hills, MI— February 23, 2012 — For Immediate Release — Shelly Bell will host a Fundraiser during the 25th annual National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAwareness Week) in an effort to bring public attention to the critical need to raise awareness and funding to battle eating disorders in the U.S.
WHAT: For each digital copy of A Year to Remember sold during NEDAwareness Week, Shelly will donate one dollar ($1) to the National Eating Disorders Association.
WHEN: February 26, 2012-March 3, 2012
WHERE: A copy of A Year to Remember can be purchased for $4.99 at www.soulmatepublishing.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com.
During NEDAwareness Week, thousands of people come together in communities across the country, hosting events to raise awareness about body image and bring national attention to the severity of eating disorders, which are mental illnesses (not lifestyle choices) with devastating, often life-threatening, consequences. While there is hope and recovery is possible – particularly with early intervention – many people suffer from long-term effects of these illnesses.
Themed Everybody Knows Somebody in 2012, some of the many events planned for the week include presentations and health fairs in schools and on college campuses; screenings of informational films; fashion shows featuring men and women of all body types; art shows; The Great Jeans Giveaway; and NEDA Walk fundraisers.
NEDA encourages individuals to get the conversation started in every community by pledging to do just one thing to raise awareness and provide critical information on eating disorders and related issues. Everyone can participate by planning and/or getting involved in local NEDAwareness Week events and activities; providing information and resources; and by encouraging community members to model acceptance and celebration of diversity in body shapes and sizes.
For information on how to get involved during NEDAwareness Week: www.myneda.org
U.S. Statistics on Eating Disorders: As many as 10 million females and 1 million males in the U.S. battle anorexia or bulimia. And as many as 13 million more struggle with binge eating disorder. Millions practice disordered eating due to an obsession with dieting ● Four out of 10 Americans either suffered or have known someone who has suffered from an eating disorder ● For females between 15- and 24-years-old-old who suffer from anorexia nervosa, the mortality rate associated with the illness is 12 times higher than the death rate of all other causes of death ● 40% of newly identified cases of anorexia are in girls 15-19 years old ● There was a significant increase in incidence of anorexia from 1935 to 1989, especially among young women 15-24 ● There has been a rise in incidence of anorexia in young women 15-19 in each decade since 1930 ● Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting and taking laxatives ● Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet ● 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner ● 81% of 10 –year-olds are afraid of being fat ● The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds ● Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women ● 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets.
Shelly Bell’s debut book, A Year to Remember, follows a food addict’s road to recovery as she searches for her soul mate under the watchful eye of the nation. A recovering compulsive overeater, she wrote A Year to Remember to share her strength and hope with compulsive overeaters and food addicts everywhere.
The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), headquartered in New York City, is the leading U.S. non-profit organization supporting individuals and families affected by eating disorders. NEDA serves as a catalyst for prevention, cures and access to quality care. Each year, NEDA helps millions of people across the country find information and appropriate treatment resources through its toll-free, live helpline, its many outreach programs and website. NEDA advocates for advancements in the field and envisions a world without eating disorders. For more information, visit www.NationalEatingDisorders.org
For Treatment Referrals, Visit www.NationalEatingDisorders.org
Or Contact NEDA’s Live Helpline: 800-931-2237
Monday – Friday: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. (EST)
Contact:
Shelly Bell — (313) 550-3313
Sbell987@aol.com
Blog Tour Sign Up: A Year to Remember by Shelly …
When her younger brother marries on her twenty-ninth birthday, food addict Sara Friedman drunkenly vows to three hundred wedding guests to find and marry her soul mate within the year.
After her humiliating toast becomes a YouTube sensation, she permits a national morning show to chronicle her search. With the help of best friend, Missy, she plunges head first into the shallow end of the dating pool.
Her journey leads her to question the true meaning of soul mates, as she decides between fulfilling her vow to marry before her thirtieth birthday and following her heart’s desire. But before she can make the biggest decision of her life, Sara must begin to take her first steps toward recovery from her addiction to food.
In My Mailbox: Week of February 12
In My Mailbox: Week of February 12
Title: Trashy Chick
Author: Cathy Lubenski
Received: From Hannah @ Vantage Point Books
Synopsis: Reporter Bertie Mallowan has drifted away from hard news stories and into the shallows of “fluff” features, the kind you find buried in the back of the newspaper. Writing about preschool fashion shows and the latest in designer garbage bags bores her so she amuses herself by inventing naughty passwords for her computer and pushing the envelope when it comes to creative lying to management types.
When she interviews greedy, nasty Robert Bellingham, the king of must-have luxury items for the rich of Southern California – like monogrammed airbags for “The Crash with Panache” and mink coats pre-streaked with red paint to foil PETA kamikazes. Over the years, his products have become de rigueur for the class that has two of everything and is seeking the one and only of something else. He’s made a lot of money and a lot of enemies.
Two days after Bertie’s interview, Bellingham’s body is found on the floor of the foyer in the family mansion; someone has aerated his skull with the stereotypical blunt object. Thanks to her interview, Bertie has inside information about the life and times of a rich and powerful murder victim and is thrust into a big story again.
Bertie is convinced that the family’s bizarre emotional ticks make them all uniquely capable of committing murder. A second murder and an attack on Bertie herself brings her face-to-face with the kind of danger she’s only ever written about, never experienced first-hand.
Title: The Baby Planner
Author: Josie Brown
Received: From Josie Brown
Synopsis: Katie Johnson may make her living consulting with new moms on the latest greatest baby gadgets no parent should be without, or which mommy meet-ups are the most socially desirable, or whether melon truly is the new black, but the success of her marriage to her husband, Alex, depends on controlling her own urges toward motherhood.
He’s adamant that they stay childless. Sure, Katie understands that he’s upset over the fact that his out-of-town ex-wife rarely lets him see their ten-year-old son, Peter. But living vicariously through her anxious clients and her twin sisters’ precocious children only makes Katie resent his stance more deeply.
While helping a new client—Seth Harris, a high tech entrepreneur who must raise Sadie, his newborn daughter, as a single parent after the tragic death of his wife in childbirth—maneuver the bittersweet journey from mourning husband and reticent father to loving dad, Katie’s own ideals about love, marriage, and motherhood are put to the test as she learns ones very important lesson about family: How we nurture is the true nature of love.
Title: A Year to Remember
Author: Shelly Bell
Received: From Shelly Bell
Synopsis: When her younger brother marries on her twenty-ninth birthday, food addict Sara Friedman drunkenly vows to three hundred wedding guests to find and marry her soul mate within the year.
After her humiliating toast becomes a YouTube sensation, she permits a national morning show to chronicle her search. With the help of best friend, Missy, she plunges head first into the shallow end of the dating pool.
Her journey leads her to question the true meaning of soul mates, as she decides between fulfilling her vow to marry before her thirtieth birthday and following her heart’s desire. But before she can make the biggest decision of her life, Sara must begin to take her first steps toward recovery from her addiction to food.
Title: Sugarfiend
Author: Caroline Burau
Received: From Caroline Burau
Synopsis: If her life is a box of chocolates, acid-tongued, sugar-obsessed Estelle Brown should learn how to pick them better. Her boyfriend’s left her for a bulimic hand model, her roommate’s skipped town, and her boss is in love with her.
In the middle of her latest of a lifetime of doomed diet attempts – cutting sugar cold turkey – Estelle decides to quit quitting for good, pack her bags, and lose herself on a 7-day Caribbean cruise.
But even on a floating monument to binge eating, the diet industry follows her. Across from every buffet is a studio full of treadmills. Next to every plate of fried calamari is a large diet Coke.
As a ship full of wary passengers ducks for cover, Hurricane Estelle wages her own personal war against moderation. But the consequences land her in the belly of the beast: broke, alone, and forced to take a job as –of all things– a detox consultant for the ship.
Is Skinny the answer to Happy? Is Sweet ‘n Low the new black? Is that Denise Austin chick … for real? No, no, and yes . . . oddly. But for a Sugarfiend, it’s not the destination that matters, it’s all the cupcakes you get to eat along the way.
