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Book Review: Wind Chime Point by Sherryl Woods

I received a copy of Wind Chime Point by Sherryl Woods in exchange for an honest review.

In the second book of the series, ambitious and driven Gabriella Castle finds herself facing a personal crisis, so she returns home. Everything that she has worked for over the last few years have been yanked out from under her when she finds out that she is pregnant, but she feels safe at her grandmother’s home in North Carolina. She is looking for time to reflect and make difficult decisions about her future, but what she finds instead is love. Wade Johnson fell for Gabi the moment he saw her. Will he be enough to keep her home though? Will she finally find her knight in shining armor?

As I mentioned in my review yesterday, I am such a huge fan of Sherryl Woods and her work. She does such an amazing job at crafting believable characters with real emotions, and this book is no exception. I was completely smitten with Wade and really pulled for him and Gabi to find love. Also, now that I think of it, Sherryl always finds a way to create such loving, kind and heartfelt male characters, and I absolutely love that about her books. Sure, maybe I should get my head out of the clouds, but that is why we read books, right? Anywho, this story is really sweet and definitely conveys the necessity of family and love. I think you will really enjoy it.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Birthday Giveaway!

I wanted to do something special to help celebrate my birthday week, and what better way than a giveaway? I have been wanting to host a giveaway to help clear some of my ARC’s from my bookshelf, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. I have six books that are up for grabs, with six different winners!

Second Time Around by Beth Kendrick
The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek
Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner
Call Me Mrs. Miracle by Debbie Macomber
A Chesapeake Shores Christmas by Sherryl Woods
Perfect on Paper by Maria Murnane

To enter:
1. Send an email with your full mailing address to Samantha(at)chicklitplus.com. You will not be entered unless I have this email! When you send the email, please also include if there are specific books you would like to win. Or if you would like a chance at all of them, just say so!
2. Post a comment below and let us know one of your favorite birthday memories.
3. For bonus entries, spread the word! Post this contest on Facebook or Twitter.

That’s it! The contest will close the day after my birthday, on Thursday March 24. Please note that I will be choosing a different winner for each book. This contest is open for US residents only.

A Chesapeake Shores Christmas by Sherryl Woods

Mick and Megan O’Brien divorced twelve years ago and had five children together. After twelve years of trying to go their separate ways, Mick and Megan are back together, slowly working towards reconciliation and getting remarried. Megan still can’t seem to let go that Mick is stubborn in his ways, and that he continually put his work before her while they were married- and fears he will do the same the second time around. Some of the children (now grown adults) aren’t quite on board with their parents impending nuptials, especially divorce attorney Connor, who seems determined to ruin the wedding. Will the family be able to come together for the holidays, or will too many unseen obstacles keep getting in the way?
A Chesapeake Shores Christmas by Sherryl Woods is from a series, but don’t be worried if you haven’t read the previous books. You will feel right at home with the O’Brien family. The story is sweet, a couple coming together after years apart, finding their way again after so many hurdles. I read that many people didn’t like Megan’s character, because she left the family after her and Mick divorced, but I related with her. As the story goes on, she becomes a very likeable heroine: strong, determined, and trying to be independent. It is clear that she loves all her children deeply, even Connor who keeps trying to shut her out. I think my only problem with this story is that it was just too nice and sweet. Sure, Connor plays a villain and has his own challenge present itself, but that wasn’t enough conflict to really make me feel for the character’s stories. If you are looking for a light read that will make you saw “aww” and feel warm and cuddly inside, A Chesapeake Shores Christmas would be right for you.
Rating:3.5/5

In My Mailbox: Week of Septemeber 12

In My Mailbox: Week of September 12th

Title: Sammi Ever After
Author: Soma Helmi
Received: From Soma Helmi
Synopsis: Girl meets boy. They fall in love. Girl moves across the world to be with boy. Boy dumps her at the airport…via email. Sammi’s fixation with Prince Charming has her in trouble again. Now she’s in London, sleeping on a friend’s couch and no ‘Happily ever after’ in sight. From Bali to Greece, Sammi’s journey to find her own fairytale ending may take her to a place she never expected.

Title: Her Fearful Symmetry
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Received: From Audrey Niffenegger
Synopsis: Fortune’s wheel is a harsh chastiser, and those lucky writers who have found heady success with their first books often come crashing down with the second, never to rise again. What’s the cause? Do they succumb to nerves from external expectations? Do they secretly feel unworthy? Are our expectations as readers unreasonable? Have they merely been sport for the gods?

The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger’s first book, was Cinderella at the ball — a book that got published without a literary agent behind it, a popular success that was a critical one too. Its distinctive (and, I assume from Niffenegger’s acknowledgments, long-steeped) flavor completely eluded the dumb movie made from it. Describing the novel as blending fantasy, science fiction, romance, mild philosophy, and epistolary traditions is technically accurate, but fails to capture its unusual charm: its balance of inevitability and suspense, the importance of conversations both humorous and tersely poignant, the cultural riffs and bookish background of Chicago in the ’80s and ’90s, the bubble of optimism that buoys it up even in the face of death and decay. It’s a great read. Given the weight of expectations (and money) riding on her second book, the conditions were ripe for Niffenegger to dig her own grave. But it turns out that in her second book, Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger gets her characters to do the grisly digging for themselves while she floats out smelling like a rose.

Title: Cold Dawn
Author: Carla Neggers
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: A search-and-rescue dog handler and a California smoke jumper search for a violent arsonist in the snowy mountains of New England, in COLD DAWN (MIRA Books, November 2010, $7.99 U.S./ $9.99 CAN.), the third novel in New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers’ riveting Black Falls series.
With the network of paid killers that disrupted life in Black Falls exposed, the people of the small, picturesque town in the heart of the Green Mountains are breathing a collective sigh of relief. That is, until search-and-rescue expert Rose Cameron discovers the charred remains of Derek Cutshaw, a ski instructor, with whom she shared a brief, troubled relationship. The fire looks like an accident, but Rose believes it was deliberately set and that Derek was murdered.
But Derek’s not the only former flame to reenter Rose’s life. Nick Martini, a wildfire smoke jumper with whom Rose shared a night of passion in Los Angeles, appears in Black Falls.
Still reeling from having ever gotten involved with Derek and, especially, from the tragic death of her father on Cameron Mountain, Rose ended her relationship with Nick by running back home to Vermont.
Nick has no desire to disrupt Rose’s life again or to earn the ire of her tough mountain-men brothers. But he’s on the trail of a firebug he believes is responsible for setting the fire that killed a California arson investigator.
Nick is convinced the same killer is responsible for the fire that killed Derek Cutshaw. But was his death a murder for hire or was the killer voluntarily disposing of a man who had hurt Rose Cameron and other people in Black Falls? Or had Derek stumbled on the arsonist’s identity?
Only Nick and Charlie Neal, the 16-year-old genius son of the vice president of the United States, believe a string of fires and explosions over the past year are connected. Nick is determined to follow the evidence—even if it takes him straight to Rose Cameron—to root out a ruthless firebug who has wormed his way into her hometown.

Title: Call Me Mrs. Miracle
Author: Debbie Macomber
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: This Christmas, Emily Merkle (call her Mrs. Miracle!) is working in the toy department at Finley’s, the last family-owned department store in New York City. And her boss is none other than Jake Finley, the owner’s son. For Jake, holiday memories of brightly wrapped gifts, decorated trees and family were destroyed in a Christmas Eve tragedy years before. Now Christmas means just one thing to him ¿ and to his father. Profit. Because they need a Christmas miracle to keep the business afloat. Holly Larson needs a miracle, too. She wants to give her eight-year-old nephew, Gabe, the holiday he deserves. Holly’s widowed brother is in the army and won’t be home for Christmas, but at least she can get Gabe that toy robot from Finley’s, the one gift he desperately wants. If she can figure out how to afford it. Fortunately, it’s Mrs. Miracle to the rescue. Next to making children happy, she likes nothing better than helping others and that includes doing a bit of matchmaking! This Christmas will be different. For all of them.

Title: A Chesapeake Shores Christmas
Author: Sherryl Woods
Received: From Alana Signor @ Truth Be Told PR
Synopsis: After years apart, Mick and Megan O’Brien are finally ready to make it official…again. Most of their grown children couldn’t be happier about their rekindled love and impending marriage this holiday season. Only Connor is a holdout. Driven to become a divorce attorney after what he views as his mother’s abandonment of their family, Connor’s not about to give his blessing to this reunion romance.
The last thing Megan wants to do is hurt her family again. After all, is she really sure she and Mick can make it this time around? And when an unexpected delivery causes chaos, it seems only a miracle can reunite this family.
Of course, it is Christmas—the season of miracles.

Title: Well Read and Dead
Author: Catherine O’Connell
Received: From Catherine O’Connell
Synopsis: The return of blue-blooded fashionista Pauline Cook, whose search for a missing friend leads her from an iconoclastic book group to the deepest and most unfashionable reaches of the Far East.
Back in Chicago after a disastrous European love affair, socialite Pauline Cook finds her finances nearly depleted, her co-op a shambles, and her best friend mysteriously missing—vanished along with Pauline’s cat. Though Whitney Armstrong’s husband offers a substantial reward for the return of his lost wife, Pauline can’t help suspecting that his grief is merely an act. But it’s a shocking suggestion by a member of Whitney’s book club that really gets Pauline moving—halfway around the world, in fact, to Thailand . . . in spite of a psychic’s warning of terrible danger.
In Asia, a morass of dark motives and deadly corporate intrigues await the intrepid globe-trotter. And all the high society connections in the world aren’t going to ensure that Pauline makes it home alive. . . .

Title: Well Bred and Dead
Author: Catherine O’Connell
Received: From Catherine O’Connell
Synopsis: Newly widowed Pauline Cook was once the toast of the Windy City elite—but now she’s practically broke. At least she’s in better shape than her dear departed friend Ethan Campbell, whose corpse Pauline has had the misfortune to discover. A writer who chronicled the lives, loves, and ensembles of the Gold Coast’s most elegant ladies, Ethan apparently took his own life—while inelegantly clad in old boxers, no less. And since no relatives are coming forward to claim Ethan’s remains, it falls to Pauline to settle his final affairs . . . with her own dwindling funds.
However, there are things about Ethan’s suicide that don’t seem to add up: the ratty undergarments he “chose” to die in, for example . . . and the multiple birth certificates the police turn up in his apartment. Before she can truly lay her friend to rest, plucky Pauline’s determined to get to the bottom of his increasingly suspicious death.