Review: The Summer My Life Began

The Summer My Life Began by Shannon Greenland

YA Contemporary Romance, Published May 2012

Read June 2012, 250 pages

3.5/5 STARS

Book Blurb:

A great summer beach read filled with sunshine, cooking, and—of course—romance!

Elizabeth Margaret–better known as Em–has always known what her life would contain: an internship at her father’s firm, a degree from Harvard, and a career as a lawyer. The only problem is, it’s not what she wants. So when she gets the opportunity to get away and spend a month with the aunt she never knew, she jumps at the chance. While there, Em learns that her family has some pretty significant secrets. And then there’s Cade, the laid-back local surfer boy who seems to be everything Em isn’t. Naturally, she can’t resist him, and as their romance blossoms, Em feels that for the first time ever, she is really living life on her own terms.

Thoughts:

This is a fun book to take to the beach (if you do that sort of thing, which I don’t).  Em has to get away from the strictness of living under her parents’ roof before she falls in line and becomes the lawyer they want her to be.  When she arrives at her newly founded Aunt’s house, she soon finds the life she has always wanted.  Em’s passion is cooking, but she has always been too afraid to stand up to her parents and tell them.  Her newly found freedom allows her to cook at her aunt’s B&B.  I loved the setting of Aunt Matilda’s house – I think I want to go on vacation there!  I think Em was craving the same attention from her mother that her aunt then provides and that’s why she clings so closely to her.  I liked Em’s blossoming relationship with Cade, but I wanted more!  I loved Em’s relationship with her cousin too.  They were definitely two peas in a pod!  Overall, a good coming of age story with a little mystery – where has Aunt Matilda been her whole life?

Quotes:

“It’s strange, but I’ve always liked graveyards.”

I looked back.  “Me too.  It’s the —”

“History,” my cousin finished for me.

“Isn’t it amazing the names, the relations, how they died…?” Frederick’s voice trailed off as he pondered the headstones.

And I thought I was the only graveyard freak in the family.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Publishing for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: Love on the Range by Jessica Nelson

Love on the Range by Jessica Nelson

Harlequin’s Love Inspired Historical Series

Historical Romance, Published April 2012

Challenges: NetGalley Reading Challenge 2012, Christian Historical Fiction Challenge

Read: March 2012, 288 pp.

4/5 STARS

Book Blurb:

The Wild West Awaits…

Any other socialite would view being packed off to a remote Oregon ranch as a punishment. But Gracelyn Riley knows that this is her opportunity to become a real reporter. If she can make her name through an interview with the elusive hero known as Striker, then she’ll never have to depend on anyone ever again.

Rancher Trevor Cruz can’t believe his secret identity is being endangered by an overly chatty city girl. But if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that Gracie’s pretty little snooping nose is bound to get her in trouble. So he’ll use her determination to find “Striker” to keep an eye on her…and stick close by her side.

Could romance be their greatest adventure?

Thoughts:

Gracelyn packs her bags and heads west on a train from Boston to Oregon to get away from the Spanish Influenza and to visit her Uncle Lou.  While she’s there, Gracelyn has a second agenda – to find the notorious Wild West Hero known as Striker and interview him for the papers back east.  When she gets to her uncle’s ranch, she is soon consumed by chores and cooking for the ranch hands.  They are glad to have her, but she hardly has time to roam the countryside to find the elusive Striker.  Trevor, one of her uncle’s most trusted ranch hands finds trouble in Gracelyn’s many questions about Striker, and his concern is not unwarranted because trouble is not far behind her.

This was an enjoyable read – a great, clean romance with a strong heroine.  The story is written in third person and I think I would have enjoyed seeing the story from both Trevor and Gracelyn’s point-of-views.  A wonderful debut and Jessica has become an author I will be looking forward to in the future!

Quotes:

Obsession was the way in which madness lay.

-Opening line from Love on the Range by Jessica Nelson

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: Wanderlove

Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

YA Contemporary Fiction, Published March 2012

Read May 2012, 352 pp.

3.5/5 Stars

Book Blurb:

It all begins with a stupid question:

Are you a Global Vagabond?

No, but 18-year-old Bria Sandoval wants to be. In a quest for independence, her neglected art, and no-strings-attached hookups, she signs up for a guided tour of Central America–the wrong one. Middle-aged tourists with fanny packs are hardly the key to self-rediscovery. When Bria meets Rowan, devoted backpacker and dive instructor, and his outspokenly humanitarian sister Starling, she seizes the chance to ditch her group and join them off the beaten path.

Bria’s a good girl trying to go bad. Rowan’s a bad boy trying to stay good. As they travel across a panorama of Mayan villages, remote Belizean islands, and hostels plagued with jungle beasties, they discover what they’ve got in common: both seek to leave behind the old versions of themselves. And the secret to escaping the past, Rowan’s found, is to keep moving forward.

But Bria comes to realize she can’t run forever, no matter what Rowan says. If she ever wants the courage to fall for someone worthwhile, she has to start looking back.

Kirsten Hubbard lends her artistry into this ultimate backpacker novel, weaving her drawings into the text. Her career as a travel writer and her experiences as a real-life vagabond backpacking Central America are deeply seeded in this inspiring story.

Thoughts:

Everyone daydreaming of summer will enjoy a trip into Wanderlove.  Bria has just graduated from high school and is looking for an adventure before deciding what to do about college.  She put all her hopes and dreams of attending art school with her boyfriend, but he is now her ex-boyfriend.  She feels let down by him, her friends who were supposed to join her on this trip, and her parents.  So not willing to give into their doubts about her, Bria decides to take off with the Global Vagabonds and heads to Central America by herself.  But she soon finds that she’s much younger than the average Global Vagabond and decides to strike out on her own adventure. 

I really loved the artwork that is incorporated into the book as Bria starts to open up to her new friends as well as herself about her love of art.  I liked that Bria’s character does stay true to her age and I liked that she took the trip on her own and the reader really gets to go on this coming of age journey with her.  I would’ve really liked to have seen Bria get out of her own head a bit more and actually visit more places as she was backpacking with Rowan as well as see more of Rowan’s character.  With such travel experience, I knew Rowan had more to offer, but his character often fell a little flat for me.  Ultimately though, I loved this story and the backpacking travel experience that the author brings to the book.  I think it does stay true to a YA audience and they will love traveling alongside Bria, Starling, and Rowan.

Thanks to NetGalley and Delacorte BFYR/Random House Children’s Books for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: The Humming Room – inspired by The Secret Garden

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter

Children’s Fiction, Published February 28, 2012

Read: Feb 2012, 192 pp.

Challenges: 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge

5/5  ❤❤❤❤❤

Book Blurb:

A novel inspired by The Secret Garden–classic!

Hiding is Roo Fanshaw’s special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment’s notice. When her parents are murdered, it’s her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life.

As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn’t believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth.

Despite the best efforts of her uncle’s assistants, Roo discovers the house’s hidden room–a garden with a tragic secret.

Inspired by The Secret Garden, this tale full of unusual characters and mysterious secrets is a story that only Ellen Potter could write.

Thoughts:

I loved it! The book really stays true to the original Secret Garden, yet adds a new spin to the story.  Roo is a very independent character, much like Mary Lennox, and she definitely makes this story stick out from the original.  After she is orphaned and sent to her new home on an island that was once the place where tuberculosis patients were sent, she is often left alone to her own devices.  She is very good at hiding and listening to the tiniest of sounds.  She is immediately interested in going outside to explore – she even catches sight of the island’s notorious wraith. Many of the islanders were great additions to the story.  When Roo is left alone in her room, she often hears humming, and soon goes to investigate its source.  While her uncle’s home looks huge on the outside, it does not seem so large on the inside and she soon starts noticing little things that help her solve the mysteries of the old sanitarium.

I loved how the story was set up.  I kept wondering when Roo would discover the “garden” and wish Roo could have spent more time there.  However, there were a few number of mysteries throughout the book that will leave you hanging until the very end!  Young and old readers alike will enjoy this story!

Highly recommended!

Quotes:

She can slip through the narrowest gaps like a ferret.  Like all good thieves, she understands space.

Squinting through the curtain of rain, she watched the shadowy form on the roof.  Suddenly, the wind changed directions, as though someone had summoned it.

The silence in the house had a sound of its own.  Thick, pulsing.  Waiting.  She listened hard for the humming, but it never came.

If there were ghosts in this house, she thought, this is where they would live.

Thanks to NetGalley and Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: Exclusively Yours

Exclusively Yours by Shannon Stacey

The Kowalski Family #1

Contemporary Romance, Published Dec 20, 2011

Challenges: NetGalley Month (Jan)

Read: January 2012, 352 pp.

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb:

Note: This title was originally published as an exclusive e-book with Carina Press. This novel is now being published in print for the first time by Harlequin HQN. 

A second chance to finish what they started…

When Keri Daniels’s boss finds out she has previous carnal knowledge of reclusive bestselling author Joe Kowalski, she gives Keri a choice: get an interview or get a new job.

Joe’s never forgotten the first girl to break his heart, so he’s intrigued to hear Keri’s back in town—and looking for him. He proposes an outrageous plan—for every day she survives with his family on their annual camping trip, Keri can ask one question.

The chemistry between Joe and Keri is as potent as the bug spray, but Joe’s sister is out to avenge his broken heart, and Keri hasn’t ridden an ATV since she was ten. Who knew a little blackmail, a whole lot of family and some sizzling romantic interludes could make Keri reconsider the old dream of Keri & Joe 2gether 4ever?

Look for more of the Kowalskis, coming soon!

Thoughts:

Joe and Keri were pretty hot and heavy in high school, but it’s been almost 20 years since they’ve seen one another, even though their parents still live next door to one another and remain friends.  Keri always wanted to get out of town and ran straight to L.A. as soon as she possibly could, knowing she had to leave Joe behind.  Now that her editor has found out that she knows the reclusive New York Times bestselling author, Joe Kowalski, she sends Keri to get an exclusive interview – it’s either that or her job.  Keri has never betrayed Joe’s trust and she doesn’t know if Joe even wants to see her.  When he offers to answer one question per day she survives the Kowalski annual camping trip, he never dreamed she would actually agree to going.

I loved all the family dynamics, not only between themselves as a family unit, but also with Keri.  Keri and Joe’s twin sister, Terry, were once best friends, but now Terry despises her. So not only is there drama in Joe’s cabin with Keri, there’s also drama between Keri and Terry – not to mention all the other small family dynamics between all the other siblings and their spouses and their kids. 

I really loved this book! I literally read it in one sitting and can’t wait to read the next two books in the trilogy – Undeniably Yours and Yours to Keep.  I liked that we got to see not only the main two character’s perspectives, but all the minor characters too.  I think this will help endear us to the next books knowing that Joe and Keri will be there too!  I enjoyed the family banter back and forth and really felt like I was camping right along with the family.

If you like the outdoors and 4wheeling, you’re sure to love Shannon Stacey’s Exclusively Yours!  It’s a great camping trip with all the s’mores you can eat without having to mess with any DEET!

Quotes:

For Stuart and our boys because there’s no greater joy than sitting around the campfire with you after a fun day of riding the trails.  I love you all madly, even when you’re muddy and smell like bug spray. (From the dedication)

People sometimes hurt the ones they love trying to protect themselves from being hurt.  Love means second chances sometimes. (~half way in)

“You awake?”  he whispered.  No answer, but she was faking.  While Chinese water torture probably couldn’t make her admit it, she snored like a chainsaw sucking down its last drop of oil. (~75% in)

Thanks to NetGalley, Harlequin and Carina Press for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: Tool Belt Defender

Tool Belt Defender by Carla Cassidy

Miniseries: Lawmen of Black Rock

Harlequin Romantic Suspense, Published Jan 2012

Read: December 2011, 224 pages

3/5

Book Blurb:

“It’s party time.”

That’s the “invitation” shoved under her door. It’s got Brittany Grayson fearing for her life…and her sanity. She’s sure the monster who once held her captive for months is dead, so why his chilling words in the note? His menacing face in the window? And why won’t anyone —even her lawmen brothers—believe that somehow he’s after her again?

Brittany just wants a normal, independent life in Black Rock. Romance is out of the question…although she’s okay as friends-with-benefits with Alex Crawford, her hunky, marriage-phobic contractor. Alex, a single dad, has his own good reasons not to fall for Brittany. But none of them matter when the race is on to find the killer who’s kidnapped her!

Thoughts:

Just based on the cover, I didn’t think this was going to be a modern romantic suspense story.  While this is part of a series, you don’t have to have read any of them before – I didn’t – but it does mention that the main heroine, Brittany, had been kidnapped and held captive and that her brothers had rescued her.  So I’m assuming the other books in the series go into her being kidnapped and her brother’s relationships.

So now Brittany has just moved back into her own house after staying with her older brother and his family for a few months after facing death and dodging it.  The one thing that got her through the entire ordeal was imagining building a back patio deck for all her family and friends to enjoy.  Alex has just moved in down the street, away from the city life, to allow his daughter to live near her grandmother.  While he’s always been a successful businessman, he has dreamed of leaving the desk and building with his own two hands.  When Brittany needs a back patio built, he contracts himself out to her.  Soon it is very evident that there is a serious attraction between the two, but there are so many things to get in the way (as they do) – Brittany’s fear of letting someone else into her heart, Alex’s fear of bringing someone new into his daughter’s life, and then there’s the strange occurrences that keep happening at Brittany’s house – the strange note, the man in the window. Is she just reeling from her tragic ordeal or is someone out there trying to get in?

While it was not was I was expecting, I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was cool that Brittany and her brothers were all policemen and I loved Alex’s daughter! She was so sweet and she and Brittany were so cute together!  I could not put it down until the very end! I had to know if Brittany was crazy or if a crazy was really after her!

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Review: The Poisoned House

The Poisoned House by Michael Ford

YA Fiction – Horror & Ghost Stories, Published August 2011

ARC Received from netGalley (Albert Whitman & Company)

YA Historical Fiction Challenge (YA Bliss & Books Are A Girl’s Best Friends)

3/5

Book Blurb:

Life can be cruel for a servant girl in 1850s London. After her mother’s death, fifteen-years-old Abi is a scullery maid in Greave Hall, an elegant but troubled household. The widowed master of the house is slowly slipping into madness, and the tyrannical housekeeper, Mrs. Cotton punishes Abi without mercy. But there’s something else going on in Greave Hall, too. An otherworldly presence is making itself known, and soon a deadly secret begins to reveal itself—–a secret that will shatter everything Abi knows.

Book Trailer:

First Impressions (Out of all the books I have to read, why this one?):

I was really looking forward to this ghost story.  I’m really a sucker for books with this type of framing – it’s a true account, really!!, and we even found a diary! I love it! PS – the trailer is pretty awesome.

Thoughts:

The story started out great with a lot of action with Abi trying to run away.  We, the reader, didn’t know what or who she was running from or where she was going.  I felt that after she is caught and brought back to Greave Hall, Abi’s sense of adventure and rebellion really took a back seat in the plot.  I would have loved to see her rebel against the HORRIBLE Mrs. Cotton.  The author spends a lot of time setting up Abi’s background story and how she came to live in Greave Hall as a scullery maid.

Then things at Greave Hall start to go awry, first with little things moving around or missing altogether.  Abi is usually the one to be blamed for these acts.  The hauntings escalate with the pacing of the plot.  Overall, I liked the writing style and loved that Greave Hall is truly a character in itself (a creepy one at that!)  I also liked that the author framed the novel to be read like a true story account, with the beginning reporting the finding of diary papers found in an estate’s renovation and ending with (SPOILER ALERT!) an obituary clipping.  I felt the turns and twists were pretty predictable and didn’t really see the need for Mrs. Cotton’s character to be so horrible (especially the Rowena incident – was that really necessary to the story, I’m really unsure as to why this had to be included), but despite that, I did continually want to find out if what I thought was going to happen really happened (it did).  I think the younger crowds will really enjoy the creepiness factor of this horror story, but the overall Victorian scandal of the novel may not impress everyone.

Sidenote: I actually listened to this entire book using the text-to-speech feature on my kindle.  I used the female voice and sloowwwed her down and I swear at times she was really getting into the story. I will definitely be using her again!:)

Quotes:

The boundaries between this world and the next are like oil and water.  They cannot exist together, but pools can form, pockets where one exists inside the other.  If they have left something unsaid or undone in life, it’s through these pockets that they come back to haunt us.

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