January 30, 2020

Throwback Thursday



Happy Thursday my fellow book lovers.   Once a month, I'm going to share with you one of my favorite reads from the past decade.  We've started a new one this year, so I thought it only appropriate to share the books I fell in love with in my 30's.  I will say that my reading did slow down in my 20's and I just picked it back up early in my 30's.  

The first book I'm going to share with you is The Help by Kathryn Stockett.    My review of this book is not very lengthy.  I read this before I really got into reviewing.  I did watch the movie with my children a couple of weeks ago and it was very interesting to them to see the world in this manner.  We have watched movies about slavery and about black people who have worked for white people, but this is the first time they had seen a movie like this and could relate it back to a family member.  Their great-grandmother could have been one of the women in this book.  Now, my oldest wants to read the book.  


The Help by Kathryn Stockett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Published: February 2009/Read in 2012
The Help  

I read The Help on my Kindle and I couldn't put it down. I think I had to charge it at least 4 times. My mother had told me about the book and so I read it from her recommendation. It was interesting to me to read because my grandmother or my aunts could have very easily been in this role as well. Even though I know the timing of the civil rights movement, it intrigues me that it wasn't that long ago, and how life really was. As a black woman I have, luckily, not really encountered much racial tension in my life. I have always had friends from different backgrounds and have been able to get along with others very freely. To put myself in a world where I could not be friends with people I am friends with or would have to do so in secret made me keep turning the pages. Not that these women were necessarily friends, but if circumstances were different, I'd like to think that Miss Skeeter would have been friends with Aibileen and Minny.

The movie was very good as well.  I think it did a good job of covering everything that was in the book.  It was hilarious and sad to watch these stories unfold.  The actors they chose to play the roles was spot on.  

I recommend the book and the movie for everyone!


To learn more about the book or movie, click the covers below:








January 28, 2020

Tuesday = New Books!!



Usually on Tuesday's new books are released.  As the month is coming to a close, there are a whole slew of them that are scheduled to come out today.  

BOOKS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO:

These books I already have a copy of and can't wait to dive in to:

The Look-Alike by Erica Spindler
Sienna Scott grew up in the dark shadow of her mother’s paranoid delusions. Now, she's returned home to confront her past and the unsolved murder that altered the course of her life.

In her mother’s shuttered house, an old fear that has haunted Sienna for years rears its ugly head —that it was she who had been the killer’s target that night. And now, with it, a new fear—that the killer not only intended to remedy his past mistake—he’s already begun. But are these fears any different from the ones that torment her mother?

As the walls close in, the line between truth and lie, reality and delusion disintegrate. Has Sienna’s worst nightmare come true? Or will she unmask a killer and finally prove she may be her mother’s look-alike, but she’s not her clone?


Into the Fire by Gregg Hurwitz
Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was trained as an off-the-books government assassin: Orphan X. After breaking with the Program, he reinvented himself as The Nowhere Man, a figure shrouded in shadows who helps the truly desperate. But the government didn’t let go of him easily, sending their best to hunt him down and eliminate him. All of them failed. With his deadliest enemies behind him, Evan is facing a new challenge—what is he going to do now that no one is after him?

Max Merriweather is at the end of his rope. Separated from the woman he loves and barely scraping by, Max is a disappointment to everyone in his life. Then his very successful cousin Grant is brutally murdered. Two months before, Grant left Max an envelope with instructions to take it to a reporter if anything happened to him. Now the reporter is missing and Max’s apartment is ransacked. A man at the end of his rope, he calls The Nowhere Man.

With mixed feelings, Evan takes on this mission, easily finding the men who are after Max and executing a plan to keep him safe. But it isn’t as obvious as it seems—and Evan finds himself enmeshed in one of the most challenging missions of his life, one that he can’t survive on his own. With the help of Joey Morales, a genius-level hacker and the last Orphan recruited into the Program, and the brilliant, off-the-books gunsmith, Tommy Stojack, Orphan X once more heads…Into the Fire.


A Favor for a Favor by Helena Hunting
When I joined Seattle’s NHL expansion team, I thought it was the start of something great. But nothing ever goes the way you expect. Take my introduction to my new neighbor. She came rolling in on the hot mess express at midnight, making a racket while she tried to get into my team captain’s apartment. Did I mention that he’s married to a woman who definitely was not her?

Imagine my surprise when I end up with an injury that has me out of the game for weeks, and she’s the one to offer to help me. I should probably add that she’s not the captain’s mistress. She’s his sexy, pastel-haired younger sister.

So we come up with an arrangement: she rehabs me so that I can get back on the ice sooner, and she can add a professional athlete that isn’t her brother to her client list. Seems simple enough. As long as I can keep my hands to myself and my hormones in check.


The Other People by C.J. Tudor
She sleeps, a pale girl in a white room . . .
Three years ago, Gabe saw his daughter taken. In the back of a rusty old car, covered in bumper stickers. He was driving behind the car. He watched her disappear. But no one believes him. Most people believe that his daughter, and wife, are dead. For a while, people believed that Gabe was responsible.

Three years later and Gabe cannot give up hope. Even though he has given up everything else. His home, his job, his old life. He spends his days and nights travelling up and down the motorway, sleeping in his camper van in service stations, searching for the car that took her. Searching for his daughter.

Katie spends a lot of her life in service stations, working as a waitress. She often sees Gabriel, or 'the thin man' as she has nicknamed him. She knows his story. She feels for him, because Katie understands what it's like to lose a loved one. Nine years ago, her father was murdered. It broke her family apart. She hasn't seen her oldest sister since the day of the funeral; the day she did something terrible.

Fran and her daughter, Alice, put in a lot of miles on the motorway. Not searching. But running. Trying to keep one step ahead of the people that want to hurt them. Because Fran knows the truth. She knows what really happened to Gabe's daughter. She knows who is responsible. And she knows that if they ever find them, they're dead.


Don't Read the Comments by Eric Smith
Divya Sharma is a queen. Or she is when she’s playing Reclaim the Sun, the year’s hottest online game. Divya—better known as popular streaming gamer D1V—regularly leads her #AngstArmada on quests through the game’s vast and gorgeous virtual universe. But for Divya, this is more than just a game. Out in the real world, she’s trading her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay the rent.

Gaming is basically Aaron Jericho’s entire life. Much to his mother’s frustration, Aaron has zero interest in becoming a doctor like her, and spends his free time writing games for a local developer. At least he can escape into Reclaim the Sun—and with a trillion worlds to explore, disappearing should be easy. But to his surprise, he somehow ends up on the same remote planet as celebrity gamer D1V.

At home, Divya and Aaron grapple with their problems alone, but in the game, they have each other to face infinite new worlds…and the growing legion of trolls populating them. Soon the virtual harassment seeps into reality when a group called the Vox Populi begin launching real-world doxxing campaigns, threatening Aaron’s dreams and Divya’s actual life. The online trolls think they can drive her out of the game, but everything and everyone Divya cares about is on the line…
And she isn’t going down without a fight.


Other Titles Releasing Today:

Scot Under the Covers by Suzanne Enoch





When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald






When You See Me by Lisa Gardner







Highfire by Eoin Colfer





Cartier's Hope by M.J. Rose






Twenty by Debra Lendwehr Engle





Wicked Bite by Jeaniene Frost





Blood Countess by Lana Popovic







The Arrangement by Sylvia Day




Diamond City by Francesca Flores






Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda & Valynne E. Maetani





Under a Firefly Moon by Donna Kauffman






The Empty Bed by Nina Sadowsky





The Art of Resistance by Justus Rosenberg






Marriage on Madison Avenue by Lauren Layne





Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu





The Bard's Blade by Brian D. Anderson





Heartland by Sarina Bowen





The Book of Candlelight by Ellery Adams






Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon






Seduce Me With Sapphires by Jane Feather





A Girl's Guide to the Outback by Jessica Kate







These are all the books I know about releasing today! Let me know which book or books you're going to get right away! Click on any cover above to learn more about the book or to order a copy. 


Happy Reading!!