I reviewed S.E.C.R.E.T yesterday. Today I’m pleased to be able to givaway one copy to a lucky reader with a US or Canadian mailing address. Just fill out the form below. I will take entries until 11:59pm CST on March 6, 2013. Good luck!
S.E.C.R.E.T.: A Novel
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: February 5, 2013
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Cassie Robichaud’s life has been filled with regret and loneliness since the death of her husband. She waits tables at the rundown Café Rose in New Orleans, and every night she heads home to her solitary one-bedroom apartment. But when she discovers a notebook left behind by a mysterious woman at the café, Cassie’s world is forever changed. The notebook’s stunningly explicit confessions shock and fascinate Cassie, and eventually lead her to S∙E∙C∙R∙E∙T, an underground society dedicated to helping women realize their wildest, most intimate sexual fantasies. Cassie soon immerses herself in an electrifying journey through a series of ten rapturous fantasies with gorgeous men who awaken and satisfy her like never before. As she is set free from her inhibitions, she discovers a new confidence that transforms her, giving her the courage to live passionately. Equal parts enticing, liberating and emotionally powerful, S∙E∙C∙R∙E∙T is a world where fantasy becomes reality.
I liked that this book had a great story – it’s not just a string of sexual encounters. Cassie is a well-developed, fun character. I also liked that Cassie’s sexual awakening was driven by her own fantasies and that she didn’t need to be forced, even pretend forced into doing anything she didn’t want to do. It’s not like 50 Shades of Gray in that regard.
If you are just starting to read erotica or if you are not a fan of what some may think are crude or vulgar words for sex organs, than this would be a good book for you. The author never uses any descriptive words for genitalia, just vague references like himself, myself, me, and him. If you are an experienced erotica reader like me, then you may feel like the sex scenes lacked “oomph”. There is only so much that can be described if descriptive words are not used.
This book ends with a major cliff-hanger which will hopefully be resolved in the sequel that is set to be released later this year. I’ll be reading it for sure – I want to find out what happens to Cassie.
Come back tomorrow – I’ll be giving away a copy S.E.C.R.E.T to one lucky winner!
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
Monday, February 4thRomancing the Book
Monday, February 4th:Love to Read for Fun
Tuesday, February 5th:RTBookReviews.com Q&A/giveaway
Wednesday, February 6th:From the TBR Pile
Thursday, February 7th:Passionate Encounters
Monday, February 11th:Feeling Fictional
Tuesday, February 12th:Smexy Books
Wednesday, February 13th:The Romanceaholic Spotlight/giveaway
Thursday, February 14th:Luxury Reading
Friday, February 15th:Babbling About Books, and More!
Tuesday, February 19th:A Chick Who Reads
Wednesday, February 20th:Sara’s Organized Chaos
Thursday, February 21st:Seaside Book Nook
Friday, February 22nd:Love, Romance, Passion
Monday, February 25th:Book Lovin’ Mamas
Tuesday, February 26th:All I Want and More
Date TBD:Melody & Words
TBD:Close Encounters with the Night Kind
Buy this book at:
Amazon
Goodbye for Now
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: August 7, 2012
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can’t get a date. So he creates an algorithm to match people with their soul mates. The technology fixes Sam up with Meredith, his perfect match, but it also gets him fired when the company starts losing all its customers as they quickly find Mr. and Mrs. Right.
When Meredith’s grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam creates a computer simulation of her from her correspondence – e-mail, Facebook, video chats, texts – so Meredith can say goodbye. Meredith loves her virtual Livvie, and the couple launches a business to help others through their grief. But as the business takes off, their undertaking proves more complicated than anyone imagined. For every person who just wants to say goodbye, someone else can’t let go. Meanwhile, Sam and Meredith’s affection for each other deepens into a love neither can live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to?
This book is both hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Frankel has a crisp writing style and wonderful sense of humor and irony. If it wasn’t for the dark, dry humor this would be an awfully depressing book. It is pretty much all about death and grieving after all.
Goodbye For Now raises so many thought-provoking questions in today’s social media age. Is chatting and emailing with a DLO (Departed Loved One) that much different from having purely electronic relationships with living people? Should RePose be used just for the short-term as a crutch in the grieving process? Or should it be used long-term as a means of honoring the DLO’s memory? Is using it long-term just prolonging the denial stage of grief – perhaps forever?
I’m not sure of the answer to any of these questions but I do know that I enjoyed this book immensely.
Buy this book at:
Amazon
(I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher and The LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
Minion (Vampire Huntress Legend)
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Release Date: 2003
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
All Damali Richards ever wanted to do was create music and bring it to the people. Now she is a Spoken Word artist and the top act for Warriors of Light Records. But come nightfall, she hunts vampires and demons—predators that people tend to dismiss as myth or fantasy. But Damali and her Guardian team cannot afford such delusions, especially now, when a group of rogue vampires have been killing the artists of Warriors of Light and their rival, Blood Music.
Strange attacks have also erupted within the club drug-trafficking network and drawn the attention of the police. These killings are a bit out of the ordinary, even for vampires. No neat puncture marks in the neck to show where the life’s blood has been sucked from the body. These bodies have been mutilated beyond recognition, indicating a blood lust and thirst for destruction that surpasses any Damali has encountered before. Damali soon discovers that behind these brutal murders is the most powerful vampire she has ever met, and this seductive beast is coming for her next. But his unholy intentions have also drawn the focus of other hellish dark forces. Soon Damali finds herself being pulled deeper into the vast and horrifying vampire world.
I really, really wanted to like this book but I just could not get into it. Normally it would only take me a couple of days to read a book like this but I struggled with this book for about a week. The main problem was I just didn’t understand what was going on. I thought maybe it was just me but after reading some other reviews, it turns out that’s not the case. In the first half of the book, not much was happening. It was written as if the reader should know what the characters were talking about but I did not. I actually had to check and make sure I was reading the first book in the series (I was) because I felt like I was jumping in the middle of something. Then in the second half of the book, the very complicated vampire mythology was presented in one long information dump. I couldn’t sort it all out.
Several of the reviews indicated that the subsequent books in this series are much better. Honestly, there are so many vampire series out there that I want to read that I don’t know if I want to take the time to see if the second book, The Awakening, is better. But I’ll be sure and let you know if I do!
Have you read this series? What did you think?
Leslie Esdaile Banks: New York Times and USA Today Best-selling author, L.A. Banks has penned over 40 novels and 12 novellas in a wide range of genres and is the recipient of the 2009 Romantic Times Booklover’s Convention Career Achievement Award for Paranormal Fiction and the 2008 Essence Magazine Storyteller of the Year Award, as well as the 2008 Best 50 Women in Business Award for the State of Pennsylvania. Recently she was featured as a speaker on the HBO Special on Vampire Literature and Legends as a prelude to the True Blood premier.
A native of Philadelphia, Banks is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program, and alumnae of Temple University’s Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking program. She writes under the pseudonyms; L.A. Banks, Leslie Esdaile, Leslie E. Banks, Leslie Banks, and Leslie Esdaile Banks. She has won several business as well as literary awards, and writes in genres as diverse as romance, women’s fiction, crime suspense, and paranormal. She has contributed to magazines, newspaper columns, and has written commercial fiction for a variety of major publishers: St. Martin’s Press, Simon and Schuster, Harlequin, Kensington Publishing, BET/Arabesque, Dark Horse Press, Genesis Press, Parker Publishing, Harper, and Tor. Her non-fiction work includes the riveting and motivational story of Bank’s life journey in her contribution to the Chicken Soup for the African American Soul anthology.
Banks’ writing career took a new twist when she won the coveted contract with Paramount/Showtime in collaboration with Simon & Schuster/Pocketbooks to write a book series for the popular cable network television series, Soul Food. Banks was also contracted to write the Universal Studios/Dark Horse Press novelization of the movie, Scarface, which takes a look at the main character Tony Montana’s life two years before he emigrated from Cuba to American in 1978. In addition, Banks penned a four-book crime thriller for Kensington/Dafina, beginning with Betrayal of the Trust, under her alternate pseudonym, Leslie Esdaile Banks. From there, Banks transitioned into another hot genre—the world of paranormal fiction, where she has penned a 12 book Vampire Huntress Legend series under the pseudonym, L.A. Banks, for St. Martin’s Press, as well as a hot new werewolf series, Crimson Moon Novels (a six book series.) Banks has also moved into ebooks with Red Rose Publishing, graphic novels, comics, manga and even a new YA, entitled, Shadow Walker, for her thriving Vampire Huntress Legends series, as well as a young adult paranormal series that is under development.
Sadly, Leslie passed away August 2, 2011 after a short but courageous battle with cancer. 
Buy this book at:
Amazon
Sorry for the unexpected silence this week. Influenza has hit my house HARD. On Tuesday, it took me down. Then on Wednesday, West came down with a raging ear infection. It was then I learned that your child will be moved to the top of the triage list at urgent care if he is yelling in pain continuously in the waiting room. Thursday, Travis came down with the flu. Luckily, he got up early and made it to urgent care before Winter Storm Q hit. Then Friday Neve went down. Luckily, we have super-awesome neighbors who came and shoveled the 12 inches of snow off our driveway so I could take Neve to the doctor to get Tamiflu. As of today, Cash is the man of the house. The rest of us still feel like crapola. I’ve been reading but I haven’t had the energy to write any reviews. I’m going to try to get some written today in between coughing fits.
Then tonight I will be glued to the Oscar Red Carpet pre-show on E! and then to the award ceremony itself. I can’t wait – it’s one of my favorite nights of the year! Who do you think will win Best Picture? I want Les Miserables to win but I have a feeling that Argo will take the prize.
I hope you are all staying healthy out there!
P.S. – I started a Facebook fan page for Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine. Just click on the Facebook button in the column on the right side of this post to go to the page and like it!
Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 2007
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This review has spoilers but since it’s a 40-page picture book, you will find out the ending of the book within 10 minutes of starting to read it anyway!
Henry’s Freedom Box is the true story of Henry “Box” Brown, a man who escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom.
While written for young children, this book doesn’t sugar coat how horrible slavery was. The very first page tells us that Henry doesn’t know when his birthday is because slaves weren’t allowed to know their birthdays. However, it did make me uncomfortable I read, “Henry’s master had been good to Henry and his family,” because I don’t think you can really be good to someone if you are that person’s “master”.
The master dies and leaves Henry to his son. Henry marries another slave and has three children. The most horrible part of the book is when the master’s son sells Henry’s wife and children. Henry runs to the center of town just as his wife and children are being driven away. At this point in the story, my six year old was almost crying.
The story ends somewhat happily. Henry makes it to freedom but he never finds his wife and kids. After I finished reading it to him, my six year old told me he was afraid he was going to have nightmares because Henry never found his family. It’s a conundrum – I want my kids to learn the history of this country but at the same time, I want to shield them from all bad things. They need to learn this stuff sometime though – I can’t keep them in a bubble forever!
Kadir Nelson’s illustrations are fabulous, especially the paintings of Henry as a young boy. The pain and sadness in Henry’s eyes is heartbreaking. This was a tough story but it was also amazing. I can’t imagine stuffing myself into a box for over 24 hours. The perseverance of Henry “Box” Brown is truly remarkable.
Kadir Nelson is an award-winning American artist whose works have been exhibited in major national and international publications, institutions, art galleries, and museums. Nelson earned a Bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and has since created paintings for a host of distinguished clients including Sports Illustrated, The Coca-Cola Company, The United States Postal Service, Major League Baseball, and Dreamworks SKG where he worked as a visual development artist creating concept artwork for feature films, “Amistad”, and “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”. Many of Nelson’s paintings are in the collections of notable institutions and public collections, including the U.S. House of Representatives and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as in the private collections of actors, professional athletes, and musicians. Nelson has also gained acclaim for the artwork he has contributed to several NYT Best-selling picture books including his authorial debut, “WE ARE THE SHIP: The Story of Negro League Baseball”, winner of the Coretta Scott King and Robert F. Sibert Awards, and was published by Disney/Hyperion in the spring of 2008. Currently, Nelson’s cover artwork is featured on the album “MICHAEL”, by the late pop singer icon Michael Jackson, Jackson’s first posthumous album release. Nelson’s upcoming literary effort, “HEART AND SOUL: The Story of America and African-Americans,” was published by HarperCollins in the fall of 2011.
Buy this book at:
Amazon
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Release Date: January 11, 2010
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.
Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.
I thought The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was a wonderful portrayal of the identity crisis a lot of young bi-racial people face. When Rachel arrives in Portland to live with her grandmother, she hasn’t been around many other black people. She actually doesn’t even realize that because she appears black, people will think she is black and expect her to act like the black people in her community do. She doesn’t fit in with the black kids at her school because of how she acts and she doesn’t fit in with the white kids because of how she looks. Even her good friend Jesse, an open-minded white boy, doesn’t understand. When someone drives by and yells the n-word at Rachel, he brushes it off, saying, “Don’t mind them.” As if that’s all that needed to be said.
The book starts when Rachel is eleven and goes through her teen years. Ms. Durrow does a great job of matching Rachel’s inner monologue to the age that she is in the story. As Rachel matures, so does the way she thinks to herself about her place in the world. The book switches back and forth between first person narration by Rachel to third person narration from the point of view of several other characters. I liked the way this made the story come together. Even though it’s primarily Rachel’s story, we get to delve in the minds of the other characters and find out their motivations and dreams.
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky was chosen by Barbara Kingsolver as the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. It is truly deserving of such an award.
Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Heidi has worked as a corporate litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association. She is a host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat; and a founder and producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, an annual free public event, that celebrates stories of the Mixed experience. She is an occasional essay contributor to National Public Radio. She is also a sought-after public speaker who has spoken at Brown, Exeter, Yale Law School and many other universities nationwide and has also spoken at popular festivals, conferences and high schools on creativity, women’s empowerment, and multicultural and multiracial issues. She has been featured as an expert on multiracial and multicultural issues and identity by the NBC Nightly News, the New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, Ebony Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is an occasional contributor to National Public Radio.
Buy this book at:
Amazon
I’ve caught the crud that has been going around. I don’t think it’s the flu but it has made me very tired and slowed my brain. I don’t think I’ll be able to post until I feel better, which will hopefully be soon. I hope you all are staying healthy!
February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada. When I was searching around the Internet for Black History Month reading lists, I noticed that the vast majority of them were for children. I definitely want my children’s library at home to include books by and about African Americans but what about my own library? Do I make enough of an effort to read young adult and adult books written by African Americans? Probably not. Today, I’m going to list the books I have read and/or reviewed that are by African American authors since I started keeping track of my reading in 2008. This is more for my own curiosity than anything else. I love making lists!
Then throughout the month of February, I will be reviewing new (to me) books by black authors. I’ll include some children’s books as well. Of course, I will also continue to make an effort to seek out authors of color throughout the rest of the year too! Maybe by next year, I’ll have read enough to put together my own adult reading list for Black History Month 2014.
Young Adult Fiction
Modelland by Tyra Banks
Copper Sun by Sharon Draper
Adult Fiction
A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvette Edwards
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris
Being Lara by Lola Jaye
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosely
Rebel Yell by Alice Randall
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Memoir
Moonwalk by Michael Jackson
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
Non-Fiction
“Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?” by Beverly Daniel Tatum
That’s 14 books out of the 468 books I have on my Goodreads “read” shelf. Only 3%! This is why I want to use my blog to bring awareness to books by black authors – they just aren’t getting promoted through traditional outlets like white authors are. It takes some research to even find what books are out there. For me anyway. If you have a good website, blog or something else that is a good resource for discovering books by people of color, please let me know. I’ll do a future post sharing those resources.
Here I Go Again by Jen Lancaster
Publisher: NAL Hardcover
Release Date: January 29, 2013
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Twenty years after ruling the halls of her suburban Chicago high school, Lissy Ryder doesn’t understand why her glory days ended. Back then, she was worshipped…beloved…feared. Present day, not so much. She’s been pink-slipped from her high-paying job, dumped by her husband and kicked out of her condo. Now, at thirty-seven, she’s struggling to start a business out of her parents’ garage and sleeping under the hair-band posters in her old bedroom.
Lissy finally realizes karma is the only bitch bigger than she was. Her present is miserable because of her past. But it’s not like she can go back in time and change who she was…or can she?
Have you ever wondered how your life would be changed if you made different decisions in high school? Lissy Ryder is about to find out. Here I Go Again is an early 90s twist on It’s A Wonderful Life. What would the world be like if Lissy Ryder wasn’t a mean girl?
I thought this book was so much fun! Lissy is a great character – she’s so self-absorbed, I just wanted to strangle her but at the same time I thought she was really funny. I was surprised by the way her classmates present day lives changed after she went back to high school – it wasn’t what I expected at all. My only quibble with the time travel is that when Lissy came back to the present after going back to high school, she didn’t remember the past twenty years. It seems like a shame to change the path of your life but not get to remember the journey of getting to your new reality. Perhaps Deva will give her a potion that will allow her to do that. That would be a great sequel!
Fans of 80s and 90s pop culture will appreciate all the glam rock and grunge rock references. It was like a trip down memory lane for me since I’m the same age as Lissy. Because of the title, the Whitesnake song, Here I Go Again was in my head pretty much the entire time I was reading it.
Jen is primarily known for her hilarious memoirs (Bitter is the New Black, Such a Pretty Fat). This is her second novel and I think she’s really coming into her own as a fiction writer. I can’t wait to see what her next fiction offering is like. (Jen has traded her trademark footnotes for parenthetical phrases so there shouldn’t be any trouble reading Here I Go Again on an e-reader.)
Buy this book at:
Amazon
Other Jen Lancaster books I’ve reviewed:
Such a Pretty Fat
Pretty In Plaid
My Fair Lazy
If You Were Here
(I received a copy of Here I Go Again courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
I’m a reading, knitting, scrapbooking, running mom of four crazy kids.
Welcome to the chaos!
