Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares


Book Summary
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Brashares comes the welcome return of the characters whose friendship became a touchstone for a generation. Now Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting. Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness. Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever—but in ways that none of them could ever have expected. As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one.

Flo's Summary
5 out of 5 stars! This book was interesting in so many ways. First of all -- I wasn't expecting it to suck me in like it did! I stayed up waaay late past my bedtime two nights in a row to read this. It's the first book in awhile that's made me wonder about it during the day while I'm at work and want to come home just so I can keep reading. I love love love when a book can do that! 

It was also interesting because from reading the reviews on Goodreads, I had a sense of what was going to happen. And it did happen. But not at the time or in the way I expected. The book was also interesting because with the characters, Lena especially, I was like, "C'mon now...get over it! Let people in. It's been MONTHS. This is longer than Bella sat in the chair and twirled around by her window in New Moon." (LOL. Couldn't resist the Twilight reference.) Actually, Lena's story was another one where I knew how it was going to end, but I enjoyed getting there. I loved Carmen's story line in the train. It was real and an ending you'd expect wasn't forced -- I liked that. 

I've had this book on my shelf for awhile, but just now picked it up this week because of a sequence of events started with my last review. Reading the movie companion prompted me to go back and watch the Special Features from the DVDs of Parts 1 AND 2. (There are some good ones, especially on the first DVD.) After that, I wanted to stay with Lena, Tibby, Bee, and Carmen for more, so I ended up reading this. I hope this becomes a movie soon. It will be an excellent movie! 

Monday, May 12, 2014

COVER REVEAL Craving by Sofia Grey






Book Title: Craving

Author Name: Sofia Grey

Author Location (for press releases) New Zealand

Name of series and book number in series: Talisman series; this is book #2

Genre: Dark contemporary/paranormal romance

Publisher:  HYPERLINK "http://timeandtidepublishing.com/" Time & Tide Publishing

Date of Publication: 10 June 2014

ISBN: 
Ebook
ISBN-13: 978-0-9892549-7-7
PRINT
ISBN-13: 978-0-9892549-8-4

Formats available: Print and Ebook

Cover Artist: Tincar Creations



Purchase Links: Pre-order at a special price

BUY LINKS


Other Book Links:
 HYPERLINK "http://timeandtidepublishing.com/" Time & Tide Publishing 


Tagline:

A deal with a demon, a biker psychic and the girl who might just be his salvation... if the demon doesn’t get to her first.


Blurb/Book Description: 
Dante isn’t your typical medium. With his leather jacket, tattoos and piercings, he looks more at home on his motorbike than he does holding a séance and Katherine has no intention of getting involved with him. He's the complete opposite of the kind of man she wants and represents everything she's tried to leave behind, but she needs a medium and he’s the best one around.

Dante’s never allowed himself to get close to anyone for fear of putting them in danger. His craving for Katherine is about to bring his worst nightmares to life. ~


Short Excerpt: BLOGGERS CHOICE

Excerpt 1:

He shrugged out of my grasp, twisting his face away and avoiding my eyes. “I’m trouble, Kitten. If they’re your friends, that’s great. You don’t need me hanging around as well.”
“You’re scared.”
This time his eyes locked onto mine, narrow and flinty. “What did you say?”
I lifted my chin. “Scared.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Yeah? And just what am I supposed to be scared of, Kitten?” He took a step toward me. “You?” The toes of his heavy boots touched mine. I could smell coffee on his breath, hear his uneven breathing.
“I told you, Dante. I’m not afraid of you.” I kept my arms by my sides, my hands loose and relaxed. He took a quick breath and I leapt in. “The idea that someone else has a Talisman. It’s rattled you.”
The flicker of fear in his eyes told me everything. Squashing down my own inadequacies, I moved forward and closed the gap. Before he could demur, I draped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips against his. It was meant to be a peck, a light touch of comfort. I didn’t expect it to ignite.
I could feel everything—the softness of his cool lips, damp with rain; his prickly stubble against my chin; tight arms that wrapped around me; one hand on the small of my back, the other closing around the nape of my neck. He growled deep in his throat and kissed me back, hard. Then his mouth slanted, the kiss went deeper in a scorching blast I felt down to my knees. My hands moved of their own accord, burrowing into his hair, pulling his head further down. He tasted of coffee and something dark and exotic. Dante was delicious.

Excerpt 2:

Dante’s breath hitched. He flinched, and a shudder ran up my arm. As he lifted his head I felt the temperature plummet. The candles nearest to him flickered and bobbed as though in a breeze and I shivered, chills oozing down my neck.
“Hello, Gabriel.” Dante sounded polite, respectful. Beside me, Suki gasped, her fingers closing tighter around my hand. One by one, the candles flickered and stuttered, the flames waved crazily and almost blew out, before righting themselves. It looked as though an unseen child crawled around the room, puffing at each one in turn. I shivered and tucked my feet in tighter, huddling into myself to keep warm.
“Please show yourself to the circle. Come and talk to us, Gabriel.”
I wrinkled my nose. What was that weird smell? Like rotting meat.
The outer candles shimmied in turn, but faster now. Dante spoke again, calm and measured. “Gabriel. I summon you to the circle.”
Suki’s chest heaved, her eyes wide and scared in the dim lights.
The candlelight steadied. Dante’s hand relaxed a fraction, and he sucked in a deep breath. Was this it? Would Gabe appear? The stink faded, and I turned my head to look at Dante just as Suki squealed and a tiny spotlight in the ceiling exploded. Poof. One by one, the recessed bulbs sparked and shattered, tiny glass fragments raining down on us. Poof. Josh swore under his breath and I sought my voice. Poof.
“Don’t break the circle, keep your hands linked.” Yes, I’d taken Nanette’s role.
Poof. Slivers of glass in my hair. I gripped Dante ever tighter. I kept my head down to avoid the falling glass, but focused on him through the curtain of my hair. He stared at the far wall, his face a mask. I looked too. A column of mist hovered in front of the door, tendrils snaked along the floor and washed around the circle, nudging the salt lines. It’s trying to get in, I realized, my heart speeding up. Poof. The final spotlight blew out, leaving us illuminated only by candles. I shivered, trembling from head to toe. My teeth would be chattering in another minute.
Dante gasped, and his head lolled forward. I blinked as the room began to dim. Oh God. One by one, the outer candles winked out, invisible fingers pinching the wicks. I could feel Suki’s terror, the trembling cascading down through her hand. I tried to stay calm. Just the inner eight candles left. The stink of rotting meat returned. I wanted to cover my nose, but daren’t break the circle. And then Dante spoke in a voice I didn’t recognize.





If you haven’t read Obsession, book 1 in the Talisman series, you can download if NOW for a limited time at 0.99!!!








BUY LINKS 


Also available in print

Blurb:

Josh Delaney is the ideal honey trap. His charm and model good looks would be enough for most women, but coupled with his psychic ability to read their thoughts, he’s impossible to resist. Suspicious husbands employ him to test their wives, to see if they can be tempted to stray.
High profile couple Suki and Gabe Bridgewater have the perfect marriage, or at least, that’s the image they portray to the world. Behind closed doors, Gabe’s dominance in the marriage is unravelling and he decides to test Suki, using Josh as bait.
For Josh it should be just another easy job, but two things go horribly wrong.
One, Josh falls in love with Suki.
And two, Gabe refuses to let her go.

Author Bio:
Romance author Sofia Grey spends her days managing projects in the corporate world and her nights hanging out with wolf shifters and alpha males. She devours pretty much anything in the fiction line, but she prefers her romances to be hot, and her heroes to have hidden depths. When writing, she enjoys peeling back the layers to expose her characters’ flaws and always makes them work hard for their happy endings.

Music is interwoven so tightly into my writing that I can’t untangle the two. Either I’m listening to a playlist on my iPod, have music seeping from my laptop speakers, or there’s a song playing in my head – sometimes on auto-repeat. 

Check out my playlists on Pinterest 

Author web links:

  Catch me blogging with Allyson Lindt



Twitter: @SofiaGreyAuthor    HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/SofiaGreyAuthorhttps://twitter.com/SofiaGreyAuthor  

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: The Official Scrapbook


Summary
Take the New York Times bestselling book and pair it with a perfect cast, a screenplay from one of Hollywood's most respected writers, and gorgeous locales like Vancouver, Baja, and Santorini, and you have The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the teen girl movie of summer 2005 from Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures!

Flo's Review
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is one of my favorite book AND movie series. I found a deal on this movie companion guide, so of course I snagged it! As far as movie companions go, it wasn't the best -- there were many pages that were just text from the book. What was the point of that? I mean, they matched it up with movie pictures, so I guess that was supposed to be cool? Overall, it was very text heavy compared to other movie companion guides I've seen. Instead of short sentence or paragraph blurbs describing different things, it had three to four pages of a director or designer telling his or her story in detail. That' nice, but I feel like with a guide like this, I am really looking to find out just some neat tidbits about filming and the actors and how the story came to life. A book like this to me should be for skimming and not for deep reading.

So, I skimmed most of the text. It does boast on the cover to have more than 100 exclusive movie photos, and I really enjoyed looking at those. There were also storyboards and quizzes and other fun things. It was colorful and fun to go through. 

On a side note: I hear they are going to make Sisterhood Everlasting into a movie, too? I've got to read that! Has anyone read it? What'd you think?

Monday, May 5, 2014

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith


Summary
Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father. Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met. A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

Flo's Review
I loved loved loved The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and This is What Happy Looks Like. So obviously as soon as I found out that this book was going to exist, it was on my TBR. I found this one to be a mix of the previous two stories. Lucy and Owen's meeting was happenstance, like in Statistical Probability, and they kept in touch not through emails like in Happy, but through postcards. It was a cute story, but it didn't completely grab me. While I liked the concept/theme of the geography and the postcards, the part of the story where it is alternating back and forth between Lucy and Owen AND they are in different parts of the world every time gave me a bit of whiplash. It was just a little too much. 

It was the little things in this book that I loved. Point Zero. The fact that both their parents were NOT clueless. (I really appreciate that -- it's refreshing when clued in parents appear in YA books because they do, generally speaking, understand what their teen is going through, having been teens themselves before.) I also liked how not everything was perfect all the time. The reality of something (yes, I'm thinking of a particular instance in the story) did not at all turn out like the expectation and and that is a very real possibility. Yet, it also wasn't the end -- which is also very real. And in the end, it was just a part of the story. I love that.

So this one was cute, but I'd say definitely read the two books I mention above over this one. Then if you're still up for simple and cute love story, pick this up.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han


Summary
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.

Flo's Review
If you skin through the reviews on Goodreads, you see a lot of, "This was cute." I think cute is a good way to describe it. First of all, I love the idea of writing letters to your exes as your final hurrah, and then putting them out of your heart forever. (Well, or trying to. At least out of the front of your mind.)

When I was in middle school, I had a slumber party at my house. My friends locked me out of my room and read my diary. This incident scared me away from writing for many years and basically sucked. I share this horror story with you because I know what Lara Jean was going through. There are some thoughts, feelings, that are meant for you and you alone -- at that time. Not to say that they can't be shared later or differently, but in some moments they should be yours and yours alone. 

Lara Jean seemed a little.....childish? to me. But then I had to keep reminding myself that she's, what, 15 years old? She is still a child. I'm not really a fan of Peter K. I'll try to keep this spoiler free, but I just don't think he's right for Lara Jean. I'm a fan of Josh, but I'm always a sucker for the boy next door. I loved reading about the relationship between the sisters and how they looked out for each other and for their dad. The letters played out to different endings, and I really liked that some letters played a major part in the story line while others got a quick resolution, or no resolution at all. That is very true to life. 

I was really surprised to find out that this is duology! Happy surprised, because I didn't love the way this one ended. So bring on P.S. I Still Love You, so I can continue to have hope for my ship! LOL