Book Tour and Book Review: Planning To Live

Author: Heather Wardell
Title:Planning To Live
Publisher: Createspace
Publish Date: Aug 31, 2010
Rating: 5 Stars
Book Blurb: Determined to lose weight for her best friend's wedding, goal-obsessed Rhiannon flees her parents' Christmas Day feast to avoid overeating but her car skids off the deserted road into a tree. Trapped and bleeding, with her cell phone out of reach, she struggles to escape, and to accept that she's spent her whole life planning but hasn't ever really lived. Will she get the chance to change that?

Review: Planning To Live is Heather's fourth novel and having finished Planning To Live in a few hours, I have to say, I feel like I was missing out, not knowing her name until now.

Planning To Live is a book for every woman.

Rhiannon is character that readers will fall in love with. She's also the kind of character that you wish were your friend. But lordy she's had it rough.

The love of her life was kidnapped and killed by a crazy ex-girlfriend. Like most women she's battling the scale, and feels that all will be right in the world if the pounds just melt away. In focusing on her weight loss, she loses sight of all the joys of the world around her, and she almost misses out on a second chance at love with her co-worker Andrew. Oh but she's in a car accident on Christmas as she was heading home, but then turned around to go back to her parents house because the roads were bad.

Oh Rhiannon. I wanted to hug you, so many times when I read this. I wanted a second chance for you.

In the 220-ish pages, the reader sees Rhiannon's struggle to survive the accident and also the events of her life up until the moment of the accident.

Heather paints a wonderful picture of a woman who wants to be better, to do better, but ultimately who puts her life on hold until it is just about too late. She's not a character that you pity. As she looks back on her life, you see she has a great boss, a loving family and good friends. If only her priorities weren't so screwed up.

The ending is bittersweet, and I won't give it away, because you have to read this book. Be prepared to cry many times as you read this. Not always because its sad but because there's a part of you in Rhiannon.

ARC Book Tour & Book Review: The Sixth Surrender

Author: Hana Samek Norton
Title: The Sixth Surrender
Publisher: Plume
Publish Date: July 27, 2010
Rating: 4 stars
Book Blurb: In the last years of her eventful life, queen-duchess Aliénor of Aquitaine launches a deadly dynastic chess game to safeguard the crowns of Normandy and England for John Plantagenet, her last surviving son.

To that end, Aliénor coerces into matrimony two pawns-Juliana de Charnais, a plain and pious novice determined to regain her inheritance, and Guérin de lasalle, a cynical, war-worn mercenary equally resolved to renounce his.

The womanizing Lasalle and the proud Juliana are perfectly matched for battle not love-until spies and assassins conspire to reverse their romantic fortunes.

Populated by spirited and intelligent women and executed in flawless period detail, The Sixth Surrender is a compelling love story that heralds the arrival of a major new talent in historical fiction.

Review: This book was so well written that it was hard to believe it was a debut novel. Hana takes her readers back in time to the days of Queen Alienor of Aquitaine.

It feels so accurate and that is probably the only fault in this book. It is almost like reading a book by Jean Plaidy or Philippa Gregory which are more fictionalized biographies and like those biographies they have lots of characters that really play an important role in the story.

I don't think there was a character in this book that didn't serve to carry the story along to its end and end that was a happily ever after in a round about way.

Juliana and Guerin are the biggest mismatched couple in any book I've read. They don't want to be married. They try not to be married. In fact, they spend more than 400 pages trying to avoid each other. It is hard to believe that in the end, they seem to end up with each other.

Both are huge pawns, Juliana more by the Alienor and Guerin by Alienor and the Lusignans. Guerin is such an interesting hero, if you can call him that. He does more killing and whoring than declaring his love for Juliana. Not that Juliana makes anything easy for him. She's not the most likable character. She's a bit too pious and at times it seems like she's totally without emotion, but for the time period, that seems suitable for a woman that was almost a nun.

Hana does offer a glimpse of her feelings for her husband,  and at the end, there is no doubt that she does care for him and readers will be happy with the way things are wrapped up at the end.

This is an excellent historical novel. It really isn't a romance though. So if you are looking for a great love story, this might not be the book for you. I know it took me a lot longer to read than most of the books in my TBR pile. It was one of those books I had to really concentrate to read, because there was so much being told.