TLC Book Tours Book Review: The Bride Stripped Bare

About The Bride Stripped Bare

• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 1, 2005)

• Language: English

A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the good wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who’s discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. She has discovered a forgotten Elizabethan manuscript that dares to speak of what women truly desire, and inspired by its revelations, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is: How long can she sustain a perilous double life?

Review: This book wasn't an easy read, but looking back to when I read Nikki's With My Body, I recall that that one wasn't an easy read for me either.

My problem is with the female character...who seems nameless, though her husband has one (Cole) and so does her best friend (Theo).

As the story goes on...the lead character finds out her husband is having an affair (possibly) with her best friend.

From that moment on...I just get more and more frustrated with the heroine. I can't deal with a woman who won't walk out only because she doesn't want her friend to win? And what I can't stand even more is how she repays her husband by cheating on him.

WTF.

In the course of this time we hear about the heroine and Cole's rather bleak sex life. It leaves you wondering why "SHE" proposed to him.

By the end of the book...I really couldn't stand her.

The heroine goes through a sort of sexual awakening as a result of her discovering her husband might be having an affair. She takes up with an actor named Gabriel, who is about the only character you can possibly like in the book, until their last encounter and then you don't like him much anymore too.

Like With My Body, The Bride Stripped Bare is written in the second person. That makes it even more difficult to take, though of the two books, I liked With My Body better, at least I felt more emotion for the nameless heroine in that book.

I didn't feel anything for the heroine in this book. I think the point of view really keeps you from getting close to the character you most want to know.

The other thing that was a bit of a disappointment to me was the Elizabethan manuscript. I wanted something more from that story angle than the author delivered.

Even though I was frustrated with the book, I give Nikki Gemmell credit, she creates a story that I couldn't abandon.

Rating: 3 flowers

TLC Book Tours Book Review: Mrs Queen Takes The Train

About Mrs. Queen Takes the Train

• Paperback: 384 pages

• Publisher: Harper Perennial (October 8, 2013)

Buy: Amazon

Blurb: After decades of service and years of watching her family’s troubles splashed across the tabloids, Britain’s Queen is beginning to feel her age. An unexpected opportunity offers her relief: an impromptu visit to a place that holds happy memories—the former royal yacht, Britannia, now moored near Edinburgh. Hidden beneath a skull-emblazoned hoodie, the limber Elizabeth (thank goodness for yoga) walks out of Buckingham Palace and heads for King’s Cross to catch a train to Scotland. But a colorful cast of royal attendants has discovered her missing. In uneasy alliance a lady-in-waiting, a butler, an equerry, a girl from the stables, a dresser, and a clerk from the shop that supplies Her Majesty’s cheese set out to bring her back before her absence becomes a national scandal. Comic and poignant, fast-paced and clever, Mrs Queen Takes the Train tweaks the pomp of the monarchy, going beneath its rigid formality to reveal the human heart of the woman at its center.

Review: Mrs Queen Takes The Train is Buckingham Palace meets Upstairs Downstairs with a touch of Blackadder comedy thrown in.

Anyone with a love for the monarchy and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will have to love this book. William Kuhn paints Queen Elizabeth as the sharp minded lady that she is, but he brings her down to earth. She's slowing down and still trying to keep up with the times when all the things she loves and meant so much to her have been taken away.

In a few words, William Kuhn turns Her Majesty into your great grandmother, or any other 87 year old lady you might know.

You get to know servants from all aspects of the Queen's life, from Renee at the Mews, to Mrs MacDonald who is her dresser and a lady in waiting to name but a few.

When one day The Queen decides she's not feeling the thing and goes off in search of some Cheddar for her horse, Elizabeth and then decides to go see the royal yacht Britannia in Scottland, well the whole palace is turned upside down.

This isn't a book to be taken seriously. This is a book to sit down, relax and have a good chuckle with. It isn't meant to be a portrait of the Queen but rather something humorous. If you check your sense of humor at the door, you probably won't get it, but if you like a little bit of silly fun in your life this is definitely a must read book!

I can't begin to say how much I loved this story!

Rating: 5 flowers

TLC Book Tours Book Review: Chocolates For Breakfast

Author: Pamela Moore
Title: Chocolates For Breakfast
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: July 2013 (originally published 1956)
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours 
Book Blurb: 

Courtney Farrell is a disaffected, sexually precocious fifteen-year-old. She splits her time between Manhattan, where her father works in publishing, and Los Angeles, where her mother is a still-beautiful Hollywood actress. After a boarding-school crush on a female teacher ends badly, Courtney sets out to learn everything fast. Her first drink is a very dry martini, and her first kiss the beginning of a full-blown love affair with an older man.

A riveting coming-of-age story, Chocolates for Breakfast became an international sensation upon its initial publication in 1956, and it still stands out as a shocking and moving account of the way teenagers collide, often disastrously, against love and sex for the first time.

Review: It is easy to see how explosive Chocolates For Breakfast had to be when it was first released in 1956. The subject matter may leave a few jaws on the floor in 2013.

Our heroine, Courtney Farrell is only 15 and through total lack of parenting (Sondra is an actress on the skids, who really didn't want to be a mom in the first place and a publisher father who isn't very much present) goes down a dark and crazy path.

The whole time I was reading this I was shaking my head. This is a girl in restaurants getting served martinis, even when she is with a parent!

And though the sex is implied rather than written, we know that Courtney is definitely sexually active, however not with anyone her own age, as she's too mature for boys her own age.

Courtney Farrell is a character that will blow you away. She's unbelievably mature for her age, but she's also very...screwed up. (Though the 4 letter word starting with "f" is probably a better word to describe her)

I think the thing that really wows me about this book is the age of the author. Pamela Moore was only 18 at the time this book was written! The prose is poetic at times and she captures the voices of both Courtney's parents as well as her contemporaries.

This book is definitely a wild ride, and I can only imagine the stir it caused when it was first released!

Rating: 5 flowers

TLC Book Tours Book Reviews: The Wonder Bread Summer

Author: Jessica Anya Blau
Title: The Wonder Bread Summer
Publisher: Harper Perenniel
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours & the publisher

Book Blurb: Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, delivers another darkly hilarious, heartbreaking coming-of-age novel with Wonder Bread Summer.

In The Wonder Bread Summer, loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, 20-year-old Allie Dodgson has adventures that rival those Alice had down the rabbit hole. Or those of Weeds’ Nancy Botwin.

Allison is working at a dress shop to help pay for college. The dress shop turns out to be a front for drug dealers. And Allison ends up on the run—with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine.

With a hit man after her, Allison wants the help of her parents. But there’s a problem: Her mom took off when Allison was eight; her dad moves so often Allison that doesn’t even have his phone number….

Set in 1980s California, The Wonder Bread Summer is a wickedly funny and fresh caper that’s sure to please fans of Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen, and Marcy Dermansky

Review: It isn't often that I read a book that I can instantly visualize as a movie, but this is one of them. Allie's story is one that is totally unbelievable but is such a wild ride that you simply won't be able to put the book down.

When her boss, Jonas won't pay her, after getting her high and flashing his privates at her, she grabs a Wonder Bread bag of cocaine and starts running.

From that point on the wild starts and Allie meets the most unusual cast of characters on her journey to keep breathing; there's her college friend, Beth,  Roger the quadriplegic porn producer, her mom and the crazy rock band she's the tambourine girl for and then there is rocker Billy Idol. (Oh to see him in a film version of this crazy story).

I absolutely loved Allie for all her craziness, and it was near impossible not to hurt with her when she was with her mom Penny and Jet, and you could tell that there were no maternal feelings going on there. That was sad. But just the opposite was when Allie finally got in touch with her dad, Frank. Frank was totally bad ass, and he loved his daughter.

Allie was totally naive through the book, as you see how she ends up in the predicament she's in, you couldn't help but want to slap a little common sense into her.

The other thing the really stands out in this book are the many sayings she remembers her grandma Wai Po saying.

This book was totally fun and crazy. Oh and did I mention it was set in the 80s? Woo hoo!

I can totally see this as fun summer film, just as it was a fun summer read!

Rating: 5 flowers

TLC Book Review: The Cottage On Glass Beach

Author: Heather Barbieri
Title: The Cottage At Glass Beach
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: May 7, 2013
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours & the publisher

Book Blurb:  Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts state history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and a doting mother. But her carefully constructed life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her daughters--Annie, seven; and Ella, twelve--and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides.

Nora spent her first five years on the island but has not been back to the remote community for decades--not since that long ago summer when her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her aunt's friend Polly suggests, a selkie--a mythical being of island legend--summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone who, like Nora, is trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own--a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past.

Review: This lovely book makes you want to sit on the sand or a beach chair or on the rocks and listen to the sea as you read the story.

Well, that's how it worked for me.

Heather Barbieri has created a picturesque town on an island, population about 201.

The perfect spot to get away and hide, and that's exactly what Nora Cunningham needs to do, after her Attorney General hubby has an affair.

Right from the start I hated Malcolm and as the story went on, I hated him even more.

Nora's daughters were really typical kids, though I wished many times that Nora would sit down and fill their minds with what an idiot their dad was. Ella was super bossy and mostly just a brat. By the end of the book, I was ready to ship her back to Boston and let her father deal with her. She was old enough to know that what was happening between her parents was something that might not be fixable.

There is one heartbreaking plot twist towards the end that really broke my heart.

I loved the touch of magic and mythology sounding the island and selkies. It was definitely different and the story wasn't what I expected it to be at

This has to be the best beach read for the summer and probably the most unique.

Rating: 4 flowers

TLC Book Tour Book Review: Elegy For Eddie

Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Title: Elegy For Eddie
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: Oct 30, 2012
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours & the publisher

Book Blurb: Early April 1933. To the costermongers of Covent Garden—sellers of fruits and vegetables on the London streets—Eddie Pettit was a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. So who would want to kill him . . . and why? Maisie Dobbs's father, Frankie, had been a costermonger, and she remembers Eddie fondly. But it soon becomes clear that powerful political and financial forces are determined to prevent her from learning the truth behind Eddie's death. Maisie's search for answers on the working-class streets of Lambeth leads her to unexpected places and people: to a callous press baron; to a has been politician named Winston Churchill; and, most surprisingly, to Douglas Partridge, the husband of her dearest friend, Priscilla. As Maisie uncovers lies and manipulation on a national scale, she must decide whether to risk everything to see justice done.

Review: I have always wanted to read one of Jacqueline Winspear's books. I've heard a lot about this series and it is definitely something up my alley. It takes place in the 1930s and in England.

Once again I find myself jumping into a series late in the game. Elegy for Eddie is book 9 in the series. I know many people are groaning that I have done this, but I will often read one book so I get to know the characters.

I love when cozy mysteries are seeped in history and that's really what this book is. This book really gives you a picture of Europe during Hitlers rise to power. I love books with characters that are "real" in them. This series reminds me of Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness series as well.

I highly recommend it to fans of cozy mysteries, historical fiction and light romance. I definitely plan on reading the rest of the books in this series


Review: 5 flowers

TLC Book Tours Book Review: With My Body

Author:Nikki Gemmell
Title: With My Body
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: June 19, 2012
Buy: Amazon
Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours and the publisher
Book Blurb: A wife, a mother of three, she has everything a woman should want—and yet she has gone numb inside. Locked in a never-ending cycle of chores, errands, and mealtimes, she cannot find a way to live her life with the honesty and passion that once drove her. Even her husband, whom she loves, has never truly touched the core of her being. Only one person has ever come close. In desperation, she returns to the memory of an old love affair—a transformative relationship with consequences she has never fully resolved. Revisiting her past, she will begin an exhilarating journey into her sexuality while finally confronting the hidden truths of her heart.

Review: This book was a bit...erm...creepy? Odd? And not at all erotic in the way that I felt it was supposed to be. The lead character who I think remains nameless throughout the book is a mother of three who is feeling unfulfilled in her sexual life.

At the beginning, I absolutely hated her. In fact, a few times I put the book down, because this woman aggravated me about how she let another woman knock her down because of play dates and my child is better than your child.

GAH...PUKE!

I would be a terrible mother...children do not have play dates..unless the mom/dad etc is buying the friendship. Children go and play with their friends. This woman should have told Susan to go do some rather rude things to herself, because it was obvious she wasn't a friend.

But I'm not really sure how that part of her life played in with the rest of the story, which is told in flash backs. Our main nameless? character has a horrible homelife. A father that loves her but has a hard time showing it, and a wicked-ish stepmother that can't be bothered with her. Somehow all of this turns her into a raging little slut by 14.

Yikes?!?!

Her true awakening comes with Tol. Her experiences with him reminded me a lot of The Story of O, which is kind of an instruction manual for her.

I couldn't stop thinking, OMG she's not even 18 and she's doing stuff most prostitutes do!

What I don't understand is how someone that ends up so sexually aware ends up in a passionless marriage.

On top of all of this she takes off for Australia to find Tol again, but he doesn't want to see her. That whole thing along with some revelations about her father made the ending very anti-climatic for me.

The book, however, was beautifully written, though I have to admit, it was hard dealing with the main character being written in the 2nd person. It was a little hard to deal with.

Over all, this was only a so so read for me, but I can definitely appreciate the author's ability to tell a unique erotic tale.

Rating: 3 flowers

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