ARC Book Review: Goodbye To Yesterday

Author: Wanda E. Brunstetter
Title: Goodbye To Yesterday
Publisher: Barbour Publishing
Publish Date: Feb 1, 2013
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: Net Galley

Book Blurb: 

Join Meredith and Luke Stoltzfus, an Amish couple who are faced with the greatest challenge of their young lives. Financial struggles. Arguments. A suspected pregnancy. A last-minute trip to Middlebury, Indiana. A deadly encounter at a Philadelphia bus station. Will their love and faith be enough to bring them back together again, against all odds?

Review: This short novella is Wanda E. Brunstetter stepping out of her comfort zone and stepping into Beverly Lewis'. You could feel Wanda setting us up for high drama, which is not usually her style.

What made this book a pleasant read were the characters. Luke and Meredith are a down to earth and as it may seem, down on their luck Amish couple.

It seems their fortunes are turning when Luke gets offered a chance to learn a new trade from his uncle in Indiana.

This is where the story starts to bug me a bit. I just don't feel the martial strife Wanda is trying to create here. It is too forced and not very real. In her other books, the conflict seems real, but here, not so much.

Everything moves on in such a rapid fire pace that as a reader, I almost felt left in the dust as she tried to set the stage for the other books to come.

I don't want to give away some of foreshadowing, but there is a drug addict/seller that just didn't work. I could tell this wasn't something she was comfortable writing about and she probably shouldn't have gone that avenue.

The only problem is, once you start reading it, you will want to find out what happens next for Luke and Meredith, especially after the ending, which gives new meaning to the word cliffhanger. It is a good thing these books come out one a month because with the way this book ended readers will be sitting on pins and needles waiting to find out what happens next.

Rating:  3 flowers

Cover Reveal: Amber Argyle - Winter Queen

Winter Queen

Fairy Queens 1

~Becoming a winter queen will make Ilyenna as cold and cruel and deadly as winter itself, but it might be the only way to save her people from a war they have no hope of winning.~

Mortally wounded during a raid, seventeen-year-old Ilyenna is healed by winter fairies who present her with a seductive offer: become one of them and share their power over winter. But that power comes with a price. If she accepts, she will become a force of nature, lose her humanity, and abandon her family.

Unwilling to pay such a high price, Ilyenna is enslaved by the one of the invaders, Darrien. While in captivity, she learns the attack wasn’t just a simple raid but part of a larger plot to overthrow her entire nation. 

With the enemy stealing over the mountains and Darrien coming to take her to his bed, Ilyenna must decide whether to resurrect the power the fairies left behind. Doing so will allow her to defeat Darrien and the other invaders, but if she embraces winter, she will lose herself to that destroying power—forever.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15829917-winter-queen
http://www.amberargyle.blogspot.com

Promo Spot: Manless In Montclair

Manless in Montclair by Amy Holman Edelman

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Manless-in-Montclair-ebook/dp/B00AI2FNV6/

Free days: 8-10 January

Chick lit/women's fiction/romance

Bio:

Amy Holman Edelman lives in New Jersey with her husband, children and Irish Jack Russell, Roxy.  She is the also author of The Little Black Dress ('97).

Blurb: 

Being short with big boobs means living life off-balance. Isabel knows this all too well; at five feet nothing with a tendency to tip over in heels, she's struggled for twenty-five years to make clothes, careers and boyfriends fit. Enter Michael. Divorced father, recovering alcoholic and fifteen years her senior--he was the last guy she thought would make the cut. But when he proposed over a pastrami sandwich in a NYC deli on the anniversary of their first date, Isabel knew, improbably, that he was the one.

Fifteen mostly happy years and two kids later, Isabel walks into her living room to discover her husband dead on the floor, leaving her a widow at forty-one. At Micheal's funeral, a guest solemnly informs her that the official mourning period for a Jewish widow is thirty days. At the moment, Isabel can't imagine a time when she will stop grieving. Not helping the process is this: as a single mom living in the very married suburbs, for the first time in fifteen years Isabel once again just doesn't fit in.

It takes her four year-old daughter's request for a new daddy to set Isabel on a journey through online dating, shifty matchmakers and painfully orchestrated single dinners. But after endless dates, a torrid affair with an unemployed, passive-aggressive neighbor and a story on page three of the New York Daily News, Isabel begins to realize that another man may not be the answer and, surprisingly, that's when things begin to change for the better...

Excerpt: Charlie put down his drink and took another tack. “Are you familiar with that Nietzsche theory?”

“Which one?"

“The one that says ‘Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’?”

“I’ve heard it, yes. Why?”

“I think that whatever doesn’t kill us just eats us alive...bit by bit…until at the end, all we need is a dent in the car or…” He looked directly at me and continued: “…a lousy-ass guy to push us over the edge.”

“So what? Are you saying you’re a lousy-ass guy? Or are you just afraid I’ll end up with one?”

He paused for a minute. Then, as if in answer to my question, he sat up, leaned over, and kissed me. He was hesitant at first, as if his lips were trying to find exactly the right place to settle on mine.

And then they did.

The kiss was passionate, needy, questioning. I breathed him in as if he were oxygen. He put his arms around me and pulled me to the floor, his hands touching my face, my breasts, my hips. I held on to him for dear life while the rolling Cuban rhythm of Buena Vista Social Club wafted in the air like perfume.

Historical Fiction Book Tours Book Review: The Midwife's Tale

ABOUT THE BOOK

Author: Sam Thomas

Title: The Midwife's Tale
Publication Date:  January 8, 2013 | Minotaur Books | 320p

Review Copy Provided By: Historical Fiction Book Tours & the publisher

SYNOPSIS:  In the tradition of Arianna Franklin and C. J. Sansom comes Samuel Thomas’s remarkable debut, The Midwife’s Tale.

It is 1644, and Parliament’s armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels’ hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridget’s friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer.

Bridget joins forces with Martha Hawkins, a servant who’s far more skilled with a knife than any respectable woman ought to be. To save Esther from the stake, they must dodge rebel artillery, confront a murderous figure from Martha’s past, and capture a brutal killer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. The investigation takes Bridget and Martha from the homes of the city’s most powerful families to the alleyways of its poorest neighborhoods. As they delve into the life of Esther’s murdered husband, they discover that his ostentatious Puritanism hid a deeply sinister secret life, and that far too often tyranny and treason go hand in hand.

Review: I wish this hadn't been one of the first books I'd read in the new year. 

No wait, not because it is so bad, but because it is so good.

It has all the elements of a great historical novel, fantastic characters that are set in a wonderful backdrop of history, oh and the most important element, the ability to make the reader want to learn more about something in the novel, in this case the practice of the midwife.

There was so much about this job that I learned about through this book. You might think that being a midwife is only about delivering children, but there is so much more to it, and that plays a huge part in the mystery of this story.

Of course there's the civil war that's going on in England, and that also helps the action of the story move along.

I don't want to give anything away, but I will tell you, that once you start reading this book, you won't want to put it down. There's more than one murder involved in this book, but the main one is the death of Stephen Cooper.

I absolutely loved Bridget. Her way of thinking might seem a little modern for her time, but she was spunky and smart and knew her own mind. Her servant Martha is another wonderful character, because she's just so different. Both women were strong and unlike the women in cozy mysteries, neither did anything that you'd consider silly, in order to find the killer.

This is definitely a book not to be missed!

Rating: 5 Flowers

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Thomas is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library, and the British Academy. He has published articles on topics ranging from early modern Britain to colonial Africa. Thomas lives in Alabama with his wife and two children.

http://samthomasbooks.com/

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A Chick Ponders Bookish Things: New Stuff

Its a new year, and I've got a lot of new stuff going on. There will be more tours and reviews, and hopefully a few fun features.

First of all, A Chick Who Reads is now on Facebook! Aren't you excited? http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Chick-Who-Reads/459388514122394

Go over and like the page, pretty please.

Next, have any of you heard of the Discover A New Love Community/Bookstore?
http://www.facebook.com/DiscoverANewLove

I've been very tempted to join. I love getting my ebook fix on.

Then there's Sourcebooks! Lots of great deals there too!

Because I really need to find more places to buy books!

Book Review: A Time For Everything

Author Ann Gimpel
Title: A Time For Everything
Publish Date: Nov 26, 2012
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: The author in exchange for an honest review

Blurb: Dumped yet again, the last thing Siobhan expects to find in the Highland mists is a man who looks like he walked right out of Scottish history. Find out if there is A Time for Everything when a disgruntled heiress and a strong, sexy Scottish laird are drawn together by a determined ghost whose love and magic reach beyond the grave. 

Siobhan Macquire’s fortune has attracted a string of men who are out to drain her for everything they can get.

Her last boyfriend was no exception. Furious at being used—again—she goes for a walk in the Highlands.

With the weather worsening, Siobhan wanders alone for hours. She’s soaking wet and starting to get scared when someone calls out to her. A striking-looking man emerges from the mist. Except there’s something wrong. His kilt is way too long and he talks with an archaic accent. Siobhan soon finds herself not only lost in the countryside but also in time.

Review: This is a short story, a very short story.  This can't be described as a book or a novella, it is simply too short. Short, as in less than 40 pages, which makes it hard to say anything about the story except, just when its getting started, it is over.

And that pretty much sums up the story.

You really couldn't get attached to Siobhan or Angus, because there isn't enough time and certainly not enough time to create a believable time travel story, and there's not enough sex to count it as erotica, but Siobhan thinks about it a lot, when it comes to Angus.

This is the kind of story that leaves you wishing it were much longer, so overall it wasn't satisfying enough for me.

I did like Ann's writing style, and I wouldn't hesitate to try a full length novel of hers.

Rating: 3 flowers

Entangled Publishing Book Tour Guest Post & Review: Robin Bielman - Yours At Midnight

Thanks so much for having me as a guest on A Chick Who Reads, Andrea. I’m so happy to be here and share my favorite way to spend New Year’s Eve.

Over the years, I think I’ve celebrated just about every way – throwing a party, attending a party, on vacation, quietly with just my hubby, then with our kids in our jammies by nine, at the movies, at a restaurant…

But my favorite way to spend the evening is with a few friends at our house. It’s a great reason for me to pull out all the stops and make a gourmet (or as gourmet as I get) dinner and enjoy some champagne (usually in my own version of a mimosa – guava juice instead of orange juice, or spiked in my famous punch). I always make too much food, but I just don’t know how to do otherwise. Dessert is something fun the kids will enjoy like build-your-own sundaes or chocolate fondue with fruit, graham crackers and sponge cake. We adults enjoy that, too. J

We put on music, talk, reminisce, and when it gets close to midnight, we ring in the new year by watching the ball drop in Times Square. That’s a must. I can’t greet January 1^st without the big countdown. And I foolishly buy those popper things that explode with confetti and take days to clean up, but it’s worth it when we all shout happy New Year and the room looks like a celebration.

How about you? What’s been your favorite New Year’s celebration? I’d love to give away one eBook copy of Yours At Midnight to one lucky commenter. Open internationally.

Happy New Year!

Author: Robin Bielman
Title: Yours At Midnight
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Publish Date: December 2012
Buy: Entangled Publishing
Review Copy Provided By: Entangled Publishing & the author
Blurb: 
Lyric Whetsone only had eyes for Quinn Sobel's brother Oliver, until a car crash took Oliver's life on New Year's Eve. Then, a moment of shared grief between Quinn and Lyric became something more impassioned, something that frightened Quinn so much he ran from Lyric's bed and her life, disappearing for four long years. Now Quinn's back for another New Year's Eve, struggling for closure, desperate to leave his grief in the past and make amends with the girl of his dreams. But Lyric has a secret--one that could drive Quinn from her life forever. Will Quinn run away from the love and acceptance he's always wanted...or will he claim his New Year's kiss and make her his at midnight?


Review: This is the kind of short holiday story that I have always loved. It is a story of second chances and of families and the love that binds them.

Quinn and Lyric are old friends and we soon learn lovers who share something in common, a son, Max, conceived as a result of a one night stand, several years back after the funeral of Quinn's brother Oliver.

I like how Robin took a plot that has been used before and made it new and fun. When we found out who Max's father was, it came as a surprise, though I suppose it should have been obvious, with the way Lyric was behaving around Quinn.

The chemistry between the two characters was electric, yet the story was more subdued, a sweet romance. Though the story was only about 90 pages, I felt like Lyric and Quinn's story was complete and nothing was left unsaid. If there was anything else that could have been added, it would have been a bit of the back story between the two, but that wasn't really necessary.

This is a great story to start the new year with and one you can easily devour in one sitting. I look forward to many more romantic reads by Robin Bielman.

Rating: 5 flowers

 A bit about Robin Bielman: Robin Bielman lives in Southern California, a bike ride away from the ocean if she's feeling really adventurous. She loves books and baking and running on the treadmill while watching her favorite TV shows. When she's not reading or writing her next story, she's spending time with her high school sweetheart husband and two sons. She is addicted to cafe mocha's and if every day were Cupcake Day, she'd be a happy camper! She loves to connect with readers. You can find her on-line here:
 Website: http://www.robinbielman.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RobinBielmanWriter Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/#!/RobinBielman Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/robinbielman

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