Book Review: Forbidden

Katie January 10, 2014 0 Comments

I have loved reading Caroline B Cooney books since I was young, so I never miss an opportunity when the books pop up on NetGalley.  This one however was a little bit harder to follow at first with all the characters, but eventually I got everything straightened out.

Annabel and Daniel meet at a party and fall in love – but Daniel doesn’t realize that she is the daughter of the man he believes killed his father.  This turns into a bit of a Romeo and Juliet situation because her father does not want her anywhere near this boy and once Daniel finds out her last name is Jayquith he is torn on if he wants anything to do with her or not anymore.

Meanwhile, Annabel’s BFF Emmie’s sister is getting married.  Daniel is in the wedding as is Annabel because he is friends with the groom.  This is when he realizes who she is and wants nothing to do with her.

Meanwhile, there is also Jade – who is Annabel’s cousin, but Annabel doesn’t know it.  Her aunt Theodora gave Jade up for adoption when she was born.  Jade’s adoptive parents both have died and she found the paper that she is Theodora’s.  She heads from Ohio to New York to Connecticut and the family’s driver ends up letting her into the home where she introduces herself to Annabel’s father.

And… are you still following? At the wedding there is a boy named Alex that Emmie falls for.  She wanted to figure out how old he is but when she looks at his ID she finds out that he is not who he says he is.  He snuck into the wedding to get closer to Daniel because he believes that the same man that killed Daniel’s father killed his brother.

Lots of other crazy stuff goes down and Alex reveals who he believes is the killer and Annabel gets kidnapped and they have to find her.

Will they find Annabel? Will Daniel believe Alex and that someone else was the killer and not Annabel’s father? Who really is the killer?

All this and more – revealed! in Caroline B Cooney’s Forbidden.

This was a rather easy read once I got all the characters sorted out in my head.  The book bounces around from who is with who and who is telling the story in each chapter and I think I’ve grown used to books with a chapter per character or just 1 character telling the story and I think that’s where the problems arose.  But write yourself a key if you have to, ain’t no shame in it! and power through because I think you will end up really enjoying it, as I did!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review.  I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

A secret that could destroy two legendary families threatens to change the course of true love in Caroline B. Cooney’s mesmerizing novel.

Annabel Jayquith and Daniel Ransom meet at a party. They fall instantly in love, unaware that their lives are inextricably bound together by the crime that shocked a nation.

Daniel is the high-profile son of a slain US senator who had presidential ambitions. Annabel is the daughter of a billionaire businessman. Like Daniel, Annabel is haunted by the discovery of her family history—a past she never knew existed.

Annabel is rich and beautiful, but eighteen-year-old Jade O’Keeffe is poor and alone. She hates her mother, the fabulously successful TV talk-show host Theodora Jayquith, for giving her up for adoption. But most of all, she hates Annabel, Theodora’s spoiled, much-loved niece. And Jade is going to make them all pay.

As Daniel’s search for the truth about his father’s unsolved murder puts him in the crosshairs of Jade’s revenge, a killer slips from the shadows. Now a secret that could bury two powerful families could also destroy Annabel and Daniel’s growing love.

Book Review: Hugo Magic Words

Katie January 9, 2014 0 Comments

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

Hugo is the Happy Starfish that I’ve read about a few other times. He always has a great message in his books and this one is no different. In this book, Hugo is being pretty rude to everyone around him.  And so everyone doesn’t give him any respect.  He goes on a treasure hunt and finds the MAGIC WORDS – Please and Thank You and knows that these will get him everything he needs on the island. And that is how Hugo learned to treat people with respect and use the magic words if he wants to get respect in return (and some burgers!)

This is a great lesson on what can happen if you don’t use your magic words – anywhere – not just on the Island of Respect.  A great story for kids (and heck, some adults too – I worked retail. I know how they can be!)

About the Book

IMAGINE HAPPINESS CAN BE LEARNED®

Meet HUGO – a little starfish with a big heart. His passion is to make others happy but he still has many things to learn. Fortunately he has more than just a big heart — he also has a curious mind.

Through his adventures, Hugo learns many valuable lessons of character, life skills, and ecological alertness — all against the colorful backdrop of a magical underwater world and mystical islands.

Join Hugo on his journey as he discovers that having the right attitude is the best way to be — and the only way to be truly happy.

Believing that happiness can be learned, feelings can be understood, and that building character based on a positive attitude leads to a happy, content, successful and confident human being, Suzy Liebermann has written this charming series of children’s books to help educate children about their feelings, their attitudes, their choices, and the consequences that follow.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Book Review: Winning Fantasy Baseball

Katie January 9, 2014 0 Comments

I’ve been in a fantasy league a couple times – I won once and haven’t played since. My Dad and brother have teams and friends and at times it as if they are speaking another language! (Although the mopey ‘I’m in last place’ I understand!)  When I saw the Winning Fantasy Baseball book I knew I had to check it out not only in case I wanted to join a league again this year but s I could understand my Dad and brother!

The book is incredibly thorough and incredibly imformative. Whether you’ve played before or not, you’d be sure to learn something.  There is information on different types of drafts and how to use them to your advantage, all sorts of ways to calculate a players value (but don’t forget injuries!) And tips like not to pick your favorite players just because you like them. (I love having the cutest team though!)  The author is a Red Sox fan and aid he the price isn’t right he’d pass on one of his guys, but if the price was right he’d snag a Yankees player without hesitation.

Overall if you are into fantasy baseball even the tiniest bit you’ll definitely want to heck this book out in preparation for the 2014 season!

About the Book

Play smart. Play to win. Play like a champion. 

In Winning Fantasy Baseball, Larry Schechter discloses the secrets of his proven methods. Packed with commonsense, easy-to-use strategies for beginners through experienced players, Schechter supplies readers with a toolkit to achieve the most important thing in fantasy ball–winning! Some have called Schechter one of the best fantasy baseball players in the world. He is the only two-time winner of the CDM Sports national salary-cap challenge, having defeated 7,500 competitors in 2002 and 6,000 in 2005. He is also a five-time winner of the renowned Tout Wars experts league and a member of the USA Today-sponsored League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR).

Readers will learn directly from the champ everything they need to know about:

– how to project player stats;
– how to convert those stats into a specific value;
– strategy for snake drafts, and mono-league and mixed auctions;
– selecting teams using a salary cap;
– playing in keeper leagues;
– and performing in-season management.

Although the book is primarily about fantasy baseball, many of the concepts also apply to fantasy football and other fantasy sports.

Book Review: Quilting with a Modern Slant

Katie January 8, 2014 0 Comments

Ah, here I go reading yet another craft book that I will probably never have time to even consider doing.  But I just love quilts and they are so beautiful and intricate and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make something quite so wonderful.

Quilting with a Modern Slant includes people, patterns and techniques inspiring the Modern Quilt Community.

It starts with 6 steps to making a quilt.  Only 6? You make it sound so easy!

The designs in this book are all so neat, maybe I can try my hand at one of the easier ones… someday… when I stop requesting way too many books to review 😉

If you are even the slightest bit interested in Quilting you should certainly check out this book because it will give you tons of ideas and inspiration! (And now I am trying to figure out how to make a quilt inspired scrapbook layout. hmm. Not sure I’ll be able to figure out how to pull that one off but wouldn’t it be awesome?)

I love the idea of a T-Shirt quilt especially since I have so many old Hanson shirts and shirts I’ve picked up from tourist places when going to see Hanson (I think I’d be more likely to part and allow those to be cut up than the Hanson ones.) but there is a bit of a twist on the shirt quilt in the book and it looks neat – but I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it. (It cuts up the images of the shirt and kind of intertwines them, looks nice, but again I think I’d rather the shirts all be relatively intact with their images if I were to ever do it.)

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Modern quilting allows artists the freedom to play with traditions and take liberties with fabrics, patterns, colors, stitching, and the ways in which they all connect. In Quilting with a Modern Slant,Rachel May introduces you to more than 70 modern quilters who have developed their own styles, methods, and aesthetics. Their ideas, their quilts, and their tips, tutorials, and techniques will inspire you to try something new and follow your own creativity wherever it leads.

Book Review: The Amazing Jimmi Mayes

Katie January 7, 2014 0 Comments

Jimmi Mayes is a drummer who toured with a ton of great musicians and bands! The book is his autobiography done in chapters chronologically telling of his career from 1941 until 2012. And of course, it ends with the discography. (You know how much I like those!)

I always prefer autobiographies versus biographies because even though the person may have been involved via interviews with their biographies, autobiographies you just get more of that straight from the horses mouth and there always seems to be some great stories from the road included!

The amount of bands / musicians that Jimmi worked with is amazing.  Not to mention – he started before the Civil Rights movement so that definitely had to have been interesting to live through that and work through that as well.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

The unforgettable life story of one amazing musician touring and playing with Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Reed, Marvin Gaye, and many more

For more than fifty years, Chicago drummer Jimmi Mayes served as a sideman behind some of the greatest musicians and musical groups in history. He began his career playing the blues in the juke joints of Mississippi, sharpened his trade under the mentorship of drum legends Sam Lay and Fred Below in the steamy night clubs of south Chicago, and hit it big in New York City behind such music legends as Tommy Hunt from the Flamingos, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown.

Mayes played his drums behind blues giants Little Walter Jacobs, Jimmy Reed, Robert Junior Lockwood, Earl Hooker, Junior Wells, Pinetop Perkins, and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. He lived for a while with Motown sensation Martha Reeves and her family, and traveled with the Shirelles and the Motown Review. Jimi Hendrix was one of Mayes’s best friends. They were roommates when they traveled together with Joey Dee and the Starliters in the mid 1960s.

Mayes lived through racial segregation, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the integration of rock bands, and the emergence of Motown. He personally experienced the sexual and moral revolutions of the sixties, was robbed of his musical royalties, and survived a musical drought. He’s been a pimp and a drug pusher, and lived to tell the tale when so many musicians have not. This sideman to the stars witnessed music history from the best seat in the house—behind the drum set.

Jimmi Mayes, Chicago, Illinois, learned his trade as a teenager in the juke joints around Jackson, Mississippi. He went on to perform with many well-known artists, including Little Walter Jacobs, Marvin Gaye, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. V. C. Speek, Minooka, Illinois, is the author of “God Has Made Us a Kindgom”: James Strang and the Midwest Mormons. Speek is a former newspaper reporter and currently works as the editor of John Whitmer Books in Independence, Missouri.

JANUARY, 224 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 32 b&w photographs, selected discography, index

Book Review: The $7.50 Bunny That Changed The World

Katie January 6, 2014 0 Comments

Flopsy is a very special bunny that was given to a shelter and adopted by his Mom who then wrote this book.  She realized that he was special and made him a facebook page and he became a spokesbunny for educating people to find out about their pets and their needs before adopting them.  Flopsy got a little sister, Bella, and together they helped educate people.  Then it was time for Flopsy to move on, his life here on earth was over.  But he would continue working with his Mom who continued to rescue rabbits and help them transition.

The story is told from the point of the view from Flopsy – though I’m sure he told his Mom what to type for him! 😉  A sweet story about an even sweeter bunny rabbit!  It is a short story – only 38 words, but it will certainly warm your heart and make you think.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Winner of two 2013 Indie Next Generation Finalist awards, “The $7.50 Bunny That Changed the World” is the story of Flopsy Parker who was dropped off at a North Carolina shelter in the fall of 2010. By 2011, after he had trained his mother Gretta to be his ghost writer, he was inspiring people on Facebook with his message of adoption and helping other rabbits around the world that needed homes. This delightful, heartwarming, and real-life story, as told from Flopsy Parker’s point of view, is sure to tweak your bunny bone. “The $7.50 Bunny That Changed the World” is a tribute to his life, the people he inspired, and proof that even the smallest of creatures can live the biggest of lives.

Book Review: Random

Katie January 5, 2014 0 Comments

The book starts with Jess, who is a waitress.  A hot guy walks in and the other waitress seats him in her section.  Not too long after, a car comes driving through the restaurant, ruining it and injuring Jess’ friend and co-waitress as well as several of the patrons in the restaurant.  Jess and the good looking guy (Tyler) start to see if they can help people and see that the other waitress is badly injured. 911 is called and Tyler says that there might be an opening at another restaurant and he’ll put in a good word for Jess, who has no idea what she is going to do now that she is out of a job.

Tyler works at the other restaurant they seem to like Jess, but don’t know when they’ll have an opening as one of the waitresses is leaving but isn’t sure when.  Meanwhile, Jess thinks Tyler might be in to her, but she is dating Rick who is in a band. He comes over and wants to hook up before the gig but she isn’t really interested.  Rick figures out all the right things to get her in the mood but Jess is realizing maybe she isn’t into him anymore.  She goes to the gig and ends up getting in the middle of a scuffle between the lead singer and Rick after the lead singer makes some crude comments towards Jess.  The band loses all its gigs and Jess breaks up with Rick and leaves.

Except Rick is still in love with her and contacting her CONSTANTLY.  Meanwhile, she’s been hanging out with Tyler a bit more and seems to be falling for him  – but she knows there is more to him than meets the eye.  Tyler and Jess end up dating and there is now an opening at the restaurant for Jess – where Tyler is a cook.  The day before she starts they have a bit of a fight but keep it professional.  Tyler explains to Jess about his family and they kiss and make up.

Everything seems to be going fine until Rick shows up at the restaurant and then him and Tyler get into it. When Jess calls 911, Tyler ends up in jail for breaking parole. Something that Jess knew NOTHING about.  She knew there was more to Tyler than he was telling her.

While all this is going on  – Jess decides to try and find her “other dad” on Facebook.  He lives in New Zealand and her mom took her and left when she was 6 or 7 and was married to her step dad Henry by the time she was 8.  While she does love Henry she can’t help but want to know more about her other dad.  They end up skyping and he offers to fly her to New Zealand to visit.

This is a new series – so the book ends with her going to New Zealand and saying goodbye to Tyler.

This was a short story (195 pgs) and a quick read that I was very much so interested in and didn’t want to put down.  I am looking forward to more books in the future!  There are definitely more secrets going on with Tyler, I just know it… and there is also some big secret that Jess’ Dads are keeping from her as well. I can’t wait to find out what!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

19-year-old Jess Donovan knows better than most that life is random. Her mom is dead, and she’s on her own, patching together a living as a waitress when a car crashes through the restaurant where she works. In two seconds, she loses her job, watches her best friend hauled away in an ambulance…and meets Tyler Smith, one of the hottest, most fascinating—and mysterious guys she’s ever met.

Both for the good and the bad…

Within days, Jess is swept up into the mesmerizing force that is Tyler. Their every touch sizzles, every kiss dissolves them both, and the sex is…fierce. But there’s more to Tyler than his hypnotic eyes. He’s adrift, too, and his body—and his soul—are covered with scars. How can she find herself with a guy who is lost himself?

Until you take charge….

Jess is determined to find her way, and make a life that is better than the one she was given. But how?