October 9, 2015

Book Review: 25 Questions You’re Afraid to Ask About Love, Sex and Intimacy

Katie October 9, 2015 0Comment

25 Questions You’re Afraid to Ask About Love, Sex and Intimacy is about, well, 25 questions.  It is written to be read either straight through and reading all the questions or so that you can just skip around to the questions you actually have.  It is written towards women but the questions are not segregated by if you are single or married.  The author of the book is often refered to as the “Christian Dr Ruth” and while she may not like that nickname – keep that in mind when you are reading if you are not Christian as the advice given may not be exactly what you are looking for.

The author does talk a bit about how talking about cohabitation, erotica, masturbation and homosexuality may ruffle some feathers. The author takes a moral stand within the perspectives offered because she believes God designed sexuality and He knows a lot more about it than anyone else.

Each of the 25 questions is a chapter in this book, and it clocks in at just over 200 pages. Read it the whole way through or just pick and choose what topics you are interested in, I think you’ll learn something or at least gain a new perspective.

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

About this Book

Whether you are married or single, having great sex or no sex, your sexuality is inseparable from your spirituality.

Many Christian women are confused and even devastated by the area of sexuality. In the silence of the church, they are left to sort through harrowing experiences like sexual abuse, exposure to porn, raging temptation, homosexual thoughts, and betrayal in marriage-all on their own.

Having nowhere to go to ask the hard questions about sexuality can be spiritually dangerous. Women need the truth.

In 25 Questions You’re Afraid to Ask About Love, Sex, and Intimacy, Dr. Juli Slattery addresses some of the most common questions women have on sexuality from a biblical perspective, such as:

What if I don’t like sex?If I’m single, how far is too far?Is ______ok in the bedroom? How do I get past my shame?What if I want sex more than my husband does?

These are the type of questions that thousands of women have been asking Dr. Slattery. She answers them with rare candor, grace, and wisdom.

We desperately need God’s perspective on sexuality. And fortunately, the Bible has a lot to say on the topic. Some of it might surprise you.

Book Review: Reservations for Two

Katie October 9, 2015 0Comment

I had previously read the first book in this series, A Table By The Window, back in May of last year.  When that book ended I was looking forward to reading Reservations for Two, so I was very excited when it became available for me to review!

This book picks up where the first one left off. Our main character, Juliette, is continuing her long-distance, started-online relationship with Neil.  Juliette is in Portland, Neil in Memphis.  Juliette and her brother Nico are opening a restaurant and their mother is ill with cancer.  When the last book left off, Juliette found a photo of a man that looked a lot like her brother Nico in her grandmother’s things after she passed.  She knew it wasn’t her grandfather but wanted to find out who it was.

When Juliette (and Neil) take a trip to France and Italy to see family and find supplies for the restaurant, Juliette comes across a lot of letters between her grandmother and her great aunt. She takes them home and scans them to her laptop and ends up reading them while on the plane to visit Neil in Memphis and whenever she has free time before the restaurant opening.  She seems to have solved the mystery from Book #1 on who this man is – BUT ends up with a whole new mystery to solve that came from these letters.  She also isn’t sure if she should tell her mother what she has found since she has been in and out of the ER with fevers and infections.

Much like the first book – the book had a decent ending, but still, so many (more) loose ends to tie up! The next book I believe is the last one in the series so I am looking forward to reading it! Actually, I can’t wait!

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

About the Book

Food writer-turned-restaurateur Juliette D’Alisa has more than enough on her plate. While her trip to Provence might have unlocked new answers to her grandmother’s past, it’s also provided new complications in the form of Neil McLaren, the man she can’t give up.

Juliette and Neil find romance simple as they travel through Provence and Tuscany together, but life back home presents a different set of challenges. Juliette has a restaurant to open, a mother combating serious illness, and a family legacy of secrets to untangle – how does Neil, living so far away in Memphis, fit into to her life?

As she confronts an uncertain future, Juliette can’t help but wish that life could be as straightforward as her chocolate chip cookie recipe. Can her French grandmother’s letters from the 1940’s provide wisdom to guide her present? Or will every new insight create a fresh batch of mysteries?

Book Review: Sorry I’m Not Sorry

Katie October 9, 2015 0Comment

Sorry I’m Not Sorry is the 3rd book in Nancy Rue’s Mean Girl Makeover Series.  This book gives an honest look at bullying – from the bully.  I had previously read one of the other books in this series – You Can’t Sit With Us.  This book follows mean girl Kylie and the aftermath of all her bullying with Ginger (who was the main character in the other book I had read.)  Kylie is trying to make amends so that she can go back to school after the summer is over, if not she has to go to a private school her Dad is trying to get her into – that has no cheerleading! (The horror!)

Kylie ends up working at a camp with some other kids from school (including Ginger) and actually seems to be changing from her bullying ways.  But a lot of things keep happening at camp that seem to be done by Kylie.  Kylie swears she really IS changing and that it wasn’t her! But now who is bullying Kylie?

This is an interesting book since it takes the point of view from the bully. This isn’t a point of view I often think about, but many bullies have things going on in their own life that they need to work through but instead of doing that they just pick on other kids at school.  It was certainly an eye opener though I am glad I am no longer in middle school and needing to deal with bullies. (Now bullies in the work place are a whole other issue I am dealing with!)

Definitely a great series for middle-school aged girls to help them learn about how to deal with bullies and being bullied and being the bully!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

About the book

Bullies aren’t born mean-through the vicious cycle of mean, bullies are made.

According to the Ambassadors 4 Kids Club, one out of every four students is bullied-and 85% of these situations never receive intervention. Parents, students, and teachers have amped up solving the bullying problem for a networked generation of kids.

Written by bestselling author Nancy Rue, each book in the Mean Girl Makeover trilogy focuses on a different character’s point of view: the bully, the victim, and the bystander. The books show solid biblical solutions to the bullying problem set in a story for tween girls.

Sorry I’m Not Sorry tells the story of Kylie Steppe, former queen bee of Gold Country Middle School. After bullying a fellow GCMS student, Kylie has been expelled-and she has to attend mandatory counseling. Without her posse to aid her and other peers to torment, Kylie focuses on the person who stole her GVMS popularity crown: Tori Taylor. As Kylie plots revenge on Tori, she attends therapy sessions, where she reveals a few details that might explain why she finds power in preying on her middle school peers. After a rough year with bullying backfire, will Kylie decide to become more empathetic with her peers?

It’s hard for tweens to imagine why a bully acts the way she does. Sorry I’m Not Sorry shows girls that they hold the power to stop bullying through mutual understanding and acts of love.

About the Author

Nancy Rue has written over 100 books for girls, is the editor of the Faithgirlz Bible, and is a popular speaker and radio guest with her expertise in tween and teen issues. She and husband, Jim, have raised a daughter of their own and now live in Tennessee.

Book Review: Scrapbook of the Dead

Katie October 9, 2015 0Comment

I really love mystery books so when they are compared with one of my other favorite activities, scrapbooking, I can’t resist reading them.  In this book we are taken to Cumberland Creek, where two sisters are found dead – with a scrapbook page in hand.  The cops, a local reporter and the local scrapbook ladies try to figure out who it was that did it.

I liked that this book had short chapters, but I also had a tough time getting into it. There were a lot of characters and it was hard to keep them organized in my head at times.  I did like the story and the incorporation of the scrapbook crops in to the story (makes it easier for everyone to be together and share what they know!) But I’ve read better scrapbook murder mysteries.

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

About the Book

Halloween means spooky scrapbooks for the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Crop, but what’s been happening around town is truly frightening. First a dead woman is found in the freezer at Pamela’s Pie Palace, and the next day a second woman is found murdered by the river. Reporter Annie Chamovitz learns the victims were sisters and is certain their deaths are linked. Most bizarre of all, both women were found clutching scrapbook pages.

As their Saturday night crop quickly becomes an opportunity to puzzle out the murders, the ladies begin to wonder if Pamela is hiding more than her secret recipes for delicious pies–or if the crimes are related to the startling discovery that there are gangs in Cumberland Creek. As All Hallows Eve approaches, the crafty croppers must cut and paste the clues to unmask a deadly killer.