Review

My (Underground) American Dream by Julissa Arce

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

My (Underground) American Dream by Julissa Arce was an amazing book. When I saw that this book was available for me to review I knew I had to pick it up because I have always wondered about the children that grow up like this. I really enjoyed this book because it was a true story and I love books that really happened. I found it easier for me to get into this book because it was true and I knew that everything really happened. I also loved getting a different view of what it is like to live in the United States. I had a rough childhood but I know I had it better than most people do in this country. I loved everything about this book because it was written well enough that I understood and felt like I was there with the author. If you love memoirs than I know you will love this book as much as I did.

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About The Book

For an undocumented immigrant, what is the true cost of the American Dream? Julissa Arce shares her story in a riveting memoir.

When she was 11 years old, Julissa Arce left Mexico and came to the United States on a tourist visa to be reunited with her parents, who dreamed the journey would secure her a better life. When her visa expired at the age of 15, she became an undocumented immigrant. Thus began her underground existence, a decade’s long game of cat and mouse, tremendous family sacrifice, and fear of exposure. After the Texas Dream Act had made a college degree possible, Julissa’s top grades and leadership positions landed her an internship at Goldman Sachs, which led to a full-time position–one of the most coveted jobs on Wall Street. Soon she was a Vice President, a rare Hispanic woman in a sea of suits and ties, yet still guarding her “underground” secret. In telling her personal story of separation, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce shifts the immigrant conversation and changes the perception of what it means to be an undocumented immigrant.

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About The Author

Julissa Arce is the author of “My (Underground) American Dream.” She is an emerging and leading voice in the fight for immigrant rights and education equality. She is the chairman and co-founder of the Ascend Educational Fund (AEF). AEF is a college scholarship and mentorship program for immigrant students in New York City, regardless of their ethnicity, national original or immigration status. She made national and international headlines when she revealed that she had achieved the American Dream of wealth and status at Goldman Sachs while undocumented. Julissa will use her inspirational story to change the conversation around immigration in MY (UNDERGROUND) AMERICAN DREAM. The book explores the polarizing question: for an undocumented immigrant, what is the true cost of the American dream?

In the heady days of the most astronomical stock-market rise in Wall Street history, Julissa Arce climbed the corporate ladder—a rare Hispanic woman in a sea of suits and ties. In 2005, against all the odds, she landed one of the most coveted jobs as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Over the course of the next six years, even while the financial markets crashed, she continued to climb the corporate ladder—riding a series of promotions to become a Vice President, complete with a high six-figure salary and all of the perks that come with living the Goldman Sachs life. What none of her colleagues knew was that she wasn’t just a young woman who broke through ceilings in a cutthroat male-dominated field: she was also an undocumented American from Mexico.

Arce now uses her success and platform to help shift the conversation around immigration and other social justice issues. Arce often gives talks at events such as TEDx and the Forbes Reinventing America Summit (alongside Nancy Pelosi, Jessica Alba, and Gayle King), and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera America, Telemundo, Bloomberg TV and Univision. Her writing has been published on Huffington Post, Fusion, CNN en Español, The Hill, and Univision. She serves on the board of directors of the National Immigration Law Center and CollegeSpring. She was officially sworn in as an American citizen in August of 2014 and will vote in a presidential election for the first time in 2016.

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The Things We Said Today by Lise McClendon

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Pump Up Your Book in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Things We Said Today by Lise McClendon was a great book that I loved from the first page. While I was reading this entire book I had a smile on my face because of some of the things that the characters were doing throughout the book. I also loved that this book takes place in Scotland. I have always wanted to travel there and after reading this book I know that at some point I will have to go.   I loved all the crazy personalities that are in this book because you never knew what was going to happen and I loved that about this book. I am usually not a huge fan of romantic comedies but I loved this book and I know that I will be picking up the others books in this series because I loved everything about the characters and their personalities. The characters are people that I would want to hang out with in real like which means that the author did an excellent job of making the characters come to life as I was reading this book. If you love romance novels that leave you smiling after the book is over than I know this is the right book for you.

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About The Book

Five sisters, all lawyers, well-trained in the art of demanding what’s necessary.It’s enough to drive a wedding planner to tears. Then add in a European venue, a Scottish hunting lodge, and a reluctant bride, and things get dicey. Can the middle sister, Merle, rally the troops, deal with the in-laws, and stop a powerful storm from ruining everything? Merle has powers of persuasion, especially when it comes to her French beau, Pascal, but in Scotland she has no clue how to corral her out-of-control sisters who are hellbent on wringing every bit of drama from a bad situation.

Annie Bennett is getting married…. At the ripe old age of 55. She’s turned down a few proposals over the years and stayed true to her motto: Stay single, stay happy. When she met handsome Scot Callum Logan she had no intentions beyond her own personal Highland fling. Then it happened: she fell in love. Annie’s doubts about marrying a much-younger man continue to plague her. Callum wants to get married in the bluebells of his native Highlands. But does Annie want to get married at all?

Join the Bennett Sisters in their third rollicking novel, after Blackbird Fly and The Girl in the Empty Dress, in another summer adventure with romance, intrigue, men in kilts, plus wine and whisky, as they navigate the treacherous waters of middle-age, self-discovery, and understanding your fears.

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About The Author

 Lise McClendon writes fiction in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. She has been a film reviewer, a film maker, a journalism professor, and a PR flack. Since her first novel, The Bluejay Shaman, was published in 1994, she has served on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers/North America, as well as on the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference where each year she critiques, speaks, and learns from writers new and old.

Lise McClendon also writes as Rory Tate.

Her latest book is the women’s fiction, The Things We Said Today.

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Harper Collins in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan was a fantastic book. From the first page of this book right through the end, I didn’t want to put this book down. I saw a lot of myself in Nina and the fact that she loves books just as much as I do. I have never thought about getting a job at the library but after this book, I am going to consider it. I have read one other book by this author, and if you want to see what I thought of that book, you can click here to check it out. I am pretty sure that I was going to like this book because I loved the other book of hers that I read. I also love these books because of the take place somewhere other than the United States which I like because I love learning what it is like living in other places in the world. If you love contemporary fiction books than I know, you will love this book just as much as I did.

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About The Book

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

Jenny Colgan

About The Author

Jenny T. Colgan was born in 1972 in Prestwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK. After studying at Edinburgh University, she worked for six years in the health service, moonlighting as a cartoonist and a stand-up comic, before the publication of her first novel Amanda’s Wedding in 2000. In 2013, her novel “Welcome to Rosie Hopkin’s Sweetshop of Dreams” won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association. She is now working on her next novel.

She mostly lives in France, with frequent visits to London. She occasionally writes for The Guardian newspaper, as well as a TV series.

Her Doctor Who novel Dark Horizons is published under the name Jenny T. Colgan.

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

Everlasting Lies by Barbara Warren

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from iRead Book Tours in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Everlasting Lies by Barbara Warren wasn’t my favorite book that I have read lately.  I had such a hard time with it because of the lying that goes on.  When I saw this book I thought for sure, it would be something that I would enjoy reading but in the end, it just bugged me.  It was well written, and I enjoyed the author writing.   I kept thinking of my parents who lie all the time, and I just wasn’t able to get past that while I was reading this story.  I  am going to hold on to this book because I am sure I would like it, so I am going to pull it out in the future and give it another chance.  Like I said this book is well written, and I know that most people would enjoy this book, and I want to try and read it again in the future to see if my thoughts change.

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About The Book

Edina Paxton is kissed at twelve, seduced at fourteen and married with child at fifteen. She immediately regrets her marriage to Charles Vernon and is relieved when he leaves to fight in the trenches during WW1. She soon finds love, comfort and sexual satisfaction with Bill, another soldier and the boy who first kissed her.

Charles is invalided out of the army and is sent to India on a hospital ship. There, he becomes a manager of a coalmine in Britain’s Indian Empire, with all the privileges that his position rewards, including sexual favours from female employees. At the end of his army service in 1920 he returns to England to collect his family and return to India, only to be greeted with the news that while he was away Edina was at play. She is pregnant.

Reluctantly, Edina and her three children sail for India with Charles and Edina gives birth to her fourth child while sailing south on the Red Sea. On reaching India, Charles finds his Indian mistress is pregnant, and Edina finds Charles’s Indian boss to be very attractive. It’s a mutual attraction. Neither Edina nor Charles is a saint.

Piecing together fragments of her grandmother’s remarkable and tragic story, Everlasting Lies is Barbara’s loving tale of the early life of Edina, her grandmother, and Charles, Edina’s husband. They both experience the horrors of WW1 and, in hopes of renewing their marriage, start new lives as members of the upper class in Imperial India.

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About The Author

Barbara Warren always has the pedal to the metal. Born in England and educated at a convent, she left school at sixteen and was selling encyclopedias in the roughest part of London at eighteen. She married and emigrated to Canada when she was twenty-three, had three charming daughters, went to university when she was thirty-six and retired from teaching in her mid fifties.

Then she pursued her passion for the arts and travel. She and her husband rode camels in India, elephants in Nepal and horses in Montana. They hitchhiked in Norway, cycled across Denmark and snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef. Barbara’s paintings grace homes in Canada, USA, and Mexico and she designs her clothes. She spends the winters in Mexico and the summers in the bible belt of southern Alberta.

Her first novel, Everlasting Lies, tells the story of her grandparents’ love affairs with each other and with others. They struggle to survive in the last years of Victorian England and the horrors of WW1 and then start a new life with four children in Imperial India.

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The Ride Of A Lifetime by Kitty McGregor

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Book Look in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Ride of a Lifetime by Kitty McGregor was am an okay book. I did enjoy this book but at times I found myself getting bored with the story. When I do get bored with a book, I just put it down and come back to it later which I was able to do with this one. I usually really enjoy books like this one but for some reason I think that this one tried too hard to be something that it wasn’t. There are parts where it seems like there are devil worshipers and that just rub me the wrong way with this book. I think that is because I wasn’t expecting that to happen with this book. Other than feeling like this book was trying to be scary it was an okay book. I would also be willing to check out other books by this author in the future. If you love Christian fiction, then I recommend you pick this one up and check it out.

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About The Book

When Lucas McCade retired from the PRCA rodeo circuit, he was an internationally famous rodeo star. In a life of conquering hard bulls and harder men, he had rarely known defeat and never given into fear. Little could he have known that as he left the arena of wild-eyed bulls and slashing hooves, he was stepping into a life filled with real danger. Once he rode for gold-buckle dreams, now ride with Lucas McCade as he scouts the back trails over the rolling hills of Oklahoma and encounters the paths of the powers of darkness. In a culture where a man’s word is still his bond and a handshake seals a deal, McCade leads his family in a walk with Christ that causes outrage in the spiritual realm. Once again, ancient battle lines are drawn between the powers of the Prince of Darkness and the Heavenly forces of Jesus Christ. It promises to be the ride of a lifetime!

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Borderline Insanity by Jeff Miller

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Borderline Insanity by Jeff Miller turned out to be a great book, but it was a slow starter for me. This type of book is one that I always enjoy, but I had a hard time getting into the story for some reason. I am sure part of the reason was that of what happened in the prolog of the book. It just really bothered me that someone would make a mother leave one of her babies behind and take her and the other back to Mexico. I am sure it is something that happens, but I don’t think that it is right. It left me feeling sorry for the mother and the children. After I was a few chapters into the book, I started to enjoy the story more. Once I was into the book, I read it pretty quickly because I wanted to know how it all worked out in the end. If you love reading mysteries than I am sure you will enjoy this book as much as I did at the end of it.

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About The Book

Special Agent Dagny Gray is a member of a small FBI team with unprecedented independence. To maintain their autonomy, the team must continue to solve big cases. To stay on the team, Dagny must keep her personal demons under control.

When Father Diego Vega tells her that undocumented workers are vanishing from a small town gripped by immigration politics, Dagny thinks she’s found her next case. But without bodies or proof of foul play, her boss won’t let her take it. Defying his orders, Dagny risks her career to investigate with Father Vega.

The families of the victims don’t trust her. The local police won’t help her, and the sheriff wants to stop her. Deep down, she worries that she’s not going to find the missing men alive. But what she uncovers is more horrifying than anything she could have imagined.…

jeff-miller

About The Author

Jeff Miller grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, where Jerry Springer attended his temple and Pete Rose broke his heart. He’s rafted down the Rio Grande with folksinger Butch Hancock, co-created an award-winning mockumentary about table tennis, and performed and written for a public access sketch comedy series. Like many lawyers, the only thing he ever really wanted to do was write. The Bubble Gum Thief is his first book. He lives with his incredible wife, Kate, and their two young sons.

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