Loreena’s Gift by Colleen Story

November 10, 2016

FTC: I received a free copy of this book from iRead 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.

Loreena’s Gift by Colleen M. Story was an interesting book. I find it weird that this week I am reviewing two books that have to do with super natural themes when it isn’t a genre I read very often in fact these might be the first two books that I have read like this. This book was interesting in the sense that it had to do with religion and things like that. I didn’t like Saul at all through the entire book. I love when I hate a character in a book because it means that author really made the characters come to life and she made me care about the story and characters. I did enjoy the book but it is one that I feel like I should read again because I almost feel like it missed something. If you love supernatural books that I would for sure check out this book. If you have read it what did you think of it?

About The Book

A BLIND GIRL’S TERRIFYING “GIFT” ALLOWS HER TO REGAIN HER EYESIGHT–BUT ONLY AS SHE FERRIES THE RECENTLY DECEASED INTO THE AFTERLIFE.

Loreena Picket thinks she knows herself. A blind young woman who lives with her uncle, a reverend at a small-town church, she’s a dutiful niece and talented pianist for the congregation.

But they’re both hiding a terrible secret. Loreena can kill people with the touch of her hand.

While her uncle sees her as an angel of mercy, helping usher the terminally ill members of his flock into the afterlife, Loreena has her doubts.

Torn between doing her uncle’s bidding and the allure of the fleeting moments when her eyesight returns on the journey to the other side, Loreena cooperates with her uncle until her troubled older brother returns to town. When she reveals her power by saving him from a local drug dealer, she is drawn into a sinister and dangerous world that will test the true nature of her talent and force her to consider how far she is willing to go to survive.

An exciting debut that crosses fantasy and literary fiction, Loreena’s Gift is a thought-provoking meditation on life and death and what ultimately lies beyond this world.

* Loreena’s Gift was recently named 1st place fiction in the 2016 Idaho Author Awards *

About The Author

Colleen M. Story writes imaginative fiction and is also a freelance writer, instructor, and motivational speaker specializing in creativity, productivity, and personal wellness. Her latest novel, “Loreena’s Gift,” was released with Dzanc Books April 12 2016. Her fantasy novel, “Rise of the Sidenah,” is a North American Book Awards winner, and New Apple Book Awards Official Selection (Young Adult). She is the founder of Writing and Wellness (writingandwellness.com) a motivational site for writers and other creatives.

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Killer In The Band by Lauren Carr

October 26, 2016

About The Book

Summer of Love & Murder

Joshua’s eldest son, Joshua “J.J.” Thornton Jr., has graduated at the top of his class from law school and returns home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to Joshua’s and Cameron’s shock and dismay, J.J. moves into the main house at Russell Ridge Farm, the largest dairy farm in the Ohio Valley, to rekindle a romance with Suellen Russell, a onetime leader of a rock group who’s twice his age. Quickly, they learn that she has been keeping a deep dark secret.

The move brings long-buried tensions between the father and son to the surface. But when a brutal killer strikes, the Lovers in Crime must set all differences aside to solve the crime before J.J. ends up in the cross hairs of a murderer.

Praise for Lauren Carr’s Mysteries

“Lauren Carr could give Agatha Christie a run for her money!”

– Charlene Mabie-Gamble, Literary R&R

“As always, Lauren Carr brings an action-packed story that is almost impossible to put down. Her mystery plots have so many twists and turns that I didn’t know if I was coming or going. And the action just didn’t stop from the very beginning till the very end.”

– Melina Mason, Melina’s Book Reviews

About The Author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries—over twenty titles across three fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, romance, and humor.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

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Excerpt

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The Murder at Astaire Castle by Lauren Carr

October 6, 2016

FTC: I received a free copy of this audio 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.

The Murders at Astaire Castle by Lauren Carr was a good audiobook. I don’t listen to many audiobooks, so this was a nice change of pace for me. I like the narrator’s voice in this book, and I felt like he really could have been the main character in the book. I did at one point have to make it go faster because at times I felt like he was just talking to slow that I got bored or distracted as I will listening to it. After I had turned up the speed of the book, I did enjoy this book even more than at the start. I am starting to love listening to audiobooks like this one while I am driving to and from work each day. I have a pretty long commute, and I find when I am listening audiobooks I don’t get as angry at other drivers. I have read one other book in this series, but with that being said you don’t have to read them in order or even read them all if some of the books don’t interest you. At times I thought this book was trying too hard to be scary and I didn’t like that about the book. All in all, it was a good book and I am sure I will be checking out other books in this series because I am a huge of Gnarly in the series. If you love mystery books than I know, you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

About The Book

Never tell Mac Faraday not to do something.

Spencer’s police chief, David O’Callaghan, learns this lesson the hard way when he orders Mac Faraday to stay away from the south end of Spencer’s mountaintop – even though he owns the property. It doesn’t take long for Mac to find out what lies on the other side of the stone wall and locked gate, on which hangs a sign warning visitors to Keep Out!

Topping the list of the 10 top haunted places in America, Astaire Castle is associated with two suicides, three mysterious disappearances, and four murders since it was built almost a century ago – and Mac Faraday owns it!

In spite of David’s warning, Mac can’t resist unlocking the gate to see the castle that supposedly hasn’t seen a living soul since his late mother had ordered it closed up after the double homicide and disappearance of Damian Wagner, a world-famous master of horror novels.

What starts out as a quick tour of a dusty old castle turns into another Mac Faraday adventure when Astaire Castle becomes the scene of even more murders. Mac is going to need to put all of his investigative talents to work to sort out this case that involves the strangest characters he has run into yet – including a wolf man. No, we’re not talking about Gnarly.

About The Author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries. The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder will be released June 2016.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

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Everlasting Lies by Barbara Warren

September 27, 2016

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.

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.

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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There’s Been A Change Of Plans by Amy Koko

September 20, 2016

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.

There’s Been A Change Of Plans by Amy Koko was a fun book to read. I did find myself smiling through most of the book. Even though I am younger than the author is in this book I understood what she was going through and how hard it can be dealing with the things that she had to deal with. I loved this book because she shared the humor she saw in such a bad situation. It also reminded me that even if life is hard, I need to take the time to find the humor in the situation because that is the best way I have found cope with things that are causing me so much stress. If you or someone you know has gone through a divorce later in life, I know you will enjoy and understand this book even more than I did.

About The Book

Blogger Amy Koko bears her soul in her witty, bittersweet memoir, There’s Been A Change of Plans: Divorce, Dating & Delinquents in Mid-life. Expecting a trip to Italy, Koko is blind-sided by her husband’s confession that he’s been putting his shoes under a much younger and prettier woman’s bed. After twenty-seven years of marriage and four children, she faces the unimaginable: her life as she knows it is unraveling around her and her family’s future is anything but certain.

In the literary tradition of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn and Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Koko’s memoir details her journey from hearing the news that her husband is in love with a blonde, thirty-something Swiss pastry chef to trying everything from thong underwear to a mini-facelift to save her marriage, only to see it die in the parking lot of gas station.

With incredible honesty and humor, Koko takes the reader on a wild ride through the tough, emotional times of starting over through divorce, mid-life, finding a job, and Internet dating, all the while trying to keep her four teenagers out of jail.

There’s been a change of plans, and that’s just the beginning.

About The Author

After 27 years of marriage, Amy Koko went into divorce, kicking, screaming, stalking and drunk texting but lived to tell about it. She is the creator of the popular blog Exwifenewlife and a contributor to Huffington Post Divorce as well as Huffington Post Women. Amy lives in St. Petersburg, Florida where she begins each day with a freshly ground cup of good coffee and ends it with a good glass of pinot noir. Or chardonnay. Or a dirty martini. Whatever’s handy.

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Mummy’s Little Angel by JW Lawson

September 12, 2016

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.

Mummy’s Little Angel by JW Lawson was a great book. I am huge of TV show’s that are like this book, so I knew when I read the back of the book that I had to review it. From the start of the book, I didn’t want to put it down. I loved how this book was written and how it went back and forth between the characters because it gives you an insight into what each of the characters is thinking. I also wasn’t able to figure out what was going to happen in the book which something that I usually am to do so I loved that about this book. I would think I had figured it out and then a chapter later I would change my mind, and I did that throughout the entire book. If you love thrillers than I know, you will love this book as much as I did.

About The Book

Mummy’s Little Angel is the first place winner of World’s Best Story!

Joanne didn’t believe that her life could become worse than it already was. She had lost everybody and everything she had loved. She was alone. Surely she had suffered enough? The press had called her identical twins psychopaths. Her Maggie. Her Annie. But she still loved them, even though one of them had killed her husband, Jeff. Joanne believed that his murder had been an accident. How could one of her girls be a murderer? She knew them better than anybody else. They were good girls really.

She just had to prove it.

The brutal murder of her god-daughter Laura had never been solved. Items were missing when Laura’s remains had been discovered: clues that could lead to the capture of her killer. One of them was Laura’s doll … the doll that Joanne later discovered in her home. Joanne is facing the most horrific dilemma of her life. Has the wrong woman been imprisoned? Could her child have used such brutality against her best friend? Or could both women be innocent after all?

She needs to find somebody for her daughter to confide in; somebody she will trust. She needs a miracle. There is only one person who can help. He is compassionate and caring, with an amazing ability to gain the trust of the most difficult patients. He is Joanne’s only hope. He is Jonathan Davies.

About The Author

Award Winning Author, JW Lawson is already gaining recognition for her writing talents in the US and world-wide. The second of a trilogy of sensational thrillers,Mummy’s Little Angel is the winner of the highly acclaimed Worlds Best Story competition and has also received some outstanding reviews from the professional team of judges in the competition. She is currently writing her third thriller, Crossroads which will be available in 2017 and the final book of the current series, Hush Little Baby will be available in 2018.

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