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Announcement: WINNER of The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard
And the winner of THE WHALE: A LOVE STORY by Mark Beauregard is….. Dana (follows on Instagram) The winner will be notified via email. Thank you to everyone who entered and a huge thank you to the publisher for making this giveaway possible!
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Review: Tiffany Blues by M.J. Rose
I’ve been a fan of M.J. Rose for quite some time. She always writes really rich and atmospheric novels of romance and historical fiction blended together. I love her Reincarnationist series is really fun but I got hooked on her books with her Daughters of La Lune books! She has this great storytelling style that never seems to fail in any of her series’. She always has this velvety tone and it never fails to hook me. So when this book came up for review, to say I was thrilled was a complete understatement. More like I was swooning at not only the fact that a new MJ Rose novel…
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Giveaway: THE WHALE: A LOVE STORY by Mark Beauregard
I am thrilled to be offering this book up for giveaway this week! Can we talk about how beautiful that cover is?! It makes me think of the summer and beach reading! A rich and captivating novel set amid the witty, high-spirited literary society of 1850s New England, offering a new window on Herman Melville’s emotionally charged relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and how it transformed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end—his last three novels have been commercial failures and the critics have turned against him. In despair, Melville takes his…
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Review: The House at Saltwater Point (Lavender Tides #2) by Colleen Coble
I like books with interesting mysterious titles. This book, in combination with the cover, said mystery to me. I love the dark, brooding colors and scenery on the cover of this book and in many ways, it reminded me of a more modern Mary Stewart novel, so I was eager to read it. Ellie Blackmore is making a name for herself as a house flipper. But when her sister Mackenzie disappears, Ellie can’t focus on anything but uncovering what happened. Her only clue is the bloodstain on the deck of Mackenzie’s boat. Ellie knows her sister isn’t on the best of terms with her ex-husband, Jason, but he wouldn’t kill…
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Review: Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton
I watched this absolutely wonderful HBO miniseries called Hemingway and Gellhorn in 2012. I had major movie hangover after watching it. IMBD users didn’t seem to like it as much as I did, but for whatever reason this movie just resonated with me and I was fascinated by this couple I knew nothing about. I knew that Hemingway was moody and an all around asshole but that he wrote beautifully. Full disclosure, I haven’t read a single Hemingway book—-but I’ve read enough Hemingway quotes to discern that he’s a brilliant writer. The person I didn’t really know much about though was Martha Gellhorn. In the film she seemed like a…
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GIVEAWAY: How to Find Love in a Book Shop by Veronica Henry
It was a four star book for me and I think it will appeal to a lot of you book lovers out there….I know it did for me! If you’ve ever found yourself spellbound by the magic of your local bookstore, losing track of time among imaginary worlds and compelling ideas, this is your perfect summer read. Nightingale Books is a dream come true for book lovers. Nestled on the main street of an idyllic village, it’s a cozy haven for the literary-minded locals—whose stories are just as interesting as anything on the shelves of their favorite store. But Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open after her…
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Review: Eagle & Crane by Suzanne Rindell
This was a book that I wasn’t really that excited to read when it initially came up for review. In my mind all I kept thinking was….ugh another WWII book. Don’t get me wrong, WWII is one of my favorite periods to read about, but lately I’ve read a lot of WWII books and I just wasn’t in the mood for another when it was time to review this one. But this one set itself apart with the Japanese interment camps angle. Everyone is so focused on the holocaust that they forget that Japanese interment camps were yet another unfortunate by product of a very ugly war. My brother in…
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Review: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Like millions of people, I got royal wedding fever so bad about 3 days before Prince Harry and Megan Markel wed. Not personally I prefer Kate Middleton over Megan but who doesn’t love a royal wedding?! The glitz and glamour and all the pomp is just too much for me to resist. After the wedding was over I was desperate for something to read that would be similar to the real life fairy tale. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to read a biography on Megan or Kate or Diana or the royal family, but I was sure that I wanted to read something in that vein. That’s when…
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Review: The Lost Family by Jenna Blum
This was a book that I actually passed on initially. Yes it sounded good and like something that would be right up my alley. But my summer reading schedule always fills up so fast and I just didn’t have room for this book so basically I had to pass. I did however agree to do a special feature on this book as I think it would appeal to many of my readers. As I was working on the special feature, I felt really sad that I wasn’t reading this book because it sounded so good. After some very aggressive reading and maneuvering, I was able to fit this book in.…
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Review: Echo Moon (Ghost Gifts #3) by Laura Spinella
This book appealed to me for a couple of reasons, but one in particular stood out above all the other general ‘pick me’ signs that I saw in the pitch. The thing that caught my eye was the twist between historical fiction and magical realism/paranormal. This book is set during the Great War (hello my favorite era) but yet has paranormal characters and the combo between the two interested me. They sound like two very conflicting different genres and the first thing that I thought was ‘this could go one of two ways—really bad or really good’. So I agreed to review this one. Knowing that it was the third…