Special Feature: Triple Love Score by Brandi Megan Granett

 

triple-love-score-coverWhat happens when you stop playing games?

Miranda Shane lives a quiet life among books and letters as a professor in a small upstate town. When the playing-by-the-rules poet throws out convention and begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper to write, she sets off a chain of events that rattles her carefully planned world.

Her awakening propels her to take risks and seize chances she previously let slip by, including a game-changing offer from the man she let slip away. But when the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love or poetry.

Publisher: Wyatt-Mackenzie – Sept. 1, 2016

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Cover Reveal: SLIGHTLY SOUTH OF SIMPLE by Kristy Woodson Harvey

SSOS CoverEarlier this year I had the chance to read a very lovely book by Woodson Harvey called, LIES AND OTHER ACTS OF LOVE.
She has a beautiful prose and story telling ability to say the least! Unfortunately her latest novel, SLIGHTLY SOUTH OF SIMPLE will not be out until spring 2017……but between now and then we can enjoy some stunning cover art today!
In addition to this lovely eye candy, Woodson Harvey is also hosting a giveaway for $100 Amazon gift card and several book bundles on kristywoodsonharvey.com/blog to celebrate the cover reveal! So I highly recommend heading over to her blog to see get entered! If you haven’t heard about the book here is a little summary:

From the next “major voice in Southern fiction” (New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand) comes the first in an all-new series chronicling the journeys of three sisters and their mother—and a secret from their past that has the potential to tear them apart and reshape their very definition of what it means to be a family.

Caroline Murphy swore she’d never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father’s death, her mother selfishly forced her to move—during her senior year of high school, no less—back to that hick-infested rat trap where she’d spent her childhood summers. But now that her marriage to a New York high society heir has fallen apart in a very public, very embarrassing fashion, a pregnant Caroline decides to escape the gossipmongers with her nine-year-old daughter and head home to her mother, Ansley.

Ansley has always put her three daughters first, especially when she found out that her late husband, despite what he had always promised, left her with next to nothing. Now the proud owner of a charming waterfront design business and finally standing on her own two feet, Ansley welcomes Caroline and her brood back with open arms.

But when her second daughter Sloane, whose military husband is overseas, and youngest daughter and successful actress Emerson join the fray, Ansley begins to feel like the piece of herself she had finally found might be slipping from her grasp. Even more discomfiting, when someone from her past reappears in Ansley’s life, the secret she’s harbored from her daughters their entire lives might finally be forced into the open.

Exploring the powerful bonds between sisters and mothers and daughters, this engaging novel is filled with Southern charm, emotional drama, and plenty of heart.

Release Day Blitz: LEAVING LUCY PEAR by Anna Solomon

Two-time Pushcart Prize-winner Anna Solomon’s new novel, LEAVING LUCY PEAR, is officially out today!

It is a moving exploration of motherhood, friendship, and marriage, and a perfect beach book for readers who like their summer reading smart and nuanced!

Early reviews are unanimous in their enthusiastic praise, calling the novel “truly new and fresh” (Good Housekeeping), “beautifully told” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune), and “fully-fleshed, compassionate, and satisfying” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Novelists Sue Monk Kidd, Celeste Ng, J. Courtney Sullivan, and Paula McLain are also early fans.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In 1917, Beatrice Haven—the unwed teenage daughter of wealthy Jewish industrialists in Boston—sneaks out of her uncle’s house on Cape Ann in the middle of the night, abandons her newborn baby at the foot of a pear tree, and watches as another mother claims the baby as her own.

Ten years later, Prohibition is in full swing and Bea has again sought refuge from her troubles at her uncle’s house, but she discovers far more than she bargained for when the rum-running manager of the local quarry inadvertently reunites her with Emma Murphy, the headstrong Irish Catholic woman who has been raising Bea’s abandoned child—now a bright, bold, cross-dressing girl named Lucy Pear, with secrets of her own.

As spring turns into summer, Emma and Bea begin to build a strained, strange friendship, ultimately confronting decisions whose consequences will forever change their lives—and Lucy’s.

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Special Feature: ENCHANTED AUGUST by Brenda Bowen

Last summer I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing ENCHANTED AUGUST by Brenda Bowen and now it’s coming to paperback this summer!

This fun summer beach read, is out in paperback on July 5th from Penguin Books with a gorgeous new cover.

A Maine Literary Awards finalist, ENCHANTED AUGUST transports readers to a tiny island in Maine, telling the story of four mismatched people who learn that sometimes—if you’re lucky—a change of scenery can lead you right back to where you belong. Romantic, optimistic, and as refreshing as a summer cocktail, the novel itself is a perfect escape.

Mary Kay Andrews agrees—she recently recommended ENCHANTED AUGUST as a summer pick, saying “Do yourself a favor and escape from the withering heat and humidity of a Southern summer by steering a course for Little Lost Island.”

Below is a great Q & A with Bowen sure to get you excited about summer reading!

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Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

This book came across my desk for review a couple of months ago and initially I passed on it for review and agreed to do a special feature instead.

I wasn’t sure that I could fit it into my review schedule and I wasn’t sure it was something that I really wanted to read. However when I did the special feature, I completely rethought my decision!

After reading the discussion questions of the feature, I was intrigued. This book sounded like it was going to be raw, honest, and dark but yet poignant and meaningful. This book was all of these things and more!

This book is set up with 13 different chapters, each of which reads like a short story. Initially I thought that each chapter was a short story about different women, but it was short stories about one main character, Lizzie (AKA Beth, Liz, Elizabeth).

Lizzie has never liked the way she looked. She has struggled with low self esteem and body images as well as a host of other issues when it comes to her weight. Each chapter addresses different aspects of her weight struggles. In some chapters she dates men online and trying to feel accepted by friends and boys, while others are a little more humorous such as when she talks about counting her almonds while trying to diet.

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