Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook

Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook is a perfect example of fun chic-lit that is perfect for the summer sun in a nice vacation spot. It is also fun and sassy with the author’s sense of humor, so it makes it that much more entertaining to read.

Book Description

“From the acclaimed bestselling author of Must Love Dogs comes a winning and witty new novel about a woman who emerges from the shadow of her overbearing family and finds herself “dancing with the stars.”

Deirdre Griffin has a great life; it’s just not her own. She’s the around-the-clock personal assistant to her charismatic, high-maintenance, New Age guru brother, Tag. As the family wallflower, her only worth seems to be as gatekeeper to Tag at his New England seaside compound.

Then Deirdre’s sometime boyfriend informs her that he is marrying another woman, who just happens to be having the baby he told Deirdre he never wanted. While drowning her sorrows in Tag’s expensive vodka, Deirdre decides to use his massive online following to get herself voted on as a last-minute Dancing with the Stars replacement. It’ll get her back in shape, mentally and physically. It might even get her a life of her own. Deirdre’s fifteen minutes of fame have begun.

Irresistible and offbeat, Wallflower in Bloom is an original and deeply satisfying story of having the courage to take a leap into the spotlight, no matter where you land.” – Wallflower in Bloom

My Thoughts

Wallflower in Bloom is an entertaining summer relaxing read. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is high literature or anything, but it is fun and breezy. The author is humorous and sassy, which is just what I enjoyed most about this novel.

The main character Deirdre often made me want to shake her for some of the choices she made, but you want to cheer her on and see her succeed nonetheless. Having this character be a Dancing with the Stars replacement “celebrity” is very unrealistic, as she wasn’t a celebrity, her brother was. Fans of this show will more than likely really enjoy this book because of the focus of this in the novel. I’m not a fan, so I can’t say I really enjoyed this being in the novel.

Overall, I found this novel to be entertaining and sassy, thanks to the author. I think it would make for an excellent beach read or summer read in general. I recommend it to all those needing a relaxing and funny read to pass the time this summer.

* Thank you to the publisher of Wallflower in Bloom, Touchstone, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Barbieri is a truly great summer or beach read about woman who finds refuge with her daughters on an island off the Maine coast. Her story is one that many women could relate to (at least to some degree), but it has an underlying fantasy side to it which makes it that much more interesting.

Book Description

“Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts state history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and a doting mother. But her carefully constructed life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her daughters—Annie, seven; and Ella, twelve—and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides

Nora spent her first five years on the island but has not been back to the remote community for decades—not since that long ago summer when her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her aunt's friend Polly suggests, a selkie—a mythical being of island legend—summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone who, like Nora, is trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own—a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past.” – The Cottage at Glass Beach

My Thoughts

The Cottage at Glass Beach is centered on Nora, who escaped to Burke’s Island with her daughters after she found out about her husband’s infidelity. He is a politician, so she wasn’t able to deal with this in private, unless she got away. Sounds realistic, right?

As someone who has never been to Maine, I can’t tell you if the portrayal of the town or people in it would be accurate, but I loved how she wrote about it, and she made me want to go visit somewhere in Maine one day. The fantasy aspect to the island is one of my favorite parts of the story, and without it – I don’t think this would have been such a good book. While on this island, Nora is searching for clues to the mysteries in her past, as well as discovering herself and deciding what to do in the future.

The only thing I didn’t like about the novel was how the author wrote the ending in too abruptly. Not everything was explained or tied up, so to me, it would have been better if she could have spent at least 10-20 more pages with the ending. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it for others to read.

* Thank you to the publisher of The Cottage at Glass Beach, Harper, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Magical Gardens by Patricia Monaghan

Magical Gardens by Patricia Monaghan is a fun to read book about gardening and the mythology that has been weaved into it since history was recorded. If you have a garden or want to start a garden, no matter how big or how small, this is a book that you must read!

Book Description

“Nurture your love of the earth with a garden rooted in your spirituality. In this updated 15th anniversary edition of the beloved classic, Patricia Monaghan offers fresh advice and guidance for creating a magical garden that will nourish your soul. Bursting with ideas and inspiration, this guidebook shows you how to plan, grow, and tend an enchanting garden that is sown with your unique spirituality.

Along with gardening advice for every climate and season, Magical Gardens weaves together myth and ritual to help you bring added power and meaning to your garden space. Discover the best plants for your site—being mindful of sun exposure, soil type, and climate zone—and learn about composting, controlling pests and weeds, gardening organically, and caring for plants at all growth stages. Perform meditations based on the year’s gardening cycle, and celebrate each season and every milestone in your life with rituals, prayers, and ceremonies.

This book features more than a dozen themed designs for sacred perennial gardens that you can re-create in your own backyard or out on your patio. Easy-to-follow designs will show you how to create a garden in honor of:

—Angels
—Aphrodite
—Cats
—Dragons
—Fairies
—Kwan-Yin
—The Sun . . . and more” – Magical Gardens

My Thoughts

Magical Gardens is one of my top favorite books on gardening. Honestly, I’m not much of a gardener, but I would like to be. Books like this really inspire and give passion, which is just what I needed to start gardening.

The book itself is very easy and fun to read. Throughout it there are black and white drawings of gardens and flowers, which I found fun to color in with colored pencils. I don’t usually (ever) write or draw in my books, so again, this book inspired me to go outside of the box (or book in this case) and do something different. I also enjoyed reading about the mythology, rituals, and the basics of planning and caring for a garden.

Monaghan is able to connect the gardener’s spirit with the spirit of the garden in an amazing way. No two gardens are exactly alike, so I’ll be coming up with some of my own ideas on my little garden in the near future. This book serves as a tremendous amount of inspiration and is beautifully written.

For further reading, or perhaps use as an intro to invite you into reading this book, check out the author’s article “Inviting Fairies Into Your Garden” found on the Llewellyn website.

* Thank you to the publisher of Magical Gardens, Llewellyn, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Eyes Wide Open by Andrew Gross

Eyes Wide Open by Andrew Gross is a chilling story with some truly evil characters that will make this psychological thriller a story you won’t soon forget. This one will keep the pages moving quickly, so jump right in and start reading it!

Book Description

“Jay Erlich's nephew has been found at the bottom of a cliff at Morrow Bay—a tragic suicide, it appears, until secrets from the past rear up again.

Years ago, Jay's older brother, Charlie, a wayward child of the sixties, fell under the sway of a charismatic but deeply disturbed cult leader in California—a mesmerizing human monster who set a nightmare of violence into motion. Charlie moved on and raised a family, but the demons that nearly destroyed him never completely disappeared.

Heading west to help his grieving brother, Jay finds himself being pulled back into Charlie's dark history. In a story of two brothers—one successful, the other outcast and troubled—Jay must put his family and life on the line to uncover the truth behind his brother's son's death, a dark and dangerous quest that threatens to bring up the secrets of the past once again . . . and plunge him over the edge into the depths of evil.” – Eyes Wide Open

My Thoughts

Eyes Wide Open is written without all of the extra details and flowery descriptions, which is something I quite like. Andrew Gross writes his fiction to the point, and in a story such as this, that is really more than enough to do the job. He has mastered psychological suspense, and although this is the first book of his I have read, I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be reading more of his novels in the future.

The characters in the story are believable and memorable. The attachment you have towards them makes it that much more chilling as you read through the story – again, something I really enjoyed. I haven’t known any cult leaders in real life, and stories like this make me steer clear of anything resembling such (even remotely).

Overall, this is a suspenseful and chilling story that fans of this type of novels will enjoy. So if you like mystery, suspense, and thriller stories that can leave you sleeping uneasy at night, this is the book for you!

* Thank you to the publisher of Eyes Wide Open, Harper, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Stress Point by Sarah Francis Martin

Stress Point by Sarah Francis Martin is a devotional and journal for women in their twenties. It focuses on some of the main stress points in a woman’s life, including their body image, money, love life, career, and other things that women tend to stress out over. We don’t have to let those stressors control our lives though, and Martin explains how through God, we can stop focusing on those issues and live a more fulfilling life.

Book Description

“Want to ditch the drama and thrive through your twenties?

Body image. Friendships. Career. Money. Dating. All these issues and more serve as points of stress for the 20-something woman, and combined they can make for a decade of drama in a girl's life. Sarah Francis Martin is the slightly older girlfriend who’s been there, done that, and got the not-so-cute t-shirt. Through this interactive Bible study, Sarah helps young adult women address each stress point by encouraging them to wait on the Lord, worship Him, and make Him the focus of their lives.

In Stress Point you will:

·         Find interactive chapters covering ten stress points for the 20-something woman

·         Dig through Scripture to apply truth to each stress point

·         Engage with real, raw, and relevant stories from girlfriends just like you

·         Journal through each chapter to engage with God in a meaningful way

·         Interact with Sarah through her video blogs for each chapter

·         Connect with your girlfriends in a Stress Point Survival Group; leader guide included

My Thoughts

Stress Point takes the things that stress out women in their twenties most, and reflects on how these issues can be turned around to God and made into something less stressful. I think that she did a good job with this, and many women will definitely benefit from this book.

She uses examples on each chapter (or issue) that explains how a certain person (real or fictional) dealt with the stressor at hand. For many of these issues, I just didn’t connect with the message of the people described. The author also liked to use a lot of personal examples of her struggles with these issues when she was in her twenties. For me, this made the book seem more of a blog follow along devotional journal, which was not what I was interested in reading.

Overall, I think that this book will certainly help some women. I wouldn’t read it again, but it isn’t not worth reading either.

* Thank you to the publisher of Stress Point, Thomas Nelson, for providing me with a copy of this book for review as part of their Book Sneeze program. All opinions expressed are my own.

Most Wanted by Thomas J. Foley

Most Wanted by Thomas J. Foley is a highly interesting read about the mob, the FBI, corrupt agents, and the former head of the Massachusetts state police. Crime sprees, murders, and more await you with this telling story about a real life mobster.

Book Description

“June 23, 2011. The news of the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger’s capture—after sixteen years on the FBI’s Most Wanted list—swept the nation. Many breathed a sigh of relief. But for Thomas J. Foley, a former Massachusetts state police colonel and the investigator who sparked Bulger’s flight from Boston, the moment was bittersweet. The FBI may have caught Bulger, but as Foley had painfully discovered almost two decades before, they were also responsible for his escape. 

It has been known that Whitey Bulger was a secret informant for the FBI, but it has never been revealed—until now—that the FBI was actually actively protecting Bulger from Foley, effectively derailing Foley’s efforts to stop Bulger’s horrific crime sprees time and again. At one point, the FBI even presented Foley with a plaque at a holiday party that read “the Most Hated Man in Law Enforcement,” a not-so-subtle suggestion that he and his team should lay off their investigation. 

Most Wanted is a true-life thriller, and Foley is the hero at its center. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston’s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence. In this book, Foley, a cop’s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation’s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t want to believe. ” – Most Wanted

My Thoughts

Most Wanted will pull you in and make you continue to read it, almost as if you had a gangster forcing you to read it until late into the night. Of course, it is much more pleasant than that, which you’ll read about in many details throughout the book about how mobsters do work.

I never heard about Whitey Bulger or Thomas Foley until reading this book. According to this book, his neighborhood may have thought of him as a local hero, but he was a criminal who made money through extortion, intimidation, and even murder. He was #1 on the FBI’s most wanted list on June 23, 2011. Heroes shouldn’t be on this list, should they?

The hero of this book is the author, Col. Thomas J. Foley, the former head of the Massachusetts State Police. He spent twenty years investigating and forming a case against Whitey Bulger. The resistance he faced with the FBI led him to uncover the FBI’s protection of this criminal and also led to the arrest of an FBI agent that helped Bulger.

This book and real life story is better than some movies about the mafia, so I really hope that this is turned into a movie. If it does, I predict that it will be a box office hit!

* Thank you to the publisher of Most Wanted, Touchstone, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Quantum Affirmations by Monte Farber

Quantum Affirmations by Monte Farber is the type of book that helps you to get what you want by not just having a positive attitude, but by changing yourself in the process of visualizing what it is that you want. If there is something that you want, but haven’t attained it yet, this is a book that you must read!

Book Description

“When life lets us down, there’s only one reason: it’s all in our heads! We are what we affirm, positive and negative.

Quantum Affirmations offers an integrative approach to manifesting the love, happiness, prosperity, and success you want in your life. Renowned psychic and bestselling author Monte Farber teaches readers how to visualize and create the future they desire with simple and fun techniques to tunnel through any and all obstacles.

Quantum Affirmations is the revolutionary new method for harnessing your mind’s power based on quantum physics. Farber has researched intriguing scientific principles and their complementary metaphysical laws that support that affirmations work. In Quantum Affirmations, he applied those principles to formulate a simple 5-step process that anyone can use to create the future they want.

Farber includes in-depth interviews with people he has guided step-bystep through the process, and shows readers how to create their own Quantum Affirmations. When the world seems to be falling apart and things are getting out of control, this book offers an easy-to-use tool to take matters into your own hands.” – Quantum Affirmations

My Thoughts

Quantum Affirmations is one of my personal favorite books on affirmations. I’ve always been interested in the theory of quantum mechanics and “law of attraction” material.

When actually using affirmations in my daily life though, I wasn’t actually that good at it. As Monte points out, we all practice it negatively with the things we think or say about ourselves, such as “I’m not good at (insert what you aren’t good at here).” When thinking about that very negative affirmation, if we are in fact bad at it, that affirmation is actually working.

Earlier this year, I took Pre-Calculus in college (it was one of the pre-requisites for the program I’m going into). I saved this as one of my last classes because I always believed “I wasn’t good at math.” Before the class started though, I never said that, and I tried my hardest not to think that. Instead, I said, “I’m going to get an A in this class and do my best.” I ended up earning a 105 average in that class!

Positive affirmations work just as well as those negative ones, and the key to doing this is having a set goal and affirmation system worked out for yourself. Mine was rather simple, but Monte Farber’s Quantum Affirmations makes this whole process so much more fun and easy, especially for someone just starting out with this process. If there is any goal that you want to obtain and haven’t been meeting it, I highly recommend you to read this book and try some of these affirmations.

* Thank you to the publisher of Quantum Affirmations, Weiser Books, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

City of Style by Melissa Magsaysay

City of Style by Melissa Magsaysay is a look at personal style in a city that has a very cool, edgy, and always fabulous fashion scene: Los Angeles, California. Home of a fun variety of styles, this city inspires not just fashion designers, but also the people who live and visit there.

Book Description

“Los Angeles harbors its own canon of styles: Romantic Bohemian, Glamour, Skater and Surfer, Rocker, Chola-Style, Indie-Eclectic, and Casual Chic—each shaped by the unique mix of subcultures, climates, geography, history, and personalities that have coexisted in different pockets of the greater LA area. These signature looks continue to inspire celebrities, clothing designers, and stylists the world over. In City of Style, Melissa Magsaysay, style editor for the Los Angeles Times, draws on decades of the best, most iconic examples of LA-style and explores the trends, tastes, and fashion innovations of today's Angelenos—while offering a taste of the retail landscape, a guide to stores and shops, and helpful tips on how to buy and wear key pieces for each different style.” – City of Style

My Thoughts

City of Style is a unique fashion book that blends the history of L.A. style and modern versions of those famous trends. This book focuses on the Bohemian, Glamour, Skater and Surfer, Casual Chic, Indie-Eclectic, and Chola looks. No matter where you live, you can probably use at least some of the fashion trends in L.A. in your personal style.

I found the history of the fashions in L.A. interesting, but a little bit too in-depth for the book. The pictures in the book were great and really showed the styles for each look, but there should have been more included in a book of this type.

The author is a very good writer who clearly has a passion for L.A. fashion, so it was a fun and easy summer read that will also give some fashion inspiration to people looking to buy new looks for their wardrobe. This is a perfect book for all fashionistas and people who just love fashion in general. I highly recommend it.

* Thank you to the publisher of City of Style, Harper Collins, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Objects of my Affection by Jill Smolinski

Objects of my Affection by Jill Smolinski is a novel about a professional organizer, hoarding, drug addiction, romance, and much more. On the surface it appears to be just a “chick lit” type of easy breezy read, but it is much more than that when you actually dig in and read this book. If you’re looking for a story that is a fun and humorous read, but actually makes you think about life and things in a new way, this is the perfect summer read to do just that!

Book Description

“In the humorous, heartfelt new novel by the author of The Next Thing on My List, a personal organizer must somehow convince a reclusive artist to give up her hoarding ways and let go of the stuff she’s hung on to for decades.

Lucy Bloom is broke, freshly dumped by her boyfriend, and forced to sell her house to send her nineteen-year-old son to drug rehab. Although she’s lost it all, she’s determined to start over. So when she’s offered a high-paying gig helping clear the clutter from the home of reclusive and eccentric painter Marva Meier Rios, Lucy grabs it. Armed with the organizing expertise she gained while writing her book, Things Are Not People, and fueled by a burning desire to get her life back on track, Lucy rolls up her sleeves to take on the mess that fills every room of Marva’s huge home. Lucy soon learns that the real challenge may be taking on Marva, who seems to love the objects in her home too much to let go of any of them.

While trying to stay on course toward a strict deadline—and with an ex-boyfriend back in the picture, a new romance on the scene, and her son’s rehab not going as planned—Lucy discovers that Marva isn’t just hoarding, she is also hiding a big secret. The two form an unlikely bond, as each learns from the other that there are those things in life we keep, those we need to let go—but it’s not always easy to know the difference. ” – Objects of my Affection

My Thoughts

Objects of my Affection is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book, but I quickly realized after the first few pages that I loved the style this author writes in, and this story was one I’d really enjoy. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I read it in a weekend off and on, and even talked about some of the characters to my family members. You know it is a good book to bring up characters to someone saying “Quit being such a Marva. You can throw that away or donate it.”

The main character, Lucy Bloom, is a writer and professional organizer. She doesn’t quite feel like a professional in either field, but she wrote a book (and got it published) on the subject, and was hired to clean up a celebrity artist’s home. The catch? The celebrity, Marva, is a hoarder and has to look at everything before she can let it go, and it takes a long time to even let go of one item in the house!

Marva has some secrets that aren’t revealed until the end of the book about why she is like she is, and why she is secretly cleaning up her house now. I won’t ruin the surprise for anyone who plans to read this book, so all I’m going to say is that it is quite a surprise! She is more of a complex and actually caring person than she appears to be at first, so don’t write her off in the beginning as just being a rude old crazy hoarder lady.

The love story is a bit of a background story in the book, but it too is interesting and more complex than you may realize at first. Jill Smolinski is fabulous with making things in the story more than they appear, so while she is a very funny writer in many portions of the book, it is also quite serious as well.

I highly recommend this novel for everyone to read. It isn’t only a fantastic read, but it might also give you some inspiration to clean out your home, too.

* Thank you to the publisher of Objects of my Affection, Touchstone, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

A Game of Thrones – War

Tonight’s episode of A Game of Thrones titled “Blackwater” is what Season One and Season Two have been leading up to: War! Sure there have been some battles and the North seems to be doing well, but now it has reached King’s Landing. Stannis attacks the Lannisters, and if it is anything like the book series, this is going to be an episode full of fiery action.

Check out the preview for tonight’s Game of Thrones episode:

Episode 19 - Preview

I have enjoyed this season so far. There are more changes from the book series than there was in Season One. However, I don’t really mind. There are some things that would just take too long to have to explain and play out on the screen for it to come through to have viewers understand that haven’t read the books. I’ve read on many forums for the series that they hate the changes or they whine about what they haven’t done. They can’t please everyone, so just enjoy it already and quit whining. At least it was put into an HBO series!