Book Review | The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

November 10, 2015November 6, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

BOOK REVIEW | THE CHOICE

TITLE: The Choice

AUTHOR: Nicholas Sparks

PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing

RELEASE DATE: September 24, 2007

GENRE: Romance, Women’s Fiction

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life — boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies — he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Despite his attempts to be neighborly, the appealing redhead seems to have a chip on her shoulder about him…and the presence of her longtime boyfriend doesn’t help. Despite himself, Travis can’t stop trying to ingratiate himself with his new neighbor, and his persistent efforts lead them both to the doorstep of a journey that neither could have foreseen. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, The Choice ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive? (Description found on Goodreads)

MY THOUGHTS

(Before reading, please be aware that this review may contain spoilers)

It had been a while since the first time I read The Choice and it was like I was reading it for the first time. I’m glad I re-read it before the movie comes out next year because it’ll make it easier to compare the two later.

The Choice contains all the great qualities of a Nicholas Sparks book; a man and a woman who fall in love, a plot twist that will leave your heart aching, and several tear jerking moments that will force you to purchase a new box of tissues.

The book is separated into two parts. Part One tells the story of how Travis and Gabby met. They met in a way that reminded me of the 1961 animated film, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. While they didn’t get tangled in the leashes of their beloved pets, it is their dogs Molly and Moby that cause them to cross paths, so somewhat similar.

Part Two travels eleven years into their future where they have a nice house, great careers, and a wonderful family together, but a terrible accident has caused Travis to question every decision he makes.

While I did enjoy reading how Travis and Gabby fell in love, Part Two is where I felt more emotionally invested. Travis has to battle with the thought of losing his wife, all while trying to be a father to his children who are also feeling like they’ve lost their mother. This is where many of the emotional ups and downs are in the book. You can tell from his interactions with Gabby, in the hospital, that Travis really adores her and may not be able to move on without her.

Overall, this is another thumbs up for me, but that’s no surprise when it comes to Nicholas Sparks. I can’t wait to see how the movie turns out. The trailers make it seem like the storyline is going to differ from the book, but I’m sure it will be a great change. Stay tuned for my Book vs Movie post next year.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Spending time with you showed me what I’ve been missing in my life.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you two make me believe that true love really exists. And that even the darkest hours can’t take that away.”

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | GOODREADS

With over 100 million copies of his books sold, Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved storytellers. His novels include 12 #1 New York Timesbestsellers. All his books have been New York Times and international bestsellers, and were translated into more than 50 languages. Ten Sparks novels have been adapted into major motion pictures, with The Choice coming in February 2016. (About the author found on Amazon.com)

Sparks wrote one of his best-known stories, The Notebook, over a period of six months at age 28. It was published in 1996 by Warner Books. He followed with the novels Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember(1999), The Rescue(2000), A Bend in the Road (2001),Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding(2003), True Believer (2005) and its sequel, At First Sight (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice(2007),The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and The Best of Me (2011), as well as the 2004 non-fiction memoir Three Weeks With My Brother, co-written with his brother Micah. His seventeenth novel, The Longest Ride, was published on September 17, 2013. (Found on NicholasSparks.com)

You can see his full bio here: Nicholas Spark Biography

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Upcoming Book Review | The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

October 17, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

UPCOMING BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: The Choice

AUTHOR: Nicholas Sparks

PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing

RELEASE DATE: September 24, 2007

GENRE: Romance, Women’s Fiction

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Book Review | Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

August 20, 2015August 19, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ 2 Comments

BOOK REVIEW | EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES

TITLE: Eight Hundred Grapes

AUTHOR: Laura Dave

PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster

PUBLICATION DATE: June 2, 2015

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

BUY LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | BAM! | INDIEBOUND | iBOOKS

There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…

Bestselling author Laura Dave has been dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA TODAY), a “decadent storyteller” (Marie Claire), and “compulsively readable” (Woman’s Day). Set in the lush backdrop of Sonoma’s wine country, Eight Hundred Grapes is a heartbreaking, funny, and deeply evocative novel about love, marriage, family, wine, and the treacherous terrain in which they all intersect. (Description found on NetGalley.com)

MY THOUGHTS

Before you read this review please note that it may contain spoilers. If you want to be surprised, just know that this is an amazing book and you should definitely read it.

I started reading Eight Hundred Grapes exactly one week ago. I was so entranced by it that I read it on the train, at lunch, on the treadmill, while taking my walk, and while my husband was pumping gas at Costco. I just couldn’t put it down. It’s that good!

There are many many aspects of it that I love, so I will spare you from reading an extremely long review and give you my top three things.

The first thing I love is the cover. I’m the type of reader who ultimately decides to read a book based on what the cover looks like. I won’t even read the description if I don’t have some sort of liking towards it. Eight Hundred Grapes has a wonderfully simple cover making me wish I had purchased the physical copy. It would be a perfect addition to my bookshelf. What do you think of the cover?

The second aspect I loved is that the entire story revolves around wine. Wine tasting is a hobby that my husband and I do together. We both love our separate wines (white wines are my thing and he likes more reds), but it’s the experience that makes it worth while and finding that wine that makes you want to buy cases of it for fear of never being able to have it again.

This book made me think about wine in a different way. I know that it takes a lot of time, effort, and money to sustain a vineyard and make quality wine, but I never truly got a sense of that until I read Eight Hundred Grapes. Laura Dave created this great story with a lot of details about running a vineyard. Even getting down to the nitty gritty of what to put in the soil at each stage of the grape growing process. I wonder how much research was done to write such detailed descriptions of the vineyard and wine making process.

The third aspect I enjoyed was the family drama and boy is this book packed with it. The main character, Georgia Ford, finds out her fiancé has been keeping a very big secret from her…(spoiler) that he found out he has a child with his ex girlfriend. To top it off, it’s only days before her wedding that she sees him walking down the street, during her last dress fitting, with his ex and his daughter. He had been keeping it from her for months. That’s when she bolts from Los Angeles to her family’s vineyard in Sebastopol, CA.

What Georgia finds is that everyone she knows has something to hide; her mother, father, and brothers. I don’t want to give away too much, but there are fists thrown around, yelling, arguing, and a lot of figuring out what to do next. In Georgia’s case, she was trying to fix everyone else’s problem instead of her own.

Eight Hundred Grapes is a wonderful story about embracing where you come from and deciding what path you want to take in life. Nobody knows where their path will lead, but it’s about taking a leap of faith and hoping that you land on your feet (possibly in some well tended vineyard soil).

Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend Eight Hundred Grapes to all my fellow Women’s Fiction lovers, wine lovers, and good old family drama lovers.

P.S. I actually asked my husband (during our Costco gas trip) what he would do if he found out he had a kid while we were engaged. After giving me a look of pure terror, he said he’d definitely tell me. I gave him points for that answer.

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Maybe that was just childhood? You hurry up, pick the opposite path, try to make childhood end. Then, as an adult, you have no idea why you were running away.”

“Here’s why my mother fell in love with him, she said. She was sitting at the Chinese restaurant, hearing him talk of soil, about the importance of foundation. And she heard the rest. His belief, at the center of his winemaking, that with work, you can give something the strength at the beginning that it needs later on. Before it even knows how it’s going to need it.”

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Laura Dave is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The First Husband, The Divorce Party, London Is The Best City In America, and the forthcoming Eight Hundred Grapes. Dave’s fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, ESPN, Redbook, Glamour and Ladies Home Journal.

Dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA Today), Dave has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends and NPR’s All Things Considered. Cosmopolitan Magazine recently named her a “Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year.”

Three of her novels have been optioned for the big screen with Dave adapting Eight Hundred Grapes for Fox2000. (About the author found on her website at www.lauradave.com)

Thank you to Laura Dave and Simon & Schuster for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review. Book provided through NetGalley.com.

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Book Review | Carry Me Home by Lia Riley

August 17, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ 2 Comments

BOOK REVIEW | CARRY ME HOME

TITLE: Carry Me Home (Off the Map #3.1)

AUTHOR: Lia Riley

PUBLISHER: Forever Yours

RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2015

GENRE: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

BUY LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | KOBO | IBOOKS | GOOGLEPLAY

Love doesn’t have to be perfect to be true…

Years ago, Tanner Green loved Sunny Letman. She was meant to be his first kiss, first love, first everything. Then their world spun upside-down and out of control.

Free-spirited Sunny doesn’t do commitment. Sure, guys are great for a night or a week, but she always leaves first. That is, until professional skateboarder and town golden boy, Tanner Green, unexpectedly walks back into her life.

Despite their broken history, a fragile and undeniably electric connection still holds them together. Now Tanner has to convince Sunny that even though love isn’t always perfect, it’s worth sticking around for…(this stand alone novella is part of the Off the Map series) (Description found on Amazon.com)

MY THOUGHTS

I’m a huge fan of Lia Riley. Over the last year she has become one of my favorite authors, so I’m always up for reading anything new of hers. Carry Me Home is a novella focused on a few side characters in her Off the Map series.

Tanner and Sunny’s story started years ago when they were children. They understood each other and what their situations were, but drama between their mother’s pulled them apart. As they got older they grew even further apart. It’s not until later that they finally start developing that relationship again. That’s where their story begins in Carry Me Home.

I enjoyed reading the story that Lia Riley developed for these two characters from the Off the Map series, especially Tanner. They both had difficult back stories that, in the end, brought them closer together. Sunny was one of the more frustrating characters. I kept saying to myself, “Ugh Sunny! Why don’t you just give in already. You know you like him”. Her noncommittal and stubborn attitude kept pushing Tanner away, but thankfully he wouldn’t let her. I liked Tanner because he knew exactly what he wanted and was fighting to obtain it. I believe their differing personalities balanced each other out and they eventually gave into their feelings.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy was how short it was, but that’s the nature of a novella. I definitely wanted more. I wonder how the story would have developed if Riley wrote it as a full novel. I guess I’m just going to have to ask her.

Overall, I would highly recommend Carry Me Home especially if you’re a fan of the Off the Map series. Even in it’s short length it showed you how love can develop no matter how different people are or how dire their circumstances might be.

If you’re interested in reading the Off the Map series, you can check out my reviews below.

Upside Down (Book #1)

Sideswiped (Book #2)

Inside Out (Book #3)

FAVORITE QUOTES

“We’ll never be the same again. We each carry a piece of the other. The way he watches me, I know he’s in this for a long time, not just a good time. And that idea doesn’t seem so scary anyone. In fact, I can’t wait.”

“Sunny is like her name. you can’t hope to hold sunshine. You can only bask in it for as long as it’s there. But weather changes. There are storms. Night always follows day. I know what I want can’t happen, but who ever said wanting needs to be reasonable or even sane?”

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS | TWITTER

After studying at the University of Montana-Missoula, Lia Riley scoured the world armed only with a backpack, overconfidence and a terrible sense of direction. When not torturing heroes (because c’mon, who doesn’t love a good tortured hero?), Lia herds unruly chickens, camps, beach combs, daydreams about as-of-yet unwritten books, wades through a mile-high TBR pile and schemes yet another trip. She and her family live mostly in Northern California.

Thank you to Lia Riley, Forever Yours publishing, and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review | What You Left Behind by Samantha Hayes

August 12, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ 2 Comments

BOOK REVIEW | WHAT YOU LEFT BEHIND

TITLE: What You Left Behind

AUTHOR: Samantha Hayes

PUBLISHER: Crown Publishing

RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2015

GENRE: Suspense & Thriller

A mesmerizing new thriller from the author of Until You’re Mine

Two years after a terrifying spate of teenage suicides, the remote village of Radcote has just begun to heal. Then a young man is killed in a freak motorcycle accident and a suicide note is found among his belongings. When a second boy is found dead shortly thereafter, the nightmare of repeat suicides once again threatens the community.

Desperate for a vacation, Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher has just come to Radcote for a stay with her sister, Jo, but the atmosphere of the country house is unusually tense. Freddie, Jo’s son, seems troubled and uncommunicative, and Jo is struggling to reach out to him. Meanwhile, Lorraine becomes determined to discover the truth behind these deaths. Are they suicides, or is there something more sinister at work? Finding answers might help Freddie, but they’ll also lead to a shocking truth: whatever it is–or whoever it is–that’s killing these young people is far more disturbing than she ever could have imagined, and unraveling the secret is just as dangerous as the secret itself.

Wicked, intense, and utterly compulsive, What You Left Behind confirms Samantha Hayes as a top thriller writer. (Description from NetGalley.com)

MY THOUGHTS

At times, I feel I need a little bit more adventure, suspense, and mystery in my life so I wander away from my usual Women’s Fiction genre books and go towards a book like What You Left Behind by Samantha Hayes. Its books like this that keeps be wanting more suspense and thriller type novels to read.

There were many twists and turns throughout the book and Hayes did a great job tying up the loose ends. This is what kept me engaged and is what I loved most about the book. I was surprised by the plot twists. At times, I can predict what twists will be, but with this book many of the twists were a mystery. That’s not to say I didn’t guess a few of them, but for the most part I was like “oh my gosh” when something was revealed.

The characters, including the minor ones, were well developed and their stories were perfectly intertwined. The way Hayes created the characters made you believe they were different than they turned out to be. I think this created a much more impactful thriller and made me second guess my predictions (commence the applause).

What You Left Behind is a riveting psychological thriller riddled with secrets and lies and is well worth staying up until 1am to finish it.

I was generously provided a copy of this book for an honest review from NetGalley. Thank you Samantha Hayes and Crown Publishing.

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | BLOG | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

Throughout the years, I always strived to improve my writing. In 2003 I won a short story competition and subsequently had a novel published by a small independent press. It’s out of print now. Since 2007 I have had four novels published by Headline under the name Sam Hayes—BLOOD TIES, UNSPOKEN, TELL TALE and SOMEONE ELSE’S SON.

I am now represented by Oli Munson at A M Heath Ltd and my books are published by Century and Arrow. I have written three novels in a new detective series – set in and around Birmingham, featuring my married DIs Lorraine Fisher and Adam Scott. The first is UNTIL YOU’RE MINE, followed by BEFORE YOU DIE, and finally YOU BELONG TO ME. These are all written as Samantha Hayes. You can find details of all my recent novels by visiting the bookspage. Meantime, I’m busy working on my next novel!

About the author was found on her website and you can click here to find out more.

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Upcoming Book Review | Carry Me Home by Lia Riley

July 29, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

UPCOMING BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: Carry Me Home (Off the Map #3.1)

AUTHOR: Lia Riley

PUBLISHER: Forever Yours

RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2015

GENRE: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

BUY LINKS: AMAZON | B&N | KOBO | IBOOKS | GOOGLEPLAY

Love doesn’t have to be perfect to be true…

Years ago, Tanner Green loved Sunny Letman. She was meant to be his first kiss, first love, first everything. Then their world spun upside-down and out of control.

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Book Review & Giveaway | The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland

July 14, 2015July 12, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

BOOK REVIEW | THE SECRETS WE KEEP

TITLE: The Secrets We Keep

AUTHOR: Stephanie Butland

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

A tragic accident, a broken heart, and a marriage drowning in secrets…

Mike always walks the dog in the evening while Elizabeth relaxes in the bathtub–but one night he doesn’t come back. Mike has drowned while saving a teenage girl named Kate, his dog standing on the bank barking frantically as the police pull his body from the water.

But despite her husband being lauded as a hero, Elizabeth can’t wrap her mind around the fact that Mike is gone–and Kate won’t reveal the details of what really happened that night.

Elizabeth finds herself facing the unfathomable possibility that she may not have known her husband at all. Does she really want to know the truth? Or will the weight of Mike’s secrets pull her under.(Description from NetGalley.com)

MY THOUGHTS

Have you ever read a book that from the very first page, you knew you wouldn’t be able to put it down? Well that’s how The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland is and I was hooked right from the very first sentence. I was so enthralled by this book that my husband was having a hard time pulling me away from it. He even tried to tempt me dinner (how cute!).

Stephanie Butland wrote this book to include letters Elizabeth was writing to her husband after his death. This was one of my favorite aspects of the book because it dove into the deeper feelings of Elizabeth. These are the feelings that many people won’t discuss with anyone else and the ones they keep to themselves. So being able to feel exactly what Elizabeth was feeling helped bring the book to another level.

There was one letter in particular that really stabbed at my heart and it read as follows:

People keep offering to “clear things out” for me. They mean, “Let me throw away Mike’s toothbrush, because I understand that you don’t want to. Let me get rid of the half-used shaving foam and the nearly gone shower gel and the new shower gel ready for when that one runs out, because it will be easier for me to remove these reminders than it would be for you to do it.” But I say, “No, thank you.”

That one small paragraph instantly made me think about my husband. It made me think, would I feel the same way? Would I grieve the same way? Would I want to keep his toothbrush and shower gel just to feel as though he’s still with me? I don’t know for sure, but when anyone loses the person they love it’s one of the hardest things to come to terms with and strange things,, like keeping their toothbrush don’t seem so strange.

As I read the book, I was able to predict what each “secret” was, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the book. It actually made me want to read it more quickly so that I could find out how it was revealed to the characters.

There were several times when I felt really sorry for Elizabeth because as each secret came to light she seemed to go back to the beginning of the grieving process and couldn’t come to terms with anything. Everything was becoming too hard for her to handle and she was cutting herself off from the world, which is not what you should do in her situation. In the end, Elizabeth did come out of the darkness and started walking a path towards forgiveness.

The Secrets We Keep is a powerfully heart wrenching novel that takes you through the different stages of grief, time and time again, as each secret is revealed.

I would highly recommend this book to my followers who enjoy reading Women’s Fiction novels.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

GIVEAWAY

Enter here to win a copy of The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland: a Rafflecopter giveaway

FAVORITE QUOTES

“Somewhere in the air around her drifts the understanding that the generations grieve differently, int he same ways that they love differently, dress differently, raise their children differently.”

“Tears fall from hers and gather on his face, and she wipes them away gently with the thumb that wears his wedding ring, and just for a moment these are his tears, and they are crying together.”

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS

Stephanie lives in Northumberland, England, and talks and trains in thinking skills all over Europe, most recently in Kazakhstan. She has written two books on her experience with cancer, and she is an active blogger and fundraiser. The Secrets We Keep is her first novel.

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Excerpt | The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland

July 13, 2015July 12, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

ABOUT THE SECRETS WE KEEP

TITLE: The Secrets We Keep

AUTHOR: Stephanie Butland

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

A tragic accident, a broken heart, and a marriage drowning in secrets…

But despite her husband being lauded as a hero, Elizabeth can’t wrap her mind around the fact that Mike is gone–and Kate won’t reveal the details of what really happened that night.

EXCERPT FROM THE SECRET WE KEEP

Elizabeth has never been to a funeral home before. She and Patricia enter the building together and then take turns going into the room. Patricia goes first and comes out swollen-faced and silent, nodding and clasping Elizabeth’s hands. So, still unsure, she rises and faces the oak-effect door.

It’s a smaller room than she thinks it will be. The light is low, and the smell of flowers, from a complex arrangement in which some of the smaller blooms are dying, is a mixture of sweetness and must. There’s a cross. And there’s a seat, next to the coffin. Because there’s a coffin. There’s a coffin. Elizabeth closes her eyes and tries to make herself breathe. She looks again. Yes, there’s a coffin. Mike’s coffin. Her soul winces. The top part is open, the rest closed.

Experimentally, Elizabeth puts her hand on the wood near the bottom, where she would imagine Mike’s feet to be, were she able to think about his cold, dead feet in a box. She checks her heart and feels nothing new, nothing worse. She takes a step farther up. Her hand is where his knees would be. The wood is smooth. Her palm runs up thigh, over stomach, rests on chest, in a horrible pantomime of what she’s done so often in life. Her mind is saying, Well, if Mike was gone, this is how it would be, yes, but he can’t be gone. He can’t be.

Elizabeth knows what needs to come next. So she takes another step, and she looks down.

Mike’s face is swollen, only slightly, and an odd color, although that might be the light. Blake had driven them the short distance, neither of them ready for the walk, or the people, or the light of an ordinary day. He had told them in the car that Mike would look as though he was sleeping, but this face, solemn and enclosed, bears no resemblance to her sprawling, duvet-hogging, snoring husband, liable at any moment to throw out an arm and pull her in to him, even though he was fast asleep.

Elizabeth realizes she is holding her breath as she fights to recognize what’s in front of her. Cautious, she reaches out her left hand, her own skin dull in this dull light. She touches his face. Her thumb strokes the indentation to the left of his right cheekbone. He is cold, and his skin is powdery, and she watches, waiting for him to open his eyes. Tears fall from hers and gather on his face, and she wipes them away gently with the thumb that wears his wedding ring, and just for a moment these are his tears, and they are crying together.

Elizabeth bends down and whispers, “You can pretend all you like, but I know you haven’t left me. I know you wouldn’t leave me.”

She whispers, “I want to hold your hand.” Her own hands, free to rake through her hair and twist around each other and catch at tears falling from her chin, tingle at the horrible thought of being contained in the way his are.

She whispers, “Show me that you haven’t gone,” and she sits, and she waits, her hand on the coffin where she thinks Michael’s hand must be. She closes her eyes. “You promised you would never leave me,” she says, trying a different tack, thinking a prod might work where a plea has failed. Time stops, and the world stops, and even the tears stop for a while, as Elizabeth strains for a sign, all of her senses ready and oh so willing. But no sign comes.

GIVEAWAY

Enter here to win a copy of The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland: a Rafflecopter giveaway

BUY LINKS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS

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Upcoming Book Review & Giveaway | The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland

July 12, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

UPCOMING BOOK REVIEW & GIVEAWAY

TITLE: The Secrets We Keep

AUTHOR: Stephanie Butland

PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Landmark

RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2015

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

A tragic accident, a broken heart, and a marriage drowning in secrets…

But despite her husband being lauded as a hero, Elizabeth can’t wrap her mind around the fact that Mike is gone–and Kate won’t reveal the details of what really happened that night.

Tomorrow I will be posting an excerpt from the book and information on how to enter to win a copy of The Secrets We Keep.

BUY LINKS

AMAZON | B&N | BAM!

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Upcoming Book Review | Autumn Getaway by Jennifer Gracen

July 6, 2015July 4, 2015 ~ Danielle Olson ~ Leave a comment

UPCOMING BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: Autumn Getaway, Season of Love Book One

AUTHOR: Jennifer Gracen

PUBLISHER: Booktrope

RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2014

GENRE: Romance, Women’s Fiction

Author Jennifer Gracen brings together a colorful cast of friends and family in Book One of the Seasons of Love series, Autumn Getaway. Newly divorced mom Lydia is just getting back on her feet. Her college roommate’s wedding promises a much-needed getaway weekend with old friends, at a beautiful manor in Connecticut.

When she meets Sam, a handsome friend of the groom, she’s nearly overwhelmed by a confusing mix of hope and trepidation. Their instant connection feels intensely real, to both of them, but the ink is barely dry on her divorce decree. It takes all her nerve, and more than a little prodding from her girlfriends, to convince Lydia to give her heart — and Sam — a chance. But when the magical weekend comes to a close, Sam must return to Chicago, while Lydia heads back to her complicated life and young son in New York. Can their newfound connection survive the trials of physical distance and years of emotional baggage?

Written with an appreciation for the day-to-day struggles of a newly single mom, Autumn Getaway explores the burdens and blessings of family, revels in the spirit of friendship, and celebrates the power of romance and hope as Lydia and Sam take a second chance at love. (Description from NetGalley.com)

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