In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman and a classmate embarked on a bold trek around the globe starting in the People’s Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent backpackers for roughly ten minutes. Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche and Linda Goodman’s Love Signs, the two friends plunged into the dusty streets of Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, they quickly found themselves in over their heads–hungry, disoriented, stripped of everything familiar, and under constant government surveillance. Soon, they began to unravel–one physically, the other psychologically. As their journey became increasingly harrowing, they found themselves facing crises that Susan didn’t think they’d survive. But by summoning strengths she never knew she had–and with help from unexpected friends–the two travelers found their way out of a Chinese heart of darkness.

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Can you say road trip?  😉

I love the story here!  Author Susan Jame Gillman shares in this memoir, a road trip here and her friend Claire took when they were in college.  I love that!  As they venture into China their story unfold at first as a fun girls trip to quickly escalating into something I would describe as pretty scary fro me – let alone two young college girls in the 80’s, which would be the exact time frame when I would have been getting out of school myself!

As the girls do their exploring things change rapidly for Claire and I don’t want to give too much away here, but let me just say her mental health became unstable which puts a bit of a scary dimension to the book as the story unfolds.  For myself I can not imagine dealing with such circumstances in an area unknown to myself and no one to turn to for help.

Susan writes this story with a refreshingly funny and open voice and with a wonderful recollection of the events that took place.  At times I was in awe of what was happening, and at other times I laughed out loud.  I found her writing descriptive and I could get a good picture of a country and people who I have never had the experience of seeing for myself.  Through Susan’s eyes and her words I feel as though I have just closed the pages to an exciting adventure.

About The Author

Susan Jane Gillman is the author of three nonfiction books, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and Kiss My Tiara (see bookshelf). Have contributed to numerous  anthologies, worked as journalist, and written for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Real Simple, Washington City Paper, Us magazine among others. Won New York Press  Association Award for features written on assignment in Poland.

In her own words: Funny, but... I never set out to write books that made people laugh. My main love has always been literary fiction, and the first book I completed (which has yet to be published) was a collection of serious short stories. However, even with my darkest work, people would always tell me that parts of it were funny. This annoyed me because I aspired to be an American Dostoevsky with Breasts.
But in 1999, I took a writers’ workshop at the Bethesda Writers’ Center. The first story I submitted was a heartbreaking tale of a man’s addiction, which impressed the class. The second was an absurd story about mistaken identity full of Jews, Rastafarians, and dental hygienists. To my great irritation, the class liked this one infinitely more.
After class, a man pulled me aside. “I have to tell you,” he said. “My wife has been battling breast cancer. I read her your story last night, and it was the first time in two years she really laughed. You’ve got a gift. Please don’t ignore it. Not everyone can make a sick woman laugh in her hospital bed.”  That’s when I finally saw the merit in my own, lurking smart-ass and stopped fighting it.

My review copy was given to me by Hachette Book Group

Becky and her brother John were best buddies, telling jokes, caring for their dog Toby, and playing soccer. John was always there to cheer her up and help her out—until he died. Becky wishes everything could go back to the way it was. When she is surprised and feels guilty about enjoying a friend’s birthday party, her mom wraps reassuring arms around her and says, “Don’t you think he’d want you to laugh, even now?” She gradually realizes that she can still enjoy the things that they used to do together and that the memories of John continue to make him part of their family. Always My Brother is a sensitive, realistic story about the process of grief, acceptance, and recovery. Phyllis Pollema-Cahill’s lovely illustrations bring readers right into the heart of Becky’s family as they struggle to move forward.

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This book touched the very center of my heart.  I felt the sense of loss that Becky did with every turn of the page.  This book deals with what it feels like to lose someone close to you at a young age.  Appropriately worded to be understood at a grade school level I not only loved the gentle words used by Jean Reagan, but also felt the compassion come through in the illustrations by Phyllis Pollema Cahill.

This book is one I would recommend to any one who has a young child in their life who is dealing with grief.  I think this book should be a must in every grade school library.  I know as someone who dealt with this topic at a young age a book like this would have been wonderful.

Please visit Tilbury House for discussion points, classroom activities, literature links and further resources for using this book in the classroom.

Thank you to Natasha at Maw Books, where I won this autographed copy of this book.  I am now donating this book to Harrison Elementary School in our town, in memory of my sister Tara, who died in a house fire when she was 5.  Truly missed every day of my life.  ♥

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier.

On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out how he made the list.

Through Hannah and Clay’s dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.

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I won this book from a contest being held on J Kaye’s Blog. I had my pick of several books to choose from but this one with its title and what it was about for some reason called to me.  I wanted to read it.  I had to read it.  A fiction book on teenage suicide and I was drawn to it.  I am so glad that I was.

Hannah was in high school.  As this book opens, she is already gone.  As we enter the read. Clay has just received a series of tapes, 13 actually, that turn out to be from Hannah with instructions to listen to all the tapes and then pass them on to the next person as instructed.

Clay, who secretly had loved Hannah from afar, is appalled that Hannah would record her reasons for committing suicide and wondered what he had to do with it.  In an almost addictive like manner, Clay begins to listen to the cassettes one after another and Hannah’s story unfolds before our eyes.

Told in Hannah and Clays voice, I found myself as addicted to the read as Clay was to listening to the cassettes.  It was hard to stop, knowing what was at stake.  occasionally I would get so caught up in Hannah’s story, when it switched to Clay’s voice I had to pull myself out and read parts again.

I read this book in two days.  On the second day I didn’t plan on sitting down and finishing the book but I just couldn’t put it down.  Each tape, each chapter, each new character drew me in further….. who was it?  Was it one person who caused Hannah to finally end it all or was it a combination of people, of events.

Hannah’s story, while fictional, brings up a valid and important topic.  High school years are hard.  Within the pages of this book you discover that it is not one person or one event that sends Hannah spiraling downward.  As you read, while some of what happened to Hannah is hurtful, I didn’t find where it was intentionally so.  No one in the story knew how fragile Hannah was.  Perhaps someone knowing would have changed the outcome, perhaps not.

This book is a good reminder of how we treat others.  We never know where someone is coming from or where they have been.  I took so much away from this book and could go on and on but instead of saying too much I am going to play the spoiler card and say that if you have read this book and wish to discuss it further, join me in the Spoiler Room where this can be talked about more deeply.

I leave you with this information on Suicide which I pulled from Author Jay Arthur’s Blog called Hannah’s Reasons:

**Later this week I will be posting an author chat with Jay Asher about this book!

My Amazon Rating

I won this book from J Kaye’s Blog

Read in its entirety from the comfy recliner

Maura Sullivan thought she knew what she was getting into when she married soon-to-be pastor Nick Shepherd. But when “the other woman” in her marriage turned out to be her husband’s congregation, she ran. Three years later, she’s back in the small community of Granger, Ohio, for the reading of a will that names both her and Nick as beneficiaries. Now Maura must face the husband – and the congregation – she left behind.

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A friend passes way…. a will is left mentioning both Nick and Maura…. and a stipulation in order for each of them to get an inheritance that they both desire.  But is the stipulation too great?  Maura has been gone from Granger, Ohio for three years.  Three years is a long time and old wounds are still easily rubbed raw and unhealed.

Maura arrives back in Granger having put her own faith on the back burner believing that God has done nothing but let her down time and time again.  As Nick tried to help Maura through this faith crisis it looks as though their is hope for repairing their long damaged marriage as well – yet there is one secret that Maura has yet to share with Nick that may destroy what they are working so hard to repair.

It is a book about love, forgiveness, and letting go.  I appreciated the real characters with real issues. Maura and Nick were real feeling characters and I enjoyed getting to know them with in the walls of their home and in the pages of this book. Watching my own Pastor (I am the Office Manager at our Church)and the hours he puts in really makes me appreciate all it must take to be a Pastor’s Wife.

Jennifer AlLee was born in Hollywood, California and for the first 10 years of her life lived over a mortuary one block from Hollywood and Vine. An avid reader and writer, she completed her first novel in high school. That manuscript is now safely tucked away, never again to see the light of day. Her first inspirational romance, The Love of His Brother, was released in November 2007 by Five Star Publisher.

Besides being a writer, she is a wife and mom. Living in Las Vegas, Nevada, her husband and teenage son have learned how to enjoy the fabulous buffets there without severely impacting their waistlines. God is good!

My Amazon Rating

I received this review book from The Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

This book was mostly read at the gym on the treadmill and eliptical

You’d think Polly Martin would have all the answers when it comes to love—after all, her grandmother is the famous syndicated advice columnist Miss Swoon. But after a junior year full of dating disasters, Polly has sworn off boys. Now she’s just trying to survive her summer job at Wild Waves western-themed water park (under the supervision of ex #3 Sawyer Holmes) and focus on herself for once. So Polly is happy when she finds out Grandma is moving in for the summer –think of all the great advice she’ll get.
But Miss Swoon turns out to be a man-crazy sexagenarian! How can Polly stop herself from falling for Xander Cooper, the suddenly-hot skateboarder who keeps showing up at Wild Waves, when Grandma is picking up guys at the bookstore and flirting with the dishwasher repairman? And why, despite her best intentions, does Polly keep letting boys get in the way of her relationship with her best friend Jane?

No advice column in the world can prepare Polly for what happens when Jane convinces her to go on a group camping trip with three too many ex-boyfriends and the tempting Xander. Polly is forced to face her feelings and figure out if she can be in love—and still be herself.

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OMG… What do you do when you work summer duty at a waterpark with your oh soooo cute ex boyfriend, have a mom who is a 5th grade teacher and in the summer takes a job at the local teen hangout serving greasy burgers and making lame jokes to all your friends, a 10 year old sister who is just you know… ten, a best friend who you are having trouble connecting with, another sort of friend who blogs about every wrong move you make – and then there is the geeky boy…. who really…. come to think of it…. isn’t so geeky any more.

I really (totally) loved this book.  It was light and refreshing.  This book takes you through one summer of happenings in Polly’s life and the paragraph I wrote above pretty much sums up what is going on.  Oh – but I didn’t mention the bulldog…. or the kiss…. yeah the kiss…..

I can’t tell you everything and give away the book but I can tell you if you are looking for a great YA read this is a good pick.  My only tiny thing I would mention is that the characters are mostly 17 years old and there is some underage drinking going on.  Other than that, I had moments I laughed out loud.  A fun read.

I received my copy from 1 Arc Tours

Read in its entirety in a car on the way home from Illinois

Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck lawyer. But just when he’s about to hit rock bottom, he stumbles upon a business with the potential to solve all of his problems.

In Waverly’s new line of work, he comes to the aid of people in desperate need of cash. But there’s a catch. His clients must be terminally ill and willing to sign over rights to their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime. Waverly then finds investors eager to advance them thousands of dollars—including a hefty broker’s fee for himself—in exchange for a significant return on their investment once the clients take their last breath.

The stakes get higher when Waverly brokers the policy of the cancer-stricken wife of Lawrence Erickson, a high-powered lawyer who’s bucking to become the next U.S. Attorney General. When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, both Waverly and Erickson—who has some skeletons of his own to hide—are unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder.

I have read Pamela Samuels Young before when I was introduced to her by reading Murder On The Down Low.  Another enjoyable read, I was excited to have the opportunity to meet up with her again in Buying Time.  Except this time, I had better be packing a weapon as the territory is filled with high crime.

A fast paced thrill ride through interesting and well put together characters.  As the pages turn the plot thickens and I found myself reading as fast as the pace seemed to have been set by author Pamela Samuels Young. At times I couldn’t imagine what would happen next and at other times I was laughing out loud (this always gets looks form my husband).   was impressed that as the book came to a close no loose ends were left untied.   What we had was a neatly wrapped book that left me clinging to the words throughout the next few days and really thinking about the companies in the book.

I don’t read a lot of legal thrillers but when I find this genre with Pamela’s name attached to it I do not hesitate to pick it up.  Well written and enjoyable!

About Pamela Samuels Young

Corporate attorney Pamela Samuels Young has always abided by the philosophy that you create the change you want to see. Fed up with never seeing women or people of color depicted as savvy, hot shot attorneys in the legal thrillers she read, Pamela decided to create her own characters. Despite the demands of a busy legal career, Pamela accomplished her ambitious goal by rising at four in the morning to write before work, dedicating her weekends to writing and even spending her vacation time glued to her laptop for ten or more hours a day.

The Essence magazine bestselling author now has four fast-paced legal thrillers to show for her efforts: Every Reasonable Doubt (BET Books, February 2006), In Firm Pursuit (Harlequin, January 2007), Murder on the Down Low (Goldman House Publishing, September 2008) and Buying Time (Goldman House Publishing, November 2009). New York Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel described Buying Time, Pamela’s first stand-alone novel, as a “deftly plotted thriller that combines the best of Lisa Scottoline and Robert Crais.”

Pamela has achieved a successful writing career while working as Managing Counsel for Labor and Employment Law for a large corporation in Southern California. Prior to that, she served as Employment Law Counsel for Raytheon Company and spent several years with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP in Los Angeles. A former journalist, Pamela began her broadcasting career as a production assistant at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, where she was quickly promoted to news writer. To escape the chilly Detroit winters, she returned home to Los Angeles and worked at KCBS-TV as a news writer and associate producer.

My Amazon Rating

I received my copy through Pump Up Your Book

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families,left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

I would say that is the best book I have read this year.  I have often enjoyed fiction stories that are entwined with a taste of non fiction as well and that is what we have here.  What a fascinating way to piece a story together!  Set in Seattle during World War II, Jamie Ford has based this book around the details of 1942 and the evacuation of all Japanese ancestry to camps featuring Henry as a young man of 12 years old as well as present age Henry in 1986.

From the very first page I fell in love with this story.  I am amazed how little I know of this time period and reading

about what happened to those of Japanese ancestry during the war really was heart wrenching.  I could imagine what it felt like to be separated from everything you knew – home, job, life, material possessions… all taken away.  All because of your heritage.  The characters in Keiko’s family were wonderfully created as loving and positive and they stayed a family through thick and thin.  They were portrayed the exact opposite of Henry’s family, and that is a large part of this story.

The Panama Hotel, which is featured in this book – still exists today as a tea house and the in the story, the articles that are mentioned to have been found in this hotel is true and you can go there even today and see many of the items on display.

I could go on and on RAVING about this book.  It is a wonderful read as well as a deep and intense look into our history.  Highly recommended for historical fiction fans as well as fans of light romance.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

What the Eldredge bestsellers Wild at Heart did for men, and Captivating did for women, LOVE & WAR will do for married couples everywhere. John and Stasi Eldredge have contributed the quintessential works on Christian spirituality through the experience of men and the experience of women and now they turn their focus to the incredible dynamic between those two forces.

With refreshing openness that will grab readers from the first page, the Eldredges candidly discuss their own marriage and the insights they’ve gained from the challenges they faced. Each talks independently to the reader about what they’ve learned, giving their guidance personal immediacy and a balance between the male and female perspectives that has been absent from all previous books on this topic.   They begin LOVE & WAR with an obvious but necessary acknowledgement:  Marriage is fabulously hard.  They advise that the sooner we get the shame and confusion off our backs, the sooner we’ll find our way through.

LOVE & WAR shows couples how to fight for their love and happiness, calling men and women to step into the great adventure God has waiting for them together. Walking alongside John and Stasi Eldredge, every couple can discover how their individual journeys are growing into a story of meaning much greater than anything they could do or be on their own.

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If you know me and have read my reviews, you would know that I do not like self-help books.  I just don’t.  I say this now as it may be easy to look at this book and label it self-help.  I want to clarify it is not.  What the Eldredges have so wonderfully packaged here within the pages is an important message on living your marriage well.  Yes – let’s get real, it is not always going to be the heart pounding romantic “I can’t wait for him to call” moments.  In fact those early days of the butterflies are hard to remember when the work hours are long, the bills are high, and lets face it – maybe you really havent connected in a while.  The Eldridges give a strong Biblical approach to marriage that was a refreshing look into what is true.

I have read both Wild At Heart by John Eldridge and Captivating by Stasi Eldridge.  Both, amazing writers. I knew when I seen this book that it would be one I would want to read and the joint efforts of this couple really paid off.  An honest and “tear down the walls and bare the truth” kind of book that at times had my laughing and at times thinking deeply about what I had just read.

My Amazon Review

I received my copy as part of a tour with Waterbrook Multnomah