The irresistible heroine of Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Ties the Knot is back! And this time Becky Bloomwood and her credit cards are headed across the Atlantic....
With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky's biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend. And worse, figuring out how to pack light. But packing takes on a whole new meaning when Luke announces he's moving to New York for business--and he asks Becky to go with him! Before you can say "Prada sample sale," Becky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury boutiques.
Surely it's only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society. Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky's bills miles away in London. But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line! Shopaholic Takes Manhattan--but will she have to return it?

My review...........4 stars

I finished this book a couple days ago, but decided to wait until today to post my review since this is the release day of book #7 in this series! I had read the first book (Confessions of a Shopaholic) a few years ago, but wanted to continue a bit with the series before the new one makes its way to my TBR pile. I had also recently read some rather intense books, and knew this one would be a light, fun escape. That is exactly what I got! I know these books are not for everyone (most reviewers seem to either love them or hate them), but I like that they can make me laugh out loud while reading! Other than the fact that I do enjoy shopping, I am nothing at

all like the main character Becky Bloomwood. Her forays into debt, because of her shopping addiction, is probably what turns people off from these books, but I can separate that this is a fictional character! Her mounting debt from shopping, and the resulting ways she deals with it, are what makes the story work. In this book we also have the added benefit of her boyfriend Luke, a character I love because he ultimately accepts Becky for who she is, the bad and the good. I had fun with the setting of NYC, since I've been there several times, and know most of the places (and shops) she talks about.

My advice, if you're not sure about these books, would be to pick one up at the library or at a used book shop, and try them out. Even if you are not a fan of Becky Bloomwood, you really should try another book by this author (there are several that are stand alone books). I guarantee you will find yourself laughing wile reading, as well as enjoying a darn good story.

Review: The Same Sky 3

ondbookshelfOctober 18, 20143 Comments

The Same Sky: A Novel

by Amanda Eyre Ward

In this heartrending and poignant novel, award-winning author Amanda Eyre Ward tells the story of Alice Conroe, a forty year old Texas barbecue owner who has the perfect life, except she and her husband long for a child. Unable to conceive, she’s trying desperately to adopt but her destiny is quickly altered by a young woman she’s never met.

Fearless thirteen-year-old Carla Trujilio is being raised by her grandmother in Honduras along with her four year old twin brothers. Her mother is sending money home from Texas where she’s trying to make a better life for her family, but she only has enough to bring one son to her. When Carla’s grandmother dies, Carla decides to take her fate into her own hands and embarks on a dangerous journey across the border with Junior, the twin left behind.

Two powerful journeys intersecting at a pivotal moment in time: Alice and Carla’s lives will be forever and profoundly changed. Heartbreaking, emotional, and arresting, this novel is about finding the courage to trail blaze your own path in life with faith, hope and love, no matter the struggle or the tragedy.

My review.........4.5 stars

Oh my goodness, what a gem of a novel! Wonderfully written, told in alternating chapters from the two main characters, Alice and Carla. While both stories were great, I absolutely fell in love with Carla! What an inspiring girl, Ward has written her perfectly. You do figure out how it's going to end before the actual ending, but the last entry from Carla had me bawling (I'm not going to reveal whether it was tears of sadness or joy, you have to read this to find out!). I would

LOVE a sequel to this book, and hope the author decides to make one. I couldn't get enough of these characters, and there were enough loose ends to warrant reading more of them.

This is my first novel by this author, and you can bet I'm going to go back and read some of her previous work! I got this book from netgalley for an advance review. The actual release date is January 27, 2015. I wish it was closer, many may forget about it by then, so go put it on your wish lists, tbr lists, whatever method you have. You don't want to miss this one.

Review: Lost Lake

ondbookshelfOctober 16, 2014October 16, 2014Leave a comment

Lost Lake

by Sarah Addison Allen

Suley, Georgia, is home to Lost Lake Cottages and not much else. Which is why it's the perfect place for newly-widowed Kate and her eccentric eight-year-old daughter Devin to heal. Kate spent one memorable childhood summer at Lost Lake, had her first almost-kiss at Lost Lake, and met a boy named Wes at Lost Lake. It was a place for dreaming. But Kate doesn't believe in dreams anymore, and her Aunt Eby, Lost Lake's owner, wants to sell the place and move on. Lost Lake's magic is gone. As Kate discovers that time has a way of standing still at Lost Lake can she bring the cottages—and her heart—back to life?Sometimes lost loves aren't really lost. They're right where you left them, waiting for you to find them again.

My review.........3 stars

I've been looking to read this book since it's release back in January. For some reason, I didn't purchase it when it came out, and by the time I got to the library for it, the waiting list was miles long! I was puttering around on book outlet the other day (a very dangerous place to be....lol) when I spotted it! At about 70% off, how could I resist?

I thought this book was a pleasurable, pretty fast read. I think there were a lot of characters, so I didn't feel like any of them were given time to be fully developed. I also did not like the magic parts of the alligator, but that is just me. Anytime I read the words magic, dystopian, sci-fi, on a book synopsis, I'm usually not likely to pick it up (with a few exceptions). It was not distracting enough in this book to keep me from continuing to read it, but I kind of wish it had not been there at all.

This was my first book I've read from this author, and I know others have gotten great reviews, so it will definitely not be my last. She has a new one coming out in January, and the cover is to die for (yes, I'm a sucker for a beautiful book cover!).

Enjoyable read if you can pick it up on sale or at the library.

Review: Hello From the Gillespies 2

ondbookshelfOctober 14, 2014October 14, 20142 Comments

Hello From the Gillespies

by Monica McInerney

For the past thirty-three years, Angela Gillespie has sent to friends and family around the world an end-of-the-year letter titled “Hello from the Gillespies.” It’s always been cheery and full of good news. This year, Angela surprises herself—she tells the truth....The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping badly with retirement. Her thirty-two-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when a bump on the head leaves Angela with temporary amnesia, the Gillespies pull together—and pull themselves together—in wonderfully surprising ways....

My Review............3.5 stars

The premise of this book was so clever, and something I felt had not been done before, which I really appreciate having read as many books as I do. I love reading the annual Christmas letters from friends (and I have sent them myself), but they almost always portray only the good things that have happened over the years (with the occasional reference to an elderly parent dying). This woman pours her heart out with what is really happening to her family, never intending for the letter to be sent.......but by mistake, it gets sent out! The book is pretty much the fallout of the reactions to the letter. I say pretty much, because it gets a bit lost from the topic during the second half. I loved the first half of the book, but it almost started to take on a soap opera-ish feel in the middle of the book. It did get back on track as far as the character study of the family. I particularly liked the way she wrote the young son Ig into the second half. I did like the writing style, and I did want to find out how all the characters made out at the end of the book.

Overall, a good (but lengthy) read. Had it not been for the divergence from the original plot, I most likely would have given it another star.

This book is being released on November 4, 2014. I've seen other versions of the cover, so this may not be the US cover. I really like this cover, as it ties into something significant in the book, so I hope they keep it. Thanks to netgalley.com for the advance review.

Review: Five Days Left

ondbookshelfOctober 7, 2014Leave a comment

Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

Destined to be a book club favorite, a heart-wrenching debut about two people who must decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice for love.
Mara Nichols, a successful lawyer, and devoted wife and adoptive mother, has recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease. Scott Coffman, a middle school teacher, has been fostering an eight-year-old boy while the boy’s mother serves a jail sentence. Scott and Mara both have five days left until they must say good-bye to the ones they love the most. Through their stories, Julie Lawson Timmer explores the individual limits of human endurance, the power of relationships, and that sometimes loving someone means holding on, and sometimes it means letting go.

My review.............4 stars

Let me preface this review by suggesting that you have some tissues handy at all times. I cried (the first time) at 75 pages in! Do not let that influence you in thinking this is some sappy novel. The subject matter surrounding the two main characters is just the sort of thing that makes me weepy. Ask my family and you will know that this is not hard to do, I can be seen blubbering over the Hallmark commercials on tv 🙂

The story involves two people who are very indirectly related through a web site chat room. I absolutely loved the character of Mara, and had the book been just her story, I would have easily given it five stars. The story of Scott, while still good, left me feeling a bit ho-hum. I thought it was too predictable, and something that I've read before. I would give his part of the story three stars, hence my overall 4 star rating.

You must read this for Mara's story! Try out the Scott parts, and if you like them, by all means read the entire book. If you are left feeling that you are reading his parts to get back to Mara, just read the Mara parts. It is not the kind of book where you need to read both characters or you will be left confused at the end. I'm still thinking about Mara several days after finishing the story........always the sign of a great read!! Don't miss this one!

Review: All The Light We Cannot See 3

ondbookshelfSeptember 30, 20143 Comments

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

My review...........2 stars

I've had this book on my tbr pile for awhile, and when I saw that it is nominated for the national book award, I decided it was time to pick it up. I so wanted to love this book, it's getting glowing reviews. As is often the case, I don't very often like the books that get nominated for prestigious book awards 🙁 I thought this book was dull, and drawn out, and honestly, not much happens. Sure, it takes place during WWII, so there is that, but the story just didn't grab me like several other books I've read that take place during this time. It also bounces around, not only from one main character to the other (which I didn't mind), but from the present to the past. It just made for confusion, and could have been told in chronological order without destroying anything in my opinion. I did stay engaged enough in Marie Laure's story to keep reading, but I really couldn't get into Werner's character at all. I also felt that the description of the plot was rather deceiving. It makes it sound like the characters interact way more than is the case. Perhaps I would have liked them better if they had been together for more of the book.

I'm giving this one star for not disliking it so much that I couldn't finish, and adding another star for the fact that there is some beautiful writing involved. The descriptions are lovely, and I thought the author did an excellent job writing about Marie Laure (who is blind). I wouldn't recommend this, but as I've stated above, I am not in the majority, lots of 5 stars for this book.

Review: Christmas on Chestnut Street

ondbookshelfSeptember 26, 2014Leave a comment

Christmas on Chestnut Street: A Novel

by Nancy Thayer

In this enchanting holiday novel from New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer, family and friends gather on Nantucket for a gorgeous winter wedding with plenty of merry surprises in store.

As Christmas draws near, Felicia returns to her family’s home on the island to marry her adventurous, rugged boyfriend, Archie. Every detail is picture-perfect for a dream wedding: the snow-dusted streets, twinkling lights in the windows, a gorgeous red and white satin dress. Except a lavish ceremony is not Felicia’s dream at all; it’s what her mother, Jilly, wants. Jilly’s also worried that her daughter’s life with daredevil Archie will be all hiking and skydiving. Wondering if their handsome neighbor Steven Hardy might be a more suitable son-in-law, Jilly embarks on a secret matchmaking campaign for Felicia and the dashing stockbroker.

As the big day approaches and Jilly’s older daughter, Lauren, appears with rambunctious kids in tow, tensions in the household are high. With the family careening toward a Yuletide wedding disaster, an unexpected twist in Nancy Thayer’s heartwarming tale reminds everyone about the true meaning of the season.

My Review...........3.5 stars

Cute, fast, fun read that even had me (who hates snow) longing to spend a Christmas season on Nantucket 🙂 I loved the fact that when I started reading, I thought I knew how it was going to end, and was sort of groaning inside, that it would be so typical of a lot of other books in this genre. Without giving anything away, it did not end this way, and for that I was grateful, and liked it even more. The writing style is pretty simplistic, so don't go into this thinking you are going to have anything more than a light, pleasurable read. For me, that is often enough, especially if I'm reading something kind of heavy at the same time. There are several characters in the book that you change your initial attitude about as the story progresses, or at least I did.

This is the perfect book to pick up before the holiday season. I was given a copy to preview by netgalley, so I am reading/reviewing it before it's release date of October 28th. I think if I had waited until November to read it, I probably would have bumped up my review to 4 stars.

Review: Big Little Lies 1

ondbookshelfSeptember 24, 2014September 24, 20141 Comment

Big Little Lies

by Liane Moriarty

Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . .
A murder… . . . a tragic accident… . . . or just parents behaving badly?
What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. But who did what?
Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads: Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).
Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.
Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

My Review..........5 stars!

This is one of those books that you just can't put down until you find out what's going to happen! On the surface this book is about the parents (mostly the moms) at an elementary school. It has all the typical social hierarchy, mean moms, and finger pointing that go on all the time in these communities. But it is so much more than that! It's also about what goes on behind closed doors of these families, interspersed with a murder that you not only want to figure out the "who done it", but also the "who is it"? Oh, and there is a huge twist at the end to complete the package! This is one of those books that felt way shorter to me than the over 400 pages that it contains because you just kept turning pages to find out what was going to happen next.

This is my third book by this author (What Alice Forgot and The Husband's Secret being the others), and while I enjoyed the other two, this one is by far my favorite! Such a fun read, don't miss it 🙂

Review: The House We Grew Up In 1

ondbookshelfSeptember 18, 20141 Comment

The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and tow-headed twins Rory and Rhys all attend the village school and eat home-cooked meals together every night. Their father is a sweet gangly man named Colin, who still looks like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish, round-framed glasses. Their mother is a beautiful hippy named Lorelei, who exists entirely in the moment. And she makes every moment sparkle in her children's lives.

Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family's desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.

My review..............5 stars

What a great read!! I was first intrigued by this book when I read that one of the central issues was hoarding. I have to admit a fascination with that tv show about hoarders, so I went into the book to fuel that. What I got was SO much more! From watching the television show, it's always very clear that something happens in the people's lives to trigger the hoarding of stuff. It's also true in this case, although Lorelei always had the tendency to collect things well before the extenuating circumstances. All of the characters in this book have issues to deal with, it's without a doubt a dysfunctional family. And yet, they all fit together, and you can see throughout the book why each is the way that they are. This book is written by an English writer who I have not read before, but I'm certain to check out some of her previous works. Her writing style was great, and I got a kick out of some of the names for commonplace items, my favorite being people carrier (ie car). There wasn't really anything I would change about this book, I loved it from beginning to end!

Definitely worth the read, and you'll thank me when it makes you want to clean up all your clutter after you're done 🙂

OnDBookshelf

Review: Shopaholic Takes Manhattan 2

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (Shopaholic #2)