Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell

by:  Maggie Mitchell
published by:  Henry Holt & Co
publish date:  July 7, 2015

The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still.

This book was just sort of ok for me.  I went through the whole thing, and it was interesting, but there were a lot of little points that aggravated me throughout.

Lois and Carly May were 12 the summer they were kidnapped by "Zed".  He held them in a cabin for six weeks.  Then the police found them and they both went about their lives until Lois wrote a book.  It was a fiction book that loosely described the events that took place while they were held by Zed.  The book got picked up by a movie studio and by then Carly Mae was now a B List actress and she was hired to play a part in the movie.  She knew right away that it was her story and it was her chance to reconnect with Lois.  Throw in a creepy stalker that wants to re-enact the entire scenario on the movie set and you have the book Pretty Is.

So my issues were that not one but two, 12 year old girls went willingly with a kidnapper.  There was never any explanation as to how "Zed" tracked these girls down across state lines in a time when computers probably weren't too prevalent.  Secondly, he kept them for 6 weeks...or 2 months...it varies throughout the book.  Yet, the girls apparently read stacks of books in that time.  They did tons and tons of stuff in the time he kept them...it made it sound like it was 6 months instead of 6 years.  I had a hard time with the timeline.  Also, their apparent Stockholm Syndrome or whatever was going on with them was really weird and never really explained.  There seemed to be a lot of story about the after and not enough explanation about the before to justify the after.

I'd recommend this book just to see if anyone else agrees with me!!  It was an ok story.  It was interesting.  I think it could have been better.

Stuck in a Good Book Hop Giveaway!

We are excited to be a part of the Stuck in a Good Book Hop.  For a list of participating blogs go here.

We have 2 packs up for grabs.  2 lucky winners will be chosen. Just fill out the rafflecopter below to enter.  (Us only please) Good luck!

Pack 1:

 Pack #2

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Con Academy by Joe Schreiber

by:  Joe Schreiber
published by:  HMH Books for Young Readers
publish date:   August 4, 2015

Meet Will Shea, a con artist who has bluffed his way into one of the nation’s most exclusive private schools. But Will isn’t the only scammer at Connaughton Academy—Andrea Dufresne is there too, and the ivy-covered campus isn’t big enough for the both of them.

So they make a bet—and the winner gets more than just a high school diploma. In this twisty tale of secrets, lies, and deception—it’s hard to figure out who’s double-crossing who. May the best con win!

Ok, so I'm not a con artist so perhaps that is why I don't always get "cons".  I don't understand all the ins and outs of the details and how it all goes together.  And then why anyone actually believes it!  I would watch that show Leverage and be dumbfounded that all this crazy stuff was actually supposed to work.  I guess it does, if all these scams have names, then they must have worked numerous times.  Anyway, I don't get it.

I thought a book about a teenage con artist might be interesting though.  It was ok.  Out of the two, of Will and Andrea, I thought Andrea was a more intriguing character.  I would have liked to have known more about her.  I had really high hopes that this would be a really wild, mad cap caper type book.  Like an Ocean's Eleven type adventure.  It was really nothing like that.  It was just two kids trying to bilk another kid out of some money.  

Would I recommend it, not especially.  I was a little disappointed.  There are plenty of other books out in the world though.  Let's go find another one!

All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Author: Ally Carter
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Date of publication: January 2015

Grace Blakely is absolutely certain of three things:

1. She is not crazy.
2. Her mother was murdered.
3. Someday she is going to find the killer and make him pay.

As certain as Grace is about these facts, nobody else believes her -- so there's no one she can completely trust. Not her grandfather, a powerful ambassador. Not her new friends, who all live on Embassy Row. Not Alexei, the Russian boy next door, who is keeping his eye on Grace for reasons she neither likes nor understands.

Everybody wants Grace to put on a pretty dress and a pretty smile, blocking out all her unpretty thoughts. But they can't control Grace -- no more than Grace can control what she knows or what she needs to do. Her past has come back to hunt her . . . and if she doesn't stop it, Grace isn't the only one who will get hurt. Because on Embassy Row, the countries of the world stand like dominoes, and one wrong move can make them all fall down.

In All Fall Down, Grace has returned to Embassy Row to live with her grandfather while her father is deployed.  He is an ambassador which means she will be living in the American Embassy.  For Grace, the return is bitter sweet as it holds constant reminders of her late mother.  She is convinced her mother was murdered by a scarred man and that it wasn't an accident.  When she sees him at an embassy ball, she decides to try to figure out what really happened. 

I was surprised at how much I enjoy All Fall Down.  I thought it was a really good mystery that totally kept me guessing.  In fact, I will admit to thinking that Grace really was crazy a time or two during during the story.  I totally didn't call the end.  Which was a kind of cliffhanger, by the way and one that is making me want the next book, like now!  

While I liked Grace's character, she could be a little angsty at times.  Besides Grace, there are some other great characters in the book.  Noah was adorably nerdy. Megan was kind of scary in a kick-ass secret spy kind of way. And Alexi looked to be a possible love interest in the future.  This is definitely a series that I will continue with and one I would recommend to anyone over the age of 13.

Throwback Thursday: Do You Take This Rebel? By Sherryl Woods

Author: Sherryl Woods
First published in 2001 by Silhouette

PREGNANT AND UNMARRIED, SHE LEFT TOWN...

Now Cassie Collins had returned to reconnect with her oldest friends, the Calamity Janes, and put her troubles behind her. But trouble found her in the disconcertingly sexy form of Cole Davis--father of her child. Having discovered her secret, Cole demanded a convenient marriage--or Cassie could lose her son to the powerful, wealthy Davis clan. Time hadn't dulled Cassie's anger at the man who'd betrayed her ten years ago...nor cooled the fiery attraction between them. Could she rekindle their long-lost love, and unite Cole, herself and their son in the precious bonds of family?

I really have mixed feelings about  this book.  Do You Take This Rebel is a mix of a second chance at love and a hidden child story.  I love the first and really detest the second.  In this one, Cassie and Cole were in love at a young age.  Their parents didn't want them to be together, After Cole gets sent off to college, Cassie finds out that she is pregnant and decides to leave town.  Now she is back after 10 years for her high school reunion.

Ultimately, I thought this was a sweet romance.  I loved Cole and Cassie together and it was apparent that their love never really died.  What I had a hard time with was Cassie keeping her son's paternity from Cole for so long.  I really couldn't blame him for his not trusting her after he found out. I just thought that was kind of crummy.  What I did like about the story was the friendship between the 5 high school friends.  This is the first in a series.  I look forward to reading the next one!

Blog Tour: The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating

Author: Kevin P. Keating

Publisher: Pantheon

Date of publication:  July 2015

From a thrilling new voice in fiction comes a chilling and deliciously dark novel about an idyllic Midwestern college town that turns out to be a panorama of depravity and a nexus of horror.

For years Normandy Falls has been haunted by its strange history and the aggrieved spirits said to roam its graveyards. Despite warnings, Edmund Campion is determined to pursue an advanced degree there. But Edmund soon learns he isn’t immune to the impersonal trappings of fate: his girlfriend, Morgan Fey, smashes his heart; his adviser, Professor Martin Kingsley, crushes him with frivolous assignments; and his dead-end job begins to take a toll on his physical and mental health. One night he stumbles upon the body of Emily Ryan, an unapologetic townie, drowned in her family pool. Was it suicide or murder? In the days that follow, Emily’s husband, Charlie, crippled by self-loathing and frozen with fear, attempts to flee his disastrous life and sends their twin daughters to stay with the Kingsleys. Possessed by an unnamed, preternatural power, the twins know that the professor seduced their mother and may have had a hand in her fate. With their piercing stares, the girls fill Martin with a remorse that he desperately tries to hide from his wife. Elsewhere, a low-level criminal named the Gonk takes over a remote cottage, complete with a burial ground and moonshine still, and devises plans for both. Xavier D’Avignon, the eccentric chef of a failing French restaurant, supplies customers with a hallucinogenic cocktail. And Colette Collins, an elderly local artist of the surreal, attends a retrospective of her work that is destined to set the whole town on fire.

I had high hopes for The Captive Condition.  It looked to be a thrilling horror story that would hopefully suck me in right away.  Sadly, there was nothing horrific or thrilling about the story.  Have you ever read a thesaurus?  I'm not talking about using it to look up a different way to describe something.  I mean from cover to cover.  No?  Neither have I, but I sure felt like I was reading one when I started this book.  I had the hardest time getting through this book. It was over written.  Sometimes the best way to describe a scene is to keep it simple.  I did not find a simple description on any page in this book.  At least as far as I read because I ended up not finishing the book at about 30%.  I think this story had a lot of potential, but the plot got lost in too many words.

About Kevin P. Keating

After working as a boilermaker in the steel mills in Ohio, KEVIN P. KEATING became a professor of English and began teaching at Baldwin Wallace University, Cleveland State University, and Lorain County Community College. His essays and stories have appeared in more than fifty literary journals, and his first novel, The Natural Order of Things, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. His second novel, The Captive Condition, will be released by Pantheon Books in July of 2015. He lives in Cleveland.

Connect with Kevin on Twitter.

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Kevin P. Keating’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Wednesday, August 26th: Mallory Heart Reviews

Saturday, August 29th: Books that Hook

Monday, August 31st: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Wednesday, September 2nd: Read Love Blog

Friday, September 4th: 100 Pages a Day

Tuesday, September 8th: Book Chatter

Wednesday, September 9th: It’s a Mad Mad World

Thursday, September 10th: Kahakai Kitchen

Monday, September 14th: Bewitched Bookworms

Wednesday, September 16th: From the TBR Pile

Thursday, September 17th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Tuesday, September 22nd: Bibliotica

Date TBD: Wildfire Books

Date TBD: The Steadfast Reader

TBD: More Than Just Magic

Positive by David Wellington

by:  David Wellington
published by:  Harper Voyager
publish date:  April 21, 2015

Years after a plague killed 99 percent of the population, turning them into infectious zombies, Finnegan and his family live in a barricaded New York City. But Finn's sheltered life fractures when his unsuspecting mother falls sick with the zombie disease—latent inside her since before her son's birth.

Finn, too, can be infected. If he remains healthy for the last two years of the potential incubation period, he'll be cleared. Until then, he must be moved to a special facility for positives, segregated to keep the healthy population safe.

Tattooed with a plus sign on his hand that marks him as a positive, Finn is exiled from the city. But when marauders kill the escort sent to transport him, Finn must learn how to survive alone in an eerie, disintegrated landscape. And though the zombies are everywhere, Finn discovers that the real danger is his fellow humans. 

This book takes place about 20 or so years after a zombie apocalypse.  The human population is slowly starting to develop back into areas of civilization with governing bodies and rules.  Finn lives in one of these areas.  When it is determined he might possibly have the zombie virus, he is sent away to live in a special camp for Positives.  However, he never makes contact with his escort and has to set out to find the camp on his own.  He doesn't understand that he must travel through many states to get to where he is going, he was born after the plague and his concept of how huge the United States is distorted by lack of education.

When Finn sets out from New York City, he thinks he's going out on a short hike to Ohio.  It obviously take him a very long time.  He has to learn what life is like outside his protected life in New York City.  This is a long journey for him and it takes him a long time to get to the camp.  Once he gets to the camp it's nothing like he expected.

This was a pretty good book overall.  Even though I'm kind of burnt out of zombies and apocalypses, this book held my interest very well.  That is to say, it held my interest for about 3/4 of the book.  Then it just got way too long.  I don't mind a long book, but this one took forever to get through and I kind of skipped and skimmed my way through the last little bit just to see how it ended.  It could have done with some heavy editing to get it down some.  

I would recommend this book to the zombie lovers, the post-ap lovers.  It was well written and and a good addition to the genre.

Blog Tour:The Sparrow Sisters by Ellen Herrick

Author:Ellen Herrick

Publisher: William Morrow

Date of publication: September 2015

The Sparrow Sisters are as tightly woven into the New England seaside town of Granite Point as the wild sweet peas that climb the stone walls along the harbor. Sorrel, Nettie, and Patience are as colorful as the beach plums on the dunes and as mysterious as the fog that rolls into town at dusk.

When a new doctor settles into Granite Point, he brings with him a mystery so compelling that town healer Patience is drawn to love him even as she struggles to mend him. But when Patience Sparrow’s herbs and tinctures are believed to be implicated in a local tragedy, Granite Point is consumed by a long-buried fear—and its three-hundred-year-old history resurfaces as a modern-day witch hunt threatens. The plants and flowers, fruit trees, and high hedges begin to wither and die, and the entire town begins to fail; fishermen return to the harbor empty-handed, and blight descends on the old elms that line the lanes.

It seems as if Patience and her town are lost until the women of Granite Point band together to save the Sparrows. As they gather, drawing strength from each other, will they be able to turn the tide and return life to Granite Point?

The Sparrow Sisters has been compared to the book Practical Magic.  That is what appealed to me because I really liked that book.  The story is basically about 3 sisters who live together in the small town of Granite Point.  They own a nursery and seem to have an amazing green thumb among them.  Plants and flowers flourish under their care.  They are deemed the best around.  Patience is the youngest and has a knack for using herbs and plants to help heal many of the towns people of their ailments.  She is accused of wrongful death when a young autistic boy is found dead of poisoning.

I so wanted to love this book, but in the end, I just thought it was OK. The story had a lot of potential, but there were a few things that bothered me about the story line. I found had a hard time letting go of my logical mind and just enjoy the story.  The book is set in modern times, but it had a very old feel to it. Patience herself felt a lot older than she was supposed to be.  The romance between Patience and Henry was kind of lackluster.

The big thing that bothered me about the story line was Patience's handling of Matty. If you know that an autistic 10 YO child is not getting his medication regularly, why would you not speak directly to his father or at least the authorities and bring up neglect?  Why would you rely on the child to speak to his own father?  I get that she felt compassion for him and thought she was helping, but letting a child around any type of plant like foxglove is just irresponsible. In the end, I felt unsatisfied and kind of depressed.  The book is left open to have a sequel, so it would be interesting to see what happens next with Sorrel.

About Ellen Herrick

Ellen Herrick was a publishing professional in New York City until she and her husband moved to London for a brief stint; they returned nearly twenty years later with three children (her own, it must be said). She now divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a small town on Cape Cod very much like Granite Point.

Find out more about Ellen at her website and connect with her on Facebook andTwitter.

Ellen’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, September 1st: Raven Haired Girl

Wednesday, September 2nd: Booksie’s Blog

Friday, September 4th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Monday, September 7th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Thursday, September 10th: Books Without Any Pictures

Friday, September 11th: Broken Teepee

Monday, September 14th: Mary’s Cup of Tea

Monday, September 14th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, September 16th: Fuelled by Fiction

Thursday, September 17th: Snowdrop Dreams of Books

Thursday, September 17th: Imaginary Reads

Friday, September 18th: Doing Dewey

TBD: 5 Minutes for Books

TBD: Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Purchase Links

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

Emmy and Oliver by Robin Benway

by:  Robin Benway
published by:  HarperTeen
publish date:  June 23, 2015

Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. In Emmy’s soul, despite the space and time between them, their connection has never been severed. But is their story still written in the stars? Or are their hearts like the pieces of two different puzzles—impossible to fit together?

Oliver was kidnapped by his father when he was 7 years old.  Emmy was one of his best friends and his next door neighbor.  Now, it's 10 years later and Emmy has learned to adjust to life without Oliver, when he comes back home. Now, Emmy and Oliver have to adjust to a new life together.  They both have to learn how to get out from the over protective thumbs of their parents and live their own lives.

I've never read anything by Robin Benway before, but this was an excellent book.  I loved the writing style.  I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by this author in the future.  I really enjoyed how the author could mix such a sad story with such hilarious dialog.  I'd highly recommend this book to the YA readers.  

Joint Review: The Rules by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

Author: Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
Publisher: Delacourte Books for Young Readers
Date of publication: June 2015

Narrated by alternating unreliable narrators, this dark thriller will have readers on the edge of their seats. No one is safe and everyone is a suspect. It's Saw meets I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Junior Robin Brisset has no idea what she's in for when she accepts an invitation to one of Callabrese High's most exclusive parties. And when the trademark scavenger hunt begins, Robin must go against every rule she's lived by to survive.

The Rules reminded me of an 80s teenage slasher film. You know the type? The ones where you never know who to trust, teens keep splitting up to investigate or find a missing person or strange noise. Ultimately, that never ends up being a good decision. The story is told through several alternating points of view.  While it was hard to keep track of the characters in the beginning, it gets easier as they start dying off.  Each chapter opens with one of that person's rules of life.  Unfortunately those rules don't always help them.

I ended up really liking this book.  I found was completely off base when the book ended and I loved it!  I would definitely keep this to over 16 crowd.  If it was a movie it would probably get an R rating because of sexual and violent content.

This book reminded me a lot of the movie Scream with "The Rules".  It seemed like no one followed the rules for survival set forth in that movie.  I also really liked the story.  It kept me guessing throughout the whole book.  I thought I had it figured out at least twice and only to find out I was totally wrong in the end.  

I had the same issue with being able to keep track of who all the characters were.  It was easier towards the end of the book.  I would definitely recommend this book to the older YA readers.  It was a lot of fun.

Blog Tour: The Fury by Shane Gericke

Author: Shane Gericke

Publisher: Tantor

Date of publication: September 2015

The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico washes a cache of doomsday weapons onto a Mexican beach: bombs filled with VX nerve gas mixed with anthrax, invented by the Nazis during World War II and perfected by the United States to use in the Cold War. The bombs soon fall into the wrong hands and create an unstoppable opponent. Only one Chicago Police detective has a chance of preventing those bombs from being used on American soil.

Reeling from the recent murder of her husband as well as allegations of police misconduct, Detective Superstition “Sue” Davis is thrown into an undercover assignment. She must infiltrate the Mexican narcotics cartel responsible for the death of her husband in order to get close to the cartel’s sociopathic enforcer, Jiminez “Jimmy” Garcia.

But when the entire Garcia family is killed in Mexico by a U.S. Special Forces raid gone wrong, Garcia will stop at nothing to get vengeance, including triggering newly acquired bombs on American soil. Superstition’s assignment quickly becomes more dangerous than planned as the threat of a terrorist attack looms closer.

Sometimes, I can really get sucked into a thriller and sometimes I really don't.  Unfortunately, The Fury fell into that later category for me.  It's a shame because I read some raving reviews after I decided to make it a DNF.  I just had a hard time getting into it.  For me, I think it was the continual jump in timelines and locations.  I actually re-read one of the earlier chapters over because I was lost.  As always, I think this just wasn't the book for me.  Check out what others on the tour are saying and then give it a shot.

About Shane Gericke

Bestselling novelist Shane Gericke is the author of Torn Apart, which was short-listed for the prestigious Thriller Award and named a Book of the Year by Suspense magazine. Shane spent twenty-five years as a newspaper editor, most prominently at the Chicago Sun-Times, before jumping into fiction. He lives in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Visit him at shanegericke.com.

Shane Gericke’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Friday, August 21st: BookBub – author guest post, “13 Hair-raising Books on the Global War on Terrorism”

Monday, August 24th: Books that Hook

Wednesday, August 26th: Vic’s Media Room

Thursday, August 27th: Life is Story

Monday, August 31st: Dwell in Possibility

Tuesday, September 1st: Mallory Heart Reviews

Tuesday, September 8th: SJ2B House of Books

Wednesday, September 9th: It’s a Mad Mad World

Thursday, September 10th: The World As I See It

Friday, September 11th: From the TBR Pile

Monday, September 14th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Wednesday, September 16th: Thoughts on This ‘n That

Thursday, September 17th: Lilac Reviews