The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 10-12-14

Posted on October 12, 2014October 10, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

October is just about half over, and every single grocery store has hordes of pumpkins just waiting to be carved into grinning Jack-O-Lanterns. Halloween can’t be far away!

And speaking of Halloween, the Spooktacular Giveaway Hop starts this week. The new hop starts on the day that the current hop, Books That Need More Attention, ends. So be sure to stop by and enter!

While this Sunday Post is posting, I’ll be at Geek Girl Con in downtown Seattle for the weekend. Not only are The Doubleclicks playing a concert, but Anita Sarkeesian is speaking on Saturday morning. This geek girl is looking forward to a real blast!

Current Giveaways:

The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg (US/Canada)
In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins (US)
$10 Gift Card in the Books That Need More Attention Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

B Review: The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg + Giveaway
B+ Review: In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway
A- Review: Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore
B+/A- Review: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
B+ Guest Review: A Forbidden Rumspringa by Keira Andrews
Stacking the Shelves (107)

Coming Next Week:

Honor’s Knight by Rachel Bach (review by Cass)
Alex by Sawyer Bennett (review)
Spooktacular Giveaway Hop
Dirty Kiss by Rhys Ford (review)
Olde School by Selah Janel (blog tour review)

Stacking the Shelves (107)

Posted on October 11, 2014October 10, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

One of the quieter weeks, so to speak, that I’ve had in a long time. While this reflects the fact that NetGalley and Edelweiss are mostly showing January and February 2015 titles, which is kind of a dead zone for publishing, it still feels weird that the list is so short.

I almost fired up Amazon just to buy a couple of things to make the list longer. But common sense prevailed and I refrained.

There’s always next week!

call to duty by david weber and timothy zahn

For Review:
Bonfire Night (Lady Julia Grey #5.7) by Deanna Raybourn
A Call to Duty (Honorverse: Manticore Ascendant #1) by David Weber and Timothy Zahn
City of Liars and Thieves by Eve Karlin
The Eterna Files by Leanna Renee Hieber
Firewall (Magic Born #3) by Sonya Clark
Her Holiday Man by Shannon Stacey
The Tears of the Rose (Twelve Kingdoms #2) by Jeffe Kennedy
Through the Static by Jeanette Grey

Guest Review: A Forbidden Rumspringa by Keira Andrews

Posted on October 10, 2014October 7, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews> Queer Romance Month

Format read: ebook
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: M/M romance
Series: Gay Amish Romance #1)
Length: 184 pages
Publisher: KA Books
Date Released: August 31, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

When two young Amish men find love, will they risk losing everything?

In a world where every detail of life–down to the width of a hat brim–is dictated by God and the all-powerful rules of the community, two men dare to imagine a different way. At 18, Isaac Byler knows little outside the strict Amish settlement of Zebulon, Minnesota, where there is no rumspringa for exploration beyond the boundaries of their insular world. Isaac knows he’ll have to officially join the church and find a wife before too long, but he yearns for something else–something he can’t name.

Dark tragedy has left carpenter David Lantz alone to support his mother and sisters, and he can’t put off joining the church any longer. But when he takes on Isaac as an apprentice, their attraction grows amid the sweat and sawdust. David shares his sinful secrets, and he and Isaac struggle to reconcile their shocking desires with their commitment to faith, family and community.

Now that they’ve found each other, are they willing to lose it all?

Note: Contains explicit sexual situations and graphic language. This is not an inspirational/Christian romance.

Guest Review by Cryselle:

When two young men fall for each other in an atmosphere as circumscribed as the Amish town of Zebulon, there’s only a few branches on the decision tree if there’s going to be an HEA. So everything rides on the style and the details. Once in a while a chunk of research looks like a chunk of research, but for the most part the details are organic to the story.

Keira Andrews gives us a book that flows, in plain language that fits the community that Isaac and David belong to. This offshoot of a larger group is struggling to make ends meet in a new place, with less interaction with the outside, and tighter rules than ever before. Where these young people had expected to have a time of freedom and tasting the “English” way of life, now, no such chance exists. As for joining the church under these circumstances—it doesn’t feel like a choice. The families that emigrated to found Zebulon all seem to be touched by tragedy brought by the young people experimenting, and therefore, no one shall experiment again: it’s too dangerous.

But the young will test their boundaries, and some cannot fit within the narrow confines.

Finding out the details of why strict went to straightjacket took long enough to make me impatient, because there had to be a reason why an already austere group would do this to themselves and their children. When even an orange safety reflector on the back of the buggy is too worldly, there has to be a reason. It was a while coming.

Not for Isaac and David to question why, though; they’re young, not yet “following church” or slipping into the life path expected of them. Isaac eyes David’s sister with fear—she’d make him a fine, hard-working wife, and if people pushed them together any harder there’d be bruises. Meanwhile, down in the barn, David and Isaac make more than furniture.

The two of them dance around the growing attraction as long as possible, but once they acknowledge the heat between them, they can’t keep their hands off each other. There were a lot of sex scenes which mostly drove the plot, but no sense of fumbling or inexperience, and I really don’t believe one raunchy magazine read by David long ago was enough to make them as adventurous or skilled as they were.

The author put a lot of effort into understanding the culture she writes about, and the respect is clear and unjudgmental. The sense of following the Ordnung, the religious directions, as a way of life is strong, though for David and Isaac, the sense of religion as faith is almost absent. Thinking for one’s self is anathema, and difficult for the young men to do. To do so risks friendship, family, and all ties. Isaac’s older brother Aaron never came back after rumspringa, and the youngest brother doesn’t even know Aaron exists. The pain of such choices weighs heavily on Isaac, who is our only POV character.

Escape Rating B+: The author tackled a tough situation where the characters have few options, writing with skill and dignity. David and Isaac have another book following, where they could solidify as a couple, which should be equally good reading.

In a separate but related note, the ebook is very prettily formatted, with custom chapter headers and horse-and-buggy dingbats.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Posted on October 9, 2014October 7, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: eARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 181 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
Date Released: August 19, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Finally, a novel that puts the “pissed” back into “epistolary.”

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can’t catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville’s Bartleby.

In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.

My Review:

It’s the incredibly funny snark of Dear Committee Members that is being called out in reviews and summaries. And the book is an absolute screaming hoot for anyone who has ever had to navigate the “hallowed halls of academe” or any arcane, entrenched bureaucracy.

Each of the individual letters in Professor Jason Fitger’s voluminous collection of Letters of Recommendation (LORs) is bitingly funny and sarcastically skewering, sometimes both at the same time.

Fitger is honest to a fault about the qualities of the various candidates, as well as painfully and painstakingly clear about the situation in which he finds himself and his reasons for being willing to write the letters.

Because while Fitger is recommending (or sometimes damning with very faint praise) his current and former students for positions for which they may or may not be either qualified for or happy with, he also manages to couch his lack of enthusiasm in language of honesty and eloquence.

Especially the skewers.

At the same time, the situation at his college is dire, dangerous and emblematic of the problems facing the humanities in colleges today. The English Department doesn’t make money and doesn’t produce graduates who can donate large sums of money to the alumni fund.

And they are part of the national trend in replacing tenure-track positions with hordes of underpaid adjunct faculty who have no benefits and receive paltry stipends. All the money is going to marquee faculty in science and technology fields.

Fitger and his colleagues are being squeezed out, not just in a war of attrition, but also by being forced to work in a hazardous waste site. (The fax machine dies when a block of concrete crashes down from the ceiling above).

Through it all, Fitger writes letters. Each individual letter is funny as hell, but the overall picture he paints of the future of the college and of his own past carries an element of tragedy to it.

Underneath the snark, there is a cry for help and a sense of regret for things both done and not done. Underneath the paint, the clown is crying.

Escape Rating B+/A-: This is a hard book to rate. I read through it in a couple of hours, as I couldn’t wait to see Fitger’s trenchant take on his student’s capabilities. I was also mining each letter for clues about Fitger’s life and view of the world.

He’s looking both back and forward, and he’s not happy with either view. But he still keeps trying to save what can be saved, and to rage against the loss of what cannot. In the end, his reward (or perhaps punishment) for all his letters and voluminous attempts to save his department is totally fitting.

Read the letters for the laughs. You’ll be left with both a smile and a tear.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore

Posted on October 8, 2014October 7, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook borrowed from the library
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Eric Carter #1
Length: 295 pages
Publisher: DAW
Date Released: February 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it’s a title Eric Carter is stuck with.

He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He’s turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course.

When he left L.A. fifteen years ago he thought he’d never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.

But now his sister’s been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why.

Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it’s the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who’s taken an unusually keen interest in him.

Carter’s going to find out who did it and he’s going to make them pay.

As long as they don’t kill him first.

My Review:

If Harry Dresden were a necromancer instead of a wizard, he probably would have turned out to be someone like Eric Carter. Same breed of snark (slightly more gallows, of course) but different city. Where Dresden is the wizard of Chicago, at least in the beginning; Los Angeles is Eric Carter’s city.

And his power comes from death.

It’s not that he is dead or even that he intentionally causes death, but that he speaks to the dead, and very definitely vice-versa.

And of course, he unintentionally causes a lot of death. Not just because he’s a mercenary necromancer for hire, but also because there are entirely too many things that know the best way to get his attention is to cause a spectacular death.

Eric left LA 15 years ago in a cloud of destruction. He killed a big-time gangster and magic user, and was told to leave town or see his friends and remaining family on “the other side”. Since Eric can actually see things on that other side, it was a damn good threat. He went.

He stayed gone until an old friend finally tracked him down to tell him that his sister had been killed; spectacularly and with extreme malice. It suddenly looked like his old deal was dead along with his sister.

Returning to LA, he discovers that his former BFF and his former girlfriend are together, and that everyone except him has become a respectable citizen, more or less. And that his sister was killed in such a spectacular fashion to particularly leave him a message on that “other side”.

Eric investigates what went wrong. It’s what he does, especially when it looks like there’s a particularly nasty haunt or ghost or necromancer playing with bad things and dead things.

But making a deal with a death goddess in order to figure out who is trying to make everyone he knows dead turns out to be a really bad deal. And that big-time gangster he thought he killed, well, in Eric’s world, dead isn’t always dead.

Eric needs to make really sure this time, or he’s going to be the one on “the other side”. Permanently.

Escape Rating A-: I compared Eric to Harry at the beginning of this review, and I think it’s a good comparison. Also good company for Eric to be in; I really love the Dresden Files.

Unfortunately for Eric, his love life is every bit as screwed up as Harry’s. We have another poster boy for urban fantasy, and it’s lack of a happy ending for the protagonist. Which feels right for Eric. He doesn’t start out as a happy camper, and he’s not supposed to become one. As a powerful magic user, he’s a misfit. As one of the few practicing necromancers in the world, he’s a misfit among misfits.

No one likes to think about the inevitability of death.

Underneath the magical trappings, Eric is conducting an investigation, both into his sister’s death and into the original mess that got him evicted from LA. He’s also being confronted with the mess he left behind and the people who did their best to clean it up and recover from his sudden disappearance.

It’s not a pretty picture and Eric is forced to come to terms with a whole lot of crap he’s been running from for 15 years. He’s trying to make up for all his mistakes, and it blinds him to the crap that is going on in the here and now.

I want to say that Eric is likable, but that’s not strictly true. He made a mess, and ran from it, and he’s now cleaning it up. Some of his methods of clean up are morally ambiguous, but completely consistent with Eric’s world as it is.

Eric is certainly compellingly watchable.

There’s an irony to the idea that Eric cleans up other people’s messes for a living,but has spent his entire adult life running from his own. His guilt makes it very easy for people (and other things) to play him. And they do.

The ending of Dead Things is a humdinger of a reveal and kind of a cliffhanger. I was left gasping a bit at the end, as I dived for the next book in the series, Broken Souls, today’s review book at The Book Pushers.

One of the things I love about urban fantasy is it’s ability to create beautifully packaged nasty surprises. Dead Things delivers!

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins + Giveaway

Posted on October 7, 2014October 6, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Blue Heron #4
Length: 480 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: September 30, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Emmaline Neal needs a date. Just a date—someone to help her get through her ex-fiancé’s wedding without losing her mind. But pickings are slim in Manningsport, New York, population 715. In fact, there’s really only one option: local heartthrob Jack Holland. Everyone loves Jack, and he won’t get the wrong idea…. After all, Jack Holland would never actually be interested in a woman like Em. Especially not with his beautiful ex-wife creeping around, angling to reunite ever since he rescued a group of teens and became a local hero.

But when the wedding festivities take an unexpectedly passionate turn, Em figures it was just one crazy night. Jack is too gorgeous, too popular, to ever end up with her. So why is she the one he can talk to about his deep, dark feelings? If Em is going to get her dream man, she’ll have to start by believing in him…

My Review:

Very much like the initially fake marriage in book 2 in this series, The Perfect Match (reviewed here) the romance in In Your Dreams is kicked off by the strong and quite natural desire to show one’s ex that one has SO gotten over the breakup–especially if one hasn’t.

Emmaline Neal receives an invitation to her ex-fiance’s wedding back home in Malibu. Some of us might just throw it in the trash and have a private pity party, but Em knows that reaction isn’t going to work for her. Well, it might work for her, personally, but her parents are still friends with the erstwhile groom and his family, and they will expect her to come.

Not just that, but both Em’s parents are psychologists. They will analyze her (badly and incorrectly) if she does come, and do more and worse if she doesn’t. All their messages about what she should and shouldn’t do with her life and her relationships would make any adult child flee to the opposite end of the country.

Her parents are in Malibu, and Em is one of two Deputy Police Officers in Manningsport, NY. Just about as far across the continent as she could get.

So she needs a date for the wedding, and doesn’t have one. After a certain amount of persuasion and lots of people taking care of her business for her, Em ends up going to the wedding with Jack Holland. Jack is handsome, amiable, and every woman in Manningsport’s perfect date to any function. He is NOT the town bicycle, he’s a perfect gentleman about all of this. It just gets him away from his loving but slightly intrusive family.

Jack is the youngest of the Hollands, and we’ve seen most of his family’s story in The Best Man (review), The Perfect Match and Waiting on You (review). The story we see in flashbacks is Jack’s late marriage to the extremely high-strung Hadley, and Jack’s incredible act of heroism that has left him with an untreated (let’s face it, Jack isn’t willing to acknowledge it) case of PTSD.

Em doesn’t want to go with Jack because she likes him just a little too much. She neither wants him to see her at her worst, nor does she want to further explore the crush she has on him.

But when their crises run into each other at the wedding, they decide (not exactly decide, more like mutually exploit) to temporarily forget their problems by having one really hot night together.

Jack wants more. Em wants to forget it ever happened, which is impossible. But she refuses to believe that Jack wants her as more than anything but a fun diversion. His ex is back in town, and she’s chasing him with every “helpless female” weapon in her arsenal.

Jack is a sucker for a woman he can rescue. And Em, the very competent police officer, is not a woman who regularly needs rescuing–or ever wants to be.

Escape Rating B+: As with most of the Blue Heron series, the author tells the love story in the present day while using flashbacks to show the trauma that both characters have suffered in the past that makes them right for each other; even when they both use the scars from that same past to push the other away.

Em’s memories of her relationship with her ex are particularly heartbreaking. They were childhood sweethearts, the only two not-perfect kids in their Malibu high school of perfect-bodied beautiful children with important Hollywood parents. Em had a stutter and her ex was the only “fat kid” in the school. They bonded over not being perfect, and always being the last kids picked for everything.

When he finally starts to lose all the weight he’s accumulated, her ex loses everything that made him who he was, and restarts his life with his trainer. Even worse, when he’s featured in People Magazine he trashes Em in print. It’s not just heartbreaking, it’s downright devastating.

There was some codependence there, he didn’t like it when Em figured out how to stop stammering, so he started getting back at her; or it felt that way to me.

Jack is the Manningsport golden child. He’s always been perfect, and he always comes to everyone’s rescue. The incident that causes his PTSD is tragic but understandable. And the aftermath affects the story deeply.

He has to convince Em that she’s not just a way of getting him through the nightmares, and he finally has to get his ex out of his life. His inability to see through Hadley went on just a bit too long.

But it was terrific to catch up with the Hollands and all the wonderful people in Manningsport. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

GIVEAWAY

Kristan is giving away a copy of In Your Dreams to one lucky U.S. commenter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg + Giveaway

Posted on October 6, 2014October 5, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Historical fiction
Length: 176 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date Released: October 1, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Agnes Hussein, descendant of the last sultan of Singapore and the last surviving member of her immediate family, has grown up among her eccentric relatives in the crumbling Kampong Glam palace, a once-opulent relic given to her family in exchange for handing over Singapore to the British.

Now Agnes is seventeen and her family has fallen into genteel poverty, surviving on her grandfather’s pension and the meager income they receive from a varied cast of boarders. As outside forces conspire to steal the palace out from under them, Agnes struggles to save her family and finds bravery, love, and loyalty in the most unexpected places. The Moonlight Palace is a coming-of-age tale rich with historical detail and unforgettable characters set against the backdrop of dazzling 1920s Singapore.

My Review:

There really is a Moonlight Palace. Or rather, the setting of this story really does exist, and some of the history that forms the background for this coming-of-age story really happened.

As the Kampong Glam Palace falls apart before her eyes (and under her feet and above her head), young Agnes Hussein negotiates both the shoals of her upcoming adulthood and the rocks of possible rehabilitation (or destruction) for the grand old wreck of a house that she calls home.

Agnes is a descendant of both the last sultan of Singapore and the granddaughter of a decorated British army officer. Her life has a foot in both worlds in the melting pot that is Singapore in the 1920s. As she says, she is half-Chinese, one-quarter Muslim, and one-quarter English. She’s also the only member of her extremely eccentric family with at least one foot in the 20th century.

She’s seventeen, and it seems like responsibility for her family’s (and the palace’s) survival rests on her inexperienced shoulders.

The Kampong Glam Palace is absolutely one of the members of the family. It is falling apart around them, and her British grandfather’s pension, along with rent from equally eccentric boarders, keeps body, soul and house barely together.

Agnes uses a bathtub with boards over it as a desk; only two of the many bathrooms still work and have intact floors and ceilings. Her current “office” is one of the non-functional ones. Chairs crumble, the roof leaks.

When “British Grandfather” dies, and his pension with him, it is the last in a string of bad luck that finally forces Agnes to see her life for what it is, and makes her realize that her future will not be lived in the beautiful but decaying palace that her family calls home.

It is up to her to find a new path that saves them and saves the Moonlight Palace, even if those futures are separate from one other.

Escape Rating B: This is a short book, and that’s just right. It’s both a family story, and a coming-of-age. It also evokes the exotic melting pot atmosphere of Singapore as well as that of a time when the world was irrevocably changing from the slow past to the fast-moving future.

Agnes makes a terrific point of view character. She loves her family and their eccentricities, and wants nothing more than to continue living in the beautiful but decrepit palace that has been her family’s home for so long.

At the same time, she is a child of the 20th century, and wants to do things for herself that are not traditional; like work and fall in love with someone her family might not approve of. It takes a big shock for her to wake up and realize not just that she can’t have everything she wants, but that she must be the one who figures out how to save everyone and everything she loves.

This is a story filled with marvelous, and marvelously eccentric, characters. Not just the crumbling palace, but also Agnes’ multi-generational family, built with both family of blood and family of choice into a slightly crazy whole.

It’s Agnes’ love, and her loyalty, that finds the way forward. Following her as she figures things out and explores her world makes a terrific story.

GIVEAWAY

Liz is kindly giving away one copy of The Moonlight Palace (US/Canada only)! To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 10-5-14

Posted on October 5, 2014October 5, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Nobody won anything this week, but there are three giveaways going on this week. All gift cards, which is very handy for buying more books!

October is also Queer Romance Month, because, as the website says, “Love is not a subgenre”. I’ll have a couple of reviews this month, and my fellow book pushers over at The Book Pushers are doing reviews and/or guest posts every Friday to commemorate what we hope is the first ANNUAL event.

And in other news there are two surprisingly similar attempts to stifle bloggers going on at the same time, one among book bloggers and one in library land. Ellora’s Cave is suing Dear Author and its chief blogger, Jane Litte, for reporting the facts about Ellora’s Cave’s current economic troubles. In my other world, a male librarian who is known in the whisper network as a broken stair has sued two female librarians for publishing on their blogs that women tell other women not to be alone with this guy. If you are interested in details, just Google #teamharpy for a rundown. Both Dear Author and #teamharpy are looking for donations to contribute to what will probably be massive legal expenses. And yes, I’ve contributed to both. This is about prevention of the chilling of free speech through monetary pressure, and I am #notchilled.

Stacking the Shelves (106)

Posted on October 4, 2014October 4, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I didn’t buy any books this week. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t buy ANYTHING, just not books. The season premieres for TV are staggering out of the gate, so I finally have new episodes of NCIS, NCIS:LA (and the amazingly fun NCIS: New Orleans) to watch.) One of the best things about streaming TV shows is NO COMMERCIALS. And we can watch whenever we want.

When I’m not reading, that is.

dorothy parker drank here by ellen meister

til dragons do us part by lorenda christensen

ryder american treasure by nick Pengelley

For Review:
All That Glitters (Jake & Laura #2) by Michael Murphy
Demons in My Driveway (Monster Haven #5) by R.L. Naquin
Dorothy Parker Drank Here (Dorothy Parker #2) by Ellen Meister
Falling Sky by Rajan Khanna
Gunpowder Alchemy (Opium War #1) by Jeannie Lin
Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4) by Catherine Bybee
The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein
Ryder: American Treasure (Ryder #2) by Nick Pengelley
Taste of Treason (Tudor Enigma #2) by April Taylor
‘Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons #3) by Lorenda Christensen
Undercity by Catherine Asaro
Witch Upon a Star (Midnight Magic #3) by Jennifer Harlow

Borrowed from the Library:
Designated Daughters (Deborah Knott #19) by Margaret Maron
The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin

Review: Pie Girls by Lauren Clark + Giveaway

Posted on October 3, 2014September 29, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: women’s ficton
Length: 338 pages
Publisher: Camellia Press
Date Released: August 5, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Princess, Southern belle, and spoiled-rotten social climber Searcy Roberts swore on a stack of Bibles she’d never return home to Fairhope, Alabama. After marrying her high school sweetheart and moving to Atlanta, Searcy embraces big-city life—Carrie Bradshaw style.

But now, Searcy has a teeny, tiny problem. Her husband’s had a mid-life crisis. He’s quit his job, cancelled her credit cards, and left her for another man.

Searcy returns to Fairhope, ready to lick her wounds. But when her mother falls ill, she’s is thrust into managing the family business—only to discover the beloved bakery is in danger of closing its doors forever.

Enlisting the help of the adorable bike store owner next door, an array of well-heeled customers, and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Searcy hatches the plan of the century to save Pie Girls.

My Review:

There are two completely opposite literary tropes about going home. One is the title of the Thomas Wolfe novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. The other is the quote from Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

For Searcy Roberts, home is definitely Frost’s version. She has to go back to tiny Fairhope, Alabama, and it has to take her in. Not initially because either she loves it or it loves her, but because they both love her mother Maggie, the owner of Pie Girls.

And Searcy has no place left to go. Considering the amount of glee she expressed on seeing Fairhope in her rearview mirror 10 years ago, there’s more than a little schadenfreude around town that she got stuck coming back.

The person Searcy is at the beginning of the story deserves every bit of that karmic payback, too. She’s vain, shallow and using conspicuous overconsumption to fill in the huge holes in her life and, frankly, her personality.

Searcy is a woman who not only can’t live without regular consultations with her personal shopper, but she expects champagne (her favorite and in her signature style) while she does her consultation. And then she feels fully justified in dropping $3,000 on “just a few things”.

Searcy isn’t mean or bad tempered, she’s just chosen to become high-maintenance to make up for everything lacking in her life. Like any relationship at all with her husband. Or much relations, ever.

When Alton finally does the very late but ultimately couragous thing and calls both their marriage and his advertising career, over and done, Searcy answers a call from her mother and realizes that her only option is to go home to Fairhope and regroup while she checks in on her mother’s health and on the family business, Pie Girls.

Both the shop and her mother are ailing. In fact, they are both terminally ill, and they need Searcy to give them both a new lease on life, every bit as much as Searcy needs to go back to her roots and find herself a new purpose.

it’s too late for Searcy to rescue her marriage (in fact, it was too late on her wedding day), but it isn’t too late for Searcy to make a fresh start on the rest of her life.

Escape Rating B: As a heroine, Searcy is a study in contrasts. The woman she is at the beginning of the story isn’t a person I liked very much. She felt like a caricature of one of the stars of Real Housewives, rich and pampered and completely shallow. She wasn’t bad or mean, she just wasn’t really there.

Then her marriage finally gives up its last ghost, and she’s depressed and desperate. And completely self-absorbed. She’s ashamed to let her friends know what happened, so she hides and covers up.

When her mother calls, it’s a rescue. Not in any financial way, but simply because it adds purpose to an otherwise purposeless life. It’s only when Searcy stops feeling sorry for herself and gets herself re-involved with Fairhope and Pie Girls that she becomes a person that you’d want to know.

Because of this, the first half of the book moves a bit slow. I wanted Searcy to see the clue-by-four way earlier than she did. It actually takes her soon-to-be-ex-husband bringing his boyfriend around to meet her that she finally gets that he’s gay, and has been all along. (The reader figures this out much, much earlier)

Although if I had to deal with his mother, I’d probably hide myself too. Possibly in Greenland. Or Antarctica. Far, far away from his mother and her badly behaved, spoiled rotten purse-dog.

But once Searcy starts taking care of her own mother, the store, and her old friends in town, her life perks up and her story gets much more interesting. And fun. I liked Searcy at the end, quite a lot, and I was rooting for her happy ending.

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