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Coming Home (Chandler Hill Inn – Book 2) by Judith Keim

Blog Tour Stop : Kate Rock Book Tours courtesy of Wild Quail Publishing

Thanks so much to the author, Kate Rock Book Tours, and Wild Quail Publishing for the complimentary finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts, and participation in this blog tour. { partner }

BOOK DESCRIPTION FROM GOODREADS :

Camilla “Cami” Chandler comes home from France to take over the Chandler Hill Inn and Winery for her recently-deceased grandmother, Lettie, as she’d always promised. Determined to succeed in this new venture, she finds herself in trouble from the beginning when she discovers most of her grandmother’s estate intended for maintaining the inn’s business expenses was lost in a Ponzi scheme. She forges ahead to provide the best wines in Willamette Valley.

After being ditched by her French boyfriend, she decides that being friends with Drew Farley is the safest way to proceed. He loves grape growing and winemaking as much as she does and isn’t looking for anything beyond friendship.

When a bride planning a wedding at the inn tells Cami that she looks exactly like her best friend, life becomes even more complicated. Never having known even the name of her father, Cami searches for a connection and comes to realize how complicated love and family can be.

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW ( 5 STARS) :

I’ll start by saying, this is book 2 of 3 in the Chandler Hill Inn series from this author, and I was not able to read the first book before diving in to this book. While I do think that I probably would have gotten more out of the story if I had read the first book, at no point did I feel like I was completely missing the necessary background. The beginning of this novel gives all information on the characters, setting, and background that was needed for this particular story, so I definitely wasn’t feeling like I couldn’t enjoy this book without having read the first. But again, I do think I may have gotten more out of it with the rest of the story, so take this whole first paragraph with a grain of salt. Basically, maybe read the first book first, but it also wasn’t necessary for me.

All of that being said, I loved this book. I read this entire book in one day, and I am not a fast reader. I was engrossed in the characters and the setting, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Also the story takes place at an Inn and Winery in Oregon, which I love. Having grown up in Washington, I love reading books or consuming other media that takes place in or near my Pacific Northwest. What can I say? The area has my heart. I wanted to hop on a plane back towards home and stay a weekend at the Chandler Hill Inn.

I also (and this will shock nobody who has read any of my other reviews) really loved the characters and their portion of the story. The “villains” of the book (read: people in the story who are working against our protagonist, not exactly super villains) were overall really believable as actual people, which I think always makes the trials in a story more interesting, rather than some totally unrealistic circumstances. And while I’ve never been put in the situations that they put Cami through in the book, so I haven’t known anyone to go to those particular extremes, I definitely feel like everyone knows these exact types of people having come and gone in their lives.

But overall, the characters were just so lovely (I think I fell in love with her grandpa, Rafe, and I will not apologize for it.) Cami, the female lead, is so strong and so sweetly written. I love a story of a young woman really coming into her own, and being a boss. And Cami does both over the course of this book. I wanted to be her friend, or even just work with her at the Inn. (Why yes, living and working at a beautiful and romantic Inn and Winery just may be a dream of mine, why do you ask? All of the wine.) But I mean it, give me all of the strong female characters in all of the media. I was very invested in her life and her story, and I definitely finished the book wanting to know where she was going to go from there.

I would recommend this book to any of my friends that want a character-driven story and a really fun, quick read. I am so excited that I was given the chance to read this book for the author’s blog tour, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book, Home At Last, which is publishing soon! I may even get myself a copy of the first book to see what I had missed out on!

LINK TO BUY ON AMAZON :

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Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Forge Books – Review: 5 Stars

Oh Karen, Georgia, and the MFM-fam. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered was written by these friends, badass ladies, and co-hosts of the incredibly popular podcast My Favorite Murder. It is, in small part, the true crime craziness that we all know and love from the podcast, but it was mostly stories of the experiences that made them who they are – including their childhoods, family stories, and their starts in the entertainment industry.

First things first, I have never been so glad that I listened to the audio of a book. The audiobook is read by the authors, and it is such a delight! It makes the stories more personal, and the way that they play off of each other at the end of each chapter is just so much fun. Each chapter is more intimate than the last, and it is truly a pleasure to read.

I laughed and cried my way through this entire book, particularly the chapter about f*cking politeness. It’s a saying that they pepper through their podcast episodes frequently so I was no stranger to the idea while listening to the book. But listening to them telling their own stories and their experiences with this particular motto really made me look back at all of the times as a kid, or even as a young adult, so many of us take help from strangers or hold our tongue around people who have no right to be telling us things, all for the sake of being polite or ladylike. Little girls specifically are always told that they need to be nice so that they aren’t “bitchy,” or not to be too “bossy” because then the boys won’t want to be our friends. But people are finally starting to talk about how damaging that can be. Feeling like we have to fill this role of politeness and being ladylike can lead to people putting themselves into situations that they aren’t comfortable with and that could even put them into danger. And I love how much these ladies, and this book, dive into that and show the darker side of it.

Alright, tangent over. I have a little bit of a soap box about that particular topic, okay? And I loved how it was all handled in this book.

Overall I absolutely loved this book. I want to recommend it, and the podcast, to anyone and everyone. Find yourself wanting to talk about true crime in your day to day life? Want to chat about like-minded humans about funny, creepy, or touching stories from the past? Have any funny stories about 80s-90s parents not paying attention, and somehow injuring yourself? MFM is the show for you. It is fun, and honest, and the book only makes it better. Highly recommend listening to the audio, but I will also be buying a physical copy because I want it on my shelf forever.

Now remember to f*ck politeness, always SSDGM, and if you’re ever in a cult, call your dad.

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How Sweet the Bitter Soup: A Memoir by Lori Qian

Blog Tour Stop : Kate Rock Book Tours courtesy of She Writes Press

Thanks so much to the author, Kate Rock Book Tours, and She Writes Press for the complimentary finished copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts, and participation in this blog tour. { partner }

BOOK DESCRIPTION FROM GOODREADS :

Her mom was working as a maid. Her dad’s Alzheimer’s was in high gear. And the rent on her parents’ small Chicago apartment had just fone up. AGain. But Lori was holding it all together: helping care for her dad and pat her family’s bills, figuring out how to navigate graduate school and four jobs on top of her family responsibilities, and, somehow, continuing to believe that there was more to life than this.

And there was.

An exciting job teaching at a prestigious school in China. Although the previous month, she had turned down a job offer in Iowa – thinking it was too far away from her family – she felt completely at ease accepting a hob in China. Grasping on to the fierce determination she’d had since childhood, Lori found herself in Guangzhou, China, where she fell in love with the culture and with a man from a tiny town in Hubei province.

What followed was a transformative adventure – one that will inspire readers to use the bitter to make life even sweeter.

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW (4 Stars) :

I always find that memoirs, these types of memoirs in particular, are difficult for me to review. It’s one thing when you pick up a celebrity memoir of someone that you already have fully formed opinions of, and you buy the book because you love the celebrity and just want to learn more about where they come from. I picked up this memoir having read the description above and knowing that I would be on this tour, but going in to this story without any additional knowledge about the author or her story made this a very personal and emotional read.

I really enjoy learning about cultures and experiences that I wouldn’t likely get to experience for myself, and so the fact that this book is truly the story of the author experiencing these other sights and cultures was really interesting and enjoyable for me. It certainly isn’t all a walk in the park for her (the chapter about the trouble they had leading up to their wedding was crushingly difficult to read.) But getting to follow along with her as she first sees and immediately loves the sights, the sounds, and the people all the way on the other side of the world, was really beautiful to get to see.

Overall I know that memoirs aren’t for everyone, and they aren’t even my go to genre by any means, but I would recommend this one to anyone who wants to dip their toes in and fall in love with China vicariously through the author’s story.

Link to Purchase on Amazon :

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Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

St. Martin’s Press – Review: 3 Stars

Thanks so much to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner }

The premise and lead character definitely (and quickly) drew me to this book when I first read the pre-publication synopsis – I love a character driven novel, and when it’s being lead by a strong female character I tend to love it all the more. What can I say? I have a type. So a story about a strong, independent, and badass female firefighter finding love and reuniting with her mother sounded like it would be right up my alley. And for the most part I really enjoyed this book, but it was a near miss from “love” for me.

One of the things that bugged me the most was the thing that I usually eat right up in a book like this – the romance. The love story. Don’t get me wrong, I had quite a few swooning moments with the Rookie. But let’s start there – it is very difficult to fully invest in a romantic connection between two characters where one is almost exclusive referred to as “the Rookie,” even by the person that he is in said relationship with. I’m all for nicknames or pet-names galore, but the fact that he had this joking and mocking nickname before they were even fully acquainted, and she continues to use it after falling in love and even up until (spoiler) the wedding. And that was just a little bit difficult for me to fully buy into.

And then the other part of the relationship that was a bit tough for me was how instantly Cassie fell for the Rookie. While I do prefer stories about the relationships that start slowly (either as friends or rivals) and build over time, I don’t have anything against a “love at first sight” type of love. And in all honesty I don’t have any issues character-wise with the Rookie falling for Cassie at first sight. But everything that we know about Cassie would mean that she shouldn’t have that kind of reaction. She has spent her entire adult and young adult life building up these walls around herself emotionally, and while yes I believe that finding herself falling in love with someone would break those walls down, seeing a man that she finds attractive should not immediately affect her as strongly as it does. The man walks into the room on their first day of work and her heartrate immediately quickens, and she all but goes weak in the knees and swoons. Again, I don’t have an issue with love at first sight, but it doesn’t make sense with who we are meant to believe that this woman is. It just didn’t fit for me.

However, now that I’ve been a bit of a downer, overall I did enjoy this book. I liked the character of Cassie and her drive, and I really enjoyed her relationship with her mom (once she let herself have one). While it was really difficult to read about the people in her life letting her ignore her past, when according to her they “just know,” rather than encouraging her to face it, it was really nice getting to see her get to the point of talking about it and therefore being able to come to terms with it.

Even with the issues that I did have, I enjoyed this book and I’m glad that I got to read it. I would recommend it, but it certainly won’t be one of my favorite books of the year. What it did do was make me laugh at times, make me unwilling to put it down at others, and make me want to call my mom.

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When I Was White: A Memoir by Sarah Valentine

St. Martin’s Press – Review: 3 Stars

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author, and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner }

I knew that I was interested in this book early on before publication, because I love getting to learn about different perspectives and read about experiences that I wouldn’t necessarily have in my lifetime. This memoir definitely fit the bill in that respect. This was a really interesting read, although I will say that it isn’t exactly a fun or easy read. Like, I wouldn’t take it to the beach or anything, but I am glad that I got the chance to read it.

That being said, I don’t think that this will end up being my favorite read of the summer. There was a ton of really amazing detail throughout the entire book, about everything – but at times there was a bit more detail than I really needed about certain aspects of the author’s story and it made parts of the book seem a bit long. Things like knowing exactly what stop she used on the subway, and all of the stops that lead up to it, and the entire layout of the shops and city. While I know that where you grow up and where you go to college tend to have a great impact on a person’s story so I definitely don’t mind a bit of that type of background and detail, but it seemed to me that it took up a good chunk of the book and made it a bit of a slow read for me. It’s completely personal preference, but it just made the book drag a bit for me in some parts.

This story, and the author, are definitely at their best when they’re focused on the human interactions – specifically between the author and her mother, as well as the rest of her family. One of the best things about non-fiction, when written in a truthful and realistic tone, is that you get to see the flaws that everybody has. This author and her family are no exception, but her mom is especially fascinating, and the many conversations that take place between she and the author surrounding her true parentage (both before it is really revealed to her as well as after) are incredibly interesting. I loved getting to see behind the curtain a little bit and get a taste of what those difficult conversations would have looked like.

I will say that if you are a reader who prefers happy endings that are tied up in a bow, this may not do it for you. The author is a strong, independent woman who finds herself through the course of finding who she is, and through becoming in touch with the heritage that she wasn’t sure she shared. And in that fact alone, it is a happy ending. But know that there are still many questions that are left unanswered. For instance, despite all of her research and looking, by the end of the story the author has not met her biological father. But maybe along the way her strength showed her that maybe she didn’t need to after all.

This story gave me a very different look into white privilege, biracial identity, and other topics that I wouldn’t have had this insight into on my own. And I would recommend it to anyone else who would like to take a closer look at one of the many stories of identity and change and finding who we are, specifically a story that may be very different than ours. Just know that it may be a bit of a long read, so prepare yourself to wade through some lengthy bits of description. And I’m not kidding, probably not a beach read. Preferably read it while sitting by a fireplace with a blanket and a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Trust me, you’ll want to feel cozy!

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Carnegie Hill by Jonathan Vatner

St. Martin’s Press – Review: 3 Stars

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author, and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review! All opinions are completely my own. { partner }

Review originally written April 17, 2019, published August 6, 2019.

When I requested the ARC for this book it was completely based off of the description, and I have to start by saying it was not quite what I had been expecting. I think I went into it expecting something along the lines of those wedding themed romantic comedies where it all centers around the heroine being caught between her perfect and loving fiance and her crazy and overbearing parents, but it all works out in the end. What I got instead was the larger scale soap opera that touches on all of the different love stories within the walls of the Chelmsford Arms, and dealing with much more serious subject matter than I had been expecting.

All of that being said, by the end I LOVED the stories and the way that they were told! Each story had a lot of heart, and each showed very different sides of love, and all with a diverse cast of characters. I will say that the chapter lengths were pretty lengthy (the novel is split into three parts with 18 chapters in total, but each totally many more pages than a typical chapter that you would expect), so at times I found that it could be a fairly slow read. But over all I still very much enjoyed it, and I would highly recommend it to any of my friends that want to spend a few days eavesdropping in on the lives of the upper class on up Carnegie Hill.

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A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell

St. Martin’s Press – Review: 5 Stars

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author, and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are completely my own. { partner }

Read the synopsis of this book. Even start reading this book. Think you have some ideas about what is going on, and who (if anyone) is telling the truth? Think again.

Get to the point where you only have three chapters left until you get to the end of this book. Think you’ve figured it out at that point, since you’re so close to the end? You’re still wrong. Think again.

This book took me a while to get all the way to the end, because I kept re-reading parts that I had just read, because I was trying to figure out the twists and turns before they happened. I was re-reading trying to instead read between the lines and see what the underlying secrets may have been. And yet I was wrong the entire time, and every time that I thought I had figured it out it turns out not only was I not on the same page but I was in a completely different chapter. This book kept me on my toes the entire time, I loved getting lost in the mystery of it, and my poor fiancé is probably glad that I’m finished with this read so that I can be done bursting out of confusion and trying to talk through it with him.

We get this story from multiple points of view – Caroline Stark, the woman who says she’s under attack; Aiden Callahan, the man who says that he loves her; and then later also from Lieutenant Jess Messina, the woman whose job it is to find out what is really the truth.

I loved getting all three of these perspectives – the first part of the book “Before the Storm” being told by Caroline and Aiden, and then the second part titled “After the Storm” being told to us by Aiden and Jess. One thing that I found really interesting is that Caroline’s side of the story is written in first person, while Aiden’s chapters are written in third person. This immediately, at least in my opinion, makes the reader feel more trusting of Caroline and feel like they are on her side, because she is talking directly to the reader almost like they are just having a conversation, or she is trusting us and letting us in on her secret. Meanwhile the third person perspective from Aiden feels isolating, and like either he or the readers are on the outside looking in, and we’re just hearing it secondhand, which automatically makes it seem like that information is less reliable. I think that this was a really brilliant decision in the writing on the author’s part, and it definitely helped to cause a good deal of my confidence in what parts of the stories I was and was not believing, as well as my confusion when I found out how wrong I was about everything all along.

There is very little that I can go into detail on with this book without having to give a massive spoiler alert, and I want to give everyone the opportunity to think they know what is happening and see if they are as off track as I was, without me spoiling any of the surprises for them.

So I will just say this: I highly, highly recommend this book. I knew that I was picking up a highly reviewed and highly anticipated psychological thriller. What I did not know what that I was probably picking up one of my favorite reads of the month, possibly of the summer. This read was clever, confusing, manipulative, and extremely well written. While yes there were parts that maybe felt a little bit longer than they needed to be, and yes there were a few parts that weren’t my favorite. But when speaking overall, I really loved this read, and am so glad that I got the experience to read it, and will be recommending it to all of my girlfriends who love thrillers and murder shows (you know who you are.)

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Sells Sea Shells by Mara Mer

Mari.Reiza – Review: 3 Stars

Thanks so much to the author for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner }

Sells Sea Shells follows a handsome young man, Ismail, who is an illegal Moroccan immigrant who makes his way by selling goods to rich tourists along the beach. In doing so he strikes a very odd acquaintance with a wealthy Italian man, who offers Ismail a very unusual agreement as a way to get out of his situation. But Ismail is good, and compassionate, and he isn’t sure he will be able to live to his side of this bargain.

I don’t often read novellas, but I’m starting to think that I should sprinkle them in to my reading more often! This was such a quick read, only coming in at about 100 pages, and it felt so nice that I had something that I could sit and read at a comfortable pace and still finish in one sitting.
However, for the short length, there is a lot that author Mara Mer fits in to this story. While reading, there were moments that seemed like she had been planning a full length novel, and so to a certain extent the ending seemed a little bit rushed and borderline unfinished to me. But overall it was a really interesting read. It is a beautifully emotional look into the lives of these immigrants, and looking at the world that we are still living in as it is, it seemed a little bit too non-fiction in a few places. I think that this novella was interesting, intense, and has a level of emotion that depicts the author’s heart hanging from her sleeve.

I would recommend this to my friends who enjoy historical fiction, and may want a quick read from a point of view that they won’t hear from in many other places.

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Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

FlatIron Books – Review: 3 stars

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author, and Flatiron Books for the early review copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions in this review are entirely my own. { partner }

I finished this book a little while ago, and honestly had been waiting around to review it because I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say. Did I like it? Love it even? Or was it just slightly missing something for me? And in all honesty, I’m still not quite sure. So here goes nothing.

It took me a long while to really get into this book when I started reading it. Not because I didn’t like it. Even in the beginning I was enjoying the characters (anyone who has read basically any of my reviews now knows that I am obsessed with character driven stories.) But for some reason that I can’t quite put my fingers on, the first half of the novel took me approximately a forever to get through.
I always enjoy when we get to hear a story from the perspectives of different characters, and when you get to see the situations a couple of different ways. However, this book is told from a total of five characters perspectives, which I think may have ended up being just a few too many voices for me. It made it kind of fun for the parts of the book where each character was off doing their own thing, and each chapter was sort of jumping you to a different part of the island, but for the parts of the book where they were all in the same spot and situation, it wasn’t my favorite. In those parts of the story we didn’t get to jump back in time a few minutes and see how the other character felt or saw what we had just read about, at least not most of the times, instead we stayed in the same moment and switched to another perspective right in the middle. Between this and how many characters there were in general, I just found that I almost didn’t have any long enough stretch of time with any one character to care about most of them or their situations. Also, just since this seems to be a previously unknown pet-peeve of mine, one of our key narrators isn’t introduced as such until halfway through the book. I get why she was an important narrator, and I did end up really enjoying her point of view, and I even get why she wasn’t needed in the first portion of the story. But I stand by it – I really don’t like when there is a new narrator introduced that late to the game. I know it happens, and sometimes can be done well. But these are my opinions, and it’s my review, so I’m sticking to it here.

Now here we get to the part of the review where I get to talk about the parts of the book that I really loved, because I promise you that there were a few. First and foremost, the setting of Greece, and how much the book dove into all of the gorgeous sites and history that come along with it. I wanted to immediately jump on a plane, explore some ancient ruins, have a glass of wine or three, and then jump immediately into some clear blue water! Doesn’t that sound perfect right now? But I digress.
I ended up, overall, enjoying the second half of the book better than the first. Whether this is because I was more invested in the characters by then and therefore the jumping around didn’t quite bug me as much, or if the story had gotten going enough that I was more invested and was more invested to see what happened next. And part of it was definitely how busy and crazy my life was while trying to read this during the first round, so definitely take this with a grain of salt. But compared to the first half, the second half completely flew by for me. The only thing that I would say about the ending is that, once I did get fully invested in the characters and their stories, I think I would have liked to get some more information about the choices that they made after “the end.” What I’m saying is, I could have used a Harry Potter style “10 years later” moment, you know? I’m all for a cliffhanger or open ending in case there’s a possibility of a sequel, or more information at a later date, but I’m not sure whether or not I would read a sequel for this particular tale, so I would have liked to get it tied up a little bit better at the end here.
And the last thing that I loved – there are some really beautiful relationships in this book. Not necessarily the romantic ones, but the friendships and the familial relationships that we see throughout the story. There isn’t too much to say about this part, but I just really loved a lot of them.

Overall, I would recommend this book to my friends. It is a really interesting look into the life of a woman and her family, when their lives are seemingly falling apart around them, but possibly falling together instead. This was a fairly fun read, set in a beautiful place, and had a good amount of interesting characters. While I think I’m ready for infidelity (slight spoiler? You learn early on, I’m going to let it pass) to not be one of the main conflicts in such a high percentage of books that I am reading, but there was enough else happening that it didn’t bug me too much. I would just give my friends that I am recommending it to a small heads up before reading it, in case they’re tired of reading about it too. But if it’s something that you don’t mind reading about, or it’s something that you can look past, I think that this is a great choice for a summer read! So pull up a glass of wine and maybe a lounge chair, and then you are all set.

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New US Giveaway!

Giveaway posted to Instagram on July 28 at 12:00noon

Struggling to finish up with your #SummerTBR? Well allow me to be of assistance! To thank all of my old and new friends and followers, one winner will receive one surprise book from their TBR list, and another goodie or two!

To enter, go on over to my Instagram post (linked below) and follow the following steps :

  • Follow me on Instagram (don’t unfollow, be my friend forever! I’m needy like that, and you’ll be blocked from future giveaways)
  • Like the post, and on it tag some of your bookish friends! (This can be done unlimited times, each in a different comment – one entry per comment)

Extra Entries :

  • Share the Instagram post to your stories for 24 hours and tag me so I can see it!
  • Follow my blog (hey, you’re here! You made it! Woohoo!) and leave a comment on Instagram letting me know that you have1

The winner will be drawn one week from posting, Sunday August 4 at 12:00 noon, and notified later that day!

Giveaway not affiliated with Instagram, etc. Just me!

Link to giveaway post : https://www.instagram.com/p/B0eD9f8AanQ/