New Release: Winning the Bosses Heart

Winning the Bosses Heart by Hayson Manning

Today is the release date for this fun novel! I had the pleasure of reading it ahead of time which was great!

First, if you aren't familiar with this author, you should be. Her characters have a ton of personality. Her heroines are always strong and sassy and certainly not damsels in distress. Her heroes are struggling with their emotions for one reason or another. 

In this novel, you really come to dislike the hero, Mason. I honestly wanted to reach through my kindle and shake him! But, I've met that type of man, one who has been through a very tragic loss, and I have to say Manning wrote him very well. Of course he was a total jerk, he was a man who had faced horrific sadness who was attempting to lock it up and simply move on as if nothing happened. Obviously it turned him robotic. 

I read our heroine, Billie, through a completely different lens. She is a woman who had to grow up fast and be the adult as a child. Then she's attracted to a man who needs some serious emotional help. Therefore, she gets her heart absolutely trampled! Of course she does! She is a woman desperately seeking the stability she never had but she's looking for it from a man who uses keeping himself closed off as a way to not finally breakdown and deal with his loss. 

This book is real, fresh, and simply delightful. It's filled with spunky back and forth banter and clever things that had me literally laughing out loud. The overall theme is healing, which is something we all need very now and then. 

Pick it up today! It's a great late summer read. 

Review: Saltwater Kisses: A Billionare Love Story

Saltwater Kisses: A Billionare Love Story by Krista Lakes
US Link http://www.amazon.com/Saltwater-Kisses-Billionaire-Story-ebook/dp/B00DIM87FC
UK Link http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saltwater-Kisses-Billionaire-Story-ebook/dp/B00DIM87FC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373673703&sr=8-1&keywords=salt+water+kisses

This is the second novel by this author and I have to say, I am enjoying her fun little stories about the adventure of falling in love.

This story begins with a small-town girl named Emma goes on a dream vacation to a tropical island...alone. She won the trip calling a radio station during a contest. I was instantly excited because I won a similar vacation on the radio not too long ago. Crazy right? Anyways, so Emma goes on this vacation and somehow ends up in the right place at the right time and assists in a water rescue of a man who had a heart attack while swimming. The other person to help her happens to be a gorgeous single billionaire who she instantly connects with. They spend the rest of her trip together.

But then he goes home and so does she. Emma thinks their fling with Jack is over until fate would intervene once more and she is swept up in a paparazzi nightmare. Jack was that important and the tabloids would love to harass Emma endlessly.

This story is full of "1% chances." She wins the vacation, she gives someone CPR (stayin' alive, stayin' alive.... ah ah ah ah stayin' aliiiiiiiiive) meets a billionaire, ends up whisked away to his pent house. Every few chapters I kept saying "No way!" It was exciting and fresh. I enjoyed having a vacation from the ordinary or a while and reading this book.

My only regret is that I read it when I did, because it would have been the perfect beach reading material for my own trip this fall. Shucks! :)

It also left us on somewhat of a cliff hanger...grrr. BUT, good news, there's a second novel coming out very soon that tells the story of one of the minor characters in Salt Water Kisses. So hopefully we will get to check back in on Jack and Emma.

Review: The Amateur Marriage

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler

My new favorite novel by my longtime favorite author. This is the most beautifully written novel I have ever read in my whole life. Hands down. Anne Tyler is gifted in her ability to poetically tell the stories of ordinary people in normal lives, that don't necessarily have huge climactic moments that leave you on the edge of your seat.

To be honest, nothing monumental happened in this novel, but it was literally a story of two entire lives.

This story follows two people who met and married very young, lived their lives, raising kids, running the families grocery store, losing a kid as a runaway, reconnecting with the estranged daughters child but not the daughter, divorcing, one remarrying, and ultimately ones dying.

Pauline and Michael are my favorite on page couple, and they don't even get their happily ever after. The way Tyler wrote them is simply marvelous. I found myself laughing and crying all in one sentence.

This novel is pure poetry and I couldn't put it down.

Review: Lost in The Forest

Lost in The Forest by Sue Miller

This book surprised me. It was recommended to me based on my recent selections from the library app on my phone. I was impressed. I love how simple and sweet the writing is, truly expressing the beauty of ordinary life.

This book instantly starts with a tragic twist of events, forcing a father to take charge and take in his children temporarily. We start in the fathers point of view, and I am glad we did. He was a good lens in which to introduce this family and their life together.

I was instantly sucked in to the way Miller found the beauty in the ordinary. Then, something unexpected happened.

******SPOILER   DON'T CONTINUE IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW A CRITICAL PLOT POINT*****

So I try not to put in spoilers but this one I just had to include. One of the children that we see first through the lens of the parents, takes center stage part of the way through the novel in a shocking turn of events. She is sucked into a physical affair with an older man, a much, much older man. One of her mother's best friends husbands to be exact.

I read this part very intently, unsure what to think. This was so real, and so sad. I am so glad that a author told this story and did it justice. Too often these stories go untold and they are sad and I think damaging to the teenagers involved. Beautiful job, Sue Miller, tackling a tough topic and shining.

Cheers! 

Review: Kissing The Maid of Honor

Kissing The Maid of Honor by Robin Bielman

I was getting ready to go to a rehearsal dinner when I found this book on a facebook group I am a part of. Now this wedding I was attending was huge, the kind of wedding that most of us think only happens in movies. The rehearsal dinner alone would have cost me a years salary. The groom is my husband's cousin, and his side of the family rented an entire ranch for us to stay at. I had a whole weekend to relax and enjoy it, sitting poolside and staring out at the rolling hills.  On this lovely weekend, I read this fun and perfectly fitting book.

It was a beautiful wedding weekend both on and off the page.

This book was sweet. Oh the troubles of high school crushes gone wrong. Being a woman who married the man that she kissed as a teenager (and it went terribly wrong), I can relate to this character. (This kiss, no joke, was why my now husband and I didn't get together then as opposed to nearly ten years later) I totally related. I loved how authentic this author wrote this fun little scenario.

Sela and Luke are characters that I instantly wanted to root for. I particularly LOVED seeing them take care of one another. To me, there is nothing more beautiful in a relationship that nurturing, and Bielman wrote it beautifully and truthfully.

The only problem is I found myself wanting more. I found myself in a few scenes saying "Wait, that's it? Tell me more! Tell me more!" This book could have been at least fifty to a hundred more pages in length and I would have been satisfied.

However, what she did include in this book was great. Fun and excited especially since I was so lucky to read it while relaxing on a ranch during a big crazy wedding weekend.

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a nice romance novel.

Cheers!

Review: Just for the Summer

Just for the Summer by Janna Rutland

This fun little romance novel was easy to become invested in. The story was both believable and interesting: a woman who meets face to face with the man who adopted her child. 

The entire novel reminded me of the feeling you get when you are at the top of the roller coaster, ready to make that first decent.  I knew ultimately Dani would have to tell Matt her secret, I just wasn't sure when. As my progress bar on my kindle kept inching towards 100%, I began to get anxious!

With the constant point of view changes between Dani and Matt, it's easy to understand the two's feelings and emotions which to me gave a comfortable "everything's going to work out in the end" feeling. You trust both characters to be good people who will make good choices. 

I particularly enjoyed the way Rutland accurately writes in the child's voice of Sam. This one is hard for people to write in sometimes and have it come off as accurate as she has. It's one thing to hope for a happily ever after for the adult characters you come to love while reading, but it's another all together to hope for one for a child. Sam's character is an instant hit. 

On the subject of voice, I also enjoyed Dani's. I felt she was a very strong and well developed character who was easy to identify with.  

One line that truly stuck with me was: "He wouldn't exist if I had thine through a the pain and grief." I feel this line, as well as several others suggest the theme: everything you go through brings you to where you are today. Another notable theme was that of second chances.  

If you want a sweet love story with a real life conflict that the characters must overcome, this novel is a good one for you. 

In fact, I plan to buy a few more of her novels in the near future. 

Review: Ladder of Years

Ladder if Years by Anne Tyler

This book was a lot of fun! As usual with AnneTyler it was an overly ordinary story with not big moments of excitement. No more than in any other normal life that is.  

The characters were fresh and fun. I enjoyed all the quirky traits of Tyler's characters. 

This book revolved around one year in the life Delia Grinstead: wife, mother, sister, and daughter in law. 

This year for her is a unique one because at the start of the novel her and her family visit the beach for their annual vacation. Then, quite suddenly, Delia decides to leave her family and impulsively and with no plan, hitch a ride out of town and begin her life again. 

That's all. Just simply rent an app attempt, buy a few new dresses and get a job. 

The novel tells of her day to day life as her new self and her journey back home. 

So ordinary yet so unique and interesting.

She is by far one of my favorite authors.