King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: The Liberation of Alice Love

author: Abby McDonald

genre: fiction/humor/chic-lit/romance


published: March 2011


pages: 417

source: ARC from Sourcebooks

first line: It began with a vibrator.

rated: 4 out of 5 stars








The first line in The Liberation of Alice Love made me laugh out loud.

The story centers around a single, thirty something year old lawyer named Alice Love working in an agency in London.

When Alice tries using her debit card, she is declined. After calling the bank, she realizes she is a victim of fraud. Things only get worse when Alice goes to the bank to try and get a loan for a flat and she finds out she is thousands of pounds in debt due to fraudulent purchases and withdrawals.

Alice is trying to figure out who could have possibly stolen her identity and taken off with her life savings.



After finding out who the culprit is, feeling foolish and betrayed, Alice falls into a depression. The debt collectors are calling, she is unsure whether the bank will refund her money, and she feels like an idiot.
Soon enough Alice hires a man named Nathan to help her track down the thief who stole her identity. She first met the handsome Nathan at her sisters party and was instantly taken by him. He is a financial investigator and is eager to help her.


Alice decides to stop feeling at fault for what happened to her, and to somehow track down the thief and get her life back on track.



She begins tracking the thief's purchases and places they frequented and learns how her money was spent. Along the way, Alice finds herself trying out a gym membership that was taken out in her name and stopping to purchase clothes on a whim at a store where the thief shopped. Alice becomes liberated by doing things that are out of the norm for her in the process of trying to understand the thief's motives.




I really enjoyed The Liberation of Alice Love. It's a fun, sweet and interesting read.
I liked Alice, she made me laugh throughout the book. The supporting characters were well written and the story was taking twists and turns that had me wondering what would happen next.





The identity theft aspect of the story was right on point. When Alice questions the bank manager, she asks in great detail how someone could have wiped her accounts clean. She asked him questions like how could the culprit have known the answers to her personal questions, such as what is the name of her first pet and how the transfer could have gotten through so quickly when in reality a basic check deposit takes days to clear. Being in banking myself, I know the ins and outs of this type of thing and I can appreciate that the author did her research here, in order to make the fraud aspect of the story believable.
Abby McDonald is an author to look out for. What most impressed me is that she is just twenty five years old.

She didnt' waste time pining over men; she'd learned that lesson years ago. If they were interested, they would do something about it, and if they didn't-well, then they clearly didn't care enough to waste her time wondering over them. It was simple, far simpler tham any books or magazines or even her friends would admit.

Believing otherwise, she knew, would only leave her feeling an ache every night, absence like a physical form in the empty bed beside her.
p. 27

About the author:

Abby McDonald grew up in Sussex, England and studied Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Oxford University. She began writing at college, and graduated to work as a music journalist and entertainment critic; drawing on her loves of pop culture, film and feminism, and interviewing acts as diverse as LeAnn Rimes, The Kings of Leon, and Marilyn Manson. She is now a full-time novelist and screen-writer.

Special thanks to April over @ Sourcebooks.

title: Tuesday Tells it Slant

author: Holly Christine

genre: fiction

published: 2010

pages: 267

first line: Claudia, Isn't it funny how we sometimes forget the things we thought we'd never lose?

rated: 3 1/2 out of 5

Tuesday Morning has always been a little... different. She's kept a diary since 1989 and while researching for her senior seminar paper on Emily Dickinson's Transcendental tendencies, reads a poem that will change her life.


And not just her future. Tuesday changes her past.



We all have secrets and skeletons in our closets, but Tuesday has managed to clean hers out with a pen and a diary. Just how precious is our past? And how much has our past created what we are today?
How far would you go to forget your past?

Tuesday Tells it Slant is mostly written in the form of diary entries that vary from past to present time.


Monday and Tuesday Morning are twins. Tuesday's mother gave her a journal when she was a little girl and told her to name it, so each entry begins with 'Dear Claudia'.


Tuesday's journal entries are about her life from grade school into her twenties. She works as a book reviewer and editor at a literary magazine called The End.


I liked the relationships within the book. Tuesday and her sister Monday are very close, and she you get to read about their lives growing up from middle school and into their twenties. Tuesday is in love with her childhood sweetheart and best friend Billy.

Something happens to Tuesday that changes her life forever, and she'd rather forget this event than live with it. She re-writes her diary the way she would have liked the events to have happened, and then she goes to see a hypnotist in order to erase certain memories.




One thing that was a bit confusing were the flashbacks and flashforwards in the book. She goes back and forth from 1990 thru 2009. You are reading her diary entries throughout her life, but not in order. Some of the flashbacks were from present time, to the very recent past, then to present time again, only to go back way into the past once more.



I really liked is that each chapter beings with an Emily Dickinson poem, since Tuesday discovered the poet while writing a paper for school.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise



As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind --

-Emily Dickinson

All in all, I enjoyed Tuesday Tells it Slant . I think I would have enjoyed this read much more if the diary entries were written in chronological order. I didn't enjoy the jumping back and forth with the flashbacks and flashforwards.


Some of the writing in this book is really great. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite tidbits:

And now it's time to let it all go. If he's mine, I will find him again. If not, I will go on as I am supposed to. There is no grief. There is no pain. And finally, after all of this time, I can be free of the demons in my past, those haunting memories that hung over my head for so long. Those terrible insecurities that have kept me from being true to myself. Tomorrow I am new again. A rebirth. A new future, a change in the present by slanting the past. My new truth.

-Tuesday

Claudia,

Isn't it funny how we sometimes forget the things we thought we'd never lose? We take in the day and promise each other that this day, this very day, will stay with us forever and ever and we will never let this moment leave our soul. It will stay in our mind until death and even upon death we won't forget. We will find it again in heaven, whispering it's syrupy sounds of reverie into our souls and reviving our spirits with the saccharine sounds of bliss.

Tuesday could never understand how anyone on earth could return a book that they had purchased. Books were prized possessions to Tuesday. Each one brought out a different side of her; each one meant something more and each one took her away from her life for a while.

about the author:

Holly Christine is the author of The Nine Lives of Clemenza, Retail Ready, and the recently completed Tuesday Tells it Slant. She began storytelling at the age of six with riveting tales of horror in the classroom.

In 2005 she completed her first novel, which remains in the nightstand. By 2006 she had completed The Nine Lives of Clemenza and patiently waited for a six figure deal from A Major Publishing House. Receiving no such contract, she took matters into her own hands in early 2009 and published Clemenza on her own. As reviews came in for her first published work, a new found confidence in her writing brought forth Retail Ready, which she immediately published in May of 2009. Believing that the muse was silent, Holly carried on a normal life until December of 2009 when the inspiration for Tuesday Tells it Slant hit. Twenty days and an unfathomable amount of coffee later, she published Tuesday Tells it Slant.

special thanks to BookSparks

title: A Bad Day For Pretty


author: Sophie Littlefield

genre: crime fiction


published: 2010


pages: 292


first line: Mama was already down in the cellar with Gracellen and Patches.


rated: 3 1/2 out of 5








A Bad Day For Pretty is Sophie Littlefield's second book featuring Stella Hardesty, a middle-aged widow who helps women who are suffering from marital abuse. Stella kind of takes the law into her own hands when it comes to abusive husbands. She also owns a sewing machine shop in town.



Stella has feelings for the local sheriff, "Goat" Jones, but as the two are having a romantic dinner, there is a knock on the door and it's no other than Goat's estranged (and trashy), soon to be ex-wife, Brandy. To top it all off, there is a tornado in town that unearths a woman's body. Stella's friend Nebuchadnezzar Donovan...a.k.a. Neb, is accused of murdering the woman.



Chrissy, a young single mom, is one of the women that Stella has helped escape an abusive husband. Chrissy now lives above Stella's sewing shop and works for her as well. She is helping Stella solve the mystery of the 'mummy' that has been unearthed by the tornado. As the story unfolds, there are twists and turns as Stella and Chrissy try to figure out 'who dunnit'.





I liked Stella from the start. She's exactly what you want in a heroine. She's smart, sassy and doesn't take crap from anyone. I also liked that Stella is your average, every day girl, with her own natural beauty. She doesn't look like a barbie doll, nor does she want to. I was rooting for her to win Goat's heart, solve the murder mystery and live happily ever after. I enjoyed the supporting characters as well. Chrissy amused me using her charms as the two women tried to get clues in solving the case. Goat was sweet and couldn't help always trying to save damsels in distress, meanwhile the women in his life are driving him nuts.
If you enjoy a good mystery with some humor and romance, grab a copy of A Bad Day For Pretty.

There was a level, deep below the surface, where women in need connected with each other, where they found out about solutions of last resort, where Stella's number was passed along in whispers and secrecy was guaranteed by all those terrible layers of fear and desperation.

Also by Sophie Littlefield :


A Bad Day For Sorry







special thanks to Tony over @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.

title: The One That I Want

author: Allison Winn Scotch


genre: fiction


pages: 270


published: 2010/ARC


first line: Imagine, if you can, that you are sixteen again.

rated: 3 out of 5

This is my life. This is happiness. The two are one and the same. This, since I was sixteen and my mother died, is what I did, how I functioned, how I constructed everything around me; as sure as I breathed, I was happy. This is the life that I want, the one that I want. How is it that my husband doesn't know that?

In The One That I Want , Tilly Farmer is a married 32 year old guidance counselor, working for the same high school she graduated from. She is married to Tyler, her high school sweetheart, and the two are now trying to have a baby. They both live in the town they grew up in.
One afternoon Tilly goes to the town carnival and decides to see the fortune teller, who happens to be one of her old classmates. The fortune teller gives Tilly the 'gift of clarity' and sends her on her way.




Tilly's life is far from perfect. Her mother died to cancer when she was 16, leaving her 2 sisters, her father and herself heartbroken. Tilly managed to cope, but her father succumbed to alcoholism and her younger sister still resents him for it.
Now that Tilly has seen the fortune teller, she suddenly has strange episodes where she has visions of the future. When she 'sees' her father getting into his car drunk, then receives the phone call from the police station telling her he is being held for DWI, she begins to wonder how powerful this 'gift of clarity' really is.



Before she knows it, Tilly begins to have other visions of the future, including one where she sees her husband packing his belongings and leaving town. Tilly begins to realize that things aren't what she thought they once were.







I both liked and disliked The One That I Want . The storyline was interesting and I enjoyed the magical realism aspect of it, but for some reason I just could not connect with Tilly's character. She wasn't annoying or anything, I just didn't feel any type of connection to her.


I hate to sound nitpicky, but one thing that bothered me was the language in the story, at times it felt uncalled for and distracting. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first one to drop the 'F' bomb in conversation, but in this story it just distracted me a bit. It felt like it was overdone in some of the conversations. I know Tilly was mad with the situation, but I'd rather have seen her less on the defense.

Another thing I didn't like were some of the metaphors the author uses.

"But that's just it," he answers, and two real tears roll down from each eye, like sperm swimming free.

Then again, some of the passages were great:

There is the before. And then there is the after. Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you.

Like I said, the storyline was interesting. I did enjoy the friendship Tilly has with her best friend Susanna. I liked how the two support each other through thick and thin. There's a scene where Tilly and a few of the girls get together for Susanna's birthday. They have dinner and drink wine and just vent, that felt realistic and I always enjoy female friendships in stories.


There is a plot twist and the end that I thought was good also. All in all, this was an okay read for me. I do recommend it, others might love it. Though I didn't particularly love this book, I would definitely read Allison Winn Scotch again.











special thanks to Crystal over @ Booksparks for making this possible.

title: Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine's Guide to Life and Love

author: Patrice Hannon


pages: 156

published: 2005

first line: Who is there?


rated: 4 out of 5

Just between us-imagine that I am whispering to you now- a few of my letters escaped Cass's fire and scissors, and speak from the eighteenth century in proof of what I tell you. But to wear one's heart on one's sleeve is a fairly certain way to have it broken, you know.

Yours most faithfully,

Jane Austen

Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine's Guide to Life and Love is a fun little book that is written in the voice of Jane Austen giving advice on love and life to current day females. This book made me smile, it's a well written tribute to Jane Austen that I think most fans of hers would enjoy.



The book starts in 1816 where Jane Austen is finishing off the last sentence of Persuasion when her niece comes in with letters for her. Women write to Jane asking her for advice on life and love.


Jane gives some sound advice, while making references to her novels as well as to the people in her own life, such as her sister. There are also several Austen novel quotes throughout the book.



I finished this book in one sitting and really enjoyed it. I laughed out loud at a few of Jane's comments. Especially when Jane refers to gothic novels like Wuthering Heights:

Dear Jane Austen:

Help! I have reached the age where I won't tell my age and I will die if I don't land a husband soon. Why am I still single? I read every relationship book that comes down the pike, take every man-catching class offered in my town, watch all the dating experts on television....

Dear Jane, tell me before I give up on men completely and take the veil: how can I live happily ever after like Elizabeth Bennet?

-Wish I Were a Heroine



Yes, I have been studying your society for some time and am well acquainted with its absurdities. As as friend I would urge you to strive for some measure of self-command. Indeed, your hysterical raving would not be amiss in a Gothic novel, or something by one of those Brontes who, after all my labour to entertain women with sparkling comedies having only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them, set the poor creatures back hundreds of years with stories full of improbable circumstances and unnatural characters.

These novels are fine entertainment, not unlike the sort my Catherine adored, but it is not in them that human nature is to be found. Catherine discovered that General Tilney had neither poisoned his wife nor imprisoned her deep in the recesses of Northanger Abbey, and unless it is your custom to form attachments with men who do such things-or who walk the moors in the moonlight with the ghosts of lovers twenty years dead as Heathcliff does-you should not look to such books-or their present-day descendants, Hollywood romances-for pictures of real men and women.

I do think that the author catches Jane's voice well, and this book is a fun escape
for any Janeite looking for a quick and entertaining read.

By the bye, I have recently made a survey of your circulating library, where I was astonished to find volumes containing enough conduct guides to stretch, if laid end to end, from Bath to Southampton. It is evident that my Emma is not the only clueless female.

Author Patrice Hannon really does give some good advice through the voice of Jane.

The minds of men and women alike run too much upon the phenomenon I understand to be comprehended in the word "chemistry". The charm of personal attraction is intoxicating, but beware the dangers of an attachment formed solely or even primarily on such superficial grounds.

The questions are very specific and the answers are thought out and very well written. You can see how knowledgeable the author is concerning Jane Austen's work as well as her private life. She even refers to Austen's lesser known works such as Lady Susan and The Watsons. I recommend this book to any Jane Austen fan. It is a quick and sweet Austen fix.

title: Bridget Jones's Diary

author: Helen Fielding

genre: romance, humor

pages: 267

published: 1996

first line: I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.


rated: 4 out of 5







I've been meaning to re-read Bridget Jones's Diary for a while now and am glad I finally picked it up again.



Written in the form of her diary, Bridget takes the reader into a year in her life as a 30 something singleton living in England who works at a publishing company. Bridget's family and certain friends keep asking her when she's finally going to settle down and marry. Bridget meets Mark Darcy, a successful, rich lawyer at a party and her mother tries to get the two together. Darcy however is a bit of a snob and dislikes Bridget right away.

Meanwhile, her playboy boss Daniel Cleaver, begins to send her flirty emails and the two end up having an affair. Bridget is hoping Daniel will take thier relationship seriously, but she has the distinct feeling he is cheating on her.



I like that this book is inspired by Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and enjoy the references throughout the book:

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.

Throughout the story Bridget is also trying to drink less, smoke less and lose weight. As cute as they were at first, the beginning of her journal entries began to annoy me toward the end of the book. I found myself skimming over them.

Sunday 26 February

126 lbs., alcohol units 5 (drowning sorrows), cigarettes 23 (fumigating sorrows), calories 3856 (smothering sorrows in fat-duvet).

This book had me laughing out loud and I could totally relate to some of the things Bridget was talking about. She's one of those heroines I think most women can relate to.

Being a woman is worse than being a farmer-there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed.

When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love.

The film version of Bridget Jones's Diary is one of my favorites and I recommend the book for a good dose of light and fun chick lit. In this case, I do prefer the film to the book.
Some of my favorite scenes in the movie are not in the book, like the famous fight scene between Darcy and Daniel.

title: The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship

authors: Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel


pages: 363

genre: fiction

published: 2009

rated: 5 out of 5




The Recipe Club is one of those books that grabs your attention and does not let go. If I didn't have to work full time and tend to two children, I would have finished this one in one sitting, instead, I read it in two.



Lilly and Val are lifelong friends who haven't spoken in 26 years due to a falling out. Lilly is outgoing, flirty and dramatic, Val is the shy one, who tends to have her nose in a book and feels insecure most of the time.



In April of 2000, when Val's mother passes away, she emails Lilly, who is thrilled to hear from her long lost friend. The two women begin to email back and forth, but while they are catching up and reminiscing, they begin to argue once again over the same old issues that broke up their friendship up in the first place.



The book is written in the form of the womens' letters to each other. When the girls were tweens in the mid 1960's, they formed what they called 'The Recipe Club', and as they wrote to each other, they included a recipe with nearly each letter. So as you are reading the letters, you get a different recipe to go along with it. Recipes like First-Kiss Caramel Almond Kisses, Starry Night Scampi and Missing You Warmly Lentil Salad.




This book reads like non-fiction, you get the feeling that you are really reading the correspondence between these two friends.


I really enjoyed this book and am so happy I got a chance to read it. I highly recommend it! I liked both Val and Lilly, and I liked reading about thier lives through the letters they sent each other. This book also has a great twist in the end that took me totally off guard.


This one will be on my top favorites for 2010. The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship is my first favorite read of the year. Special thanks to Caitlin over @ FSB Associates for sending me a copy of this book.


Here's a few tidbits I liked:

Sometimes I feel like you and I don't have much in common anymore. But here's a recipe anyway. For the sake of the Recipe Club. It's complicated. I hope you mess it up.

Valerie

I'm starting to understand what it takes to make friends: it's all about connecting with other strong, intelligent, focused women. About abandoning the shell you've been hiding in your whole life. And when you do it right, you're rewarded with love. With people who really get you. Who never judge you. Who admire you for who you are and what you have to offer.

The truth is, you need lots of different kinds of friends, Val. My mom has taught me that, too. When I think about it, I realize my friends are like planets, circling around me. Each one is different, but I am always the sun.

title: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

author: Melissa Bank

published: 1999

genre: fiction/chic lit

pages: 274

rated: 3 out of 5











A friend of mine passed her copy of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing to me. Funny enough, as I was in the middle of reading this book, I saw a preview for a movie that was going to be playing on the tv, and I made sure to watch it. The film is called 'Suburban Girl', and it is loosely based on this book. Funny coincidence! I had no idea. When I was watching the movie, I realized, it was based on the book I was reading.



In The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing , Jane Rosenal narrates the stories. In the first story, she is 14 years old, then in the next story she's in her twenties, then the next story jumps back to when she was younger, only for the next one to go far into the future when she has a grown son. Confused? I was a tad bit myself.




I had no idea what this book was about when I first started reading it, and it ended up being a short story collection about Janes life, mostly her dating life. The book is told almost like a memoir/diary. Jane grows up to become an editorial assitant, and she reads and edits unsolicited manuscripts. The stories are mostly about her family life and love life, her relationship with a man 28 years her senior. I did not like the first two stories, but I did enjoy the others, mostly the last one.

The short stories are called:

Advanced Beginners

The Floating House

My Old Man

The Best Possible Light

The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine

You Could be Alone

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing



What I did not like:

* The time lapses in the story were confusing. She goes from being 14, to being in her 20's, then back to age 14, then fast forward into adulthood again only to end up in the far future. I was confused.


* I wish I would have known it was a book of short stories. The cover doesn't say so.

*Jane is in all of the stories. I like short stories that have nothing to do with one another. If this book were just written as one story, and gone in order, I probably would have liked it more.




* Sometimes the writing was choppy, there was just not enough description and some of it didn't make any sense to me. I know as readers we use our imaginations as we read, but this didn't work for me. Some of the passages are written like journal entries. I don't mind books that are written like that, like Bridget Jones Diary, for example, but in this book I didn't like it.



What I did like:

* Nearly all the stories had some shocking event take place. I liked that, it grabbed my attention when I least expected it to.

* A few parts made me laugh. There are some funny moments.

* The romances in Jane's life seemed realistic. In the end you want her to find someone she can be happy with.


* Some of the passages were written beautifully, like this:

Something changed then. I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching.

I saw myself the way I'd seen the cleaning women in the building across the street. I was just one person in one window.

Nobody was watching, except me.

For me, this book had it's good and it's bad parts. And I was interested enough to read it all the way through. I am glad I stuck to it and finished it, it got better towards the end. So don't let my review dissuade you from reading this one. What I didn't like about this book, another reader might love. And this is the kind of book that has me torn. You know what I mean? I both liked and disliked this book.






The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
has been made into a movie called 'Suburban Girl' starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin. It was a cute movie.