Authors and Publishers, I am happy to receive ARCs and published children's, middle grade, and YA books for review. When I finish it, I will review it. If you need the review posted in a certain time period, please let me know and I will move it to the top of the stack. Please note: my reviews are honest, but they are my opinion. If you don't want that, please don't ask. Email Me for reviews.
Mailbox Monday is a weekly meme started by Marcia at The Printed Page. You can read all about it at the Mailbox Monday blog. Well, the mailbox has gone on tour. This month's host is Library of Clean Reads.
I love this meme because it lets me take a peek into other bloggers' mailboxes and find out what they received over the last week. I will warn you, it does lead to more books as you will find many that you want because of others mailboxes. If you'd like to join in on the fun, post about your books and link up!
The week started off with a bang as I received an awesome package from Simon and Schuster. You can read about the excitement of Wither in the blog post, Thank You Simon & Schuster!
Welcome to another edition of my combo meme In My Mailbox/Mailbox Monday. You can find these hosted by some wonderful ladies: Kristi at The Story Siren and Marcia at The Printed Page, respectively. They host these memes so that book bloggers can share the books that come into their houses. I appreciate them both and hope that you will visit their blogs.
I had another light week, but got some good reads!
Alphatudes: The Alphabet of Gratitude by Michele Wahlder, from The Cadence Group for a Pump Up Your Book blog tour Alphatudes reveals that gratitude is the unexpected, simple secret of living a joyful life. In a world obsessed with negativity, we must deliberately choose to focus on the positive. Alphatudes uses your earliest grade school victory the ABCs to help you achieve a sustainable shift in thinking that leads to contentment, optimism and peace of mind. An alphatude is defined as: a person, place or thing for which one alphabetically expresses gratitude. Filled with vibrant illustrations, Alphatudes takes you on an inspiring 26-step journey where you ll discover how to: heighten your awareness of life s daily gifts; attract opportunities with a positive mind-set; find blessings in difficult situations; and become free from worry, negativity and resentment.
Letter to My Daughter (ARC) by George Bishop, from Ballentine Books via Shelf Awareness
Dear Elizabeth,
It’s early morning and I’m sitting here wondering where you are, hoping you’re all right.
A fight, ended by a slap, sends Elizabeth out the door of her Baton Rouge home on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Her mother, Laura, is left to fret and worry—and remember. Wracked with guilt as she awaits Liz’s return, Laura begins a letter to her daughter, hoping to convey “everything I’ve always meant to tell you but never have.”
In her painfully candid confession, Laura shares memories of her own troubled adolescence in rural Louisiana, growing up in an intensely conservative household. She recounts her relationship with a boy she loved despite her parents’ disapproval, the fateful events that led to her being sent away to a strict Catholic boarding school, the personal tragedy brought upon her by the Vietnam War, and, finally, the meaning of the enigmatic tattoo below her right hip.
After by Kristin Harmel, from Knopf Delacorte Dell
Lacey's world shatters when her dad is killed in a car accident. And secretly? She feels like it’s her fault. If she hadn’t taken her own sweet time getting ready that morning . . . well, it never would have happened. Her mom wouldn’t be a basket case. Her brother Logan wouldn’t drink. And her little brother would still have two parents.
But life goes on even if you don’t want it to. And when Lacey gets the chance to make a difference in the lives of some people at school, she jumps at it. Making lemonade out of lemons is her specialty. Except she didn’t count on meeting a guy like Sam. Or that sometimes? Lemonade can be a pretty bitter drink to swallow.
Review Copy Provided by: author via Pump Up Your Book Promotions
About the Book:Irene Watson's pretentious life could go no further until she faced her own past. Her poignant and inspiring memoir begins at the end, in a recovery center, where she has gone to understand a childhood fraught with abuse, guilt, and uncertainty. Her powerful story is a testament that it’s never too late to change your life, never too late to heal.
The Sitting Swing was a rope swing, hung from a tree next to the tiny cottage her Russian immigrant father built by hand from hand-milled logs and mud in Northern Canada in the early 20th century. Any motion at all would smash the child into a vigorous rose bush. It was a sitting swing in a family not given to play, in a childhood stretched between two very different cultures.
Irene was born into a tight Ukrainian-speaking community and a family struggling with guilt, shame, and grief over the death of a first-born child—a son. The old world immigrant culture placed much of the blame for Irene's brother’s death on her mother, causing her to hold her next child close to home, segregated from the new culture, victim to the blunt aggression of male cousins, and scornful townspeople.
About the Author: Author, entrepreneur, and therapist, her life has taken her on many paths, with breakthrough results and exemplar growth, to find her authentic and true self. She lives with her husband in Austin, Texas. Irene earned her MS in Psychology, with honors, from Regis University in Denver.
My Review: Another memoir, and I liked it! I have to say, that for this not being my favorite genre, it's growing on me. Watson tells a powerful story, that begins at the end. She starts out in adulthood, then takes you back to her childhood, how it all began, and why she ended up at the recovery center in the first place. I have a place in my heart for children who go through abuse, and Irene was one of those children. This is a story that will touch you in more ways than one.
I thing I really enjoyed was the sprinkling of pictures that were interspersed in the chapters of the book. They really added the reality feel to Irene's words. You could actually picture some of the things she mentioned in the book. It really helped to make the story more personal for me.
Irene Watson pours her heart and soul into this memoir as she tells how she survived a childhood of guilt and abuse, overcame the patterns created by her parents, and became a better person because of it. It you enjoy memoirs or just a great story, you should read this one!
Irene sent me an extra, autographed copy to giveaway to one of my readers. Please leave a comment on this post telling me why you'd like to read this, and I'll draw a random winner. Contest runs until Tue. June 9, and is open to US/Canadian addresses only. The winner will be posted and emailed on the 10th!
Extra entries can be earned by following (+1), tweeting (+2), blogging (+3). Good luck!
