Must read before seeing movie!

Finally reading these two dystopian/paranormal teen sensations!

I'm enjoying Beautiful Creatures much more than Matched.

What do you all think?

I've always been a late bloomer, so to speak, when it comes to reading what's hot.

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Children's Book Review: Exclamation Point by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld

From the bestselling creators of Duck! Rabbit!, an exciting tale of self-discovery!

He stood out here.

He stood out there.

He tried everything to be more like them.

It's not easy being seen. Especially when you're NOT like everyone else. Especially when what sets you apart is YOU.

Sometimes we squish ourselves to fit in. We shrink. Twist. Bend. Until -- ! -- a friend shows the way to endless possibilities.

In this bold and highly visual book, an emphatic but misplaced exclamation point learns that being different can be very exciting! Period. (Goodreads)

It's been a little while since I've highlighted a children's book that I am reading. I couldn't possibly keep up reviewing all the books I read with my son. We read up to five daily. Since he just turned five, he is actively reading now. We are knee deep in the first step of chapter books. Frog and Toad are our good friends!

I've been getting some wonderful books sent to me from Scholastic and I just have to share them with you all. 

Exclamation Point by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld is absolutely delightful. When teaching our son how to read, we emphasized the importance of using emotion in your voice when you read a sentence ending in an exclamation mark. He would do it so over the top it was adorable. I just knew he would love this book and he did.

It's sweet. It's simple. The illustrations are just right on. I love that the Question Mark can only ask questions and once the Exclamation Point gets going, lets out his excitement! It has a sweet message. Finding who you are and being proud of it!

Thank you to Scholastic for sending me a copy to enjoy and share with you all.

If you have a young child in your life, this is a wonderful pick to read to them. Any of Amy or Tom's books do the trick. All of them are so lovely and well done.

Book Details:
Exclamation Point
978-0545436793
Price: $17.99
56 pages
Scholastic Press
Release Date, March 1

Author Websites:
Amy Krouse Rosenthal 
Tom Lichtenheld

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Audio Review Part 2: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

If you caught one of my earlier posts in December,you will remember I reviewed the first half of this audio book at that time. It is a total of 30 discs and I was only at 15 but really, really excited to talk about it even if it was just a little. I knew with the holiday coming up that it would take me awhile to finish it. I ended up shelving it for a month while I listened to two other audio books, just to mix it up.

I finally finished it three days ago and I am in a Stephen King fog. Now I just want to listen to more! Like I said previously I hadn't really read Stephen King since I was a teenager. I am a child of the 80s and he was the shit for a long time. Maybe it was just my lack of knowledge at the time but books and authors seemed different back then. There just weren't that many that were marketed as heavily as Stephen King, Danielle Steel, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, that sort of thing. These are who you read if you wanted horror, romance, mystery. 

I miss that. Also, Stephen King's books just conquer some weird nostalgia in me, like the feeling I get when I hear wind chimes on a windy evening in the country. Spooky, yet comfortable. I can't really explain it that well. All I can say is that I loved this audio book and I absolutely loved the narrator. He was amazing!!!!  And King was at his finest. Yes, it was lengthy and involved but damn, he did it well. It had all the politics and the drama and the love story that just kept it going.

I was also big into the Kennedy family when I was a teen. I did a lot of papers on them so to have the underlying story here be about the assassination of JFK really intrigued me.

I was hitting a wall previously with a certain disc/hour limit before this but now I am really opening my eyes up to other books that are longer. I don't mind investing the time if the story is going to rock my socks. 

For audio fans, pick this one up. It's well worth it. My husband picked up the book and read it along with me. He finished the book in less than a week. He is amazing like that! It was fun to talk about it together.

I'm off to placed a request for Under the Dome by him as well. Let the horror begin!

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Review: Always Watching by Chevy Stevens

As a psychiatrist, Nadine Lavoie has a true desire to help people put their demons at rest, but she has demons of her own, some she can barely think about, and some she can’t even remember. Nadine’s mother was a wildly unpredictable manic depressive, her father an alcoholic, and there are whole chunks of Nadine’s life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for eight years.

After she’s attacked outside her office, Nadine decides to take a job at a hospital in Victoria as a staff psychiatrist. It’s the perfect opportunity: She won’t get as attached to her patients and she’ll be closer to her daughter. But when a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought in to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her—and learns of some troubling parallels to their lives. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her own history, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island. What happened to Nadine? Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?  (Good Reads)

My review:

Chevy Stevens had one of those debut novels that kicked the ass of many readers. Still Missing terrifies me to this day when I think of it. Because of the impact it had on me I have eagerly anticipated each book she has written. Her second Never Knowing packed a punch as well. I was fortunate to receive a galley of her third, Always Watching, due out in June of this year. It didn't take me long to get wrapped up in the crazy story she created.

It seems that Stevens is hitting her stride. The story was a bit more refined, less flashy and startling than her other two. There were still twists and turns and "holy shit" moments but it seemed a bit more fleshed out. More character development, more back story. 

The story included a twisted tale of a cult like leader which for some insane reason always fascinates me. How people could blindly follow the voice of another and have them completely control every aspect of their lives, I'll never know.

Nadine was a tough cookie but still had her vulnerable side. I did figure out some of the secrets within the book over half way through but it really didn't ruin it all for me. Overall, I thought it was a pretty decent thriller. I'm hoping Stevens takes longer breaks between her books so she doesn't get too formulaic. The authors that tend to churn them out lose their flash after awhile, in my opinion.

For readers new to Stevens, I would start out with Still Missing. I think it's her best but they are all worth reading.

Author Website: Chevy Stevens

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child 

A wonderful quote

Indeed.

Audio Review: I, Rhoda by Valerie Harper

The heartwarming memoir from beloved, award-winning television actress Valerie Harper.Valerie Harper is finally ready to tell her story. In this, her first memoir, the beloved and award-winning television actress reflects on the role that made her famous—Rhoda Morgenstern on the groundbreaking series The Mary Tyler Moore Showand on the spin-off show Rhoda—and the pressures of helming her own sitcom, Valerie. From her childhood in New Jersey and upstate New York to the beginnings of her acting career as a dancer and chorus girl on Broadway—performing alongside stars like Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason—to her recent battle with lung cancer, Valerie shares the story of her life, both the highs and the lows, in this heartwarming memoir, filled with charming anecdotes about Betty, Lucy, and Mary, to name a few (Goodreads)

"We're going to make it after all...."

I really wasn't a Mary Tyler Moore fan. I was a freak and geek about Maude, Golden Girls, One Day at a Time and Alice. But my good friend, Cheryl, LOVES the show. I would have to listen to her love for it when we were living together many years back. I know it's going to be right up my alley so I finally requested the first season of the show from the library. 

Just because I didn't watch Mary Tyler Moore does not, however, mean that I don't love Valerie Harper. I was a huge Valerie (and then The Hogan Family) fan. Remember that show? I had to say yes to reviewing this on audio. I didn't expect reading it would be as fun as listening to Valerie herself narrate her life in her raspy, New York voice.

This was really sweet and fun. She dives into a little bit of her troubles with eating, her cancer scare and her troubles with some network folks over Valerie but overall, it's just a fun listen to her journey through acting. She starts us off with her love of dancing, her early years in theater, to network TV star, to movie star, to mom, and so on and so forth.

For all of the "celebrity" memoirs out there, this one was worth the listen. I liked that it wasn't filled with over the top drama or life lessons. Straight forward, simple with a little sass, just like Ms. Harper.

Thanks for Simon and Schuster Audio for sending me a copy to review. Click here for a listen.

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Book Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

"Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.
"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
''I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under. (Good Reads)

Oh sweet day what a delightful book and indeed a perfect book to start this year off. I'm still taking longer to get through a book these days (see last year) but I really looked forward to getting back to this one. We received an ARC at work and it was placed in my mailbox. Turns out two other co-workers read it and loved it and thought I would too.  They are not young adult readers at all so it surprised them that they would enjoy it as much as they did.

The beat of this book reminded me  Fault in our Stars by John Green. It had the quick, right-on, back and forth dialogue of youth. I took to it because sprinkled in were references to the 1980s, MY youth. I liked that it didn't have the cell phones, the texting, the internet, the social media element that is so heavy in youth culture these days. It just had Eleanor and Park and their clunky fall into first love. 

Eleanor is a new kid in a new school. She comes back to live with her mom and her stepdad after being booted out a year before. Feeling like an outsider and an intruder in her "home", along with her siblings, she just tries to coast by, unseen. This is hard to do when you consider yourself to be "fat", tall and have enormous red curly hair. She meets Park on the school bus and he, being uncomfortable with his jerky friends picking on the new girl, offers up the only available seat, next to him.

This begins an awkward yet so dead on tumble into love.

Eleanor's life is unsafe, not easy to read at times but she allows herself, eventually to seek relief and happiness with Park.

This book was so wonderfully written. Easy to read, completely relatable, absolutely moving. Highly recommended. I swear it will find the success and following that Fault in our Stars found. It has to! 

Author Website: Rainbow Rowell
Purchase: Indie Bound
Release Date: February 26, 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child