The Blurb: Irina “Ira” Jeffries and her roommate, Fernanda Lopez, turn heads, even in a paradise like Miami’s South Beach where beauty is the rule, not the exception. Ira lands local modeling gigs while working at an ultra-hip art deco hotel. Fernanda’s classic Hispanic looks catapult her to the top of the local pageant scene. Both women take a mind-blowing ride into the cutthroat and competitive fashion and pageant worlds filled with seductive men, thousand dollar champagne toasts, Botox parties, spiked drinks, and the most incredible cities. Ira must choose between the frenetic pace of the fashion runways or the man she loves, sexy Spaniard and aspiring shoe designer, Pablo Andrews. Fernanda’s quest for being the best and nabbing the crown of Miss United States drives her into the arms of local celebrity and former trash-talking Miami Tarpon football player, Thomas Traylor. Each woman eventually has to make the biggest decision of her life about who she really wants to be. The options leave them both Head Over High Heels.

My Review: I downloaded this book for free on amazon when I was doing research to see how other authors managed the descriptions in their books. This book was similar to the rest of the modeling books that I’ve read. Shy, sweet, otherwise perfect girl doesn’t realize how incredibly gorgeous she happens to be and becomes a super famous, super popular, superstar of a model while struggling with whether or not she’ll lose her true identity to the evils of fame. Meanwhile girl meets a boy who appreciates her for being real but gets angry with her as modeling pushes her further and further toward fake. This book was written for adults so there was more sex, drugs, and plastic surgery than the YA versions of the tale, but otherwise it was similar. There were some plot points that bordered on the ridiculous, but all in all the book was good fun and for a free read completely worth the download.

Pros: Girl Friendships. Too often this type of book features the wallflower who is *different* from other girls and consequently doesn’t get along with other women. Gibson neatly sidesteps that oh so annoying cliche that sets women up against each other and puts a friendship front and center of the story that is every bit as important as the romance. Another major prop every character in this story has their own life. Even the love interest. And it doesn’t revolve around the protagonist! Instead everyone is reaching for their own goals, experiencing their own dramas, and supporting each other along the way.

Cons: The book got preachy on a few points, being anti-drug didn’t bother me, but the book came down just as hard on plastic surgery and botox. Now, I happen to agree that as women we should be happy with our appearance and screw anyone who tries to pressure a woman into going under the knife and I’m never going to spent my money on plastic surgery because for me, it’s just not a priority. However, the degree it was frowned upon ruffled even MY feathers. I don’t think it’s anyones, particularly not two natural born super models written as mouth pieces, place to judge whether or not a woman chooses plastic surgery. That’s no ones business but theirs and the sheer snide comments from the virtuous good guys about the amount of work different models got done just came off as grating.

There was also a missed opportunity in this book that completely made me lose respect for one of the characters involving a person who’d undergone a sex change. The character turned down an opportunity because *spoiler*

she’d originally lost to someone who was born male and was offered first place once this fact was uncovered. Her reason for turning down the opportunity was that she was insulted she’d lost to a biological male in the first place. She could have made a statement about how this person who identifies as female and went through numerous and painful operations so the rest of the world would see them as they perceived themselves won and she didn’t think it was right to take that from them. No, she just basically said she should have won in the first place. And I get that not everyone shares that opinion but in a book that’s completely about discovering who you really are and going after your dreams while discovering yourself, it seemed an odd plot point to throw in there for almost no reason.

But that’s my opinion, and that has nothing to do with the writing just an opinion I have. Ignoring those two things that just grated on my nerves, the book was fun to read. Well written descriptions too. Worth checking out.

Blurb: Once, a long time ago, I walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane, all alone, on the worst night of my life, and I found a kindred spirit. That was our beginning. More than thirty years ago. TullyandKate. You and me against the world. Best friends forever. But stories end, don’t they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way to go on. . . .

Tully Hart has always been larger than life, a woman fueled by big dreams and driven by memories of a painful past. She thinks she can overcome anything until her best friend, Kate Ryan, dies. Tully tries to fulfill her deathbed promise to Kate–to be there for Kate’s children–but Tully knows nothing about family or motherhood or taking care of people.

Sixteen-year-old Marah Ryan is devastated by her mother’s death. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable in her grief. Nothing and no one seems to matter to her . . . until she falls in love with a young man who makes her smile again and leads her into his dangerous, shadowy world.

Dorothy Hart–the woman who once called herself Cloud–is at the center of Tully’s tragic past. She repeatedly abandoned her daughter, Tully, as a child, but now she comes back, drawn to her daughter’s side at a time when Tully is most alone. At long last, Dorothy must face her darkest fear: Only by revealing the ugly secrets of her past can she hope to become the mother her daughter needs.

A single, tragic choice and a middle-of-the-night phone call will bring these women together and set them on a poignant, powerful journey of redemption. Each has lost her way, and they will need one another–and maybe a miracle–to transform their lives.

An emotionally complex, heart-wrenching novel about love, motherhood, loss, and new beginnings, Fly Away reminds us that where there is life, there is hope, and where there is love, there is forgiveness.

My Review: This isn’t my typical read, but I found it to be enjoyable nonetheless. It was touching, and sad. Sometimes unnecessarily so and a bit predictable from time to time (in a Murphy’s law kind of way) but overall the story captured the different ways that people fall apart when tragedy strikes and how they build themselves back up.

One major positive, I had no idea this was a sequel. None. I’d never heard of Firefly Lane (I picked this book up at a book exchange) until I went to review this on goodreads. I felt like all the characters were well developed, but never once got the sensation that it was because I’d missed their adventures in another story. As an author that struggles with how much backstory to put in my sequels, I have to give props here because it’s really hard to include the level of detail needed to catch new readers up without making them feel like they are drowning in backstory. Great job, Ms. Hannah!

The Blurb:
What happens when your ancestor, who happens to be a pedophile, a rapist and a cold-blooded killer, tries to kill you? Even stuffs his daughter into a box and throws them into the sea?

Luckily for Ariadne Phillips, Triton, god of the sea, travels across the ocean to protect her. Reluctantly you might add.
Sent by his father to watch a silly mortal, Taz plans to ship her off to No Man’s Land, so he can go back home to max and relax.

When blues eyes meet hazel, it’s a done deal. Taz wants to keep the only mortal who can make him laugh and cry at the same time, while Ari gets a dream trip to Greece, to be a model and finally use her self-defense training to kick some butt.
Happily ever after can’t be reached without Taz discovering his mortal flaw. Gods can and do die. Ari can’t join the immortal ranks without fighting the crockety Fates for her soul.

My Thoughts:

Triton-AM is the first book in the Aegean Chronicles by Yelle Hughes. Be sure to check out her guest blog from Monday. A very important note for the young adults who read my work is that this book has adult content.

Thank you so much Marissa Tejada, for inviting me to participate in this Q&A!

1) What am I working on?
I’m polishing the final draft of Venus and Adonis and then taking a break from goddesses until my daughter’s preschool is back in session. In the meantime, I’m working on a shorter ya paranormal horror story called Blood and Other Matter.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My Daughters of Zeus series features the actual Greek gods in modern times, not their descendants, not reincarnations of them, not similar supernaturals thrust into the same story.

Blood and Other Matter is features the scarier side of the paranormal, where instead of just being hot and misunderstood, the monsters are bad guys. It’s very early in the writing process though.

4) How does your writing process work?

Ah, speaking of that. Well, I just discovered Scrivener, so I’m plotting away on their cork board and taking my first draft through writer’s group 5,000 words at a time. Right now I’m staying just ahead of the deadline date for writer’s group so it’s slow going. I’ve got a very rough outline and about ten chapters written. Those ten chapters will hopefully become thirty, and then get written and rewritten as I go through draft after draft of revision. I tend to go through three to four major revision drafts before I get it in the hands of a publisher and go through their editing process.

Thank you again, Marissa, for the invite!
Want to participate in the Q&A? Simply answer the four questions above on your blog and leave a link in the comments. Oh, and don’t forget to link back to me.

Happy Blogging.

Today I’m hopping along with Julie’s Book Review in the Is It Summer Yet Blog Hop. Follow the link above to hop along for more prizes.

How do I know it’s summer? Well, school’s out, there’s the heat, and all my favorite shows are on hiatus. But the big reason I know it’s summer is vacation. Right now, I’m visiting California, and it is amazing. I’ve climbed (little) rocks in Yosemite, hiked among the redwoods in Sequoia National Park, and whale watched in Monterrey. How about you? Share your most memorable summer vacation in the comments below for a chance to win your choice of either Persephone the audiobook or Persephone the ebook. Synopsis and cover below:

The “talk” was bad enough,but how many teens get told that they’re a goddess? When her mom tells her, Persephone is sure her mother has lost her mind. It isn’t until Boreas, the god of winter, tries to abduct her that she realizes her mother was telling the truth. Hades rescues her, and in order to safely bring Persephone to the Underworld he marks her as his bride. But Boreas will stop at nothing to get Persephone.

Despite her growing feelings for Hades, Persephone wants to return to the living realm. Persephone must find a way to defeat Boreas and reclaim her life.

Alexia Maccon, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears–leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. So even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.

She might even find time to track down her wayward husband–if she feels like it.

My review:

It’s pretty rare that I enjoy the second book in a series exactly as much as the first. Exactly. Not one iota more or less. Like the first book in the series, this starts slow, but once it picks up is a lot of fun to read. There’s humor, fantastic world building, and interesting conundrums. I don’t have much to say that I didn’t in the first review, except WOW the ending, I actually did not see coming. Unlike the end of book one, I rushed to pick up the next book this time. Check out this series. It’s just fun.

Julie!

Thanks for participating everyone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In honor of Children’s Book Week, I am pleased to be participating in the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop. Young Adult and Children’s literature has a special place in my heart. I devoured books as a child, starting with Sweet Valley Kids, The Boxcar Children, Bunnicula, and  other favorites like Ella Enchanted. As I grew older I found books by L.J Smith, R.L Stine, and Christopher Pike to pass the time. When I close my eyes, those are the favorites I see lining the shelves of the very small middle grade and young adult reader section of the bookstore.

Wow how times have changed. The children’s literature, YA, and middle grade genres have exploded in my lifetime, and I’m so thrilled that my daughter is going to benefit from shelf after shelf of awesome adventures like How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians, and so many more. And I’m pleased to have added to the genre with my Daughters of Zeus series.

Persephone is definitely on the older end of children’s lit (firmly planted in YA), but it never would have come to be were it on for the books I read when I was younger. Reading was a massive part of my identity, my absolute favorite hobby, and almost all my friends and I ever talked about. I owe those books and those writers a debt for inspiring me and entertaining me.

So in honor of Children’s Book Week, I am giving away either an e-copy or an audiobook of Persephone (described below). Winner’s choice. All you have to earn a chance to win is to respond in the comments below with the name of your favorite children’s book and explain why it was your favorite. Winner will be chosen at random on the 19th.

There are worse things than death, worse people too.
The “talk” was bad enough, but how many teens get told that they’re a goddess? When her mom tells her, Persephone is sure her mother has lost her mind. It isn’t until Boreas, the god of winter, tries to abduct her that she realizes her mother was telling the truth. Hades rescues her, and in order to safely bring Persephone to the Underworld he marks her as his bride. But Boreas will stop at nothing to get Persephone. Despite her growing feelings for Hades, Persephone wants to return to the living realm. Persephone must find a way to defeat Boreas and reclaim her life.
Want a chance to win even more books? Follow the links below:

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Click here to view the complete list of participating bloggers and authors…

Are you a children’s book or teen literature blogger, an author, a publisher, or a publicist looking to share copies of a fabulous book? Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews are joining forces to provide you with the opportunity to take part in the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop 2014, featuring links to giveaways for fabulous children/teen’s books, gift cards, cash, or other prizes. What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week?

 

 

So today I woke up and my throat felt fine. I’ve been eating normally and everything. I’ve been super lucky with this whole recovery period I know. And I don’t know if it’s because I did everything “right” or if my recovery was just luck. But if it wasn’t, I hope my experience helps someone else have just as smooth of a recovery.

Now I’m back to work, and hopefully I’ll have news on Venus and Adonis soon. Revisions are going really well and I’m excited about my new project as well, Blood and Other Matter. All my audio books are out now, so expect contests and such in the weeks to come. I might start doing Freebie Fridays.

Lots of exciting stuff to come. Keep reading 😀

Was way too busy to write yesterday, and not much has changed. For the most part my throat feels sore, like a sore throat, but if I try to chew anything, talk to much, or like clean the whole house, I can feel it. I’ve gone back and forth the last two days between not taking my pain meds at all, and the maximum dosage. It just really depends on how easy I’m taking it.

Eating is harder than it was before so I guess my throat is in a new stage of recovery. My ears have hurt every now and then, but at the first sign of ache I microwave my little heat pack and by the time it cools down, I’m fine.

I’ve been super lucky. Friday I was able to drive my daughter to school, visit a friend, deal with some friend drama, and host my daughters first spend the night. Today I’m packing to go to California tomorrow. I’m able to do it all, but I’m looking forward to just resting on Monday. Monday will mark one week from my surgery. I know I’ve been super lucky.

So, I’m back to regular writing unless something crazy comes up. My only other is advice is seriously, don’t chew, it’s not worth it. Mushy, mushy foods. It’s not that the food is hard or soft (though I haven’t tried hard foods) it’s that kind of sideways chewing motion that rips into your throat a bit. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I took a bite and I’m still paying for it. But otherwise I’m doing great.