Flash back to when we were tending grand kids at the beginning of August.
In the past we'e had a tradition of reading local authors during August. Looks like I pretty much continued that this year with three of my four books being local! Cool.
This is the highly anticipated return to the drama scene by beloved actor Kim Soo Hyun after his military enlistment. And it was a brilliant return indeed and he made us all remember why we love him so much! Wow.
It's a drama that deals with a disturbing subject matter, namely mental illness, but done in such a way as to leave viewers happy and hopeful. Our main guy is a caretaker at a mental hospital, and also a caretaker of his older autistic brother. He is so good with everyone, but he neglects himself. And he's starting to realize that neglecting himself is not such a good thing. He's starting to realize that he needs his own life in order to function.
Our girl is a famous picture book author. She is very caustic and selfish and mean. On the outside. On the inside she is lonely, hurting and suffering. She was raised by abusive parents, and treated like an object to be molded and fitted to their wishes. Her fairy tales are dark and twisted, reflecting both of these sides of her.
The autistic brother is a massive fan of this author and one day when they are attending her signing, their stories converge. The author is instantly enthralled by the gorgeous younger brother and she wants to acquire him... to possess him. He is enthralled by her because she simply enthralls him. And because there is of course a connection to his past.
And then he finds out the connection is even worse than he realized.
Being a family means taking a family portrait, right?
And so the story goes, with these three characters becoming very involved with each other, coming to rely on each other, and love and trust each other. The stories of several patients at the hospital are weaved into it, along with the terrible back story. We learn about human nature and what people crave in life. We learn about the importance of family, and what makes a family a family. We learn how to laugh in the face of despair.
Wow, but it's a good one. It's filled with many teary moments, and many out loud laughing moments. The relationship of the brothers is crazy good. The acting of these two actors playing the brothers is crazy good. The music is crazy good. The weaving of dark and twisted fairy tale stories in and among the "real life" stories is crazy good.
This one will be on my list of favorite dramas this year for sure. And I am completely besotted by Kim Soo Hyun yet again.
Here's a trailer:
And I absolutely fell in love with this song, and have a new favorite singer to add to my list:
I was happy to nab this one from NetGalley for an early review. Wow, it's been awhile since I've done that!
This is an awesome tribute to Alice in Wonderland and its author Lewis Carroll. We have two kids who are struggling in the real world, who meet up and quickly bond over their respective issues. As they are hanging out in the library, they stumble upon the lost diaries of Lewis Carroll which transports them straight to Wonderland itself!
But something is off in this Wonderland. All the familiar characters are there, but everyone is different. Things don't seem right. These two kids quickly realize that not only do they need to figure out how to get home, but they need to save Wonderland too! They go through adventure after adventure having to solve problems and riddles all along the way to accomplish their goals. Kids will love this. There's also a ton of learning thrown in, learning about different animals, learning vocabulary, etc. Kids, and parents, will love this even more!
So yes, there's much humor and fun in this book that both kids and adults will enjoy, especially those who love Alice and her adventures. It's fun to see these kids have a similar, yet very different experience in Wonderland. And then come out of it stronger and better and much much more confident about dealing with their real life struggles. Perfect.
This book will be published early September. Look for it!
Another awesome book by a favorite author! This one is about resistance fighters during WWII. We follow the story of one girl who gets kicked out of her Jewish ghetto in Poland and ends up joining a resistance gang. They spent a lot of time sneaking food and news in the ghettos, and, in one instance anyway, sneaking out babies. And also sabotaging the supplies of the Nazis who were occupying their cities.
This story has our girl involved in one of the first (the first even?) armed attacks by Jewish people, and then later, she was part of the huge Warsaw ghetto uprising. So most of the book is her path to getting to this event. And then living through it. We see her bonding with her fellow resistance fighters and learning to trust and rely on them. We learn about some of the real life leaders of these cells, all of who were very young. We learn about the courage and tenacity of these people during this hard and terrible time in history. It's hard to read about the things they went through, but it's also uplifting to see the strength of people.
The book as an afterword that adds to the understanding of everything that happened, which I really appreciated. And the author mentions that the point of the book is not place judgment on how any one person acted during this time, which I also appreciated. People chose all sorts of ways to survive this terrible-ness, and we, reading from the future, have no idea how bad it was and what prompted any of them to do what they did. It's so very eye opening.
This is a fun one about a feisty girl, Emme O'Shea, who is on a mission to fight for Shape Shifter rights. She is making quite the name for herself in society as the spokesperson for this cause. And in so doing, she tends to get herself in a lot of trouble. The dude who happens to always be there to pull her out, and then arrest her, is her nemesis of a detective...Mr. Oliver Reed. He doesn't think twice about literally throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her off to the slammer!
But then one day when she is about to set off to Scotland for a summit where she will be giving the keynote speech trying to change legislation in favor of Shifters, she is sent a life threatening message. And suddenly she finds this detective has now been appointed as her bodyguard!
This makes for an awesome scenario in which lots of fun banter, flirting and compromising moments arise. Not to mention life and death adventure! And they both quickly find that they don't hate each other quite as much as they originally thought.
This book is very very loosely based on Cinderella but I only found a few similarities... mostly a wicked step sister, a carriage filled with pumpkins, curious mice, an ally named Gus, some fancy shoes, and midnight. LOL! So yeah, very fun! Throw in some vampires and you have it all, right?
So yeah, I really enjoyed the banter and many romantically charged moments. And of course the steampunk setting. Always fun.
This book, due to be released in October, is part of the Proper Romance line from Shadow Mountain, and specifically part of the steampunk romance line. (I reviewed another book in this line here. The stories have no connection as far as I can tell, just the world and setting.) Thank you to Shadow Mountain for the opportunity read and review another fun book!
Here's a fun book trailer:
And more about the author:
Nancy Campbell Allen is the author of seventeen published novels and
numerous novellas, which span genres from contemporary romantic suspense to
historical fiction. In 2005, her work won the Utah Best of State award, and she received a Whitney Award for My Fair Gentleman. She has presented at
numerous writing conferences and events since her first book was released in
1999. Nancy received a BS in Elementary Education from Weber State
University. She loves to read, write, travel, and research, and enjoys spending
time laughing with family and friends. She is married and the mother of three
children.
Visit her at nancycampbellallen.com, on Instagram @authornancycampbellallen,
on Facebook at nancycampbellallen, or on Twitter @necallen.
I was approached to read this first book of a new kpop romance series by a new author. Of course I was all, sure! It seems to be kind of my thing at the moment I guess. She warned me that this one might have some content (language and etc.) that I might have issues with, but still I said, eh. I'll see what I think.
Well, let's just say the warning was justified! Whew, this one has a LOT of content that I usually don't read! It actually read like a fanfic, which I am not...a fan of...even though I've never really read any. LOL. But a fanfic in this fandom is when people write really explicit (usually? mostly?) stories about their favorite kpop groups turning them into lustful, rebellious, sometimes nasty boys. If I understand right, people insert their fantasies into these stories including their favorite ships (meaning the boys in love with each other) and inserting themselves (what we call a y/n moment... or your name here moment) into the stories. So many people LOVE LOVE LOVE them and they get a lot of response and activity.
So that being said, they aren't my favorite thing and yet, this book really felt like that to me. If that makes sense. But despite that, I found it interesting to just plug along and see where this book took me.
It's about a girl from Ohio who loves a very popular kpop group. They inspire her to tryout for the singing thing herself and by some crazy miracle she makes it! And suddenly she finds herself in Korea becoming a very popular idol herself and even in the same company with her favorite band! The book opens when she is on a TV talk show together with these guys. So we meet them there and see their interaction and her first impressions of them in real life. Afterwards, she gets invited to their concert and then gets invited to their after party. And they are... shall we say... interesting! And not at all how I picture MY kpop boys!
After that she ends up in their same path often, and starts a relationship with her favorite dude. Which makes her a little nervous because this favorite dude is "shipped" with one of the other guys. And she is worried about whether or not this relationship is actually real. Is she messing something up? Or is this relationship just a play for the fans? She doesn't know for sure. And it goes from there and things get a bit crazy!
So in that aspect it was lots fun. And again it's fun to see someone's idea of what might be going on behind the scenes. This take was very very different from the other's I've read in that regard. These boys were in my opinion, not so nice. Sex craved, foul mouthed, mean to our girl, and etc. And of course, we don't know what they are like in real life when the cameras are off, but I like to still imagine them as decent guys!
The girl was interesting too. I wanted to like her more, but she made me a little crazy. But not sure I can actually put my finger on why. Maybe because she went along with things way too easily. She portrayed herself as a very naive, but she didn't act like that. I don't know. She was interesting. I am willing to give her a chance though.
So yes, I understand there will be more to this story. I think if given the opportunity I will continue. I am curious. The author told me these characters will go through quite the arc and will make changes. I want to see that! And my heart goes out them, because they are portrayed as having many hard issues they are dealing with. So it would be nice to see what happens to them and if they find happiness and peace.
Thank you to the author for sending me this book to read and review! Hopefully it's okay that I am totally honest in that there were some things that were a bit over the top for me! :)
Oh, this book has a lovely book trailer:
And here's the book jacket so you can read the blurb:
