Re-review & Giveaway – Arranged -Catherine McKenzie

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (HarperCollins)
Released: May 15th, 2012 (U.S. release)
Genre: Chick-lit, general fiction
Review copy from publisher

Anne Blythe is lucky. She’s got a brand new book contract, a great newspaper job and a steadfast best friend, and she can land just about any man she sets her sights on — and the ones that appeal are typically tall, dark and handsome.

Problem is, the men she chooses never last. Shortly after yet another relationship goes down in flames, Anne comes across a card for what she believes is a dating service, and pockets it just in case. If she’s so unlucky in love, maybe she could use a little assistance. Then her best friend announces she’s engaged, and envy gets the better of Anne. Now’s the time, she decides, to give the service a try — and she is shocked to discover that what the company specializes in are exclusive, and pricey, arranged marriages. After learning of the company’s success rate, however, she overcomes her reluctance and signs on. After all, arranged marriages are the norm for millions of women around the world, and she’s not done so well selecting a mate on her own. So why not use a professional service that claims it can produce the perfect match?

Some time later, Anne is travelling to a Mexican resort, where in one short weekend she will meet and marry Jack, the man they have chosen for her. And against all odds, it seems to be working out, until Anne learns that Jack and the company who arranged their marriage are not what they seem at all.

From HarperCollins website.

First of all, I need to say a big HAPPY U.S. BOOK BIRTHDAY!!!!! to Catherine and Arranged. I was part of the Canadian launch and I am all giggly and smiley that I get to be a part of her U.S. launch, too. If you’ve been to my blog before, then you know how much I ADORE Catherine’s books and Catherine herself. And you know how much I like to stalk, er, promote my fave authors.

As you can tell from the post title, this is a re-review. And I’m happy to say I was as taken with Arranged as I was the first time I read it.  Reading it for the second time, one thing became very clear to me: Catherine is a master of quick, snappy dialogue. And not overly clever, sappy dialogue either. No, the dialogue in Arranged, to me, rang very true. It had that quick back and forth banter that I love. And she’s not afraid to drop the F bomb. At all. And as someone who could make a sailor blush, I appreciated that.

I like how Catherine really digs into the issue of looks and attraction, and how it isn’t always the best thing in the world when it comes to relationships. Since about grade 4 I kinda had a type, a weakness for redheads. In fact, my type was so particular that in university, when I brought home a boy I was dating, my parents sat me down afterwards and held an intervention because he looked so much like my ex, they thought at first we had gotten back together. When I met my husband, we corresponded on line first for about a week before we exchanged pictures. At that point we had hit it off so much, that when I found out he was pretty much bald, I didn’t give a hoot. If we had met in a bar or supermarket first would I have taken notice of him? Hard to say. I think that a lot of us are so attached to our type that we miss a lot of great opportunities with other, just like Anne.

I once again sat down to read Arranged and didn’t stop until I was finished. And I was a bit of a sobby mess at the ending, once again. Actually I found myself tearing up a few times. This says a lot about the book, the writing and the emotional attachment that I still felt on second read.

Oh, and a bit of a spoiler, but not a huge one: there’s a Gilmore Girls reference in Arranged. You have no idea how happy this made my heart. My other obsession, besides books, is The Gilmore Girls. And the episode Catherine mentions (season 4 finale) is one of my FAVES.

So, yeah, I still stand behind my original judgement that this is one kick-ass chit-lit book. If you’ve read either of Catherine’s other books, or are a fan of the genre, I can’t see how you wouldn’t love Arranged. And if you are curious about chick-lit, this book is a great place to start.

GIVEAWAY!

So, I have a copy of Arranged to give away to one lucky US winner, courtesy of HarperCollins in the U.S.. AND, since I’m a Canuck and I love all my Canadian readers, I’m going to be giving one lucky Canadian reader a copy (ordered from book depository). I like to keep things simple, so to enter all you have to do is comment below and tell me either your favorite Gilmore Girls episode or moment, your favorite rom-com moment or if you have a “type” when it comes to dating. Also mention in your comment of you are from the U.S. or Canada. The contest will close May 22nd, 11:59EST.

Tags: Arranged, Canadian author, Catherine McKenzie, Chick Lit, giveaway, review

Summer Lovin’ Blog Tour -While He was Away – Karen Schreck

One year—he’ll be gone for one year and then we’ll be together again and everything will be back to the way it should be.
The day David left, I felt like my heart was breaking. Sure, any long–distance relationship is tough, but David was going to war—to fight, to protect, to put his life in danger. We can get through this, though. We’ll talk, we’ll email, we won’t let anything come between us.
I can be on army girlfriend for one year. But will my sweet, soulful, funny David be the same person when he comes home? Will I? And what if he doesn’t come home at all…?

I don’t often do this in reviews, but I HAVE to take a second to talk about the cover for While He was Away. I don’t know if it’s the gorgeous pink coloring of the sky, the fact that they’re holding hands or my strong desire to have those wedge shoes, but this cover caught my attention majorly. When the book arrived I was in the middle of reading another book, but kept going over to my desk to glance at it. I just I think it’s amazing.

And the inside of the book was just as fantastic and captivating as the cover. I felt a pretty strong connection to Penna from the beginning and didn’t wander too far from my box of Kleenex throughout the whole book. See, here’s something that some of you might not know: my husband doesn’t live with me full time. He works in another province for two week stints then comes home for six days. So while he isn’t a soldier and doesn’t leave for a year at a time, I could still empathize with what she was going through, all the emotions she was feeling before David left and after. And let me tell you, Schreck nailed that perfectly. PERFECTLY. Hence the Kleenex.

The blurb doesn’t give much away, so I don’t want to either, but I do want to let you guys know that there’s a lot more to this book than just Penna and David’s long-distance relationship. Penna has some serious family shit going down, and while it’s traumatic and stressful, it also helps keep her mind off of David (as much as that’s possible). I loved the layering of Penna’s stories and how everything was connected.

I was expecting a bit of a gooshy, romantic read and I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the novel. I read it in one sitting and was moved by the beauty of the prose and the details of the story. Anyone who is a fan of YA contemp should absolutely run out and buy While He was Away, as should anyone who’s interested in the genre. Actually, all of you should go buy it. It was that good.

Thanks bunches and bunches to Source Books for the review copy.

Tags: Fiction, Karen Schreck, romance, While he was away, YA contemp

Forgotten – Catherine McKenzie – blog tour

Emma Tupper is a dedicated lawyer with a bright future. But when she takes a month-long leave of absence to go on an African vacation, she ends up facing unexpected consequences. After she falls ill and spends six months trapped in a remote village thanks to a devastating earthquake, Emma returns home to discover that her friends, boyfriend, and colleagues thought she was dead and that her life has moved on without her.

As she struggles to recreate her old life, throwing herself into solving a big case for a client and trying to reclaim her beloved apartment from the handsome photographer who’s taken over her lease, everyone around her thinks she should take the opportunity to change. But is she willing to sacrifice the job, relationships and everything else she worked so hard to build?

*Sigh* Don’t you love when you have an author that you just know is going to wow you? Over the past couple of years Catherine McKenzie has become one of my go-to authors. I wait impatiently for her to have a new book out, then do what I have to do to get a hold of an ARC. Then I devour it in one sitting, hug it to my chest happily and begin the whole process over. Seriously.

Forgotten is a bit different than Catherine’s first two books. While it once again deals with a woman who finds herself in an unusual predicament, I found it a lot darker and more serious than Spin and Arranged. But I still loved it to bits. Despite the different overall tone it still had the snappy dialogue, great characterization and gut-wrenching scenes that I’ve come to expect from Catherine.

I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a subplot that pops up about half way through the book that I thought was a wonderful addition to the main plot. It added another layer to Emma and really  helped her character to grow. And that’s what’s really at the heart of this story: growing. I think it’s great that Emma comes back all ready to take over her life again. But is that really the life she wants? And if so, will that life still be there for her? It’s these questions, and the way that Catherine approaches them, that makes this such a great read.

Oh, and the handsome photographer ain’t too shabby, either. :0)

Tags: Arranged, Canadian author, Catherine McKenzie, Forgotten, Spin

A Certain Grace – Binnie Brennan

In the tradition of short story writers Alice Munro and Carol Shields, Binnie Brennan examines the minutiae of ordinary life. During a tipsy night out escaping the frustrations of daily routines, two middle-aged school teachers try their luck at scoring a joint. A long-haul trucker drives an injured butterfly to its breeding ground in Florida, giving them both a much-needed migration. And while struggling with the death of her ex-husband, a single mother questions her place in her family’s lives. A Certain Grace is richly told in spare prose and woven with vignettes of a much-loved grandfather’s life. 

Binnie Brennan’s pitch-perfect stories chart with a musician’s precision the beats between tenderness and cruelty, between innocence and understanding, in the gulf between what we long for and what is. Centred on the rifts between partner and partner, parents and children, acquaintances and strangers, they hover on the cusp of loss and the quiet deliverance of words themselves, to pinpoint the moment, brimming with possibility, when everything changes. 

— Carol Bruneau, author of Glass Voices

I met Binnie last September and bought her first collection, Harbour View, from her at Word on the Street. I pretty much bought it because Binnie is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met and I love supporting local authors.  And if you’ve read my review of Harbour View, then you know I fell in love with Binnie’s writing and imagination. So I was a happy little booknerd when Quattro Books sent me her latest book, A Certain Grace.

The stories in A Certain Grace are wonderful little snippets of people and of life, in general. I think my favorite thing about this collection is that most of the stories don’t end. Well, they obviously end, but there isn’t a lot of closure. Things aren’t wrapped up all nice and neat.  They are truly snippets. Kinda like going to a cafe by yourself and eavesdropping in on the tables around you. You get some beginnings, some middles and maybe some ends, but usually not all three. And that’s how Binnie’s stories are. And it made me happy, guys. So happy. I loved that I didn’t know how things ended. I could imagine what happened next, play around with endings on my own. I find that I often gravitate towards this writing style. I know it ticks some people off, but for me it’s wonderful.

Something else that’s wonderful is the Five Miniatures at the end of the collection. I loved the tone and voice of these mini stories and they were written in such a personal manner that they seem like diary entries or memories.

A Certain Grace was just a lovely collection of short stories. I enjoyed them all.

Tags: A Certain Grace, Binnie Brennan, Canadian author, Short Stories

Emily for Real – Sylvia Gunnery

If it’s just him, I cut a clean diagonal right across the middle, letting one half fall dead on the bed and throwing the other half on top of the pile. If it’s a picture of him with me, I carefully slice him off, and for some reason I save the piece with me in it. After a while, there’s a pile of Brian corpses lying there staring at nothing, and the pages of my album are all patched up with slices and triangles and scraps of pictures of me.

In every one of these sliced-up pictures, I look stranded.

Seventeen-year-old Emily’s world crumbles when her boy friend dumps her, and when she thinks her life can’t possibly get any worse, a series of secrets are revealed that threaten to tear her beloved family apart. Emily’s heart has been broken into a hundred pieces and she feels like there is no one to turn to, until an unexpected friendship blossoms with a troubled classmate named Leo. Sometimes moody but always supportive, Leo is Emily’s rock in an ocean of confusion and disbelief.

But Leo doesn’t have an easy life either. He struggles to be both mother and father to his little sister while his mom battles her alcohol addiction. His deadbeat dad darts in and out of the picture, and Leo would rather he stay away, permanently. The two friends lean on each other, and in the end discover the inner strength to face whatever life throws at them.

I don’t think I can quite capture my love for the relationship between Emily and Leo. I found it absolutely refreshing to read about a friendship between a boy and girl that stays just that: a friendship. When I was a teen, most of my best friends were boys, so I really identified with it. It was so realistic and honest and I just loved it. I also loved how they were both pretty messed up and damaged and didn’t really like each other at first, but slowly became close and trusted each other.

While I loved their relationship, I was a bit overwhelmed with Emily’s family secrets. The revelations, to me, seemed a bit forced and really came at a pretty fast pace. I realize that it’s possible for family stuff to go down that way, but I just felt that it was a bit rushed. But despite this, I really loved Emily for Real and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys YA contemp with strong themes of friendship.

Thanks to Pajama Press for the review copy.

Tags: Canadian author, Emily for real, Fiction, Sylvia Gunnery, YA contemp

172 Hours on the Moon – Johan Harstad

Everyone said sending teenagers into space would be their opportunity of a lifetime…

It’s been decades since anyone last set foot on the moon. But three ordinary teens are about to change that–and their lives–forever. Mia knows this will be her punk band’s ticket to fame and fortune. Midori believes it’s her way out of her restrictive lifestyle in Japan. And Antoine just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible. But little do they know that something sinister is waiting for them on the dark side of the moon. And in the black vastness of space, no one is coming to save them…

I love the premise of this book. I don’t read a lot of sci-fi and I dig the idea of crossing sci-fi with horror. I just, well, I wish the execution of the idea was a bit better. Now, this was a translated work, so maybe something got lost during the translation, but 172 Hours on the Moon left me feeling a bit cold and definitely wanting more (and sometimes less) from the story.

Overall the book wasn’t bad. I really enjoyed the diversity of the three teens that were chosen to go to the moon. I just didn’t necessarily need as much background information about them. As I was reading about them before they were chosen, I couldn’t help wishing that the author had cut out some of that part of the book and had concentrated more on the actual time on the moon. I already knew from the blurb that they were chosen, so I didn’t really need a lot of lead up to it.

I loved the space training part and also when they actually go to the moon. I just wish it had been a bit more detailed and that the author would have spend more time there. I would have been perfectly happy if the book had started with them at the training base or even with the shuttle launching.

The story is told in third person from the point of view of the three teens and some other secondary characters. I really, really didn’t get the point of some of these secondary characters. For me they didn’t add a thing to the main story. Antoine’s ex-girlfriend gets a couple of chapters as does a former janitor with NASA. I honestly think that if these sections had been cut out, the book wouldn’t have suffered and would have been a lot tighter.

But I absolutely LOVED the tone of 172 Hours on the Moon. The whole feel of the writing and the story reminded me of The Thing, one of my favorite horror movies. I also whipped through the latter part of the book when they’re on the moon. Shit goes down and it was awesome, in a scary way. And I also loved the fact that the author didn’t wimp out at the ending. At all. It was horrific and as far as I’m concerned, perfect.

So while I had a lot of issues with this book, there were also some things I loved about it. Would I recommend it? I’m not sure. I think this one is going to appeal to some and not others.

Thanks to Hachette Group Canada for the review copy.

Tags: 172 hours on the moon, Horror, Johan Harstad, sci fi, YA fiction

Readathon!!!!!

8:24 am
It’s almost starting time and I am ready to go! I have all my snacks ready for the day, books picked out and animals are all cleaned and fed. All I have to do is read!

I’m starting off with Jackson Pearce’s Purity. I’ve heard mixed reviews about this one, so I’m pretty curious about what I’ll think about it. First readathon snackie-poo of the day shall be irish cream tea and some strawberries. YUMMY!

11:35am

About a hundred pages into Jackson Pearce’s Purity and really enjoying it so far. I’ve nommed on strawberries, trailmix and pepperoni so far, along with a couple of cups of tea. I’m getting a bit drowsy (I was up late last night) so I’m going to switch from the couch to a chair. Also going to have a cup of David’s tea chocolate rocket for a boost of energy.

1:30pm

I finished my first book! LOVED Purity by Jackson Pearce. Loved it! Next up is While He was Away by Karen Schreck. This one’s an YA romance, a genre I rarely delve into. But I’m trying to broaden my reading horizons and not be as snooty about romance novels. And I believe it’s time for some Earl Gray tea and dark chocolate, almond coconut treats!

4:30pm

I’m about half way through While He was Away. Holy emotional read! I’m definitely going to need to read something light next. I also took a 20 minute break to cut down some of the shrubs in front of my house. It’s supper time here, so I’m nomming on some bologna with avocado. The tea of the hour is Tweed and Hickory cookies & cream which doesn’t taste anything like cookies & cream but is still delish.

12:00am

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

9:20am

So, as you can see from the above update, I zonked out at around midnight. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay up all night, because I have a houseful of animals that require my attention and usually start asking for it around 7am. I managed to finish another book (Bad Kitty Meets Baby) and start a fourth (The Last Song) before I dozed off. I’m taking today, which is all kinds of dreary, as another reading day and hope to finish a few more books. AND, since I had enough snacks for an army, I’m good for nommies for the rest of the week.

Tags: readathon