Ways to Win Books To Read / Reviews of Books I've Won!: March 2018

Friday, March 30, 2018

Kentucky Cowboy (Bluegrass Reunion #1) by Jan Scarbrough 5 Stars!

Kentucky Cowboy by Jan Scarbrough – 5 Stars

This is one of those lovely romance novels, with lots of back story, a few fairly steamy love scenes which are not erotic in nature, that you can pick up and polish off in a few hours. You don’t want to put the book down as it is decidedly interesting and it weaves its way into your brain and the story line is such that you have to finish it before the day is out. The nice thing is that you can. It’s not overly long and drawn out, just the right amount of drama, romance, and entertainment for a rainy day or a nice lie in! I found myself carrying the book with me from room to room from the time that I received it in the mail until it was finished. The back story is well developed and the interesting thing is that this book involves a professional bull rider in the rodeo and for those of us who have never ridden a bull it’s pretty interesting. This particular bull rider does this for a living and is on his way to the million-dollar grand prize for year as the best. He has to go home and settle his Mothers estate in the middle of his quest and runs into the girl next door who was always the love of his life in high school until one fateful night when he pulled a stupid stunt and she walked away from him never to speak to him again for years. Of course, him staying next door for a few weeks to sort things out she can’t avoid him, her niece for whom she has custody runs next door attracted to this cowboy and all of his interesting story’s along with her baby sitter. Of course, she must retrieve her when she comes home on more than one occasion, which means she can’t stay silent. He weaves his way back into her head and heart and the book comes to a beautiful conclusion.

Mandy Sullivan, veterinarian has custody of her niece and never wants her sister to return to claim her as she’s been raising Georgia ever since her sister took off leaving behind the infant to raise. Mandy doesn’t do danger, she lost parents to that kind of living, and she won’t have it in her life. Of course, she can’t have everything her way. No one can really control their destiny or stay in a nice safe bubble the rest of their lives and there in lies her problem. You also can’t really choose who your great love will be because love has a way of coming up and smacking you between the eyes and some times it can’t be ignored, especially when it comes to one very handsome, very smart sweet-talking cowboy!

So, there I’ve said enough go pick up this book and give it a read, I believe you’ll love it as much as I did as well as anything else written by this author, I love her books I’ve read many and never found one I could put down.

I received this book through a drawing that Jan Scarbrough held on her web site. I was lucky to be one of 17 out of 77 entries. Of course, she sent out the paperbacks hoping we would write an honest review and tell others how much we liked her book. I have no problem with that I've read many of hers and they never disappoint. Thanks Jan for the great read!

Description as found on Good Reads:

Professional bull rider Judd Romeo is a contender for the world title. He defies death for a living. But now he must deal with the death of his mother by settling her estate. Returning home to Kentucky, he runs smack dab into the arms of his high school sweetheart, a woman he’s never forgotten.

Veterinarian Mandy Sullivan learned early on that risk-takers are trouble. Having custody of her sister’s child, she is working hard to be both mother and father to the abandoned girl and doesn’t count on trouble showing up next door.

Mandy discovers she can’t avoid the famous cowboy, and she’s never quite put him out of her mind. When Mandy’s sister comes back threatening to take away the little girl she loves as her own, will Mandy finally realize Judd is not the same man he once was?

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Daring To Hope: Finding God's Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful by Katie Davis Majors

Katie Davis visited Jinja, Uganda on a missionary trip while in High School. She fell in love with the area and upon graduation she went back there to live and work. She started her non-profit Amazima Ministries International in 2008. She has several outreach programs, doing so much great work for and with the people of Jinja, Uganda. She married Benji Majors who like her hailed from her home state of Tennessee later in life. She was 27 when she wrote this book. Many are mentioning her first book, “Kisses From Katie” which I haven’t read, I guess it was fabulous also.

Katie wrote this book about her life as a missionary, her home life, the stories that have evolved while taking care of many people who needed medical care, some lived, some didn’t make it. She has adopted 13 girls through the years in Uganda. She chronicles her struggles with daily life as she takes care of those who have no one, often finding that her prayers don’t lead her to an ending that she has chosen. This is a great book for those who have lost loved ones and wish to connect with God and understand why he allows some to die and some to live. Why is a question that Katie asks often and turns to her Bible and God time and time again, looking for a story or passage that will provide her with an answer. Katie has a faith that is so very deep and a love for others that is strong, her stories will provide many with answers they don’t even know they are asking.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

SEE LESS

Description as found on Blogging For Books:

How do you hold on to hope
when you don’t get the ending
you asked for?

SEE LESS

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of thirteen girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.

After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him.

Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible—the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn’t come. It’s about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It’s about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God’s goodness in the least expected places.

Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You’ll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you’ll hear God’s whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.SEE LESS

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Biography:

Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda over a decade ago with no idea that this would be the place that God chose to build her home and her family. Today, she is a wife to Benji and mama to her fourteen-favorite people. Katie and her family invest their lives in empowering the people of Uganda with education, medical care, and spiritual discipleship. She is also the founder of Amazima Ministries, an organization that cares for vulnerable children and families in Uganda and the author of the New York Times bestseller Kisses from Katie.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Women In The Castle by Jessica Shattuck 3.5 Stars

The Women In the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

I finished this book a week or more ago but didn’t sit down right away to write the review. I struggled with this book. It seemed to start out ok, but this book was one that seemed to catch me for a chapter or two and then drag along then pick up for a while and then drag along. I have always enjoyed reading books about WWII this one just left me hanging between reading sessions. It wasn’t a book that I picked up and couldn’t put down until I finished it. I wished that it had. I really had more hope for this book than it delivered for me. It was nice that it seemed to tell the story of how these women met and were married to men who were plotting to kill Adolf Hitler and about their lives, after WWI, up to and after WWII. The men were killed. Marianne made a promise to find the women and their children after the war and to bring them back together and help them recover. She does that, and the story tells as she finds the children and two of her friends. It tells of the women and each of their stories and how they lived through WWII, and where they ended up. It also tells the stories of how they stayed together and tried to recover their lives after the war. The difficulties that they faced and some of the small joys. The book is pretty sad, and the interest for me lagged I’m very sorry to say. There were some historical facts shared in the book and I found them to be interesting. There were many people who found the book to be much more interesting than I so I can’t say don’t read it, just examine the book and read a sample of it before you decide to buy it, find out if the book is for you first.

As always, I thank Good Reads for allowing me to read a book by a new author, a story I may not have been able to read otherwise. I won this book through Good Reads.com and it was sent to me with the hope that I would leave an honest review of the book which I have.

Here is the description of the book as found on Good Reads:

Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold

Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin s mother, the beautiful and naive Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war each with their own unique share of challenges.

Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

All The Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church - This is a must read - 5 Stars!

At eight Lily lost her family to a car accident, she only survived. She was sent to live with her Aunt and Uncle. Her Aunt is very cold and she doesn’t know how to raise a little girl. Her Uncle begins visiting her bedroom at night and her Aunt just looks the other way. Lily begins taking dance classes and she is given a “scholarship” out of the blue. She finds an escape in her dancing. She starts putting money away and as soon as she can, she plans on going to Vegas to become a showgirl dancer there. Lily suddenly needs to leave home, it’s time, so she changes her name to Ruby Wilde and heads to Vegas. This is the story of Lily and Ruby, her life and times growing up and branching out. Her life and her loves. The story is gritty, real, engrossing and hard to put down. I enjoyed the story of Lily/Ruby. Of her life during 1960’s Las Vegas and her quest for real love, whatever that is. She must figure that out, which isn’t easy because she hasn’t seen it in a very long while.

I received this copy of All The Beautiful Girls from Net Galley in exchange I provide very honest reviews!

Description as found on Net Galley!

No one captures the exuberant passions and inner struggles of women like Elizabeth Church.”—Martha Hall Kelly, author of Lilac Girls

A powerful novel about a gutsy showgirl who tries to conquer her past amongst the glamour of 1960s Las Vegas—and finds unexpected fortune, friendship, and love.

It was unimaginable. When she was eight years old, Lily Decker somehow survived the auto accident that killed her parents and sister, but neither her emotionally distant aunt nor her all-too-attentive uncle could ease her grief. Dancing proves to be Lily’s only solace, and eventually she receives a “scholarship” to a local dance academy—courtesy of a mysterious benefactor.

Grown and ready to leave home for good, Lily changes her name to Ruby Wilde and heads to Las Vegas to be a troupe dancer, but her sensual beauty and voluptuous figure land her work instead as a showgirl performing everywhere from Les Folies Bergere at the Tropicana to the Stardust’s Lido de Paris. Wearing sky-high headdresses, five-inch heels, and costumes dripping with feathers and rhinestones, Ruby may have all the looks of a Sin City success story, but she still must learn to navigate the world of men—and figure out what real love looks like.

With her uncanny knack for understanding the hidden lives of women, Elizabeth J. Church captures both the iconic extravagance of an era and the bravery of a young woman who dances through her sadness to find connection, freedom, and, most important, herself.

Advance praise for All the Beautiful Girls

“A gorgeously written novel with the bite of a gin martini, All the Beautiful Girls goes beyond the splashy, gaudy dazzle of Las Vegas in the sixties to reveal the beating heart beneath the glamorous façade of a showgirl with big ambitions.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of At the Water’s Edge

“A razzle-dazzle novel about loss, love, and friendship . . . All the Beautiful Girls pulls back the curtain on the glamorous, titillating world of showgirls, revealing the emotional bruises hidden beneath the dazzling costumes.”—Melanie Benjamin, New York Timesbestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue

Ways to Win Books To Read / Reviews of Books I've Won!

Friday, March 30, 2018

Kentucky Cowboy (Bluegrass Reunion #1) by Jan Scarbrough 5 Stars!

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Daring To Hope: Finding God's Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful by Katie Davis Majors

Biography:

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Women In The Castle by Jessica Shattuck 3.5 Stars

Thursday, March 1, 2018

All The Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church - This is a must read - 5 Stars!

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