The Quick by Lauren Owen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, I loved this book. 🙂 When I got to the end of the first part, I realized it was going to be about vampires.

No where in the information I read about the book did I see the word vampire and mostly through the book, you never see the word vampire. If I had seen it prior to reading,I sincerely doubt I would have chosen this book and I’m glad I didn’t because it was that good!

This is a long book. I love getting totally wrapped up in a story like this one which takes place mostly in London where there is a large population of the undead.

Charlotte’s brother, James, is turned into a vampire unwillingly. She finds out, finds him and takes him away to their childhood home and then begins the process of trying to find a cure for him.

This story is amazing and you will find yourself on the edge of your chair at some points in it.

I highly recommend this book, me a non vampire book reader. 🙂

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The Approval Fix: How to Break Free from People Pleasing by Joyce Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a great book. I adore Joyce Meyer and was excited to be able to review this book for Netgalley.

I was 41 years old when I realized I didn’t care if people liked me or not. That’s kind of coming late to the game and I admire those who are able to be confident in themselves and not needing the approval of others in their young lives.

I honestly thought I had gotten past the need to please poeple but apparently there are little fragments left. I had a situation that I felt I need to be involved in so they didn’t think badly of me. Then I picked this book up to finish it and the truth hit me in the face: I do NOT have to please them, I need to please God first and then myself. It helped me make some important decisions.

If you have ever struggled with people pleasing this book is for you. Joyce’s style is real and honest and very understandable. 🙂

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Jasmine and Maddie by Christine Pakkala
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a cute book about two eighth grade girls who come from very different backgrounds but find they really have a lot in common after all.

Jasmine moves to Clover with her mom after her dad dies. Although they could stay with her uncle in the next town over, Jasmine’s mom wants to be independent. In order to do that, they have to live in the trailer park and mom has to work two jobs. Jasmine puts up a wall around herself so that no one sees the real her.

Maddie comes from the picture perfect family but as the middle child, she feels like she doesn’t have any special place in the world. When she doesn’t make the soccer team along with her best friend, Kate, she feels like she has no friends at all.

Because they share some classes, Maddie and Jasmine who would be unlikely friends, find out that they are more alike than they are different.

This was a book I really enjoyed reading and I highly recommend it. 🙂

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The Breakup Doctor by Phoebe Fox
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book! Brook is a therapist and when she loses her practice because the building is being torn down and her partner’s bail, she tries to figure out what to do next.

Her best friend, Sasha tells her she should help people with their broken relationships because she gives the best advice. Sasha also helps to get her a column at the newspaper she works with writing advice for the lovelorn. She tags herself as the Breakup Doctor.

When her own relationship fails and she comes unglued, she feels like she has no business giving anyone else advice.

I loved Brook and it was awesome to watch her character grow and learn. I give this book two thumbs up and I can’t wait to read the next book from Phoebe Fox! 🙂

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Aspen by Rebekah Crane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book! Aspen is a high school girl who is not a popular girl. She considers herself odd and is a reflection of her hippie mom whom she calls Ninny.

Before her senior year of high school, she has a car accident. The girl in the other car was the most popular girl in school, Katelyn, and she died while Aspen lived.

When school starts things are weird for Aspen, as she receives acceptance from the other kids that she never had before. After being paired up with Katelyn’s boyfriend, Ben, as a lab partner in physics, she finds herself drawn to him.

There’s a lot of guilt in this story and Aspen is finally ready to deal with the trauma she went through with the support of her mom, her best friends, and Ben.

I really liked this book and highly recommend it! 🙂

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The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a really good book. So very well written, I read it in a day.

The story is told from the viewpoints of four different high school students and what they know about Alice. Alice was labeled a slut. Brandon, star football player and most popular guy in school said he slept with her an so did another guy at the same party on the same night in the same hour. After he told everyone that, he died in a car accident and it just became easy to blame Alice for every other thing that happened at school that year.

Although the really popular girl, Elaine, knew she had it in her power to stop it, she didn’t try and do that until the end of the book. Kelcie, who had been a friendless nerd in her previous school, wasn’t about to lose her status at this school and, in fact, increased her status by telling everyone that Alice had had an abortion. Josh, the one who was in the car with Brandon when he crashed, is the only one who knows exactly what happened that night and he’s not telling. And, finally, Kurt the ridiculously intelligent nerd who no one is friends with but lived next door to Brandon and knows the truth about Alice.

This is a wonderfully well written book that describes the character’s true feelings without being shy about it. I highly recommend The Truth About Alice. 🙂

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The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book! Nina Teicholz digs deep to uncover the truth about nutrition as we’ve known it for 60 years revealing how fats aren’t the bad guy.

What I liked the most about this book was that it was confirmation of what I have learned on my own experiment, party of one, me. I’ve always been a student of healthy eating. When the low fat/high carb recommendations came out, I was right there. No fat? Even better. What did that get me? A big butt.

Several years ago, I stumbled up on the Paleo lifestyle and after having removed the grains and carbs from my diet and added back meat and fats, I am the healthiest I’ve ever been.

I have worked with the American Heart Association over the past several years and, although I admire what they are trying to achieve especially regarding women’s heart health, I was never in agreement with their nutritional suggestions.

Thank you for this book, Ms. Teicholz! I hope more people will understand, after reading it, how to be healthier. 🙂

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We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really liked this book. Told from the point of view of the younger sister, Nell is speaking to her older sister, Layla, through the book.

The girls are 17 months apart and it’s clear that Nell idolizes her older sister and wants to be just like her. When she finally arrives at City Day for high school, she starts to see her sister a little differently. But, then, her sister is having an affair with their art teacher.

The book explores the depth of their bond and how far Nell will go to cover up for Layla. Nell’s best friend, Felix, is a good sounding board for her but she even keeps Layla’s secret from him until the very end.

A story of the bond between sisters and growing up. I highly recommend. 🙂

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Revenge of the Flower Girls by Jennifer Ziegler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An incredibly cute story! Triplets, Darby, Dawn and Delaney, are 11 and 11 years younger than their older sister, Lily.

Lily tells them that’s she decided to marry Burton, a guy the call a nincompoop, rapscallion, scalawag who is allergic to everything and looks like an armadillo. She tells them they are going to get married in a month so she can leave with him when he goes to IL to attend law school.

Thus begins the plotting and planning to stop the wedding. The triplets believe that Burton doesn’t make their sister happy because she doesn’t sparkle like she did when she was dating her previous boyfriend, Alex. Their plots involve getting Alex and Lily together so they can see that they are meant to be together.

The story is fun and crazy and they eventually achieve their goal. I loved that the triplets are so politically aware, it added another fun dimension to the story. I read through this without stopping. Highly recommend! 🙂

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Broken Hearts, Fences, and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a cute book with a moral of why honesty is the best policy.

Gemma makes a bad mistake when she’s 11 trying to stop her parents divorce. It spirals way out of proportion, further than she even knew it could, eventually wrecking a bunch of lives. Now she has a chance to make it right.

When she’s on the train to stay with her dad for the summer, with coffee her friend had bought her for the trip, she meets someone from her past. When she realizes who is is and he assumes her name is “Sophie” because that was the name on her coffee cup, she lets it ride. She thinks this will be a good way for her to prove that she is really a good person and is sorry for what happened in the past. When Josh’s sister, Hallie, picks him up at the train and nearly identifies her, she is happy she decided to be Sophie.

The summer is filled with bad happenstance but Gemma feels like she’s making headway in becoming friends with Hallie again. Still, her lies and avoidance maneuvers end up catching her in the end and she ends up hurting Josh and not really being friends with Hallie after all.

This was a good, quick book. I enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel. 🙂

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