Tackle Your TBR Read-a-thon Begins Today!

And so it begins....the journey to whittle down the stacks of books I have around the house!  I have set a goal of at least six books during the next 12 days, but hope to be able to finish even more. Here are the first six that I will be working on, some of which are already in progress:

Dissonance by Erica O'Rourke (55% finished)

The Book Stops Here by Kate Carlisle (75% finished)

Watercolor Dreams by Sherry Kyle

The Moment Of Everything by Shelley King

The Kennedy Connection by R.G. Belsky

All We Had by Annie Weatherwax


I'll post every day with an update, and add new titles as needed. Wish me luck!!!

The New Elvis, by Wyborn Senna

Synopsis: On the night of August 19, 1974, Elvis realizes he wants to leave a little more of himself behind when it’s time to go, so he visits a fertility doctor named Johns and sets events in motion that have ramifications far beyond his own mortality. The perfect candidate is found to bear his offspring and a son is born, but as the young man grapples with the secrecy surrounding his paternity, it takes a special friend to help him discover the truth. Fraught with tension, poignancy and raw emotion, this work of fiction examines the friends’ disparate lives—one born into a life of privilege and the other despair—and ultimately unites them in truth, healing, and love.

Thoughts: **I received a copy of this book from Story Cartel in return for an honest review.**

There was a lot more to this story than I expected. Aside from the obvious paternity story,there was suspense, murder, trauma, and plenty of twists and turns.

The characters are all very well developed, and the story was very realistic. This is my second book by this author, and I look forward to more in the future.
Rating: Four stars

The Photograph, by Kristen Otte

Synopsis: On a quest for truth, one girl will find more than she bargained for...

Sixteen-year-old Rachel Brandt is excited about her six-month anniversary with her boyfriend, Brent, getting her driver’s license, and competing for a district championship in her first season on the varsity basketball team.

But when Rachel stumbles across a photograph of her parents, she can’t shake the feeling that she is meant to find her mother, whose identity is a secret her grandparents have closely guarded. All Rachel knows is that her mother disappeared around the time her father was killed in action in the Gulf War a few months after she was born.

Her discovery of the photograph sends Rachel on a search for her mother against her grandparents’ wishes and propels her life into a tailspin. She never imagines her search will reveal a series of lies that jeopardizes every important relationship in her life and ultimately lead Rachel to question her identity.

Thoughts: **I received a copy of this book from Story Cartel in return for an honest review.** 

My biggest problem with this book was all of the long,drawn out descriptions of Rachel's high school basketball games. I'm not a real fan of the game, and I found myself skipping over a lot of those pages by the time I got to the middle of the book.

The story of Rachel's journey to connect with her mother, however, was well worth reading. There were twists and turns all through it that left me stunned and surprised. The relationships with her friends are complex, yet fairly realistic.

Overall, an enjoyable read.

My rating: Three stars

Bury Me With Barbie, by Wyborn Senna

Synopsis: Caresse Redd is 37. She is divorced. She is a mom. She is tired. She is also in love with vintage Barbie dolls. In fact, in the course of answering personal ads and going on dates so she can write a story about her experiences for the newspaper she works at, she comes to the conclusion no man can stack up to her beloved hobby of Barbie collecting. What she doesn’t know is that the scoop of a lifetime looms on the horizon. A woman bent on revenge against adversaries on the Best Barbie Board—for slights including being accused of having a vintage doll gown with a repro rose and removing freckles from a Midge doll with nail polish remover—is prowling her way across the country from Oswego to Walnut Creek, taking not only the lives of those who have tormented her but their doll collections as well. It’s up to Caresse to help detectives connect the dots and figure out who the killer is before more lives are taken, but can she do it?

Thoughts: 

**I received a copy of this book from Story Cartel in exchange for an honest review.** I loved this book! The author obviously researched the world of Barbie and Barbie collectors, to be able to give such intricate details. I looked some of the outfits up with which I was unfamiliar, and they are described just as they were in the book. The mystery was a great one....even though we had some details about the killer from page one, her actual identity came as a complete surprise when it was revealed. Her fate was total karma, in my opinion. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller. My rating: Four stars

Your Hidden Riches: Unleashing the Power of Ritual to Create a Life of Meaning and Purpose by Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood

Synopsis: From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Passion Test comes a book that will teach readers to harness the power of ritual to unlock their unique gifts and create a life of love, wealth, and happiness.

Rituals are the common feature of every ancient culture on Earth. Yet, modern society has lost touch with the power and value of ritual to create a rhythm for daily life, balance, and a connection with others. In the process, many of us have lost touch with ourselves. 

Your Hidden Riches is a call to reignite the power of personal and community rituals--to sustain us in the midst of an ever-increasing onslaught of information and expectations, and to sustain our world by reawakening the awareness of our interconnection with all life.

In the book you will learn to engage with: 
-Rituals for Magical Relationships
-Rituals for Diet, Health, and Beauty
-Creating Wealth Through Ritual
-Rituals for the Seasons of Life
-Rituals for a Closer Family Circle

Embracing ritual will allow you to finally live the life of health, wisdom, and love that you deserve.

Thoughts: This book is very deep, and is going to take me weeks to fully get through, digest and implement. But what I've read and begun to implement so far is already making a change in my life. I'm feeling much more grateful and positive in every situation that comes my way.

Rating:  Four stars

Before, During, After, by Richard Bausch

Synopsis: When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquility of the nation’s summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha’s inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into “before” and “after.” They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion. 

Thoughts: This is a very different sort of love story. Michael and Natasha meet and become engaged prior to 9/11, and that day finds them separated---he in NYC, she in Jamaica. Because of something that happens on that day, there are secrets between them, which result in tension, frustration, and anger.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I had a few complaints about it. The phrases "babe," "my love," etc., were used too often for my taste. We know the main characters are in love, but we also know they have a certain amount of emotional distance between them, so the endearments seemed a little forced through much of the book.

The other issue is the amount of drinking....it seemed that everyone always had a drink in their hand, and the main characters spent a LOT of time drunk. 

I was slightly disappointed in the ending, as well...but I have hopes that it means there might be more to the story of Michael and Natasha in the future.

My rating: Four stars

The Angel of Losses, by Stephanie Feldman

Synopsis: When Eli Burke dies, he leaves behind a mysterious notebook full of stories about a magical figure named The White Rebbe, a miracle worker in league with the enigmatic Angel of Losses, protector of things gone astray, and guardian of the lost letter of the alphabet, which completes the secret name of God.

When his granddaughter, Marjorie, discovers Eli's notebook, everything she thought she knew about her grandfather--and her family--comes undone. To find the truth about Eli's origins and unlock the secrets he kept, she embarks on an odyssey that takes her deep into the past, from 18th century Europe to Nazi-occupied Lithuania, and back to the present, to New York City and her estranged sister Holly, whom she must save from the consequences of Eli's past.

Interweaving history, theology, and both real and imagined Jewish folktales, The Angel of Losses is a family story of what lasts, and of what we can-and cannot-escape.

Thoughts: This book did not appeal to me as much as the above synopsis. The folktales interwoven into the story were fascinating, but the story of the present day family was more than just a little too far out in left field for me.  I didn't care about any of the characters, with the exception of Holly's newborn son, Eli. The rest of them had so many annoying, irritating personality traits that I couldn't find any reason to get involved in their story.

My rating: Two stars