Readers' Favorite

June 3, 2017

Summer Book Recommendations and Giveaway

by Donna Huber

It is the last day of Armchair Book Expo! It has been fun. In case you missed the earlier post, check out Introductions & Best Practices, What Readers Want  & Let's Collaborate, and Book Diversity & Dining with an Author. Today, we are offering (and asking) for book recommendations and it is GIVEAWAY DAY!

June 2, 2017

Book Diversity and Dining with an Author

by Donna Huber


diverse formats of books
I'm a diverse reader, both in terms of genres and formats I read


Day 3 of Armchair Book Expo is here. In case you have missed my earlier posts: Day 1 was introduction and best practices and Day 2 was what readers want and collaboration. Today's topics are book diversity and dining with an author.

June 1, 2017

What Readers Want and Let's Collaborate

by Donna Huber



Day 2 of Armchair Book Expo. Yesterday, we did introductions and discussed best practices in book blogging. Today, we are taking a look at what readers look for in a great book and collaborating and listening in today's book blogging world.

May 31, 2017

Introductions and Blogging Best Practices

by Donna Huber


Image credit: Boquilla's Window of Big Bend Productions

Welcome to another year of the Armchair Book Expo. This is a great event to get to know other bloggers and talk about different blogging topics. As today is the first day, there is the typical introduction and then I will be discussing some blogging best practices.

Amazon affiliate links are used in this post.

Introduction

Hi! I am Donna, the owner of Girl Who Reads. I manage a team of writers that includes 3 reviewers and 4 features writers. I've been blogging since January 2011 and still loving it.

Currently, I work full-time at the local university. I spend part of my day as the manager of publicity and development for a research center and the other part of the day as the editorial manager for an academic journal. I was able to secure these positions in large part due to the skills I learned from running Girl Who Reads and working with authors.

My current reads are East of Eden by John Steinbeck (paperback), The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (audio), and Picture Mr. Perfect by Laura Briggs (ebook). I read the print book before bed, the audio book is being listened to in the evenings when I'm doing household stuff, and the ebook is read when I'm out and about and find myself with a few minutes, like yesterday at the dentist office.

Blogging Best Practices

I use to write a weekly tips post where I doled out advice about blogging, marketing, and social media so I will link to a few posts in case you want further information. But for the purpose of today, I will give you a run down of 8 things you should be doing to be the best blogger possible.
  1. Have an editorial calendar. Knowing what you are going to blog about when is a huge help when life gets busy. About mid-month, I start planning out the next month of content. I use a Google calendar. My features writers have a set day each month for their articles, so those are already on the calendar, Then I make sure any blog tours or guest posts I've committed to are on the calendar. Then I look at the reviews I have. My reviewers continually send me reviews so I have a queue I can pull from. I prioritize reviews based on (a) release date (any books coming out that month go on the calendar first), (b) tied to anything happening that month (e.g., romance books get priority in February), and (c) when the review was submitted. I also make sure I have a nice balance between the reviewers so that there is variety. Finally, I add in filler material - lists, videos, spotlights, etc. Sometimes I will leave a few days open for last minute promotions. You can view my calendar. For more information, read my full articles on creating an editorial calendar and setting a blog schedule
  2. Have policy and procedures in place. Serious book bloggers need to have a few policies in place to help manage work flow and also limit liability. At the minimum, you need to have a review policy, a disclaimer, and (if running giveaways) contest rules. I break down each of these in a post I did a few years back for Bloggiesta on policies and procedures. As you can see in my top navigation bar I have a link to my review policy, submission guidelines (for guest posts and other promotions) and m disclaimer. I also have an automated footer in each post reminding people that I use affiliate links. I also insert towards the beginning of the article that the post contains affiliate links, and if it is a review I mention that free books were received in accordance with FTC guidelines. I discuss more about FTC disclosures in my article FTC Disclaimer - Revised and Updated.
  3. Be active on social media. The best way to promote your blog is through social media. You don't need to be on every social media channel. I recommend that you pick 5 or 6 channels to really focus on and then prioritize based on where you get the most interaction. My main channels are Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I also maintain a presence at Google+, Goodreads, and Pinterest.  The first three are major players in the social media world. They have the most users and are some of the fastest growing channels. Check out my quick tip for getting more Facebook page likes. And I have some tips on using Instagram for blog promotion. Google+ helps with search engine optimization. Outside of posting my new articles to it, I don't do much with it. Goodreads helps me organize my books and mostly use it like any other reader, but I do link to my reviews on the blog to help drive more traffic to my site. Pinterest can be great if you have awesome graphics, I pin my new posts most of the time (when I remember) but I've never gotten a lot of interaction from it so I don't spend much time there. During 2015's Armchair Book Expo, I discussed all kinds of social media tips.
  4. Visit and comment on other blogs. Networking is very important in the blogging community. Participating in memes and blog events like Armchair Book Expo are great, but they shouldn't be the only time you are reading other blogs. By reading other blogs you can learn what you like and don't like about reviewing and blogging. I've often been reading a post on another site and think to myself, 'I've never thought of doing it that way'. If you are feeling like you are in a rut, explore other blogs to get new ideas. And remember to leave a comment. Why should you leave a comment? We all like to know our content is being read by a real person and not scammers and bots. Also, it can help with discoverability of your own blog. You should always leave a link back to your own blog in the comments (unless of course, you are on a site that has nothing to do with books, because then it could be seen as spam). Try this trick to drive more traffic to your site.
  5. Create awesome content. No matter how active you are on social media or how many book blogs you visit if your content sucks no one is going to stick around. I recently learned that most people online read only about 20% of the words. Have you really read every word of this post? Or did you scan it? A key to awesome content is often in how that content is presented. If you want to write better content, check out my three best practices for writing content on the web. Not getting comments? Is your content engaging enough for readers to know what to say in a comment? Here are a few more tips on writing a blog post worth reading.
  6. Optimize your post for search. I'm sure you have heard the term SEO - Search Engine Optimization. There is so much that goes into SEO, some of which you have no control over but some of it you do. Like the keywords you use. The past two weeks I've been training in SEO and I have discovered some awesome tools. Did you know with Google Adwords there is a keyword planner tool? You can see what keywords are most used on your blog or you can research specific keywords. You want keywords that are high in searches, but low in competition. If you don't mind messing a bit with HTML, Google has a Structured Data Markup Helper which always you to insert specific HTML tags for search engines to read (but isn't seen my human readers). There is one specifically for book reviews. Both of these tools are free!
  7. Use images wisely. With faster internet speeds, blogging has become very visuals. But be careful using images you find on the web. Not everything posted on the web is free for just anyone to use. If you don't want to pay for images, you will need to either take your own photos or search for images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons (CC) license. There are a number of sites that provide free public domain/CC images. For any image you find on the web, you should keep a record of its license, particularly for CC licenses as the owner can change the license. As long as you can show you used the image per the license it was under at the time you should be fine. (I'm not a lawyer and this should not be taken as legal advice).
  8. Have fun. Most of us got into book blogging because we have a passion for books and enjoy talking about what we are reading. But blogging can be stressful and most bloggers suffer from blogging burnout at some point. When I was struggling with keeping the blog going and taking a break wasn't helping, I decided to add regular contributors. Even though managing a writing team comes with its own issues it has really helped me.

Wow! That was a lot to take in wasn't? Sorry, blogging best practices are kind of a passion for me and I have trouble stopping once I start doling out the advice. If you want to learn more about social media, reviewing, writing, and other book blogging topics, you may want to look over all my tips posts.

If you are participating in Armchair Book Expo, I hope you have fun and I look forward to getting to know you. If you aren't participating in ABE, I still look foward to getting to know you, please leave a comment!

If you have read this far you deserve a reward, swing by my March Mystery Box Giveaway.

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

May 30, 2017

One More for the Beach Bag: The Forever Summer by Jamie Brenner

by Susan Roberts


Now that May is here, my mind keeps heading to the South Carolina beaches that I enjoy so much. Even though I can't get to the beach this month, I can enjoy reading books about it. Last month, I told you about four books which you could tuck into your beach bag and enjoy while you are lounging in the sun. Today, I have one more for you.

Amazon affiliate links are used in this post. A free book was provided for an honest review.




The Forever Summer
April 2017; Little, Brown and Company
9780316394871; ebook, audio, print (368 pages)
women's fiction
The Forever Summer by Jamie Brenner is full of family secrets that keep the story moving at a fast pace. I must admit that once I started it, I couldn't put it down because I wanted to see how it all ended.

It's a story about what it takes to create a family and about the love that pulls a family together. I enjoyed all of the main characters and was really invested in their stories.

Marin is a lawyer at an NYC law firm and was always the good girl until she fell in love with another lawyer at the firm while engaged to someone else. At the same time they both ended up losing their jobs, a girl shows up claiming to be her half-sister on her way to Cape Cod to meet family that she didn't know she had. Marin, at loose ends, agrees to go with her and finds out more about her family - both the family that raised her and the family she didn't know existed - during that summer and at the same time she started to learn what was really important in life.

Buy The Forever Summer at Amazon

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling.  She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends.  She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook.


Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

May 29, 2017

Read, Reading, To Read - May 2017 Books

by Donna Huber
Summer Reading
Ready for the pool!
It is the last Monday of the month, and it's time to tally up what I read and am reading this month and plan for next month. I wasn't sure if I would read as many books I have been reading each month. I've started doing some training at work which has cut down on the audio books that I usually listen to at work, but television season is wrapping up so I'm starting to listen to books in the evenings. The last 2 - 3 month, I've completed eight books. I have 7 finished so far this month. I'm still on track with my reading goal for the year so it's all good. I also laid a patio this month. You can see a bit of it in the above picture.

Amazon affiliate links are used in this post.

Read:

In print...
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
I won The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley in a Goodreads giveaway. I don't win very many of them, but I'm glad I won this book. You can read my full review that I posted last week.

A father protects his daughter from the legacy of his past and the truth about her mother's death in this thrilling new novel from the prize-winning author of The Good Thief.

After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past; a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come. This father-daughter epic weaves back and forth through time and across America, from Alaska to the Adirondacks.

Both a coming-of-age novel and a literary thriller, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley explores what it means to be a hero, and the cost we pay to protect the people we love most.

Buy The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley at Amazon


Keeping Away from the Joneses
I met this local author at a street fair recently. He is a great guy and I wish I had enjoyed his book more. There were just too many problems that kept me from doing so. It had great potential though. You can read my full review that I posted Saturday.

Keeping Away From The Joneses is first-time author, Bowen Craig's, classless look at the American class system. Diedre Jones is a full-time Appalachian maid and part-time hypochondriac. She and her eclectic, crazy family have always been on the bottom rung of the American ladder. But that was before they won the lottery...

Buy Keeping Away From the Joneses at Amazon



In audio...
Gathering Blue
I thought I would give Lowry's other books a try since I liked The Giver. The second installment in this thematic series was almost as good as the first.

Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever.

As she did in THE GIVER, Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve, and what could be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira’s plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.

Buy Gathering the Blue at Amazon


Messenger
Messenger is a continuation of Gathering the Blue. I found his one to be a bit sadder, but perhaps it because I knew the character more.

Messenger is the masterful third novel in the Giver Quartet, which began with the dystopian bestseller The Giver, now a major motion picture.

Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a blind man known for his special sight. Village once welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. Now he must risk everything to make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.

Buy Messenger at Amazon


Six Kids and a Stuffed Cat
I won this ebook at last year's Armchair Book Expo. It is a cute read for elementary age children. If you get the print version, there is a script at the end so that kids can create their own play.

It seemed like a normal school day, until a horrible storm forced the very cautious school administration to make everyone hole up in a safe place. Six students find themselves stuck in a tiny, questionably smelly space—a school bathroom—with a stuffed cat for entertainment. Hijinks ensue and the unexpected happens. They enter as strangers…and leave as friends.

Buy Six Kids and a Stuffed Cat at Amazon


In ebook...
The Second Chance Cafe in Carlton Square
The sequel to The Big Little Wedding in Carlton Square (read my review) is due out next month. My review for The Second Chance Cafe in Carlton Square on June 30 as part of the blog tour.

One chance isn't always enough

Everyone expects great things from Emma Billings, but when her future gets derailed by an unexpected turn of events, she realizes that getting back on track means traveling in a different direction.

She finds it in the closed-down pub on Carlton Square. Summoning every ounce of ingenuity, and with the help of her friends and family, she opens the Second Chance Café. The charity training business is meant to keep vulnerable kids off the streets and (hopefully) away from the Metropolitan Police, and her new employees are full of ideas, enthusiasm ... and trouble. They'll need as much TLC as the customers they’re serving.

This ragtag group of chancers have to make a go of a business they know nothing about, and they do get some expert help from an Italian who's in love with the espresso machine and a professional sandwich whisperer who reads auras, but not everyone is happy to see the café open. Their milk keeps disappearing and someone is canceling the cake orders, but it's when someone commits bloomicide on all their window boxes that Emma realizes things are serious. Can the café survive when NIMBY neighbors and the rival café owner join forces to close them down? Or will Emma’s dreams fall as flat as the cakes they’re serving?

Buy The Second Chance Cafe in Carleton Square at Amazon


The Hitwoman Takes a Roadtrip
This book was my reward for the intense yard work I've been doing the past month. I laid a new patio in front of my front porch. I first had to take out 4 very overgrown holly bushes and then laid down tarps, sand, and stone squares. Now I'm waiting to see if the rain this week totally washes away my hard work. But JB Lynn's new book provided a much need relaxing afternoon. This road trip is anything but a vacation for our favorite Hitwoman.

Some people just can’t outrun trouble.

Overwhelmed hitwoman Maggie Lee thinks she’s leaving her family worries behind when she’s convinced to take a road trip with her buddy, Armani.

But pretty soon an old friend, a pesky relative, and even her pet, are asking for her help.

Loyal to a fault, Maggie soon finds herself tangled in a dangerous theft involving a crime family; confronting the abusive previous owner of her cat, Piss; and dealing with family revelations that rock her world.

With the assistance of psychic predictions, talking animals and unexpected allies, Maggie takes on her troubles head-on.

But if she’s not careful, this “vacation” could literally be the death of her.

Buy The Hitwoman Takes a Roadtrip at Amazon

Currently Reading

In print...
East of Eden
I loved John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and to a lesser extent Of Mice and Men. Then suddenly I started hearing East of Eden everywhere and I realized I had never read it. I decided that this would be my summer pool reading book. Until I walked into the bookstore and there was a pretty copy with rough cut pages. So instead of being my pool book, I'm reading it now and enjoying every minute.

In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

Buy East of Eden at Amazon


In ebook...
Picture Mr. Perfect
Another one of those ebooks that have been languishing in my ebook to be read pile. I'm not far enough in to really have an opinion. There are some issues with the set-up to the story, but I'm hoping that the story will be strong enough that it can overcome them. The premise sounds fun.

Jason Barry isn’t an actor. He isn’t a model. But when he takes a one-time photo shoot gig, he ends up on the cover of a best-selling romance novel—and becomes the face of a hero idolized by millions of women.

Now fame is trying to change Jason’s whole life—and turn him into the picture-perfect face for every romance from Pride and Prejudice to sword-wielding swashbucklers.

Emily Cooper isn’t a book critic. Or a hater of romance novels. But when the snobby president of her book club pushes A Gentleman's Word as the monthly read, Emily finds herself tired of the obsession with ‘Lord Damon’s’ looks. When Emily learns the model behind the face is a student at her own university—and her new study partner—she can’t imagine being friends with him, much less falling head over heels.

A sweet comic romance about seeing what’s beneath the surface.

Buy Picture Mr. Perfect at Amazon


In audio...
The Gene
Another win from last year's Armchair Book Expo. This one is a testament to my science geekiness.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information?

The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.

Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In superb prose and with an instinct for the dramatic scene, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Thomas Morgan to Crick, Watson and Rosa Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.

As The New Yorker said of The Emperor of All Maladies, “It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion…An extraordinary achievement.” Riveting, revelatory, and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, and an essential preparation for the moral complexity introduced by our ability to create or “write” the human genome, The Gene is a must-read for everyone concerned about the definition and future of humanity. This is the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master.

Buy The Gene at Amazon

To Read

In audio...
Son
I'm next on the holds list so I should have it in the next week or so.

They called her Water Claire. When she washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions and colors didn’t exist. That she had become a Vessel at age thirteen. That she had carried a Product at age fourteen. That it had been stolen from her body. Claire had a son. But what became of him she never knew. What was his name? Was he even alive? She was supposed to forget him, but that was impossible. Now Claire will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice.

Son thrusts readers once again into the chilling world of the Newbery Medal winning book, The Giver, as well as Gathering Blue and Messenger where a new hero emerges. In this thrilling series finale, the startling and long-awaited conclusion to Lois Lowry’s epic tale culminates in a final clash between good and evil.

Buy Son at Amazon


In print...
The Chocolate Clown Corpse
Pool season is here! I think I will start with this book as my "pool read". I picked it up a few weeks ago on the discount shelf so I won't feel too bad if it gets a little wet.

Revenge is sweet for a killer on the loose—and it all started with the murder of Warner Pier’s most hated clown....

Everyone who knew the bozo wanted him dead. Odd, then, that a complete stranger was accused of bursting Moe Davidson’s balloons. But it’s been a month since the miserable shop owner of Clowning Around was killed, and everybody’s moving on, including Lee Woodyard. Her chocolate shop, TenHuis Chocolade, is next door to Moe’s shuttered tourist trap, and it’s giving her delicious ideas to expand. But over whose dead body?

Moe’s widow, Emma, and her two stepchildren list the property for sale, but when Lee tours the building, she finds Emma unconscious. Now Lee wonders whether Moe’s real killer is still at large and is taking care of unfinished business. Unfortunately, since the town is celebrating Clown Week, there are so many potential suspects in grease paint and floppy shoes it’s not even funny.

For Lee, protecting Emma, freeing an innocent man, and rolling out hundreds of her clown-themed chocolates is a pretty tall order. But so is staying alive long enough to find out which one of her neighbors is a killer in disguise.

Includes Tasty Chocolate Trivia!

Buy The Chocolate Clown Corpse at Amazon


What have you read, are reading, and will read?
Are you taking a road trip this summer? Check out my inforgraphic to find out what audiobooks you should listen to.
This is the last week to enter this month's mystery box giveaway. What will be in the box? Lots of bookish goodies!

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

May 28, 2017

Sci-fi Review: Paroxysm Effect by Ashleigh Reynolds

by MK French

In Paroxysm Effect, Gemi is startled when everyone around her suddenly becomes aggressive. Chips had been installed to suppress emotions, and they failed; the sudden surge in emotions drove most people insane, and they became incredibly violent. She is saved by a military group trying to contain the violence, and their trek back to the military base is full of dangers. Suddenly, Gemi doesn't know who to trust, and who might help her. Getting to the base is an ordeal, and it's one that isn't even over when she gets there.

Amazon affiliate links are used in this post. A free book was provided for an honest review.

Paroxysm Effect
February 2016; Legendary Books; 9781523449231
ebook, print (296 pages); science fiction
The plot of Paroxysm Effect is intriguing and very straightforward. It reads like an action film, one where the violence and blood get worse as the story moves along and people fall more and more out of control. (Think 28 Days Later and its rage virus, and you'll have an idea of the violence involved).

 It's very much science fiction, as emotional control chips are everywhere in this future world, yet there are also no such things as review boards to go over the ethics of human experimentation or citizens' rights.

The twists in the book are rather sudden, as are some of the characters' reactions to each other. It seems to be very out of place to have such disjointed responses, even with malfunctioning chips. The military doesn't even have chips, so they don't have that as an excuse, either! I didn't enjoy the disjointed emotional whiplash in the first half of the book; Ms. Reynolds really shines when she laid on the tension and mystery in the earlier and later chapters than with the out-of-nowhere romance. Even explaining it as not exactly out of nowhere didn't really help me get a better sense of the relationship.

While this is the first book in a series, it is fairly self-contained as is. There are inevitable questions for future books to answer, but this is still wrapped up fairly neatly.

Buy Paroxysm Effect at Amazon

Born and raised in New York City, M.K. French started writing stories when very young, dreaming of different worlds and places to visit. She always had an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and the macabre, which has definitely influenced her work. She currently lives in the Midwest with her husband, three young children, and golden retriever. 

Get even more book news in your inbox by signing up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mHTVL. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.

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