The Second World by Jake Korell ~ an Audiobook Review

by Donna Huber

Mars has declared its independence from Earth. But building a country takes more than a new flag, an arena-worthy anthem, and naming Pluto the donkey the national animal. As the Red Planet spirals into political upheaval, Flip Buchanan—the irreverent, reluctant son of the most powerful man on Mars—stumbles through two tumultuous decades of alien discoveries, killer clones, and the chaos of a new nation still working out the kinks.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free audiobook was provided for an honest review.

Fever Beach by Carl Hiassen ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

Welcome to Fever Beach, where the sun blazes, the politics are unhinged, and the characters are as volatile as a summer storm.

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

I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.

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

The Grand Scheme of Things by Warona Jay ~ a Review

by MK French

Relebogile Naledi Mpho Moruakgomo, Eddie for short, is an aspiring playwright hoping to make it big in London’s theater world. Repeated rejections make her suspect it's her name and not her plays that are the problem. Hugo Lawrence Smith is stifled by his law degree and wants out. He and Eddie become friends and plan to use Hugo's name on Eddie’s play. When her plays are successful, they can expose the theater world for its racism and hollow clout-chasing. This plan soon spirals out of control, leaving Eddie and Hugo wondering if their reputations and friendship can survive.

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

Review: Junkyard Leopard by Oliver Brackenbury

by MK French

The Figure is a woman dressed head to toe in leopard print Lycra, even over her face, with a white fur coat. She targets corporate bankers and lawyers with hammers, crowbars or acid, carving a bloody swath through Wall Street.

Two #Books about Women in Transition

Reviews by Susan Roberts

If you read my reviews, you know that I'm drawn to books about women who are making transitions in their lives. Today I have reviews of two books on this subject - one about a young woman who has to completely change her life when she loses the job that she loved and the second about an older woman who decides that she can no longer stay married and takes drastic steps to change her life.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. Free books were provided for an honest review.

Best Friend for Hire by Mary Carlomagno 

June 2017; Post Hill Press; 978-1682612606
ebook, print (256 pages); satire

This is a fun light read and a perfect book to read at the beach or pool. It's lighthearted and very funny in parts and is a feel -good book with a wonderful and well written main character.

As the novel begins, Jessie is mentally preparing herself for the promotion that she knows is coming. After 10 years of hard work at a major publishing company in NYC, she feels that she has earned this promotion. Imagine how surprised she is when she is called to her boss's office and given a pink slip. After the initial shock wears off, she knows that she needs to find work and decides to set up her own company and be a best friend for hire - help people arrange their closets, go shopping with them and do all of the things that a best friend would do. Believe me, Jessie gets herself into some very funny situations in her quest to be a best friend to several of the people who hire her. But despite the setbacks and the worry of her large NJ Italian family, she keeps trying. Her biggest job as a best friend for hire is when she promises someone that she can get THE BOSS (and in NJ that would be Bruce Springsteen) to attend a fund raiser.

This is a fun well-written book that will have you rooting for Jessie while you are laughing at some of the predicaments that she gets herself into.

I received an advance copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own

Buy Best Friend for Hire at Amazon

The Little French Bistro by Nina George

June 2017; Crown; 978-0451495587
ebook, audio, print (320 pages); women's fiction

Marianne has decided that her life is useless and she can't stay married to her husband another day. So while she and her husband are visiting Paris, she decided to drown herself in the Seine. Unfortunately (to her), she is saved and ends up in the hospital where her husband leaves her to figure out how to get home when while he returns to their home in Germany. She leaves the hospital without permission and finds a small town on the coast of France where she plans to kill herself. Life has a way of disrupting plans like this and just maybe the quirky cast of characters that she meets will make her change her mind...or maybe not.

This book started out with a great premise. Marianne's husband was so insufferable and unlikable and you could almost understand her plans to leave him - though suicide is a bit over the top. I thought that there were way too many characters in the small town that she escaped to and had a problem keeping them all figured out. Despite that, I loved the beginning and the end of this book and think that it's well worth reading just to see the changes in Marianne.

Thanks to First to Read for a copy of this book to read and review.

Buy The Little French Bistro 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.

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Great Potential: Keeping Away from the Joneses by Bowen Craig

by Donna Huber

A few weeks ago I went to Statham to have lunch and there was a street fair going on. I love looking at the crafts and whatnots so I strolled through. I happened upon a book booth for a local Athens book publisher - Bilbo Books. I got to talking with Bowen Craig who is a co-founder of the publisher and an author himself. He gave me a copy of his book Keeping Away from the Joneses for an honest review.

Amazon affiliate links are used in this post.

June 2009; iUniverse; 978-1440117039
ebook, print (119 pages); satire

I love meeting local authors and I wasn't aware of this publishing group. Bilbo Books is a pay-to-publish outfit focused on memoirs, but they also work with authors of general fiction and children's books.

I was really excited about reading Keeping Away from the Joneses. The back cover summary is sparse:

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...

But I was grabbed by the fact that Diedre, or Dee as she is called by friends and family, is a hypochondriac. Hypochondriasm can offer a great deal of comic relief in fiction. And while we are told (there's a bit more telling than showing in this novel) in the opening chapters that she is a hypochondriac, we never see any signs of this particular mental illness. Perhaps, Craig, who often opened chapters with dictionary definitions, failed to read the entry for hypochondriac, "a person who is abnormally anxious about their health."

Unfortunately, this was not the only problem with the book.

The whole book felt a bit like reading a season of The Beverly Hillbillies. The opening chapters were character vignettes and since I'm not a huge fan of short stories, this manner of character establishment didn't appeal to me. It still bugs me that in the chapter where we are introduced to Uncle P, who likes to experiment with household items to see what can get him high, there is mention that the family gets in Ethel's SUV and goes to her house from the hospital. Why didn't they drive themselves to the hospital? Why was Ethel there? Perhaps if Ethel had driven just Dee and Hannah it would have made since they clean her house. But the whole family?

Speaking of the character development. Craig heaped every redneck stereotype upon the characters that they became more caricatures that possible real people. So it was difficult to become attached to any of them. Though when we finally get to the main plot of them winning the lottery things got a little better. The story arc expanded over the chapters and we get to see the actions of the characters more.

There were also technical problems with the book. The reading level is low, but that wasn't the problem per se. Instead, it was the oddly worded sentences, misspelled words, and mixed-up homophones that I took issue with.

"Setting down the silver colored, metal folding chair he was carrying in order to think, PH thought." pg. 22

Did I really need to be told "he thought" at the end of the sentence? It just felt like I was reading more of a draft than a final product. And really there is a lot of potential in this book for a great story. You can see Craig's potential to be a great writer. I really think if Craig would tweak the story a bit, clean up the copy, and address some of the layout inconsistency, the comparison of a modern day John Steinbeck could be made.

If you are interested in checking out this novella, you can buy it at Amazon

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.

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