Will You, Won't you, Want Me #ItsRainingBooks Bonus Book!

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! And now there is a bonus book! The bonus book is Will You, Won't You, Want Me by Nora Zelevansky.

About The Book:

Marjorie Plum never meant to peak in high school. She was Queen Bee. Now, 10 years later, she's lost her sparkle. At her bleakest moment, she's surprised by renewed interest from a questionable childhood crush, and the bickering with her cranky boss - at a potentially game-changing new job - grows increasingly like flirtatious banter. Suddenly, she's faced with a choice between the life she always dreamed of and one she never thought to imagine. With the help of a precocious 11-year-old tutee, who unknowingly becomes the Ghost of Marjorie Past, and a musician roommate, who looks like a pixie and talks like the Dalai Lama, Marjorie struggles with the ultimate question: Who does she want to be? Nora Zelevansky's Will You, Won't You, Want Me is a funny, often surprising, novel about growing up when you are already supposed to be grown.

My Thoughts:

This is a good book about coming-of-age when you are already supposed to be of-age. Growing up and changing life. A good, fun, quick read.

About The Author:

Nora Zelevansky is the author of Will You, Won't You, Want Me and Semi-Charmed Life. Her writing has appeared in Elle, T Magazine, Town & Country, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair, among others. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn, New York.

 
 

The Goodbye Year #ItsRainingBooks

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! The Fifth and final book is The Goodbye Year by Kaira Rouda.

About The Book:

Melanie, a perfectionist mom who views the approaching end of parenting as a type of death, can’t believe she has only one more year to live vicariously through her slacker senior son, Dane. Gorgeous mom Sarah has just begun to realize that her only daughter, Ashley, has been serving as a stand-in for her traveling husband, and the thought of her daughter leaving for college is cracking the carefully cultivated facade of her life. Will and his wife are fine - as long as he follows the instructions on the family calendar and is sure to keep secret his whole other life with Lauren, the woman he turns to for fun (and who also happens to have a daughter in the senior class). Told from the points of view of both the parents and the kids, The Goodbye Year explores high school peer pressure, what it’s like for young people to face the unknown of life after high school, and how a transition that should be the beginning of a couple’s second act together - empty nesting - might possibly be the end.

My Thoughts:

This is an excellent read! It hit a little too close to home for me in some parts, even though we are nowhere near being Empty Nesters. A real life novel that touches the heart.

About The Author:

Kaira Rouda is a USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of contemporary women's fiction and modern romance novels that sparkle with humor and heart. Her previous award-winning and best-selling women’s fiction novels include Here, Home, Hope, and In the Mirror. When she's not writing, she can be found walking the beach, practicing yoga, playing Pickleball, and enjoying as much time as possible with her family.

 
 

Meternity #ItsRainingBooks

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! The Fourth book is Meternity by Meghann Foye.

About The Book:

Like everyone in New York, media editor Liz Buckley runs on cupcakes, caffeine, and cocktails. But at thirty-one, she’s plateaued at Paddy Cakes, a glossy baby magazine that flogs thousand-dollar strollers to entitled, hyper-competitive spawn-havers. Liz has spent years working a gazillion hours a week picking up the slack for coworkers with kids, and she’s tired of it. So one day when her bosses mistake her stress-related nausea for morning sickness - boom! Liz is promoted to the mommy track. She decides to run with it and plans to use her paid time off to figure out her life: work, love, and otherwise. It’ll be her “meternity” leave. By day, Liz rocks a foam-rubber belly under fab maternity outfits. By night, she dumps the bump for karaoke nights and boozy dinners out. But how long can she keep up her charade…and hide it from the guy who might just be The One? As her “due date” approaches, Liz is exhausted - and exhilarated - by the ruse, the guilt, and the feelings brought on by a totally fictional belly-tenant…about happiness, success, family, and the nature of love.

My Thoughts:

This is a hilariously fun read! I laughed out loud on several occasions. A fun fast read, it was perfect for a spring fever read!

About The Author:

Meghann Foye is the senior web editor at Redbook.com and has worked for Seventeen, Woman's Day, For Me, and Elle.

 
 

Parting Gifts #ItsRainingBooks

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! The Third book is Parting Gifts by Katrina Anne Willis.

 About The Book:

Broken by their unorthodox Midwestern childhood, sisters Catherine, Anne, and Jessica Mathers search for love, acceptance, and worth - often in the most unlikely places. Catherine, the oldest of the Mathers sisters, is an English professor battling breast cancer with Cytoxan, red wine, and profanity. Anne is a wife and stay-at-home mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a suburban existence that both suffocates and confounds her. Jessica, the youngest by ten years and estranged - by choice - from her family, is an exotic dancer who feels safer on stage than in a relationship. But when the sisters are faced with an incomprehensible loss, they are forced to reevaluate themselves, their damaged bonds, and their fragile future. Parting Gifts illuminates one highly dysfunctional family’s tentative, desperate crawl toward a life of meaning and worth.

My Thoughts:

This is an excellent book on the dynamics of family, especially of the sisterhood variety. This reminds me of my sisters and our relationships. An amazing read! I was hooked from page one!

About The Author:

Katrina Anne Willis, 2011 Midwest Writers Fellow and 2015 BlogHer Voice of the Year, is an author, blogger, and essayist. An Indianapolis Listen to Your Mother participant and contributor to Mamalode magazine, her work has been anthologized in Nothing but the Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women On Life’s Transitions and My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends. She was awarded the 2014 Parenting Media Association’s Gold Medal Blogger Award for her work with Indy’s Child magazine. Willis lives in Northwest Ohio with the love of her life, Chris, and her four fabulous teenagers, Sam, Gus, Mary Claire, and George.

 

 

A Girl Like You #ItsRainingBooks

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! The Second book is A Girl Like You by Michelle Cox.

About The Book:

Henrietta Von Harmon works as a “26 girl” at a corner bar on Chicago’s northwest side. It’s 1935, but things still aren’t looking up since the big crash and her father’s subsequent suicide, leaving Henrietta to care for her antagonistic mother and younger siblings. Henrietta is eventually persuaded to take a job as a taxi dancer at a local dance hall - and just when she’s beginning to enjoy herself, the floor matron turns up dead. When aloof Inspector Clive Howard appears on the scene, Henrietta agrees to go undercover for him - and is plunged into Chicago’s grittier underworld. Meanwhile, she’s still busy playing mother hen to her younger siblings, as well as to pesky neighborhood boy Stanley, who believes himself in love with her and keeps popping up in the most unlikely places, determined to keep Henrietta safe - even from the Inspector, if need be. Despite his efforts, however, and his penchant for messing up the Inspector’s investigation, the lovely Henrietta and the impenetrable Inspector find themselves drawn to each other in most unsuitable ways.

My Thoughts:

I do not usually like historical romances too much, but this was a good read and it kept my attention. It is fun to read about something that you don't know much about.

About The Author:

Michelle Cox has a BA in English literature from Mundelein College, Chicago. While her heart might lie in the eighteenth century with Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy or in the crooked streets of Little Dorrit’s London, she tends to write of a slightly more recent age, a time closer to the World Wars, when all was not yet lost and the last roses of summer were first coming into bloom. Cox lives with her husband and three children in the Chicago suburbs. This is her first novel.

 
 

Start With The Back Beat #ItsRainingBooks

BookSparks is putting a spring in your step for this season’s April Showers Blog Tour! Join me in reading, reviewing, and sharing five handpicked, buzz-worthy books! The First book is Start With The Backbeat by Garine B. Isassi.

About The Book:

It is the spring of 1989 in New York City when Jill Dodge, a post-punk rocker from Texas, finally gets her big promotion at Mega Big Records. She is thrust into a race to find a gritty, urban rapper before the “Gangsta” trend passes their label by. As Jill and her mostly middle-class coworkers search for the next big rap star, they fluctuate between alliances and rivalries, tripping over the stereotypes of race, class, and musical genre. They work to promote their current roster of acts as well as the new rap artist they sign to a contract. It turns out, he may not be what they expected. Full of original lyrics and wit, Start With the Backbeat is a compelling examination of the nuances of class, race, and culture in America - which are sometimes ridiculously serious.

My Thoughts:

This is a fun fresh read! You don't find stories like these around much. It digs into the cultural stereotypes, and makes for a compelling read. And makes you realize that we all bleed the same color underneath our skin.

About The Author:

Garinè B. Isassi is a former singer/songwriter who grew up with one foot in Texas and the other in New Jersey. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, she is a lover of music, chocolate, and altruistic sarcasm; a writer of post-punk humor; and the illustrious founder of Helicopter Moms Anonymous. She is proud of her Armenian-American heritage, but tired of explaining it. She currently lives in Maryland, where she works full time in marketing communications, sings in a gospel choir, is the Workshops Chair for the Gaithersburg Book Festival, over-volunteers for a variety of community organizations, writes when everyone else is asleep, and lives with her husband, three kids, a cat, a dog, and a gecko (it’s the gecko that sent her over the edge).