Sinful Temptation

by Ann Christopher


If you read Sinful Seduction (and you should have), you know that the surprise ending revealed that Alessandro's brother, Antonios (Tony), shows up at their family's home. It was a surprise because Tony was presumed dead while serving in Afghanistan. While working to adjust back to civilian life, he finally meets Talia Adams, whose letters to him overseas gave him the hope that kept him alive when he was behind enemy lines. Talia is having to make some adjustments of her own as she is dealing with some major medical issues. 


Ann Christopher has again masterfully blended romance with the  serious issues that touch many of our lives today. Having the two main characters of your book have major physical and psychological challenges can be daunting, but it didn't weigh down the story and gave a realistic touch to a genre that is sometimes criticized for its escapism.

Constant Craving

What Your Food Cravings Mean and How to Overcome Them
by Doreen Virtue


It's no secret that I struggle with my weight and being the avid book reader that I am, I am always reading about weight loss topics. Most of them give you a lot of scientific data, diet tips, and exercise options. But if you've ever watched a reality show with people trying to lose the pounds, you know that the issues go beyond just stopping at too many fast food restaurants or not being able to push yourself away from the table. There is almost always and emotional reason behind our food addictions and until we deal with those underlying problems, releasing the weight will be difficult.


Constant Craving takes it a little further by pointing out the emotional ties to specific food cravings. For example, chocolate is my craving of choice, and that points to a need for reassurance, love and support. To help you through the process of understanding and overcoming your cravings, Virtue provides alternate foods, exercises, meditations, affirmations and other alternative methods to use. This was a very enlightening and interesting take on the issue of weight loss and I found the tools easy to use and effective.

The Healing

by Jonathan O'Dell


When an traumatized, orphaned girl appears on her doorstep along with her dead mother, an old woman uses stories of her own childhood to help heal her. The woman, Gran Gran, tells about growing up on a plantation as one of the house slaves. Her life and the lives of everyone there is changed when Polly Shine arrives. Polly, known to be a healer, is purchased by the plantation owner when a plague of sickness affects the slaves and conventional medicine isn't helping. Along with her healing herbs and tinctures, Polly brings along a rich knowledge of her African heritage, recognition of the power of women, and a taste for freedom. She believes that the child Granada (Gran Gran) has "the gift" as well and does what she can to nurture it, not always successfully.


Like other reviewers, I knew nothing about this book before I read it, except for some vague comparisons to The Help. Comparisons made mainly because O'Dell, like Kathryn Stockett, is a White author writing a novel primarily in the voices of African-Americans. I didn't read The Help, but this novel is a success. In the author's note included, O'Dell shares all of the extensive research he did on that time in slavery and the history of healing & midwifery in this country. I think he did a great job with this one and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Diamond Life

by Aliya S. King


In general, just like movies, book sequels can be tricky. By the time they come out, you have either forgotten about the characters or just don't care any more. For me, the former is true. My brain can only hold so much and sometimes it purges information without me realizing it. However, I was able to step into Diamond Life as if I had just finished Platinum the day before.


The hype surrounding Cleo Wright's explosive memoir has died down and the players involved have (mostly) survived and get back to the business of their lives. And while Alex Maxwell's career has taken off after ghostwriting Cleo's book, her husband Birdie's debut album is taking him to superstar status affecting their relationship. Rapper Z, who battled drug addiction in Platinum, is in recovery and doing his best to mentor his son Zander as he navigates the music industry and the domestic troubles with his also up and coming singer girlfriend, Bunny. Jake, the record label owner who unites them all, spends his time in an alcohol-induced daze as he deals with the death of his wife Kipenzi.


This was one of the most gratifying sequels I've read in a long time. As usual, King's real life access to the world of hip-hop provides lots of behind the scenes stories that keep a book like this interesting. A lot of reviews of her books suggest that readers will have fun trying to guess the people that her characters are based on. That may be fun, but this well-rounded cast can also stand on their own. Make sure to take a copy of this to the beach with you this summer.


(I actually did guess who the character of Lily is based on :)

Falling for Me

How I Hung Curtains, Learned to Cook, Traveled to Seville, and Fell in Love


by Anna David


I've never been a fan of Cosmopolitan magazine. Even when I was a teenager and young adult I thought it placed too much emphasis on sex and getting and keeping a man. Its most famous editor, Helen Gurley Brown, on the other hand is fascinating. She believed early on (before feminism and the free love movement) that women need to own their power and that includes their sexuality and their financial lives with or without a man. She used this philosophy to turn around the failing Cosmo magazine and wrote a bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl, in 1962, before the women's rights movement gained popularity.


Anna David, like a lot of women, reached an age where she realized that the life she created for herself didn't resemble the one she thought she would have. Fresh out of a relationship that was all wrong for her, she stumbled across Helen Gurley Brown's book and wondered if she could apply advice given in the early sixties to her life in the new millennium. From decorating her apartment, to honing her cooking skills, to broadening her dating horizons, David shows that becoming your own woman and not waiting on a man to provide for you is timeless advice. 

Salvage The Bones

by Jesmyn Ward


I've never belonged to a book group, for several reasons: the books chosen don't interest me, I've already read the selection, I have a to-be-read list five miles long and something else took precedence. For Salvage the Bones (which won last year's National Book Award), however, I chose to participate in a discussion group on Goodreads, the Literary Fiction by People of Color. This helped me immensely during the reading of this book as I discovered the many nuances of this story through the eyes of others.


Esch is a fourteen year old girl in a small town in Louisiana on property known as "The Pit". Since her mother died giving birth to the last son, Esch is the only female in this family of boys, with the exception of her brother Skeetah's prized pit bull, China. The twelve chapters of this book cover the twelve days leading to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Esch's father, an alcoholic long past caring about much in the world, is concerned about the impending storm that everyone else believes will blow over like the others. He tries to take charge and have everyone board up the buildings on their property and stockpile the food they have little money for. But every family member has other issues to distract them: Esch has discovered she is pregnant, Skeetah has a new litter of China's puppies to deal with, older brother Randall has his basketball dreams that he hopes will take him out of "The Pit", and baby Junior is on a search for the parenting he missed out on when their mother died.


I know that seems like a lot, but I promise you that I haven't even touched the surface of this book and what happens during those twelve days. The plot has its ebbs and flows, but reading it with the book group allowed me to see things I would have missed during what seems to be the slower parts of the book. Salvage the Bones was definitely deserving of the awards and accolades that it received last year.


If you're interested, you can access our Goodreads discussion here.

Begging Forgiveness

Please forgive the lack of posting here. I started a new job in February and after  almost 8 months of unemployment (where I settled into a very nice groove), I am still getting used to actually having to be somewhere everyday along with the non-traditional hours of the retail industry.

But this hasn't affected my reading schedule and I have several books to review and hope to do so soon. Also, I now work in fashion retail and my current wardrobe is far from adequate for this situation, so I may live up to the name of this blog and post some sewing as well.

Thank you, readers, for your patience!