Calling All Reading Addicts! Book Giveaway!

So I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum to review thanks to 20SB and Penguin Publishing House. Disclaimer, I was compensated for this review, but I always need to keep it real when reviewing the books I read. ANYWHO, below is a quick synopsis of the book you can find on the author's website here.

Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.

But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it’s difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.

Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.

It took me a little while to get through this book, although it was interesting how the author wrote the book by skipping throughout periods of time when she was with her psychologist, her past lover and the present. At times it got a little confusing since this would happen abruptly and right in the middle of the page, but I feel like it also spoke to Anna's character. Her mind was all over the place and unfocused...she really didn't know what she wanted and she was ambivalent toward seemingly everything aside from her children. The whole book revolved around Anna and her struggle with herself and lack of feeling, in not only her relationship with Bruno but her life as a whole. I must say I've never been so frustrated with a character, but I related to her in the effect that she dug herself into such a deep hole instead of just being honest with herself and everyone around her to solve the problem. The book was ultimately about Anna's journey coming into consciousness, yet I felt her character remained so stagnant throughout the whole book until she finally had no choice but to finally wake up. Although I didn't care for the plot of the story too much, the overall message and moral of it is one to take to heart.

Enter the giveaway for a free copy of Hausfrau courtesy of Penguin Publishing House! The book's release was officially yesterday, March 17th. Good luck!!!



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Lucky You!! Another Book Giveaway!

Summer is the best season for a great read to take with you on the beach or on vacation...or if you're like me...anywhere!! I was chosen by 20SB and Random House once again to review another book, Lucky Us by Amy Bloom. You can visit her official website here. The book's official release is July 29th!

The following is a summary you can find on Amy Bloom's website:

“My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”


So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events,Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.

The book hooks you from the very first page by jumping into the plot very quickly. Bloom captures the 1940's Hollywood and war era very well as Iris jump starts her acting career and her half-sister Eva observes it all on the sidelines. The structure of the novel was very interesting as random letters were written in between chapters from the key characters that either foreshadowed what was going to happen next or to deliver a different point-of-view other than through Eva's. The overall plot kept me reading more as Eva and Iris were although living together, had different demons to face as they ventured through life and taking risks. 

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great, quick read that takes you back to a completely different era and through a family's struggle to survive.

Book Junkie Giveaway!

It's no secret that I am quite the book junkie. I love reading and having a huge pile of books ready for me to read. I was elated when 20SB and Random House gave me the opportunity to read and review an advance copy of The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh. You can find the link to her website here! The book's official release was on March 11th.

The following is a brief summary that you can also find on her website:

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family’s influence, Lucy—darkly beautiful as her mother was—is always thought of by those around her as her mother’s daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls—the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t save—and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri’s death.
 
What Lucy discovers is a secret that pervades the secluded Missouri hills, and beyond that horrific revelation is a more personal one concerning what happened to her mother more than a decade earlier.

Alright so now for my review. I must say that this book had me from page one...okay I'm exaggerating more like page 5. But seriously, I cruised through this thriller/mystery novel in about THREE days. The character development in this book is great and had a very interesting writing style. McHugh would switch points of view between characters in the beginning of each chapter which at times made things a little confusing, but her attention to detail and the quick story development made me flip through each page faster and faster without getting lost in the story.

I learned very quickly that I could not read this book at work since I ended up shouting "NO WAY" several different times....out loud. There are several things that are important to me in a book that makes me recommend it to everyone I know and a unique plot and a great writing style are two key components. She never gives you a chance to put the book down and does a great job at building the suspense throughout each chapter. The author also makes you feel several different emotions with each character in the book. For instance Crete, I wanted to just reach through the book and punch in the balls. If a book makes me feel that much emotion, the author did his/her job! I'm obviously not going to give you my in-depth opinion of the ending because I don't want to spoil it! BUT I was pretty satisfied with it. I didn't feel like it was rushed at all, something that is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.

For McHugh's first novel, it was quite impressive! I would definitely look out for future books written by this author. I definitely know why other reviewers compared this author to Gillian Flynn now, so if you're a fan of Flynn, this is a must-read!

And NOW for the big event, a giveaway I'm hosting for The Weight of Blood! Good luck, fellow book lovers! The giveaway will end on March 20th. The winner will receive a copy of the book courtesy of Random House.