Review+ INT Giveaway: Cassidy Lane: A Novel by Maria Murnane

Blurb: From the author who brought us the unforgettable Waverly Bryson and the bestselling Perfect on Paper series.

Bestselling author Cassidy Lane walks into her twentieth high school reunion with several novels under her belt, but no date on her arm, and deep down she still feels like the smart girl no one asked to the prom. Then handsome Brandon Forrester confesses his teenage crush, and soon Cassidy finds herself swept up in a modern-day fairytale romance not unlike the tales she spins for a living. While their relationship blossoms, however, the new book she’s writing isn't going as well, and for the first time in her career she considers crafting an ending that doesn't include a proverbial walk into the sunset. Contemplating the simultaneous reversal of her own romantic fortune and that of her protagonist’s is daunting, but maybe it’s time for both her writing and her personal life to take a new path. Or is it?
Filled with Murnane’s trademark wit and optimism, a charming cast of secondary characters, and loads of heart, Cassidy Lane will have you cheering for its heroine down to the very last delightful word.

                                            MY SYNOPSIS

Imagine this: What’s your stance towards high school reunions? Hesitant to attend or eager to show up? The feeling is mixed, for you actually. It’s fun to go see who’s bloated the size of a barnyard, or who became what, and who’s still a bitch. When you are forty, you look out for:

1. Who is recently divorced?

2. Who's had their face done and by whom?

3. Who is close to death, faced by an illness or is aging like a breakup letter received with ire?

Your high school life wasn’t what everyone would wish their high school life would be. You weren’t asked to Prom. You didn’t have the body of a cheerleader. You had crushes on the jocks who didn’t notice you. And even the nerds couldn’t even acknowledge you, because who would like to be a braces-wearing geek anyway? But your best pal wouldn’t let you decide against attending. So you have no option than to face your past, which was much of a blur to everyone else anyway. And hark, you are not only going a successful writer with so many books under your belt, you are going single. There’s a whole look they give to single spinsters at forty in a high school reunion and you would soon find out.

You admit to yourself, you were overreacting a bit. The high school reunion didn’t turn out bad, or great either. The cheerleaders have grown the size of Cindy Crawford’s mole. Jocks that had muscular thighs and legs as long as Lindsay Lohan’s criminal records now have arthritis. Apparently rehabs couldn’t contain the crack junkies. The dorky nerd whose proximity determines the degree of your embarrassment, is still who she is, except she might be a mother of two (equally dorky kids). The school bitch, is still pretty, plastic and divorced. But there’s someone you never noticed, someone whose transformation has taken on a ‘woah’ factor according to everyone. Brandon Forrester.

So what if you get back to New York and everything returns to normal? Your life is as solitary and mundane as ever, being a successful writer and all. Your deadline, as though it isn’t already looming, has been pushed forward. The pressure to produce something that might be your finest to date is daunting. You know reading fan mails are the only perks of your job.  But what if you open your inbox one time, and saw Brandon Forrester, an email from him. With your deadline, you can’t afford to be distracted. It isn’t an option. But what if you reply, and within a twinkling, he does back? Then the messages keep piling, and piling. Can a long distance relationship work, you begin asking yourself. And even if it can, perhaps, can you rewrite your entire high school life and get back the happy ending you missed out on when no one asked you for prom?

Cassidy Lane’s life summed up for your delight!                                        

MY REVIEW

The story-line of this book is a winner. Reunions, forty year olds, life after high school, spinsterhood. Perfect! I mean, who hasn’t wanted to find out what their high school mates have become after over twenty years. Another reason to be nuts for Murnane’s settings.──★

Everyone wants to write full-time these days, a few people have accomplished that. So the appeal this story would hold to all the wannabe full-timers, shouldn’t be debatable. Not only wannabe writers per se, on odd days who wouldn’t wish they had their work right at home. The perks are that perky. The trip to the fridge is short, you have no boss looming around to call on your mistakes, and perhaps no one to monitor if your emails are work-related, no one to tell you when you can leave work and when to actually work at work. To create a character like Cassidy who’s very relatable──on the outside appears very successful, an equation we give to all full-timers, but behind closed doors not really feel like the million-dollar book deal she is, is what would draw in readers to pick this title.──★★

The in-depth view into Cassidy’s life would also win another star from me. The thing about writing what you know really comes into play for Maria Murnane here. It’s an insightful take on what really goes on behind the pastel chick-lit covers. The struggle to stay focused, the editors who keep pushing forward the deadlines, the writers’ workshops you are invited to speak at with the pressure of what to give away and what-not-to-tell, the fear of losing your fans if you ditch the ‘walk into the sunset’ endings for a more realistic one, the fight to stay inspired always around everyone and everywhere. This book puts down the notion that after signing a book deal with a big, big Traditional Publishing house, all is roses. Perhaps the most annoying feature into that aspect of a full-time writer’s life would be the fact that, whatever happens, whatever masterpiece you create, you are always, always going to be among the D-List of celebrities (when even shits like the Jersey Shore cast are proportioning to incredible levels).──★★★

I had some fav characters that made reading this book fun. Danielle and Patti, the kickass friends, were the stars of this book. Brandon Forrester was also one of the characters I constantly looked forward to reading about. I wish like him (and me of course) all men knew women hated mixed signals and men who keep them thinking on their feet for meaning to their words.──★★★★

The humor is subtle. I loved Cassidy’s voice, very insightful, very without-the-fluff (which is basically saying, very forty). And it has been very well established I love Older Women Books.──★★★★★

The suspense in this book is very unsettling. One feature that got me glued to this book. I wanted to find out what would happen, and perhaps test its predictability. But Maria Murnane never made her plot stand out like a skanky see-through top, it was all fed at a read, no prescience by me could figure the turn of events. But thinking of it, that’s just life. A feature about this book that makes it very realistic.  I wished though, it wasn’t that rigid. I wish it was a bit predictable enough for me not to slash one of its stars into a half.──★★★★★★

So my rating: 4.5 stars!

Buy Cassidy Lane, Maria Murnane’s so-true-to-life latest on Amazon in both kindle and paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Cassidy-Lane-Maria-Murnane/dp/1477849947

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cassidy-lane-maria-murnane/1117243364?ean=9781477849941

Three print copies are up for grabs. This is an INTERNATIONAL giveaway. Enter the rafflecopter below. a Rafflecopter giveaway

I recommend this book to anyone who loves their women’s fiction very real. Anyone who wants anything that’s not easy to predict at all. Anyone who loves their Women’s fiction with ample romance to keep them glued. Anyone who has always wondered what goes behind closed doors of very successful authors should also pick up this title.

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads.  

Review+Giveaway: The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger

Blurb: Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm’s most important client. After eighteen years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant, Golightly’s. She is locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, for custody of their ten-year-old daughter Jane—and she also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she’s never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can’t be put off. As she so disarmingly puts it: It’s her first divorce, too.

Debut novelist Susan Rieger doesn’t leave a word out of place in this hilarious and expertly crafted debut that shines with the power and pleasure of storytelling. Told through personal correspondence, office memos, emails, articles, and legal papers, this playful reinvention of the epistolary form races along with humor and heartache, exploring the complicated family dynamic that results when marriage fails. For Sophie, the whole affair sparks a hard look at her own relationships—not only with her parents, but with colleagues, friends, lovers, and most importantly, herself. Much like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, The Divorce Papers will have you laughing aloud and thanking the literature gods for this incredible, fresh new voice in fiction 

Debut novelist, Susan Rieger, mixes law, family and separation to tell a beautiful tale rich with insight, humor and unsettling suspense. Divorces can be sweet and thrilling too?

Imagine this: You specialize in criminal law at a big firm. You don’t necessarily get your raison d’etre practicing it. But you do it because there is no other field in law you find worthy enough. Now a big time client has brought in a case everyone specializing in civil litigation would jump at, the separation of his daughter from her husband after seventeen years of marriage. Now there’s a divorce, and there’s a divorce. So much money, so much wealth, so much property to divide which could turn nasty. No one wants to drag a divorce to the courtroom, especially the husband who can’t wait for his philandering days (with a dermatologist) to begin. A senior partner approaches you with the case because all other divorce lawyers are booked with others jetting away to visit their parents. Just an interview with a client, he tells you, no big deal. You take him up on his offer, sit through the interview with the daughter. Now all you can think of are her gestures, her humor, her references to good ol’ literature, her sophistication, her so-not-behaving-like-a-woman-who’s-being-legally-separated-from-her-husband behavior.

But still you wouldn’t take the case if you are begged to.

Then you are demanded to. You think your boss is inconsiderate when he knows your past with divorcing parents. You have to take the case, no other option for you.

Now you are dangling in the mess of a divorce. Undergoing civil litigation training, dealing with aggravating lawyers and endless negotiations, getting a whole sense of déjà vú when an eleven year-old daughter of the couple comes into the picture, fighting off opposition at work from the other office bitch who specializes in divorce cases but didn’t get this because she was off to her parents, dating a super-sweet stage-actor introduced to you by your brilliant stage-actress friend, wondering if your best-selling writer mum is “misbehaving” with your boss, dealing with clients tearing at each others throats in every sense of the word, wondering why your parents had to part away, wondering why your dad would never show any interest in you or what you do for that matter, feud after feud, negotiations after negotiations, back-to-stage-one after back-to-stage-ones. Life gets hard and hectic, as much as you try to make time for your personal life──there’s one thing, you can only keep in touch through emails. Emails everywhere, as if the pile of letters from the mail of your firm aren’t enough. Your life is as messy as a divorce.

Until you manage to sort it out, it would stay that way for over a year.

Sophie Diehl’s hectic life, summed up for your undivided attention.

──────────────

MY REVIEW

This book made me have blast! Like a grenade blast! I ah-dored every piece of it. But this blog isn’t about me, it’s about you. So this why you would love, love this title.

It’s beautiful in every sense of the word, the writing style. I loved that it was an epistolary. I have never, ever read one of these titles before. Or perhaps I have, but they weren’t as memorable as this. Divorce, social life, professional feuds all embraced in this epistolary, to give it a real feel. An effect some books with dialogue struggle to achieve.───★

The storyline was perfect. Uh-huh, Uh-huh──the storyline! It was surprising because I said earlier, written in an epistolary, blah, blah, it did have a storyline that can be easily related to. Who hasn’t gone through a divorce, or at least seen one? The effects it has on its participants and the children── even the pets! It’s mind-blowing how all this was captured in this title. The fact that it was an epistolary yet left nothing untold is what would make lovers of Women’s Fiction (and other genres) grab this title. Portrayed so real with depth that made it feel so true to life, I wonder if I’m shrieking about a storyline or rather a lifeline. ───★★

The characters in this book truly had character. I couldn’t believe anyone could execute a piece written from start-to-finish in letters but still embody the unique traits of each character. Through letters, you could tell you were reading about a strong, successful yet self-conscious Sophie Diehl. Through her letters, you could predict Maggie Pfeiffer, Sophie’s friend was the kind quick to admonish, advice type. Through her letters, you could tell Maria Meiklejohn, the client was well-poised, well-read, sharp, embodying every elegant, firm mother in their forties. Jane, the eleven year-old daughter, stuck between the divorce was intelligent, precocious, confused and hurt (much like every child in the midst of parental wars). Elisabeth Dreyfus, aka Maman, aka Sophie’s mum, was French, funny, sophisticated, exotic, and someone you’d like to take to lunch and listen to. Daniel, the client’s husband, was a moron. David, the boss and trainer, was firm but playful. Harry, Sophie’s sort-of-boyfriend, was an asshole in gentleman’s clothing. Fiona, the office bitch, was well, an office bitch. It’s a characterization party in there all through letters and I could go on and on. I loved each and everyone of them───★★★

The suspense in this book was riveting. I really wanted it to end, end, end or at least take a little break. But it kept increasing as things got complicated and complicated. I found myself rooting for Maria, hoping, praying she squeezes a chunk out of her SOB husband. If this is how divorces are, I’m not sure I have the heart to go through one. Stick with your partners (Ouch, no pun intended).───★★★★

As I said earlier, this book felt more of a literary piece than a book, more of a masterpiece than a literary piece.  References to classics that stole the hearts away of many born in the seventies and beyond (would go look ‘em up), all the subtle humor, the wisecracks, again, the writing style and the voice of each character, was breathtaking. Authors hardly get it write on their debut, but not debut novelist, Susan Rieger.───★★★★★

I talk a lot. No news. That’s why, I’m further going to:

Give this book: a whooping Five stars

Tell you to: Go buy this book in hardcover because kindle just doesn’t do it justice on....

Amozon in Hardcopy/kindle formats: http://www.amazon.com/The-Divorce-Papers-A-Novel/dp/0804137447

Amazon in audio format:http://www.amazon.com/The-Divorce-Papers-A-Novel/dp/0804166331

 

Give you a chance to: Win one of Two Hardbacks of The Divorce Papers from Crown Publishing, Random House

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Recommend this book to: Anyone who has been through a divorce or not. Anyone who wants to find the topic of divorce interesting, insightful as well as damaging and perhaps an opportunity to let go of the past and begin anew. Anyone who loves a well-written piece. Anyone less interested in material with fluff. 

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads.

    

Author Interview + Giveaway: Toni Rae (I Dated This Guy Once)

We catch up with Toni Rae, author of I Dated This Guy Once… In a book that is part Eat, Pray, Love and part Sex and the City, Toni takes readers on her adventures in 21st Century dating and shares all that she has learned along the way with plenty of laughter, wisdom and points to ponder for the modern woman. 

Buy on AMAZON in both Kindle and Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/Dated-This-Guy-Once/dp/1458211223

Questions for Toni Rae, author of I Dated This Guy Once…

1.    Tell us about your new book I Dated This Guy Once…

I Dated This Guy Once… is a memoir focusing primarily on going through the volatile years of ages 18-26 and how to navigate your decisions, your focus, your career and love life. The book is about instilling love where judgment exists, compassion where doubt exists and positivity into these years which can be sometimes dark and daunting. Growing up isn’t easy for anyone, especially not in today’s society.

2.    What was the defining moment that made you realise you wanted/needed to write this book?

I was laid off three times in about three years and decided to take the next job offer that presented itself, regardless of where or what it was. I took a job offer teaching English in South Korea, something I would never of even considered doing had the opportunity not came knocking on my door. The defining moment for me to write this book, and share my story, is because so many young people, at least 25,000 hired in Korea in 2008 alone, go through the exact same feelings and emotions I did. We all feel in search of something outside ourselves. I needed other young people to feel that they’re not alone.

3.    What are the key bits of advice that you want to share with others?

Dating in the 21^st century can be a real pain in the ass, but it is better than sitting at home eating bagels and feeling sorry for yourself. That’s one piece of advice. The other is just to love, love everyone and everything you surround yourself with. Sometimes one random act of kindness can change your tiny little corner of the world, so if you can’t change the world, change your little corner of it. Be a soft heart to a tough soul. Fall in love every day, with something or someone, but at the very least, fall in love.

4.    What are your thoughts about the modern way of dating, in particular online dating?

The modern way of dating, is as I mentioned, quite painful. With cell phone apps such as Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Skout and so on and so forth, you can pretty much meet anyone, anytime, with a quick swipe of a finger. It is unbelievable. But what has this done to communication and dating? It has made it less likely for a man to approach a woman traditionally, or even give a man the confidence and communication skills he must ascertain in order to actually facilitate a successful relationship. In other words, people aren’t communicating like they used to, everything is virtual. Online dating is a bit better than dating apps, because sites like Match and eHarmony match people with you in a systematic way regarding your personality and circumstantial expectations for a potential partner, which is obviously better than swiping left or right through photos of strangers on your cell over a beer at the local bar. Either way, I think online dating can be extremely successful, if you’re actually going on dates and putting yourself out there. Just simply getting out of the house should be your number one goal for finding the love of your life, unless you’re seriously considering a food delivery man.

5.    What do you think the future holds for dating?

That is a tough question. The future scares me a bit in the world of dating. We are already seeing our youth of society date and communicate differently. I was sitting next to this adorable 9 year-old boy at a squash match in a private club in Greenwich, CT a couple weeks ago. He was talking about his EX-girlfriend, yes a 9 year-old boy about an ex-girlfriend. Not only was he talking about her, come to find out, they had never actually met in person. They had friends at near by grade schools, met on facebook, started texting and video chatting and eventually broke up because they didn’t go to the same school. Okay, now I know you might be thinking, that’s not really that big of a deal. And maybe it’s not. But what sort of communication skills do you need, or could you possibly develop, carrying on a relationship via technology? That means that there is no personal or physical connection, just a virtual or emotional connection based primarily on looks. You could pretty much carry on an emotional relationship with any attractive person at this level, which scares me a lot, because emotions can be deceptive. So what do I think the future holds? Maybe a plethora of basic communication and dating skill classes? Your guess is as good as mine.

6.    Do you believe that there is someone out there for everyone?

I do believe there is someone out there for everyone who wants someone. There are definitely people in this world that are far better off being and staying single, and actually prefer it that way. Then there are the rest of us, who find love, desperately want to be in love, get married, and stay married. I am a hopeful romantic, and believe if you’re single, your soul mate could be right around the corner. Or he/she could be sitting in front of you at Starbucks, if you would just look up from your iPhone or Mac every once in awhile. I think the most important thing, is to always be present. Stop looking in the past, stop thinking of the future, and be present in every moment, then and only then will happiness find its way to you.

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There you have it, Toni Rae unveiled!

Buy on AMAZON in both Kindle and Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/Dated-This-Guy-Once/dp/1458211223

On goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18602306-i-dated-this-guy-once

Buckle up, Toni Rae is giving away two hardbacks worth $30. Stand a chance to win one of them by entering this giveaway. Good luck.

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