• Book Reviews

    Children’s Book Review: Petunia Pepper’s Picture Day

    Media Type: Ebook Title: Petunia Pepper’s Picture Day Author: Cathy Breisacher Illustrator: Christian Elder Publisher: Warner Press Pages: Hardcover; 32 Release Date: July 1, 2010 Source: NetGalley ———————————————- Recommended to: Young readers who love funny stories with vivid illustrations. Add it on: Goodreads / Amazon / B&N Poor Petunia Pepper! Every year disaster strikes her on school picture day. Puffy hair, pumpkin-style smiles and pink eye help create pictures that only her family could love. But this year, Petunia promises herself things are going to change. She plans carefully for the perfect picture day. Unfortunately, she misses the school bus…

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    Book Review: Karma Bites

    Her best friends aren’t speaking, her parents just divorced, and her hippie grandmother has moved in. The only karma Franny’s got is bad karma. Then Franny gets her hands on a box of magic recipes that could fix all of her problems. It could even change the world! Finally, life is looking up. But Franny is about to learn that magic and karma aren’t to be played with. When you mess with the universe, it can bite back in unexpected ways. Ouch! –From Goodreads Cover Inspection: Bright and intriguing! First Thoughts: Do kids really talk like this? *** My Thoughts:…

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    Book Review: Firelight

    (I had to make this cover extra large because I LOVE it!) With her rare ability to breathe fire, Jacinda is special even among the draki—the descendants of dragons who can shift between human and dragon forms. But when Jacinda’s rebelliousness leads her family to flee into the human world, she struggles to adapt, even as her draki spirit fades. The one thing that revives it is Will, whose family hunts her kind. Jacinda can’t resist getting closer to him, even though she knows she’s risking not only her life but the draki’s most closely guarded secret. –From Goodreads Cover…

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    Book Review: Freefall

    Seth McCoy was the last person to see his best friend Isaac alive, and the first to find him dead. It was just another night, just another party, just another time where Isaac drank too much and passed out on the lawn. Only this time, Isaac didn’t wake up. Convinced that his own actions led to his friend’s death, Seth is torn between turning his life around… or losing himself completely. Then he meets Rosetta: so beautiful and so different from everything and everyone he’s ever known. But Rosetta has secrets of her own, and Seth will soon realize he…

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    Book Review: Friend Is Not A Verb

    From the author of the Edgar Award–winning The Wessex Papers comes a hilariously offbeat novel about Henry “Hen” Birnbaum, a teenage boy who dreams of becoming a rock star despite a minor setback, namely: his girlfriend just dumped him and kicked him out of their band. Now his social life consists of night after night of VH1 marathons with his best friend and next-door neighbor, the neurotic Emma Wood. Then there’s the matter of Sarah, his sister, who mysteriously disappeared for a whole year and just as mysteriously returned. As the story unfolds, the reasons for her disappearance seem more…

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    Non-Fiction Book Review: Free Wakeful Dreaming

    Michel Depeyrot (Ph.D., Stanford, 1968), a multi-faceted scientist and entrepreneurial maverick, is an acclaimed practitioner of the therapeutic use of Georges Romey s Free Wakeful Dreaming and Devi Nambudripad s Allergy Elimination Technique. The former is an experience innovator who created this technique in France, then founded its promotional association ADREL and its school (EREL). With the insights and confidence of an enthused adherent and disciple, Depeyrot introduces a wide audience to Romey s theories and practices in this first primer on Romey s work since he launched this technique in the early eighties. Depeyrot translates key writings of Romey…

  • Book Reviews

    Blog Tour: The Remains by Vincent Zandri

    Thanks to the very kind Dorothy Thompson, I had the opportunity to review this amazing book! This is the first Virtual Book Tour I’ve participated in through Pump Up Your Book Promotions, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  See my review below to discover what I thought about The Remains. Thirty years ago, teenager Rebecca Underhill and her twin sister Molly were abducted by a man who lived in a house in the woods behind their upstate New York farm. They were held inside that house for three horrifying hours, until making their daring escape. Vowing to keep their…

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    Book Review: Past Midnight

    Let me set the record straight. My name is Charlotte Silver and I’m not one of those paranormal-obsessed freaks you see on TV…no, those would be my parents, who have their own ghost-hunting reality show. And while I’m usually roped into the behind-the-scenes work, it turns out that I haven’t gone unnoticed. Something happened on my parents’ research trip in Charleston—and now I’m being stalked by some truly frightening other beings. Trying to fit into a new school and keeping my parents’ creepy occupation a secret from my friends—and potential boyfriends—is hard enough without having angry spirits whispering in my…

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    Book Review: It Started with a Dare

    Self-proclaimed nobody CG Silverman sees her move to an upscale new school as her chance to be somebody different. Her devil-may-care attitude attracts the in-clique, and before CG realizes it, a routine game of truth or dare launches her to iconic status. While this rebel image helps secure CG’s newfound popularity, it also propels her through a maze of unprecedented chaos, with each new lie and every dare opening doors that, in most cases, were better off left shut. CG is on a collision course with disaster. Will she be able to keep up the façade? Or will the whole…

  • Book Reviews

    Book Review: The Mermaid’s Mirror

    Lena has lived her whole life near the beach—walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves—the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching. As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Lena vows she will no longer watch from the sand: she will learn to surf. But her father – a former surfer himself – refuses to allow her to take lessons. After a near drowning in his past, he can’t bear to let Lena take up the risky sport. Yet something lures Lena…