Book Review: All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church

All the Beautiful Girls
Cover art is copyright of Ballantine Books

If you follow my blog or my Instagram page, then you probably know how much I love reading books set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. By the Golden Age, I’m referring to the period of the 1930s to the 1960s. There is just something I love about being transported back to a time when Hollywood and the movies were truly magical. So when I read the synopsis of All the Beautiful Girls, I jumped at the chance to read it. While not set in Hollywood (it largely takes place in Las Vegas during the 1960s) it still had that allure of the early days of entertainment out west. All the Beautiful Girls is the story of Lily Decker, or as she becomes known in Las Vegas, Ruby Wilde. I couldn’t put this book down.

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Book Review: Surprise Me By Sophie Kinsella

Surprise Me
Cover art copyright of Random House Publishing Group

Just after my last blog post, our family lost someone very special to us. My father-in-law received a stage four cancer diagnosis in January. He lived this last year of his life like he always did – enjoying life. He spent a lot of time with family doing the things he loved. On Thursday, November 16, 2017, he passed away peacefully surrounded by family.

In the days following his passing, I tried to write a new post and keep reading. But I found myself unable to concentrate. Before I knew it, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday had all passed me by. After a few days of sadness and grief, once the “dust settled” so to speak, I found myself able to once again take comfort in reading.

Reading has always been an escape for me, and it was nice to pick up a new book by one of my favorite authors and disappear into a new, wacky world for a little while.
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Book Review: Click’d by Tamara Ireland Stone

Click'd
Cover art is copyright of Disney Book Group

I recently included Click’d in my post of upcoming Children’s and Middle Grade Reads for Fall. Click’d has been on my radar for a couple of months, and I was thrilled when Disney Book Group sent me an advance reader copy through NetGalley. The synopsis appealed to me because it’s about a young girl, Allie, who is interested in technology and coding.  Allie designs an app called Click’d which helps kids form friendships with other kids who share common interests.

Allie designs Click’d at a summer camp that is all about coding and plans to enter it into a Games for Good competition, once she proves how Click’d helps bring people together and make new friends. Her app quickly goes viral once school starts up and before she knows it, everyone knows who she is. She is famous in her school. But when she discovers that Click’d has a glitch, a big glitch, that could spell trouble for a lot of people, she’s forced to figure out a way to fix it ASAP or temporarily pull the plug, disappointing everyone and giving up her newfound popularity.
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