24 Hour Read-A-Thon Spring 2015

Good morning everyone. It is time for Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon

This is an event I have participated in for a few years now and I always enjoy it. This will be my main post and I will update it as I go.

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HOUR 0 – WHAT THE READATHON MEANS TO ME + THE OPENING MEME.

When I first began book blogging back in 2007, Dewey was one of the bloggers I met online. She would visit my blog and leave comments and I remember thinking she was so sweet to visit my new blog being that she was well established in blog land already. Her read-a-thon was one of the events I’d take part in twice per year and I am glad it is still going on.

Opening Meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? New Jersey
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I am looking forward to reading a little Gaiman today but I am reading a love story first.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? My daily smoothie.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m a mom of two teens, I have a fur baby chihuahua and I crochet. I’m also a runner and have been enjoying the nice Spring temps to when taking my runs outdoors lately.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
When I take part in the read-a-thons I usually do the same thing, I pick books that I think will be page turners. I also find short story collections are good for this kind of thing.

Happy reading and good luck to those who are taking part. Have fun 🙂

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Isabella’s Heiress by N.P. Griffiths

source: free review copy courtesy of the publicist
title: Isabella’s Heiress
author: N.P. Griffiths
published: Clink Street Publishing (February 25, 2015)
pages: 354
first line: The sun rose early that morning in Dresden.
rated: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

blurb:
Newly dead and struggling to cope with her new reality, Emma Elliott is thrust into a dark and desperate vision of London. In her fight to survive she meets friends, both old and new, and uncovers a world inhabited by two warring clans of angels, one bent on the ultimate destruction of mankind, the other committed to our salvation. A way out presents itself but with the forces arrayed against her Emma starts to wonder why, of all the people who have found themselves in this position; she is being singled out for such special attention. As time passes more questions arise for Emma. Who is Isabella, the woman she is constantly mistaken for? Who are the mysterious Cado Angelus who cast a shadow over Emma’s every move? And what part does Emma have to play in the events that will soon unfold in her world and ours.

my thoughts:
Isabella’s Heiress opens on a battlefield in 1648 in Dresden. Isabella Calabria is leading the ranks and fighting when she disappears.
Fast forward to modern-day London, and to Emma Elliott who finds herself in a strange situation.

She is near London Bridge where she works, yet something is off. The priest father Eamon is with Emma and he explains to her that she has been in an accident has passed away and is now in purgatory. She has to stay here until it is decided where her soul will go next because she has unfinished business and because she also died too soon.

Mailbox Monday 4.13.15

Happy Monday all, I hope you are doing well. I took the picture above this past weekend while on a drive upstate and I just love the way the sky looks. We are finally getting some warmer temps here which is really nice after so much snow and cold this winter.

Onto my mailbox….

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Just in time for National Poetry Month, Dawn of the Algorithm by Yann Rousselot arrived courtesy of the publisher via https://www.netgalley.com/.

Dawn of the Algorithm is an illustrated poetry collection that tackles topics ranging from robots and aliens to stock markets and street signs. In examining the dark side of the human experience, the collection reminds readers of the light in the world: the humor, the joy, and the love they can find even in the shadow of the ever-looming robopocalypse. By delicately deconstructing our humanity in the age of the internet, Yann Rousselot offers prophetic words of wisdom to the generations more connected to their iPhones than their emotions.

A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor

source: Free review copy via AmazonVine
title: A Bad Character
author: Deepti Kapoor
published: Knopf (January 20, 2015)
pages: 243
first line: My boyfriend died when I was twenty-one.

Blurb:
A highly charged debut novel about a young woman in India, and the love that both shatters and transforms her.

She is twenty and restless in New Delhi. Her mother has died; her father has left for Singapore.
He is a few years older, just back to India from New York.
When they meet in a café one afternoon, she–lonely, hungry for experience, yearning to break free of tradition–casts aside her fears and throws herself headlong into a love affair, one that takes her where she has never been before.

Told in a voice at once gritty and lyrical, mournful and frank, A Bad Character is an unforgettable hymn to an exhilarating, dangerous city, and a portrait of desire and its consequences as timeless as it is universal.

My thoughts:
I found A Bad Character to be a unique read. The storyline follows a young woman living in New Delhi. Her mother died when she was just seventeen and she is left with her Auntie who is trying to secure a good marriage for her. The story flips back and forth to her past and present at age twenty when she meets a man and begins a love affair. He has visited New York and has experienced so much more than she has, which she envies him for.