Party Today! "No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party. Win kindles, iPods, and get free books!

“It's the age-old tale:      Boy meets girl.      Boy stalks girl.      Girl already has a stalker.      Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.”

It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since I handed in the final proofs for my weird little book ‘No Hope for Gomez!’ To celebrate this, and the fact that it just became a finalist in 2010's Best Book Awards, I decided to throw an international party. As I’ve had a debilitating fear of throwing parties and no-one showing up since early childhood, I’d be more than delighted if you’d come!

Of course, with every cool, international party comes a gift bag. Here's just some of the stuff attendants will get:

• Exclusive short story collection
• No Hope for Gomez: The Lost Chapters
• Making of Gomez: behind the scenes eBook
• Signed hi-res poster + bookplate

(These are all exclusive items and will not be available again)

Additionally, several lucky attendants will win a Kindle or an iPod!

Oh yeah, you can bring as many friends as you like, just don't bring your crazy uncle who drinks too much and then tries to get me to go to the attic with him to see something wonderful. I've fallen for that before and I don't mind telling you, I came away very disappointed!

Find out how to attend HERE

"No Hope for Gomez!" Birthday Party. Win kindles, iPods, and get free books!

“It's the age-old tale:      Boy meets girl.      Boy stalks girl.      Girl already has a stalker.      Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.”

It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since I handed in the final proofs for my weird little book ‘No Hope for Gomez!’ To celebrate this, and the fact that it just became a finalist in 2010's Best Book Awards, I decided to throw an international party. As I’ve had a debilitating fear of throwing parties and no-one showing up since early childhood, I’d be more than delighted if you’d come!

Of course, with every cool, international party comes a gift bag. Here's just some of the stuff attendants will get:

• Exclusive short story collection
• No Hope for Gomez: The Lost Chapters
• Making of Gomez: behind the scenes eBook
• Signed hi-res poster + bookplate

(These are all exclusive items and will not be available again)

Additionally, several lucky attendants will win a Kindle or an iPod!

Oh yeah, you can bring as many friends as you like, just don't bring your crazy uncle who drinks too much and then tries to get me to go to the attic with him to see something wonderful. I've fallen for that before and I don't mind telling you, I came away very disappointed!

Find out how to attend HERE.

Review: A Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart

Thanks to Barnes & Nobles's First Look Book Club for letting me review this one.



About the Book

One moonless night in February 1895, a young landowner in Texas cow country loses his wife in childbirth. In the lonely years that follow, his new son, his fourth, grows to become a skillful, aggressive jockey and his father, with equal fervor, stakes his land and fortunes on his success. In 1910, father and son, distant, yet strangely joined in this venture, race to a point of no return for the entire family. What happens to the son beyond that juncture will not reconfigure his past, but it will burnish him into unexpected maturity. (Hand-selling tip: Of this first novel, one early reader wrote, "If Evan S. Connell, William Faulkner, and Norman Maclean had been born as one person, he might possess the extraordinary gifts of Bruce Machart.")

My Review

This one took me a while to get into it. The writing was very "slow". Since I read this as part of a book group I didn't want to get to far ahead. So I'd read and get into the story, then when I got to the stopping point I found I had a hard time getting back into it. Had I read it straight through without stopping I probably would have liked it much more.

I loved how the author gave everything a feeling. The landscape, the animals, everything was described to have a sens of feeling. It was a nice change, but I think it became a little to much, as it just seemed to drag the story down some.

I didn't really get to connect with any of the characters. In fact there were some places in the book where I was confused as to who was talking, who was doing what, what was being done to who. I was just so lost at some points that it really frustrated me.

The story, if you take out the "extra" was pretty good. And it was an endeering story about lost love, in many forms, and how that can affect a person their whole life. The relationships between the characters was sad, and that sad feeling was the tone of the entire book. Everything was just sad.

I think if I had sat with this and read it straight through without taking breaks I would have liked it more. But as I said each time I picked it up I had to "get back into the story" and I think that took so much away from it for me.

The Wake of Forgiveness

Review: Tokyo Lives by Mark Hersberger

Thank you to Mark Hersberger for sending me a copy of his book to review.



About the Book

When a teenage runaway-turned-prostitute is found murdered in the dark alleys of Tokyo's raunchiest red-light district, no one seems to care...except The Snake, a grizzled, whiskeyswilling yakuza. It's an affront to his authority: No one gets away with murder on his turf.
Determined to render justice and restore his reputation, The Snake juggles his investigation amidst an impending gang war and an effort to get the Governor of Tokyo elected Prime Minister. The victim's former best friend holds the key to the mystery, and a romance blossoms while they chase the killer.

As the couple wades through their familiar milieu of ruthless gangsters, elite hostesses, and corrupt politicians, they reveal a cover-up that threatens the highest levels of power. Ancient yakuza codes of honor give way to betrayal as The Snake is torn between lifetime loyalties and justice.

The seamy back alleys of Tokyo come to life in this thriller folded as tightly as origami. These Tokyo lives aren't the ones you read about in travel guides-they're the ones that prey on the flaws and indiscretions of a nation.

For more information about Tokyo Lives please visit the book's website.

My Review

This was a really good book. It had a bit of everything in it. There was a hint of a love story. There was a really good murder mystery. It had emotions. And it was just exciting to read. I really liked it.

The main character The Snake was a great character. He is a gangster who is loyal to his "family", he is also ready to be done with the life he leads. That internal dilemma leads to some great twists in the story. While some of the other characters play fairly large roles in the book I connected the most with The Snake.

The story was really good. It was so suspenseful. While I thought I had the "whodunit" figured out at the beginning I kept second guessing myself, and I wasn't even close as to the why!

I've never been to Tokyo, but Hersberger does a great job of painting the pictures for me. Using my experience living in various "not so nice areas" I was able to paint a pretty good idea of how the neighborhood looked. Even the smells were ones that I could easily draw from my experiences...

The story itself was really good. The twists that the story takes really keeps you guessing through the whole book. Given the predictability of some of the recent mystery novels I've read this was quite refreshing. The twists weren't anything that seemed to "out there". Everything was plausible and fit really well into the story line. Even tying up the ending was done well. I felt like everything that needed to be "finished" was and the things that you were supposed to keep guessing about were left open. The ending also didn't feel rushed.

I really liked all the different stories that were going on. There was the murder mystery. There was the changing of the guards, so to speak, within the yakuza. There was the governor's race going on. The seedy lives of the prostitutes and call-girls. And everything just melded so well together. It took me a while to pick it up, but once I did I didn't want to put it down.

Tokyo Lives

Review: Audiobook: The Brave by Nicholas Evans

Thank you to Hachette Audio for sending me a copy of this title for review.



About the Book

Tom Bedford is living alone in the isolated wilds of Montana. Having distanced himself from his own troubled past, he rarely sees his ex-wife, and his son, Danny, is away in Iraq and hasn't spoken to him for years. Tom hasn't always been so removed from society. As a boy, his mother was a meteoric rising star in the glitzy, enchanted world of 1960s Hollywood. There, she fell in love with the suave Ray Montane, who played young Tom's courageous onscreen hero, Red McGraw, the fastest draw around. Tommy and his mother lived in a glamorous, Hollywood version of the Wild West. Everything was perfect, until the gold flaking on their magical life began to chip away, revealing an uglier truth beneath. Ray was not who he seemed. Tommy and his mother fell into a deadly confrontation with him, and they fled Hollywood forever, into the wilderness of the real West.

As a man, Tom has put all of that behind him--or so he thinks. Unexpectedly, his ex-wife calls, frantic: Danny has been charged with murder. In the chaos of war, his son has been caught in a violent skirmish gone bloodily awry. The Army needs someone to pay for the mistake. Tom, forced into action, is now suddenly alive again and fighting to save the son he'd let slip away. To succeed, he must confront the violence in his own past, and he finds that these two selves--the past and the present--which he'd fought so long to keep separate, are inextricably connected. As father and son struggle to understand one another, both are compelled to learn the true meaning of bravery.

Beautifully interlacing the past and present, the author of The Horse Whisperer reminds us that we are tied to the glories and mistakes of our own history. The Brave lives up to its name, as one the most courageous and full-hearted novels of our time.

For more information about The Brave please visit Hachette's website.

Watch the Trailer for The Brave on You Tube.

Visit Nicholas' website.

You can also "Like" Nicholas Evans on Facebook.

My Review

This book was beautiful. Which sounds like a weird way to describe a book, especially one with a few murders in the plot... But beautiful is such a great word for it.

The characters were all great. I loved Tommy and Diane. Cal was another great character. The story follows Tommy through his life growing up in England, moving to Hollywood, and eventually "settling down" in Montana. The whole way through I was so captivated by what he was going through. The opening scene with Tommy and his mother is so captivating that I couldn't help but care what happens to Tommy through the rest of the story.

The writing was beautiful in this story. Since it was an audiobook that I read I can imagine some of the imagery was as much from the writing as it was from the narrator's voice. But either way I could see everything that was going on. The descriptions weren't long and drawn out, but everything I saw in my head was on a large scale. I didn't just see where the action was happening, if they were in a room I saw the whole room, if they were outside I could see the whole scaling landscape around the area. I think the writing and the narration were such a perfect fit for each other that this book really was able to take on a life of it's own for me.

The story itself was great also. The story jumps around in Tommy's life. Each part of the story answers one question and then raises another. Even when the story jumps forward it somehow is able to answer the questions from the past... The story wasn't always fast-paced, but it wasn't boring either. Everything about this story just hit that perfect balance.

The narrator for this one was amazing. I don't like to see who narrates before I start and audiobook because then as I'm listening to the book all the characters take on the narrator (especially if it is someone famous). While I was listening I kept thinking to myself this voice is so familiar, and when I finished and looked to see who it was I realized why I liked the narration so much. Michael Emerson has such a great voice. I loved Lost, and even though I didn't so much like Ben I do like the guy who plays Ben. He was able to give each of the characters their own voice, without making them sound fake or "put on". I loved the narration as much as I loved the story.

The Brave: A Novel