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The Heart Revolution

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The Heart Revolution by Sergio De La Mora is a book that surprised me with its power, creativity, and positive messages. Sergio De La Mora invites you to take a 40-day heart challenge reading along and rethinking your life, framing it in a positive light and allowing yourself to trust entirely your heart. It is the power of your heart that can lead you to success or keep you from fully embracing your greatness. I was skeptical when I began this book, but the author Sergio De La Mora won me over with his authenticity and his passion. De La Mora is the founder of the Cornerstone Church of San Diego, California, one of the fastest growing churches in the USA. He lives in San Diego with his wife and six daughters. But almost more importantly than any of that he came from a background of poverty as a Mexican immigrant to the US and was quickly initiated into gang culture as were some of his brothers. Sergio De La Mora was using drugs regularly as a young teen, smoking PCP and hanging with a gang his brother’s friends had started to keep from getting beaten up. Tragically, De La Mora was stabbed in the back when he was in grade eight and he spent many months recuperating. A good deal of that time was spent listening to radio and as he grew to appreciate the power of words, he realized he wanted to become an on air radio personality. He got his DJ’s licence and became quite well known as a celebrity Disc Jockey. The entertainment industry only fueled his drug habit. On a day when De La Mora, was promoting one of his own dance events, he discovered a flyer for the Cornerstone Church and he followed his instincts into a meeting there. De La Mora describes his young self, anticipating an imminent spiritual and physical break down, attending the meeting while high on cocaine. “So the night before I had come to church I had done two things. One, I did half a gram of cocaine, because I never went anywhere without being high. And two I told God these words: If You can change my life and take this monkey off my back I will do anything You want.” He knew he needed to get out of the life he was living and he found this particular church just when he needed it. The pastor there won him over and Sergio quit his job and became active at the church. Prior to the meeting he had felt that God couldn’t forgive him, a strung out Cholo. Regardless of your particular spiritual beliefs, or your degree of religiosity, this is a book that comes down to passion and life goals and philosophy. It is incredibly innovative. I loved that there were small breaks after some chapters directing the reader on line to sermons that supplement the writing. This is a smart way to encourage two things books to become more interactive and relevant and people to become more involved in the actual revolution itself. I applaud Baker Publishing and Sergio De La Mora for being creative and innovative in an industry that is in flux. Here for instance http://www.sergiodelamora.com/heartrev is an example. The foreword of the book is by Ed Young Jr. I will keep this book for a long time as a reminder to recharge and revisit the idea of leading with your heart. In fact I didn’t want it to end in some ways. The chapter on Revolutionizing Your Beliefs is particularly intelligent and discusses the difference between living religiously and having a relationship with Jesus. I love that I can extrapolate from that whole chapter what I need to illustrate even in my own life the power of negativity to drag you down and zap energy and the opposite and empowering nature of having an active relationship with your heart and your belief systems. It is more than just a semantic debate. It is the difference between passive religion and actively living your best life. Throughout the book there are numerous personal stories of people who felt unloved and people who were grieving giving themselves over to the heart revolution. Most of the examples are relevant and well used. But my only criticism is one example used in a chapter on Forgiveness that I found jarring. A family of children is sexually abused by an acquaintance. The repercussions of this are devastating for the entire family. However, the father of the children finds it in his heart to forgive the abuser. He confronts the person, a family friend and tells him he has to apologize, essentially. As a parent I find that to be really hard to believe, and I think the example will lose some readers. Aside from that poor example there is a lot here to like. Sergio De La Mora is smart and savvy and his passion is infectious and young enough to not yet come off jaded or overpackaged.

Thriftymommastips ranks this one a $$$$ out of $$$$$
The Heart Revolution by Sergio De La Mora, 2011, Baker Publishing Group, $17.99 US, Non Fiction, Christian Life, 278 pages.

Scribbling Women Blog Tour and a Huge Giveaway

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The author Marthe Jocelyn, photo credit Tom Slaughter

Welcome to Day Two of the Scribbling Women Blog Tour. Scribbling Women: True Tales From Astonishing Lives is a series of stories about little known female authors who documented their lives and the trials, tribulations and triumphs along the way. There are several stories here that I found captivating. Some of these interesting women travelled the world, some escaped slavery, others were mainly homebodies. All were intriguing and help us gain insight into a period in history when women were less likely to be written about or acknowledged. Many of their stories are authentic and colourful, told through letters, this compilation will be historical in its own right as this dying artform continues to give way to technology.

Marthe Jocelyn is an award-winning author and illustrator of over 20 books. She was born in Toronto and now lives in Stratford, Ontario. Her novel Mable Riley won the first ever TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Her non fiction book A Home For Foundlings won wide critical acclaim. In 2009 she won the Vicki Metcalf award for body of work. In this new non fiction collection of women’s stories, aimed at age 14 and up, there are many different women, many different personalities. Mary Hayden Russell, for instance, followed her husband and took her son on board a whaling ship in 1823 where they lived for more than a year. She noted their pursuit of whales and the challenges of life at sea. Harriet Ann Jacobs was a slave, remarkable because she was literate and she left her story for history. She wrote a book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in the time when slavery and literacy were so feared by most that laws were passed making it illegal to teach a slave to read or write. She assumed a pen name and recounted a brave life. Most of these mini biographical slices of life are compelling but most interesting to me was the snippet regarding Nellie Bly, perhaps the first ever female investigative journalist, who took on some incredible stories in her day, going under cover in a women’s insane asylum to reveal the deplorable conditions.

Scribbling Women is part of Tundra Books blog tour and a giant giveaway also being hosted by author and publisher. This giveaway consists of 28 books. That’s right. One lucky winner will be sent 28 books, the full range of author Marthe Jocelyn’s writings. This contains toddler books right on upto young adult novels and all are sure to please. What a great collection! Take a peek here:

Scribbling Women: True Tales From Astonishing Lives, by Marthe Jocelyn, Tundra Books, Hardcover, 208 pages, age 14 and up, Canadian $21.99 and US $19.95. 

Thriftymommastips review is $$$$ out of $$$$$ for the variety of stories within this book. I received a copy of the book in order to complete this review. This is no way impacts my opinion.

An Interview with the author: Thriftymomma was lucky enough to be able to interview the author for this blog tour. Here are the answers to my questions. A Big thank you to Marthe Jocelyn for taking the time to speak with my readers..

Q 1. How did you come to writing and illustrating as a career?

Marthe: I was a late bloomer as far as writing is concerned. I had a small toy design company in New York City, and also made children’s clothing. When I had my own kids, I began to make books just for them. I took a couple of writing classes and read a thousand books and slowly learned how to do it. Although I call myself a writer, I don’t quite think of myself as an illustrator just yet.

Q 2. For Scribbling Women you have such a variety of women in the book…how did you choose?


Marthe: Choosing the women to fit into the book was the biggest challenge and took me about a year of reading and mulling and writing and more reading… I still have a file full in case I get the chance to write More Scribbling Women.

Once someone had landed on my long list, I began to research and write about her as if I was using her. If the work faltered, it was usually a sign that she might not make the final cut – perhaps there wasn’t enough information about her that would appeal to children, maybe her writing had not been translated into English, or possibly I couldn’t sustain my own interest, let alone that of a young reader. So the ones who were left at the end, the eleven finalists, were the ones, as I say in my introduction, whose stories made me catch my breath.

Q 3. What motivates you to get out of bed every morning?

Marthe: Some mornings I don’t get out of bed. I slip down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and then climb right back into bed to work. However, when I do get up? If it’s light and sunny, I want to go for a walk. If it’s snowing, I might go sledding. If it’s pouring rain, I think about making a living… which means work.

Q 4. What advice do you have for aspiring writers or illustrators?

My advice for aspiring writers is to read, read, read. Write for a few minutes a day, stop before you’ve run out of steam, and read some more. For illustrators, I’m not so clear, but I think the same advice applies. Look at pictures, draw something, and do it again the next day.

(I love these answers. Especially the some days I don’t get out of bed one. Ha! That’s what I am doing wrong! I need more time in bed to become a successful author like Marthe!)

Giveaway:
To WIN: Enter to win a full collection of 28 Marthe Jocelyn books by leaving a comment on this post.That’s right just leave me a comment here at thriftymommasbrainfood. Tell me why you want to win or what you learned from this post or any old thing pertaining to books.
Rules: Entrants can enter across all of the blogs taking part in this Scribbling Women blog tour. You can enter a total of 30 times if you enter on each blog taking part in the tour. The contest starts Monday, March 28th, 2011 and closes Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 11: 49 p.m. EST. One winner will be selected from all the entries

The Mountains Bow Down Blog Tour and A Cruise Giveaway

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Picture the cruise from hell. That’s where Raleigh Harmon, a newly engaged FBI agent, finds herself with mother, aunt and a dead movie star’s wife. This story The Mountains Bow Down has one of the best mystery plots I have read in awhile. Raleigh Harmon is a beautiful but athletic and very capable FBI agent asked to come on a cruise to Alaska to simultaneously relax and also act as a consultant for a B grade movie being filmed on the cruise ship. She is no sooner there when a body turns up, a young woman, apparently a suicide. But the clues don’t add up. The ship turns back to the sea before it has even reached the first port of call and the vacation cruise is over for many. Raleigh knows the evidence is indicating this can’t have been an ordinary suicide. Initially they point to movie star Milo Carpenter, husband of the deceased. But is it him? Or is he just a washed up actor with a drinking problem? Despite the limitations of being on a boat, she manages to cleverly manipulate the tools available to analyze and collect evidence. Petroleum jelly becomes an agent to reflect ultraviolet light on a bracelet and create a glow in the dark lure for a thief. These are the types of smart tricks that Raleigh uses and they complement the strong female character. She runs her own investigation and uncovers a whole lot of criminal activity on the cruise ship. Her nemesis Special Agent Jack Stephensan, a good-looking cowboy with an eye for Raleigh, shows up to help and soon begins to make her question  her engagement. As the one week cruise sails through the Inside Passage Raleigh and Jack have to solve this crime in the span of five days. After that the cruise ship passengers disperse to various countries and suspects and evidence will be gone.  Sibella Giorello lives in Washington with her family. She began her writing career as a news features reporter. Raleigh Harmon is also the main character in two other novels by Giorello The Rivers Run Dry and The Clouds Roll Away.

The Mountains Bow Down is by Sibella Giorello, Thomas Nelson publishers, paperback $14.99 US, 369 pages.

I was not compensated for this post. I received a free copy of the book to facilitate the review and the blog tour.

This one gets $$$$ out of $$$$$. It was suspenseful and had a great main character. Very plot driven.

Sibella’s celebrating the release of The Mountains Bow Down by giving away a Cruise prize pack worth over $500.00!
Giorellos Cruise Giveaway

One Grand Prize winner will receive:
A $500 gift certificate toward the cruise of their choice from Vacations To Go.

The entire set of the Raleigh Harmon series.

Click the button for cruise giveaway details.
Then tell your friends. And enter soon – the giveaway ends on 4/1! The winner will be announced at Sibella’s Raleigh Harmon Book Club Party on FB April 5th, 2011! Don’t miss the fun – prizes, books and gab!

Join Sibella and fans of the Raleigh Harmon series on April 5th at 5:00 pm PST (6 MST, 7 CST & 8 EST) for a Facebook Book Club Party. Sibella will be giving away some fun prizes, testing your trivia skills and hosting a book chat about the Raleigh Harmon books. Please RSVP and if you have questions you’d like to chat about – leave them on the Event page.

Left Neglected: Lisa Genova’s New Soon To Be Bestseller

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Sarah is a juggler, like many working Moms and stay-at-home Moms and women, in general, she has so many balls in the air at any given time that one of them must fall eventually. And it does, when one day on her commute to work, she roots around in her purse for her cell phone and crashes the car. Sarah, a bright and savvy business woman, a wife and mother to three children, is suddenly left with brain damage, a condition called Left Neglect. Basically the portion of her brain that sees the left and controls the left side of her body  cannot anymore. She can’t make her left side work at all. Her left hand is impossible to control and her left leg slowly comes along with therapy and hard work. Left Neglected is the story of how she gets her life and health back and the lessons she learns on the way back to her former life. The title is also a clever twist on what she might have neglected before the accident forced her to slow down and reexamine her world. Lisa Genova is a unique storyteller. Sure there are many doctors that have come before her and spun beautiful stories, poems and literature. In fact doctors as writers could be an entire course taught in university English departments. Genova burst onto the scene a couple of short years ago with the blockbuster bestseller Still Alice, the story of a woman slowly being overcome by Alzheimer’s Disease. It was a stunning glimpse into the workings of the brain and the effects of that disease on the various relationships within a family. This is the thing I adore about Genova. She gives us great stories and brilliant insights into how the mind works. Sarah is a great character, very real and humane. There is a scene at the beginning of the novel where she describes her work day and the breakneck speed with which things happen. And then she simply observes when it gets away from her she closes her office door and permits herself a 10 minute cry before resuming her job. Shortly after her accident, her eldest son Charlie, rambunctious and impulsive is also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and he also has to learn how to make his brain work differently. It is an interesting parallel that provides smart lessons on how people with different brains change things to make them work. In some respects Sarah is living an American dream before it all comes crashing down around her and her dream changes. I enjoyed this fiction story in a different way from Still Alice. Both books offer some truly insightful pictures of how the brain works, but Left Neglected is a more universal story of the human condition. My only mild criticism is that the writing is secondary to the plot. The characters are strong and the subplot with Sarah’s mother is a nice touch, but I never felt as if the writing leapt off the page and sang. This is a book I couldn’t put down and also a story we are discussing at the National Book Club on EverythingMom.com http://www.everythingmom.com/ Buy the book, read along for the month of March and come join us!
Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova, Simon and Schuster, 2011, $25 US, $28.99 Canadian, 327 pages.
$$$$ out of $$$$$
I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in order to review. My opinions on this blog are my own.

An Amish Love: Three Novellas and Something Unexpected Review/Giveaway

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Drug addictions, forced marriages, deadly accidents, a fall out with the church and spouses who disappear mysteriously. An Amish Love contains three lovely novellas, set in Amish country-side, with a big dash of the unexpected. The novellas are all tied to place and characters flit in and out of each separate story. The prominent themes are: alienation and love. This is a perfect book for my February I Heart Books Event. An Amish Love is a triple threat. Usually in acollection like this, there is at least one weak link. But all of these stories are really well done and enjoyable. Each is a treat on its own.

Take for instance the first novella: A Marriage of the Heart by Kelly Long. Joseph Lambert has been away from his Amish ways for several years and has come back to live with a local doctor. Abigail Kauffman, motherless, lonely and a beautiful flirt, sees a way out of her ‘boring’ Amish life that she no longer wants to be part of and she tricks him into marriage. Well, as the plot progresses in this really charming story, she comes to love her husband and slowly reveals to her father that she has always felt lonely and unloved and was deceitful in claiming Joseph made advances towards her before their marriage. Joseph carries his own secrets. When an ex-girlfriend shows up with a vial full of painkillers and an old hold on his heart, the relationship is tested. 
In the second novella, What the Heart Sees, written by Kathleen Fuller, Ellie Chupp, who lost her sight in an accident, finds her jam business growing and her idenpendence tested with overprotective parents. Her friend is about to marry the young Amish man who is known to have been responsible for a deadly car accident. Ellie’s good friend is dead as a result and Ellie’s fiancee broke up with her, unable to handle her blindness. When Christopher Miller returns to town after being shunned, Ellie finds herself feeling romance again. But how could this individual love her, now that she is blind? And will Miller be able to forgive and return to the Amish life in time for his sister’s wedding?
And finally in Healing Hearts by Beth Wiseman, the father of a large brood returns home to his wife after being absent one year without explanation. While Naaman Lapp was not shunned, his family remains perplexed as to why he left. His son Adam is particularly angry and finds it difficult to forgive despite the Amish teachings. Naaman’s wife, Levina, has moved on and found a degree of independence despite the chatty gossip in town and the speculation that Naaman might have had another woman in Ohio. Eventually he will realize he needs to court his wife again and earn her trust back.

The end of this book contains a reader’s guide and some excellent Amish recipes from within the novellas. I cannot wait to try some out here. Yum!                 
 Am Amish Love, by Beth Wiseman, Kathleen Fuller and Kelly Long is a Thomas Nelson book. $14.99 US, 391 pages and is classified Fiction, Christian, Romance.
All books are provided free from the publisher but that in no way affects my review.
For this giveaway also Feb. 27th.
1. Follow me on GFC.
2. Follow @inkscrblr on twitter
and leave me your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
Extra two entries if you tweet this contest. “Amish Love book giveaway – not what you expected – enter on http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.com/ ”

Barrio Bushido: The Next Trainspotting? Review and a Giveaway

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Barrio Bushido is disturbing and violent and poetic and a profound social statement. Barrio Bushido is Ben Bac Sierra’s first novel and, as graphic and absolutely horrific as it was at times I couldn’t stop reading or envisioning this as a really great movie script in the same vein as Trainspotting or Fight Club. Barrio is the gritty realistic sad tale of three gang members, growing up in a Latin ghetto area of California. The main character is Lobo, the wolf, leader of the pack. He is a strange disenfranchised soul with the heart of a poet. He spends his days in a drugged haze knowing he is inevitably headed towards a fate that involves self destruction. The bull, Toro, is babysat by a television when his mother goes to work cleaning office buildings and homes. While his sister can come along on the jobs, he cannot because he is too rough and so on one of these occasions when he is left home, as a five-year-old, he falls out the window of his apartment building. He waits and wanders after the fall searching for help that doesn’t come. As a youth he will find a place in the marines where he tries to earn respect and the love of his mother. He endures the Gulf War and is little more than a young adult when he learns to wear the scars of his many battles with pride. Santiago is the third pillar of the odd triad of brothers. He pulls the drooping needles from his parent’s arms and feeds his brothers and sisters. Benjamin Bac Sierra is an intense writer. He manages to create empathy for characters that are completely vile outlaws. Bac Sierra knows his topic well. He is a former homeboy himself and a veteran of the Gulf War. The author himself, a former homeboy and a veteran of the Gulf War, clearly knows his topic well. He grew up in San Francisco’s Mission, joined the Marine Corps at 17 and saw front line combat in the Gulf War. In an incredible transformation he managed to complete a Bachelor of Arts at U.C. Berkeley after an honourable discharge from the marines and is now a professor at City College in San Francisco. Bac Sierra’s characters are nothing if not realistic. They jump off the page fighting. Bac Sierra is a masterful storyteller with a true strenth for characterization. Lobo is no cliche; instead he is a gangster with a weakness for his girlfriend Sheila and a strangely romantic soul. He is placed in an impossible situation when a rival gang member, he is supposed to kill ends up kidnapping Sheila to turn the tables on Lobo. Lobo is a strange contradiction, speaking in swear words and poetry at the same time. These characters are remarkable and magnetic. The story is gritty and compelling in the same way some traffic accidents are. But this story isn’t for everyone. It is a fiction story with a high degree of realism and extreme violence. This is a brave first novel rooted in some reality. It will be very interesting to see where the author goes next, also if someone options this as a script.

Barrio Bushido, by Benjamin Bac Sierra, El Leon Literary Arts, $20.00 US., 282 pages. Fiction.
Thriftymommas rating $$$ out of $$$$$. Excellent characterization and dramatic plot, but too much hostile language towards women and the violence, while understandable in this context is really over the top.)

I am giving a copy of Barrio Bushido away this month as part of my I Heart Books Event.
Mandatory:
1. Follow me on GFC (google friend connect.)
2. Leave your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
I will draw for this one on Feb. 27th. Open to Canada and US.

Reviewed by Paula Schuck

A Book BlogHop and a $25 Chapters Giveaway – Canada

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Book Blogger Hop

I have a new bloghop today just for book bloggers and it looked like fun so I am passing it on. Those of you who read me often know this month is my February I Heart Books Event and I am giving away a lot of great goodies. Today I am also giving away a $25 Chapters/Indigo gift code.

Mandatory (To Win:) Canada Only
1. Follow me – thriftymommasbrainfood -on GFC at side of blog.
2. Follow me – thriftymommastips – on GFC side of that blog here http://www.thriftymommastips.blogspot.com/
3. Tell me what you might buy with it and leave me your email address.

That’s it!
1. Extra two entries for following me on twitter @inkscrblr
2. Extra two entries for tweeting this or something like it: “Canadians can win a $25 gift card to Chapters/Indigo from http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.blogspot.com/”

I will draw for this one on Feb. 22. Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Search: Blog Tour

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The Search is a quiet little charmer of a book. A romantic story set in Amish country, The Search is part three in the Lancaster County Secrets series of women’s Christian romance novels. This story centres around two young women, one named Bess and the other Lainey O’Toole. At first it is unclear what the two women might have in common and how their stories are intertwined. Bess is the grandaughter of Bertha Riehl, and she is sent for the summer to Pennsylvania to help care for her grandmother after some surgery has left Bertha in need. Well, the surgery turns out to have been a bit of a stretch and the grandmother, a bit of a scheming puppet-master. Bertha is a comical character who Bess learns to love over the course of the summer. Bess and Bertha and the farmhand Billy will all work together throughout the summer at Rose Hill farm, living off the land and learning how to grow roses. The roses, of course, are a metaphor for the characters within the book, some blooming like Bess, others slowly withering like Simon and Bertha and, yet another group still twinning together like the hybrids Billy has learned to graft into new variations on the traditional flower. Throughout the summer Bertha mischieviously tells Bess she must teach her how to drive a car and repeatedly “borrows” a police car to give her lessons. When Bertha manages to get herself and Bess thrown into jail, her son Jonah must return home. Thus Bertha successfully orchestrates the return of her son Jonah, Bess’s father. Lainey O’Toole has remained in Stoney Ridge following some car troubles. She is an aspiring chef who once lived in Stoney Ridge and didn’t intend to return, but winds up spending far more time there than intended. While she is there revisiting her old home, she is confronted by her past and the choices made so long ago, on a night when Jonah and his young family were involved in a horse and buggy accident just outside Lainey’s old childhood home. When Bertha Riehl’s brother, the drunk Simon, who has been shunned by the Amish community for many years, is near death, Bertha seeks a family member to donate bone marrow. Finding a match for the old miserable Simon starts a whole subplot that will call DNA and lineage into question. When Bess is eventually found to be a perfect match, everybody but Jonah, it seems, understands what that must mean. This is a story well told. Suzanne Woods Fisher has successfully created several strong female characters that really are the heart of this book. The author shows restraint and purpose in capturing the reality of Amish life. Suzanne Woods Fisher is the author of The Choice and The Waiting. I have not read either one of the earlier stories, so I know that this novel can stand on its own, or in the context of the series. Based on how much I enjoyed this story, I would happily choose either of those other books. Getting to know the characters in The Search was enjoyable. The characters are engaging and well rounded and driven by psychological struggles and romantic desires. I found this book to be a nice surprise and truly enjoyed the strong female characters.
The Search by Suzanne Woods Fisher, Jan. 2001, Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, US $14.99, 297 pages with discussion guide.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$.
I received a copy of this book in order to review it. The opinions in this blog are my own.

The Poison Tree: A Sweet, Surprising and Sophisticated Thriller

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The Poison Tree is as decadent as your finest chocolate, a truly delicious hold-all-my-calls kind of book. It has all of the elements of a bestseller and, at times reminded me a bit of a drug trip. This read was truly addictive and when it was over I was truly craving more. The Poison Tree, by first time author Erin Kelly, arrived accompanying the latest novel of a more established author and I wasn’t even planning to give this a read for months because it wasn’t requested by me and my list of titles to review is massive. But from the second I picked this one up I was gone. The Poison Tree begins as Karen Clarke and daughter Alice,9, have just picked up Rex Capel from prison. He has been there serving a sentence for murder. Now he is to be reintegrated into his former life, or what is left of that life. We know Rex is Alice’s father, but we don’t know why he was in prison exactly. The narrator Karen, preoccupied and somewhat paranoid, lets drop a single name BIBA on the car ride back to their new life together and that sets the stage for the slow unravelling of the story of Rex, Biba and Karen. Rex and Biba are brother and sister, orphans they claim, inaccurately. Karen, a gifted language student, is going through the motions of completing her ascent into academia saddled with a dull boyfriend named Simon. When he breaks up with her she finds herself numb to the loss and open to the idea of possibility. Right on the cusp of one memorable summer, Karen encounters Biba, a young actress seeking a dialect coach. Biba is a force of nature, flamboyant, exotic and charmingly magnetic. But the very energy that fuels her desirability also threatens to consume her and anyone who gets close to her. Kelly’s first novel could have easily slipped into softcore porn territory, but it falls just shy of treading there, showing remarkable restraint on the part of the author. This is the story of one self indulgent summer that changes the course of all their lives. There are many surprises here in this taut thriller that is extremely well written for a first novel. I hesitate to spoil any of them for my readers. Erin Kelly is a former freelance journalist from North London. Her prose can be quite lovely; for instance: “That night in bed I lay awake on my right-hand side. Bruises, like sunburn are nocturnal and the one on my left thigh was waking up as I tried to sleep, a soft dark badge to commemorate the day’s chases and revelations.” Strangely, this is a novel that works very well alternating back and forth between past and present. The author does so in a logical fashion, as her narrator moves in and out memory, often triggered by a word. Kelly doesn’t superimpose a new chapter or alternate voices to cue the reader to her intent. Although there are a few jarring transitions, for the most part, this style creates a hazy almost drugged feel to the book, echoing the experience of that summer. The past blurs with the present and the effect is almost seamless, organic. Tiny clues are dropped throughout the book about the crimes that took place and the ensuing scandal. But in the end I didn’t find the outcome to be predictable at all. In fact, as I slowly guessed one plot twist another would blindside me. If I had to pick a single fault in this amazing read it would be the prologue which sets the tone, but also isn’t really necessary to the plot. The title of the novel is taken from William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree.” The Poison Tree is a stunning debut.
The Poison Tree, by Erin Kelly, Paula Dorman Books Viking, Jan. 10, 2011, 322 pages, $26.50 US and $33.50 Canadian. Thriftymommastips rates this one $$$$ out of $$$$$. I received a free copy of the book in order to complete this review.

Tales From the Treehouse: Jane and The Raven King

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Jane and The Raven King is by Stephen Chambers, Sourcebooks, Jabberwocky, published last month Dec. 2010, $6.99 US and $8.99 Canadian, paperback, 256 pages.

My full written review is at New York Journal of Books.

This one gets five $$$$$ out of $$$$$. We thoroughly loved this character and her quest to save the world. Great strong plot and compelling adventure fantasy fiction for ages nine to 12.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.