College can be a real killer! Tamiko’s world completely changes when a chance meeting develops into romance and her Mother’s unexpected encounter with a mysterious figure could destroy everyone in her life.
About Coming of Age in Berkeley
Romance is the furthest thing from Tamiko Gashkin’s mind when she drops her copy of the Brothers’ Karamazov on the path through Faculty Glade on the Cal Berkeley campus. Imagine, then, how stunned this almost 16-year-old brainiac athlete is when she’s instantly beguiled by Alec Burns, the shaggy-haired college senior who not only retrieves her book, but pledges his affection. But how is a high school girl who has never been kissed to cope with a far more sophisticated older guy given that almost everyone in their world disapproves, especially Tamiko’s protective single mom, Amy? Indeed this modern fairy tale might have been squelched right there were it not for the appearance of Max, a demonic psychopath from Amy’s past ready to destroy everyone in his way. But with survival now the overwhelming priority, can there suddenly be room for Alec and Tamiko to be together?
My Thoughts
Tamiko is not your average fifteen, almost sixteen year old. She is extremely smart to the point where she takes courses at university, has pretty much completed high school and has a memory that can recall little facts which will serve her well throughout the novel. She is still in her tomboy phase and while mentally more advanced than her peers, socially and emotionally she is not ready. She hides behind her baggy sweaters and avoids boys advances at all costs.
This all changes when she meets Alec in a chance encounter.
It was love at first sight for both of them. You can feel the attraction off the pages of the book. The only problem? Alec is almost seven years older than her. While this age gap may not seem like much in your twenties, thirties and beyond, many people have a problem with this relationship – especially her mom Amy!
Alec brings Tamiko to life, she wants to embrace the part of her womanhood that she has left hidden out of possible fear or maybe even being unsure of herself? She finds a happiness with him that so many people spend their life searching for. Her Mother is dead set against their relationship – and a firm no touching and no being alone rule is put into place and the two are trying to find a way to make things work.
Just when you think you are focusing on the development of their relationship in this not so ideal but possible scene, all of this is thrown out the window when a murderous, revengeful man from Amy’s past surfaces. He wants nothing more than to hurt Amy and will use Tamiko to do so. The story takes a swift turn and we are led on an adventure that is terrifying and keeps you on your toes. Our surprising hero? Alec – who would do anything to protect Tamiko but will they be alive at the end of the story to be able to embrace their relationship?
This is a fun, sexy and adventurous novel that I loved every moment of. It does have sexual scenes and language in the story but I feel it would be appropriate for young adults.
Jake Warner is the author Murder on the Air (with Toni Ihara) as well as a number of children’s stories including Sheriff Daisy and Deputy Bud, The Tibbodnock Stories, and Clem, the Detective Dog. He is also the co-founder and longtime publisher (now retired) of Nolo, America’s leading source of consumer law information. Warner lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Toni Ihara.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Not every leading lady finds love, gets married and sustains a domestic life. What about the
ladies who were never swept off their feet? Do they take matters into their own hands?
About Kiss Me at Christmas
Bow Street Runner Daffin Oakleaf abhors Christmas. Caroling and holiday cheer only remind
him of a dark time. When a close friend calls on him for help, Daffin is happy to capitalize on the distraction. But when he learns the lovely Lady Regina is the one in danger, he’s to become
bodyguard to the captivating woman.
Regina has one mission: to find a night of passion in the arms of a gentleman. Considered firmly
on the shelf, Regina has given up on marriage—but that doesn’t mean she wants to be denied the
pleasure married ladies experience. Daffin has long captured her attention…and when a threat
calls him to her side, the sparks between them ignite. But how can a hired bodyguard find his
way into Regina’s reserved heart?
My Thoughts
Kiss Me at Christmas follows the bright, young and independent Regina who is a Lady of the ton and as such has many expectations placed on her. This includes marrying a man that she does not love and does not make her heart do a leap. What she wants to feel is the way she felt when she met Daffin, a family friend in the summer. He was fun, exciting and full of adventure but more importantly he made her feel attractive, loved and appreciated. A complete opposite of the man she is supposed to marry, who makes her want to hide in her room!
The only problem that exists? Daffin has quite the family history (one we only come to realize near the end of the book) and is well below Regina’s social status, thus making any relationship between the two doomed before it even begins. He is also a man of morals and while he is attracted to Regina, he is also friends with her cousin and would never do harm to her reputation and relationship with her family
When Regina approaches him with her bold proposal, he doesn’t even know how to respond. She asks him to make her feel loved and special for one night before she is set to spend the rest of her years in a loveless marriage. Thinking of her, he denies and the two part ways, thinking this would be the last they would see of each other.
But fate has a funny way of making things happen! Regina and Daffin are brought together again as someone seeks to murder Regina and we watch on the edge of our seats as the mystery unfolds and secrets from the past are brought to light. Through it all, you keep rooting for these two – that Regina will have a family that will support and defend her decision and that Daffin can realize despite his social status, he is the perfect man for her.
Love, murder, family secrets and more is what you will find in Kiss Me at Christmas, an exciting, don’t put the book down read that you will read over and over again.
VALERIE BOWMAN grew up in Illinois with six sisters (she’s number seven) and a huge
supply of historical romance novels. After a cold and snowy stint earning a degree in English
with a minor in history at Smith College, she moved to Florida the first chance she got. Valerie
now lives in Jacksonville with her family including her mini-schnauzer, Huckleberry. When
she’s not writing, she keeps busy reading, traveling, or vacillating between watching crazy
reality TV and PBS. She is the author of the Secret Brides series and the Playful Brides series.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
While growing up has never been easy, today’s world undeniably presents kids and their parents with unprecedented challenges. Award-winning author and international speaker Maureen Healy in Emotionally Healthy Child:Helping Your Child Calm, Center, and Make Smarter Choices is a widespread acknowledgment that emotional health, resilience, and equilibrium can be learned and strengthened.
About Emotionally Healthy Child: Helping Your Child Calm, Center and Make Smarter Choices
Healy, who was a “wild child” — the kind, she writes, who left babysitters “wondering if they wanted children” — knows her subject. She has become an expert on teaching skills that address the high sensitivity, big emotions, and hyper energy she herself experienced.
“The ideas and tools in this book are what my younger emotional self was seeking — an understanding of how emotions work and how I could create better-feeling ones,” writes Healy. “Today’s children are seeking the same things, and this book was born to address that need.”
In The Emotionally Healthy Child, Healy shows readers how to teach children to master their emotions and move forward on their unique paths toward wholeness by developing the mindset and habits necessary to be able to stop, calm, and make smarter choices.
“We may know what emotional health looks like, but often we don’t know how to get there,” writes Healy. “This book will help you with the how. The how is where we struggle. As adults we can often identify what we want, whether it’s a bigger home or happier children, but we need some guidance on how to go about achieving these things.”
Healy gives adults the ideas and real-life strategies they need to raise emotionally healthy children. Her book delves deeply into what children need to know, what children need to do, and what speeds up the process of emotional health. It also includes a toolbox full of mindfulness tools designed to help readers put the ideas throughout the book into practice.
“Using the tools in this book, children and adults alike can learn to pay attention and catch themselves before they make not-so-smart choices,” write Healy. “We explore this simple yet life-changing idea that we can become more mindful and then, with emotional knowledge as well as some new tools, make better choices — the types of choices that bring healthier and happier experiences into our lives and that allow us to model this uplifted life to our children and teach them how to do the same.”
My Thoughts
“We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people” – His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama taken from The Emotionally Healthy Child
When it comes to my children, I would do anything for them – I want to ensure that they know that they are loved, that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to, that I am proud of them and that I support them. I also want to ensure that they have the skills to cope in a world that can be unkind and ever-changing.
Having suffered with mental health for years, I know how anxiety can creep in slowly and can destroy your confidence and self-worth. I still struggle to this day and have to find ways to calm my mind and emotions down. I worry that my children will pick up on this or even inherit some of this from myself and I want and need to prepare myself with the knowledge and tools to help them. I have had to learn not to be reactive but instead calm myself and understand the situation before dealing with the situation.
All children have a hard time dealing with strong emotions, especially when they are placed in situations like preschool, daycare, school and even at home where they are not always in control. This book is not just for children who are struggling to handle their emotions but for all children regardless of age and their parents. Emotions are an everyday part of life and we all need to learn to recognize these emotions and learn how to control our actions. This is not just a skill for children but a skill that you will need your whole life.
This book teaches you about identifying emotions and empowers you as a parent to help guide your child through them. Maureen points out common statements that we may make as a parent (which seem harmless) but to a child may be taken out of context and cause them to react further. We need to look past the superficial reason a child may be acting out and learn the whys behind their actions before we can help guide them through their emotions. Children may be labelled as “bad” but if we look at why they are acting out, we can help understand them, show them we care and guide them through it. I loved how she helped us learn each emotion and gave us helpful tips and tools on how to deal with a wide range of situations. Some of the tools I have implemented in my own work day (hand over heart and deep breathing), as well as downloading one of the suggested apps for my phone to help us as a family with mindfulness. I loved the wide range of quotes that she includes throughout the book (one of my favourite is at the top of this section) as it helps to put what we are learning into perspective in each chapter.
This book is a must have parenting book – it is full of tools, tips and situations that prepare, guide and teach us how to handle a wide variety of situations. It not only will help you become a better parent in understanding your child but also assist you in becoming a better emotionally balanced parent. A win for both parties!
You can purchase a copy of this book here.
Rating: 5/5
About the Author
Maureen Healy is the author of The Emotionally Healthy Child and also Growing Happy Kids, which won Nautilus and Readers’ Favorite book awards in 2014. A popular Psychology Today blogger and sought-after public speaker, Maureen runs a global mentoring program for elementary-aged children and works with parents and their children in her busy private practice. Her expertise in social and emotional learning has taken her all over the world, including working with Tibetan refugee children at the base of the Himalayas in Northern India to classrooms in Northern California. Visit her online at http://www.growinghappykids.com.
Question and Answer
What inspired you to write The Emotionally Healthy Child?
Teaching children is my greatest joy. As I pondered the issues that many of the smart, capable kids I work with are facing — like stress, worry, fear, and trauma around bullying — I realized that the majority of children today lack the understanding of how emotions work and what their role is in creating happier ones – so that’s where the idea for the book was born. Originally, I was going to title the book, The How of Children’s Happiness but it became clear to me that focusing on the broader concept of emotional health would serve more adults, professionals and ultimately, children.
How do you define an emotionally healthy child?
Children are all in the process of learning who they are, and how they relate to their feelings. But the emotionally healthy child is doing something differently – she is learning to pause and release her emotions constructively even if they’re challenging like anger or jealousy. She no longer is operating solely on “automatic” but is gaining emotional self-control and awareness. This allows her to express their full range of emotions constructively, while honoring each moment (not running from or ignoring it) for whatever it is.
In The Emotionally Healthy Child, you say that three simple steps have the power to change everything when it comes to emotional health. What are they and why are they important?
The “Three Steps to Success” are: 1) Stop, 2) Calm, and 3) Make a Smart Choice. The first step is where children learn to catch themselves before they go in negative and challenging directions, so they stop. Then they calm, before moving on to step three, which is making a smart choice — that is good for them and others. For example, if they’re angry, they might yell and find some relief from their anger. This is good for them, but certainly not for others. But what if they took some deep breaths and walked away, this would be good for them and others, therefore a smart choice.
As simple as these steps sound, they have the power to help children begin moving in a more constructive and emotionally healthier direction whether they’re feeling angry, frustrated, disappointed or worried. They apply to all emotions and are a theme throughout the book to help children slow down and make smarter choices, even when they are emotionally charged.
The Emotionally Healthy Child is full of practical tools for parents, teachers and professionals to teach children about how to healthfully express their emotions. Can you share one of those tools with us?
Yes, The Emotionally Healthy Child is full of practical strategies and tools to help children regain their emotional balance and make smarter choices. I will share one I call the “Smart Choices Checklist,” which helps children identify what smart choices are, and what they look like at home or school. For example, Joshua has trouble on the playground and hasn’t been making smart choices, so his teacher led his classroom in the creation of a smart choices checklist. Smart choices are defined as good for you and good for others. So instead of pushing children, Joshua identified several smart choices that he can make when he’s feeling frustrated such as: 1. Walk Away, 2. Use my Words, 3. Take Deep Breaths, and/or 4. Go to the Library. Before this discussion, Joshua wasn’t clear on what he could do when he’s frustrated, but now he goes to the library more and reads Mr. Underpants, which he loves.
You emphasis the ability for children to learn how to make smarter choices even when emotionally challenged. Can you explain what a smart choice is?
Smart choices are choices that good for you and good for others. Children that are emotionally reactive tend to have big emotions and start life releasing them in ways that aren’t smart choices like screaming and shouting. But once they learn how to stop, calm and make smarter choices, even big emotions don’t have to come out destructively. They can walk away from someone calling them names or take deep breaths, for example. These are smart choices.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
From USA Today bestselling author Caitlin Crews comes A True Cowboy Christmas, the first in a sensational series debut about a cowboy, a farm girl, and the greatest gift of all.
About A True Cowboy Christmas
Gray Everett has a heart of gold but that doesn’t mean he believes in the magic of Christmas. He’s got plenty else to worry about this holiday season, what with keeping his cattle ranch in the family and out of the hands of hungry real-estate investors looking to make a down-and-dirty deal. That, plus being a parent to his young and motherless daughter, equals a man who will not rest until he achieves his mission. Now, all Gray needs is the help of his lifelong neighbor. . .who happens to have grown into a lovely, spirited woman.
For Abby Douglas, the chance to join forces with Gray is nothing less than a Christmas miracle. Much as the down-to-earth farmer’s daughter has tried to deny it, Abby’s been in love with stern, smoking-hot Gray her whole life. So when Gray proposes a marriage of convenience as a way to combine land—and work together toward a common cause—Abby can’t refuse. But how can she convince Gray that sometimes life offers a man a second chance for a reason. . .and that their growing trust and mutual passion may be leading to true and lasting love?
My Thoughts
A True Cowboy Christmas is a fantastic story from start to finish, a tale of second chances, hope and trusting in the future.
Gray has had a rough past, his marriage was rocky at best and full of lies. The only good thing to come out of his marriage was his daughter, a child far too old for her years. Combine this with an extremely rough childhood and broken relationships with his siblings, you have a man who finds it hard to open up, hard to trust and someone who no longer believes in love and romance.
His neighbour, Abby, has been in love with him for as long as she can remember. While others ran away from their small home town, she stayed where her heart felt like it belonged and took care of her elderly family (her Mother was always coming and going out of Abby’s life). The two individuals have so much in common in their history but unlike Gray, Abby still hopes for the future and of love that will last.
Gray proposes one of the craziest arrangements ever to Abby – a marriage of almost convenience, she takes care of the home and his daughter and he takes care of the ranch. While it looks great on paper and comes out completely wrong, Abby never the less accepts his proposal and the two stumble down a rocky path of attraction and denial. Abby seems determined to make this work and while Gray is extremely attracted to her, he puts a rock where his heart is and will not let him feel any emotion, which was almost frustrating at times. Every step Abby takes forward with him, he is determined to take the couple two steps back. It isn’t until he is firmly woken up about his behaviour to Abby, his brothers and his daughter, that he is forced to take a step back and look at himself and it was a self he wasn’t happy about but would it be too late, did he ruin things so greatly with the people in his life that matter the most?
This is a lovely story about looking inside of ourselves, having the courage to push past the pain and our past in order to accept a future of love and happiness that we all deserve. Sometimes our past leaves such dark stamps on our lives but we should never allow this to create our future. This is a fantastic story that I could not put down.
USA Today-bestselling, RITA-nominated, and critically acclaimed author Caitlin Crews has written more than seventy-five books, including Frenemies, Princess from the Past, A Royal Without Rules, and Undone by the Sultan’s Touch. She’s won fans with her romance, Harlequin Presents, women’s fiction, chick lit, and work-for-hire young adult novels, many of which she writes as Megan Crane (including the dystopian Viking romance Edge series). These days her focus is on contemporary romance in all its forms, from small town heat to international glamour, cowboys to bikers to military men and beyond. She’s taught creative writing classes in places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, gives assorted workshops on occasion, and attempts to make use of the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in York, England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with a husband who draws comics and animation storyboards, and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
An heiress with a daring proposal. An earl who’s determined to resist her. And a love that just might be written in the stars, in First Earl I See Tonight by Anna Bennett.
About First Earl I See Tonight
Recently jilted by his fiancée, David Gray, Earl of Ravenport is not in the market for a wife. Even if Gray didn’t have his hands full renovating his crumbling country house, it would take more than a bold marriage proposal from a headstrong young beauty to thaw his frozen heart. Gray is confident that spending a week at his ramshackle estate will change her mind about marriage, but every passionate moment he spends with her tempts him to change his.
A talented artist, Miss Fiona Hartley desperately needs her dowry money to pay off a blackmailer set on ruining her sister. The handsome earl seems a sensible choice for a husband…if only she can convince him that romance will play no part. But marrying in name only may prove difficult for Fiona. Gray can’t help but be dazzled by her genuine warmth. Yet as their feelings deepen, Fiona’s deadline looms. Will her secrets destroy them, or is true love their final destiny?
My Thoughts
First Earl I See Tonight follows a bold new plot, where our female character takes her future into her own hands. In a time where women were not encouraged to be bold and independent, Fiona takes care of herself. When she finds herself in a position where she is being blackmailed (which at first you think is directed towards her but it is not – it is against her sister), she looks to save herself and her family from disaster.
The only problem? Women weren’t in control of their money then. So Fiona devises a plan to get her hands on her dowry to save her sister – the only problem with the plan? She has to convince Gray to marry her and with his current situation between his home and his failed engagement, he has closed his heart to love.
While superficial circumstances bring the two together, they slowly come to realize how much alike they truly are. They both put family and friends before themselves and both see the beauty beneath the surface not just the glitter on the outside. Just at they come to realize there could be more than meets the eye, disaster hits – a shock and betrayal that you will never see coming. It leaves you wondering if they can survive this both physically and emotionally and if they can, can they still pull together to form a future.
First Earl I See Tonight is a beautiful story of forgiveness, acceptance and hope for the future. While our past may not always be pretty and the present the same, we always have hope for the future and moving to a brighter place. This was a lovely story from start to finish.
Anna Bennett started swiping romances from her mom’s bookshelf as a teenager and decided that
books with balls, dukes, and gowns were the best. So, when she had the chance to spend a semester in London she packed her bags—and promptly fell in love with the city, its history, and its pubs. She dreamed of writing romance, but somehow ended up a software analyst instead.
Fortunately, a few years and a few careers later, Anna found her way back to writing the stories she
loves and won the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart®. She lives in Maryland with her
husband and three children, who try valiantly not to roll their eyes whenever she quotes Jane Austen.
Anna’s books include of the Wayward Wallflowers series and the Debutante Diaries series.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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