Category: book tour

November 19, 2019

My Beautiful Detour Book Spotlight

What happens when an ordinary teenager has to turn into a warrior just to survive? And can the journey through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder really become an “adventure”? Such is the detour in life that Amy Oestreicher was forced to take.

About My Beautiful Detour

An estimated 70 percent of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives and up to 20 percent of these people go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. An estimated 5 percent of Americans—more than 13 million people—have PTSD at any given time.

Amy Oestreicher was one of them. So, what happens when an ordinary teenager has to turn into a warrior just to survive? And can the journey through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder really become an “adventure?”

Amy had ambitious plans for college and a Broadway career, until her stomach exploded the week before her senior prom. Months later, she awoke from a coma to learn that she might never be able to eat or drink again. After years on IV nutrition, her first bite of food awakened her senses to life’s ordinary miracles but also brought back memories of being sexually abused by a trusted mentor for months, just before the unexpected rush to the emergency room that fateful Passover night. With determination, imagination, relentless resilience, and an inner “hunger” for life, Amy created a roadmap where none existed. Her journey through life’s unthinkable detours is nothing short of miraculous, but the creative path to healing she forged is accessible to anyone. As a survivor—and “thriver”—of abuse and extensive medical trauma, Amy discovered sources of resilience she didn’t know she had but it turns out we all possess. In this book, she creates a tapestry made from each of each thread of her journey, empowering others to find gratitude in every setback and discover their own infinite inner strength. Amy’s search for “home” proves to be the greatest test of cultivating resilience after near-death, and reclaiming identity after both sexual assault and medical trauma. Amy’s journey is ultimately a celebration of ordinary and extraordinary challenges and miracles.

In this coming of age story, Amy shares her struggles and discoveries living with both visible and invisible illness, the tremendous gifts to be reaped from trauma, its lessons which have illuminated her path, and how these gifts can be discovered as a unique, yet universal way to navigate any kind of uncertainty.

My Beautiful Detour offers practical strategies for individuals and unexpected tools for the families of trauma survivors, helping communities build new, limitless futures. The book includes numerous “trauma insights,” and is enriched with humor, art, poetry, and useful takeaways for readers. Reading one woman’s heroic adventure through trauma, recovery, and discovery of new directions in healing the body and the mind is an empowering tale of not just getting through, but thriving.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

About the Author

AMY OESTREICHER is an international keynote speaker, Huffington Post columnist, actor, artist, songwriter, playwright, Audie Award-nominated PSTD peer-to-peer specialist, and author. A survivor of extensive medical trauma, including 27 surgeries, and sexual assault, she shares her life story and creative strategies with therapists, medical professionals, patients, sexual abuse victims, and general audiences nationwide. Creator of the #LoveMyDetour movement to inspire individuals to thrive because of, rather than in spite of, obstacles, she has been featured on the Today show, delivered three TEDx talks, and performed her one-woman musical, Gutless & Grateful, in more than 200 venues across the country. She is also a passionate voice in the ostomy community and presents narrative medicine workshops.

You can connect with her on her website, Twitter and Facebook.

November 13, 2019

Bread Bags & Bullies: Surviving the ’80s

This hysterical coming-of-age tale is jam-packed with enough nostalgia to satisfy anyone who grew up in the ‘80s or at least had the good fortune to travel through them.

About Bread Bags & Bullies: Surviving the ’80s

It’s the winter of 1984. Twelve-year-old Herbie and his two brothers—Wally and Cockroach—are enjoying the mayhem of winter break when a late Nor’easter blows through New England, trapping their quirky family in the house. The power goes out and playing Space Invaders to AC DC’s Back in Black album is suddenly silenced—forcing them to use their twisted imaginations in beating back the boredom. At a time when the brothers must overcome one fear after the next, they learn that courage is the one character trait that guarantees all others.

Our Thoughts

Bread Bags & Bullies: Surviving the ’80s was a fantastic, heart felt, laugh out loud read. Steven has a personal way of writing that is honest, fresh and down to earth. You feel as though you are right there experiencing every moment with the family. It reminded me of all the good laughs you have with friends over the good old days.

The ’80s were definitely a simpler time (I was a very young child growing up but I still remember the endless days of being outside until it was dark and those bread bags (or any bag in general!). We used to spend hours riding up and down the street on bikes with no care in the world. This book brings back some great memories and makes you wish you could take a trip back in time. I loved the emphasis on family and spending time together – this is sometimes lacking now in society, where everyone is so busy all the time. Families may not have been perfect but they put family first.

This book starts off with Herbie breaking up a fight between his own two boys and then he begins to tell the tale of a week long adventure in his childhood home during the middle of winter and one bad storm.

I fell in love with this family, they were quirky but they were real. I am pretty sure you will be able to find similarities in some of the characters to your own family. They absolutely love each other but have a very unique way of showing it – a result of the times that they grew up in (a perfect example, the brothers could tease poor Cockroach but definitely not their friends!). The brothers learned how to handle situations themselves, they did have their parents but they were independent for the most part which ensured that they had the life skills they needed. We witness the struggles of having little money and doing everything you can to keep the family afloat. It was his childhood and the lessons he learned that guided him in his own journey of fatherhood – we grow from all the good and bad things that happen to us.

This is a fantastic book from start to finish, you will laugh, get anxious and take a trip down memory lane. It is so well written that you will not be able to put it down.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

Steven Manchester is the author of the #1 bestsellers Twelve Months, The Rockin’ Chair, Pressed Pennies and Gooseberry Island; the national bestsellers, Ashes, The Changing Season and Three Shoeboxes; and the multi-award winning novels, Goodnight Brian and The Thursday Night Club. His work has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s The Early Show, CNN’s American Morning and BET’s Nightly News. Three of Steven’s short stories were selected “101 Best” for Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He is a multi-produced playwright, as well as the winner of the 2017 Los Angeles Book Festival and the 2018 New York Book Festival. When not spending time with his beautiful wife, Paula, or their four children, this Massachusetts author is promoting his works or writing.

You can connect with him on his website, Facebook and Twitter.

The Giveaway

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Providence Book Promotions for Steven Manchester. There will be seven (7) winners. Two (2) winners will each win one (1) Amazon GC and five (5) winners will each win a copy of Bread Bags & Bullies: Surviving the ’80s by Steven Manchester (eBook). The giveaway begins on November 1, 2019 and runs through January 2, 2020. Void where prohibited.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

November 12, 2019

The Tender Birds Book Review

“The wording is both elegant and poetic… the author, accomplished painting vivid images within my mind’s eye that will never be forgotten. Overall this book is unique, being unlike anything I have read before. Go get a copy! You will not be disappointed.” —Readaholic Zone

About The Tenders Bird

Matthew Reilly is a busy academic, a lonely priest haunted by secrets. Young Alison is the shy and devoted keeper of Daisy, a falcon which suffered an accident and can no longer fly. The three of them meet in a Boston parish, but Matt has forgotten a momentary but disturbing meetup with Alison, homeless eight years earlier in Toronto. Close to exhaustion, he’s forced to reflect on what’s become of his life, including the loss of a son that no one knew he’d fathered. Alison and Matt had a fateful encounter during her homeless period, but Matt doesn’t connect that frail teenager with the healthy young woman she’d become. It’s left to Alison to uncover Matt’s past and for Matt to come to terms with it.

My Thoughts

The Tender Birds is a powerful book that left me in tears and touched my heart.

The author starts the book off with an individual rushing to make a flight but unfortunately missing his flight. As we turn the page, we learn that the flight he missed was the flight that crashed into the World Trade Center Towers. The story continues to unfold in a beautiful, mysterious way as we discover how the lives of our two main characters, Alison and Matt are interwoven. We learn how their decisions have impacted another individuals life and how far reaching this was.

It is a beautiful story about understanding, forgiveness, compassion and faith. Our actions (or lack of action) can have an impact on someone’s life that we may never understand, see nor appreciate. We don’t truly even appreciate the impact of Matt’s decisions until we hear Alison’s story in the second half of the book. While Matt’s story is one of an individual seeking forgiveness, of a person who doesn’t quite seem able to connect with others or even know himself or the consequences of his actions – Alison’s story broke my heart. The events that she had to deal with in her life, could have broken her but instead it was her Father’s memory, her faith and her belief in goodness that slowly helps her heal. She is just a truly good person, who sees the beauty and light in everyone and everything (especially in birds). She makes mistakes but she is also honest about them and seeks to correct and forgive. She could have never forgiven nor let go of her past but instead she tries to move forward, slowly making friends, shows compassion to others and teaches those around her to show compassion to those less fortunate. She doesn’t do it in a flashy way, she is always humble and almost doesn’t even realize the lessons she is teaching others.

While the ending of the book is sad, it is also full of hope, understanding and forgiveness. Alison has learned and grown so much and you can’t help but feel proud of her. I was sad when this book ended because I would have loved to have read her next chapter. This is an excellent novel that does not disappoint.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and Chapters.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

Carole Giangrande is the award-winning author of ten books, including the novella A Gardener on the Moon (winner of the 2010 Ken Klonsky Award) and the novel All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (2018 Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Literary Fiction). The Tender Birds is her fourth novel. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio (Canada’s public broadcaster), and her fiction, poetry, articles and reviews have appeared in literary journals and in Canada’s major newspapers. In her spare time, she loves exploring nature with her partner Brian, photographing birds and studying French.

The Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

October 23, 2019

Spooktober with DK Canada: Fairy Tales, Myth and Magical Beasts

October is the month of magic, myth, scary stories and tall tales. It is also my favourite time of the year! I love learning about myths, legends and fairy tales. I enjoy sharing this passion with my children and I know that they love hearing these stories as well.

DK Canada has two fantastic books that you can fall in love with this month that will delight, engage and and teach: Children’s Book of Mythical Beasts & Magical Monsters and A First Book of Fairy Tales and Myths.

Children’s Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Monsters

Discover the adventures of heroes and monsters that exist in the world of mythical and magical creatures.

Stories have been told on every continent since the dawn of time. Some have lasted for thousands of years, becoming what we know today as myths. These fantastical tales educate by creating amazing worlds and inhabiting them with wondrous feats of heroics and dastardly deeds of evil.

Mythical Beasts & Magical Monsters gives children the opportunity to discover these stories, and encourages them to understand storytelling from different cultures.

This book takes readers around the world and in time to teach them about myths, legends and folklore. We learn about who the characters are, their story and the adventures they take.

We start off exploring nature and nation – how early people tried to understand themselves, the world around them and how the universe began. One of my favourite stories in this section, was the Japanese myth around the creation of the universe that began with two gods, Izanagi and Izanami. There was even a section on how create sound effects to go along with this story to make it even more engaging for younger readers. In Magic and Mayhem, it examines how people explained the unexplained and tried to understand why good and bad things happened. I loved the section on the crafty tricksters – especially Saci Perere from Brazil who had the power to appear and disappear, leaving many things wrong in his wake. We also learned about Baba Yaga, the Russian Witch, whose name we had heard of in a movie but had never looked up prior to this. Talk about a scary tale! Finally we have Quests and Battles, where they examine the legendary heroes of cultures. The warriors who overcame great obstacles to achieve heroic deeds. You may know some of these names – Berserker, Thor, Odin, Lord Vishnu, Ganesha. They even had a section for warrior heroines (yay!).

This is a beautiful, well organized and illustrated book that will delight readers of all ages. We learn so much more about the popular stories we have heard in passing and in movies along with many new characters. I loved that the book took us on a journey around the world – not favouring one particular region or type of story.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and Chapters.

A First Book of Fairy Tales and Myths

Two beautifully illustrated books about myths and fairy tales combined in one slipcase to make the perfect gift for young children.

This two-volume set is a collection of well-known myths and legends and classic fairy tales from around the world. A First Book of Myths includes classics such as the Fall of Icarus, Andromeda, How Butterflies Began, and the Crocodile and the Baby. Mary Hoffman’s lively narratives and the delightful illustrations capture the worlds full of gods and monsters. In A First Book of Fairy Tales, Mary retells 14 classic children’s fairy tales, including favorites such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the Little Mermaid. The charming illustrations bring the best-loved fairy tale characters and events to life.

These two beautiful books come in their own slipcase package and are gorgeous (I almost didn’t want to open them they looked too perfect). One book focuses on fourteen myths and legends and the other on fourteen fairy tales. The fairy tales include: Cinderella, Rapunzel, The Little Mermaid, The Frog Price and Diamonds and Toads to name a few. The myths and legends book included: The Golden Touch, A Newborn Warrior, How Butterflies Began, Rama and Sita plus many more. I was familiar with a few of these titles but some of these were new to me, which is always fantastic.

The stories in both books were easy to read out loud and perfect for young readers to follow along and engage. You can read it one story at a time or several stories together at night before bed. The illustrations are beautifully done and feel warm and welcoming (versus dark and scary like the previous book). We thoroughly enjoyed these two books and strongly feel this would make an excellent gift for young readers any time of the year.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and Chapters.

About the Author

Author Mary Hoffman is a popular children’s author with more than 90 books to her name. Her unique observations bring vitality and humour to each of her stories, including A First Bible Story Book, Amazing Grace, A Twist in the Tail, and Song of the Earth.

Disclosure: I received the books above in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

July 16, 2019

Poppy The Montgomery Sisters Book Two

What happens when love interferes and thrusts Poppy into discovering emotions she never knew existed?

About Poppy

Poppy Montgomery has always been good with a gun and could fight her way out of anything. Tough as nails and a sharp shooter, her beauty deceives the outlaws she’s after. Hot on the trail of the Clemmons gang, a group of outlaws who rob trains and killed an innocent woman and child a few months before, she is determined to make them pay for the sin’s they’ve committed by bringing them to justice. Pinkerton, Noah Shaw is investigating a ring of stage robberies and knows the Clemmons gang is behind them. Told to track down the infamous redheaded bounty hunter, Noah gets more than he bargained for when he arrests Poppy for assault. Handcuffed together the pair must work together to stop the robberies, and figure out who is behind them. But what happens when love interferes and thrusts Poppy into discovering emotions she never knew existed? Will she choose the solitude she’s always known, or Noah’s sweet embrace?

My Thoughts

I fell in love with this book, mostly because of Poppy. She is one tough, no nonsense young woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to go get it. She also has this softer side of her that can be hurt easily and that she doesn’t let others see.

Her work catching a group of outlaws brings her into contact with Pinkerton Noah. He was sent to track down Poppy and find out what she knows about the robbery and murder but is not to let Poppy know. When he arrests Poppy in order to keep her safe, I don’t think he could even begin to imagine how his life would change!

Together the two form a strong bond as they work to stop the robberies and figure out the culprit behind a young woman and her child’s death. What they don’t expect? To be so attracted to each other! Both of them had refused to love again but these feelings begin to pop up. Do they ignore them? Do they act on them? How will this interfere with their case and their future?

This was a sweet, fast paced, romantic novel with one tough young woman as our lead role. I loved every moment of reading this book!

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

Rating: 4/5

The Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Author

Kat Flannery’s love of history shows in her novels. She is an avid reader of historical, suspense, paranormal, and romance. A member of many writing groups including the National Romance Writers of America (RWA), Kat enjoys promoting other authors on her blog. When she’s not busy writing, or marketing Kat volunteers her time to other aspiring authors. She’s been published in numerous periodicals throughout her career, and continues to write for blogs and online magazines. A bestselling author, Kat’s books are available all over the world. The BRANDED TRILOGY is Kat’s award-winning series. With seven books published, Kat continues to write two novels a year.

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.