GRAVITY vs. THE GIRL by Riley Noehren

I’ve been reading this book for over a week, but I’ve taken my time because DARN IT—I didn’t want it to end :)

Synopsis

Samantha Green has just spent an entire year in her pajamas, and she is beginning to regret it. What's more, she is haunted by four ghosts that are former versions of herself. First up is the overachieving and materialistic attorney, who is furious with Samantha for throwing away the career she worked so hard to build. Second is the lackadaisical college student who is high on life but low on responsibility. Next is the melodramatic teenager, who is consumed with her social standing, teal eyeliner and teased bangs. Finally, there is the scrappy six-year old, whose only objective is to overcome gravity so that she can fly. Samantha's ghosts alternate between fighting with each other, rallying around Samantha's budding sanity and falling in love with a string of good-for-nothing drummers. Despite her reluctance to do so, Samantha must rely on these spirits from the past to repair the present and ensure her future.

The Afterglow

I LOVED this book! Maybe it is because I feel like I’m one chocolate bar away from a nervous breakdown most of the time myself, so I could relate with Samantha's meltdown. I can only imagine what my child-self and teenage-self would think of me today.

This was such a brilliant concept and beautifully executed. The writing was lovely and Noehren did a fantastic job of weaving the themes of love, loss, gravity, and change throughout the book.

Even given the heavy subject matter of depression and lunacy, it was light, funny, touching, and insightful. Pick it up you won’t be disappointed. I would read it again in a second :)

-Angie Cothran

The Kiss of a Stranger : by Sarah M. Eden

LOVED this book! You know it is good when you are yelling at the characters, "Come on already! Figure it out people!" I read it in one day completely ignoring my kids and dinner (we had cereal :) A great regency romance with very well developed characters. I met the author at a conference. She was so funny and personable it made me want to read her books.

- Angela Cothran

Synopsis:

When Crispin, Lord Cavratt, thoroughly and scandalously kisses a serving woman in the garden of a country inn, he assumes the encounter will be of no consequence. But he couldn't be more mistaken--the maid is not only a lady of birth, she's the niece of a very large, exceptionally angry gentlemen, who claims Crispin has compromised his niece beyond redemption. The dismayed young lord has no choice but to marry Miss Catherine Thorndale, who lacks both money and refinement and assumes all men are as vicious as her guardian uncle.

Trapped between an unwanted marriage and a hasty annulment, which would leave his reputation tainted and Catherine's utterly ruined, Crispin begins guiding his wife's transformatoin from a socially petrified country girl to a lady of society. Their unfolding relationship reveals encouraging surprises for both of them, and privately each of them wonders if theirs may become a true marriage of the heart. But their hopes are dashed when forces conspire to split asunder what fate has granted. As a battle of wits escalates into a life-threatening confrontation, will it be possible for Crispin and Catherine to live happily ever after?