The Great Escape

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

You hear that? That's the sound of me finishing a book I absolutely LOVED and finding an author I adore. It's like falling in love on a first date. It's love on first read.

The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The dazzling sequel to Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s beloved bestseller Call Me Irresistible

Lucy Jorik is a champ at not embarrassing her family—not surprising, since her mother is one of the most famous women in the world. But now Lucy has done just that. Instead of saying “I do” to the most perfect man she’s ever known, Lucy flees the church and hitches a ride on the back of a beat-up motorcycle with a rough-looking stranger who couldn’t be more foreign to her privileged existence. At his beach house on a Great Lakes island, Lucy hopes to find a new direction . . . and unlock the secrets of a man who reveals nothing about himself. But as the hot summer days unfold amid scented breezes and sudden storms, she discovers a passion that could change her life forever.

Now, even though you didn't read the sequel, you can still love this book. Love it times a million. I didn't read the sequel, I didn't feel lost at all. I didn't feel like I missing key components of the story and you won't either. 

First up, I loved all of these characters. Even though they are all crazy and flawed, I loved them because they were true to real life. I admired Lucy's totally ballsy move and lack of greater plan. I love Panda (the rough looking stranger) because he's scary but adorable and pretty much the dream boat of my fantasies. I love how Lucy finds herself and figures out life and just goes for it. I love how story lines of multiple characters come together and not just Lucy, but everyone figures out their lives. They aren't perfect but they realize that the things that they are focused on are the wrong things. And you can't run away from your problems. From the things that hold you back. Nothing is ever easy and everything can be painful, but the key is just to do it. Face it head on and then enjoy the rest of your life. And you know what? Maybe it's not so awful to open up and tell someone the things that you dislike the most about yourself. 

I basically lived this book and I couldn't put it down. This is one of those times where I've finished the book and it was so amazing, that I don't know where to even start or what I can say to convince you that you have to read it. I just know that you need to bump this to the top of your reading list immediately. Now that I've read this one I feel compelled to read basically everything Susan has written because she is a talent. She writes with honesty and common sense but she pulls a bit of humor into it. She is just so fantastic and you just feel so happy reading her books. I literally squealed from the greatness of this book. I love me some Susan too. 

Check out Susan's website and her Facebook and properly stalk her like I plan to. 

The Loved and the Lost

I'm excited to give you the third and final review in Lory Kauffman's Verona Trilogy.

The Loved and the Lost 

They are three time travelers desperate to return to 14th-century Verona to reclaim their medieval family s shattered lives. It is a mission fraught with danger and the risk of unexpected consequences for themselves and for their worlds. For all three, it is a matter of the heart. For one, though, it is truly the only thing that matters, as the fate of his eternal love and the life of their unborn child is the prize to be won or lost forever. In this, the final book of THE VERONA TRILOGY, Hansum, Shamira and Lincoln go on the boldest adventure of their lives. They will face hardship, tragedy, and threats from sources they couldn't have imagined all in an effort to wrestle a future from the steely grip of an unforgiving past.

I am going to say again that the history aspect of these books was an unexpected highlight for me. I usually steer clear from history books because I hated history in high school. Hated it, but that's for another day. I do like the concept of History Camps and it'd be fascinating to have something like this so that high school kids could experience what it really was like before so they can get a greater appreciation for what they have now. 

The great thing about this book in particular is that it really highlights the dangers of changing history, of changing time. We all know realistically that would be bad because present day is the result of culminating events in history that we build on. It's important. Bad things in the past are important to the current day and even the future. 

I love how the characters found their own. Lincoln got his life together and found his calling. Shamira found a love who has the same interests as her in art and that's a big deal. And Hansum, who I really like and I have liked his character in the other two books, is kind of lost. He was married to a woman in 14th century Verona and he has to leave her behind, he can't save her. It's a very different twist to a Romeo & Juliet love story. It seems particularly cruel that they can go back in time with their teachers to see what they did wrong because it shows them what could have been. It was really hard to remember that essentially, these are still teenagers. They make a lot of mistakes and they have poor judgement and I was frustrated with them and had to remind myself that this is what teenagers do, it's normal. I found it most interesting that for three kids who were so against going to 14th century Verona, they end up preferring that to their home in the future. And I really thought that was great, like they really understood the lesson and they picked up something from it. 

I really liked this book. I do appreciate that the book had an ending that was good that I didn't totally expect. It feels like there could be a fourth book but it wouldn't be unsatisfying if there weren't. I definitely recommend this series to anyone. It is a YA series, but as an adult I really enjoyed it.  I think it's challenging to write a book that is geared toward YA but is still enjoyable to an adult and Lory hit the mark. 

No Greater Illusion

Pump Up Your Book and K. Baskett will be giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Card/Paypal Cash plus an autographed paperback & ebook copy of her book on her No Greater Illusion Book Blast today ! This promotion begins on April 1 ends on April 26.  The winner will be announced on April 27. To enter, fill out the Rafflecopter form below and good luck!

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A number of unacquainted adults, from various walks of life, routinely enjoy the benefits of residing in a nation where liberty and justice are among its chief luxuries. Having different statuses of education, income, and ethnicity, all are suddenly forced to cope firsthand with the "domino effect" of America's violent reaction to the assassination of a promising female presidential nominee, Gov. Ceinwen Jarvis. In a day and time where the advancement of technology allows one's voting status, banking information, and even medical history to be accessed by microchip scan, they quickly realize that America - as well as their own lives - will never be the same.

Purchase your copy:

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ABOUT K. BASKETT

Jack of all trades, master of none - save for the art of procrastination - K. Baskett lives by the motto, "Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow." K. firmly believes that you aren't really interested in the author's hometown, spouse, children or pets, and has therefore decided to spare you the details.  No Greater Illusion is the author's debut novel.

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One Step Too Far

As a wife and mother I know first hand what it feels like to think, "I could just leave. I could just go right now and start all over...". When I saw this book in the NetGalley listing, I knew I had to read it.

One Step Too Far - Tina Seskis

An apparently happy marriage. A beautiful son. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life to start all over again? Has she had a breakdown? Was it to escape her dysfunctional family - especially her flawed twin sister Caroline who always seemed to hate her? And what is the date that looms, threatening to force her to confront her past? No-one has ever guessed her secret. Will you?

I will start by saying that this was a weird book. It was good, but there were so many parts where I started to really hate Emily not just as a mom and wife but as a person. Even though I can sympathize with wanting to just start all over because it's hard. Life is hard but you add the duties of motherhood and being a good wife into the mix, it's even harder. But she has had a lot of confusion and inner demons her entire life and I guess over time, it just gets to be too much. 

The secret that essentially drives this book, it's what keeps you reading because you want to know what it is, isn't earth shattering. I read it and was like, "Ok. No reason to freak out, totally something you could work out.". But given the personality of Emily, I understand why it would be a big deal for her. 

Things I didn't like about the book- is that she seems really cold. I mean, the thing keeping me back from running away is knowing it would screw my children up forever. Now, she thinks it's doing her son a favor but come on.... does anyone really think that? I mean, somewhere in your mind you have to know this is wrong. Then she moves into the most bizarre living situation with all of these randomly put together flatmates and eventually develops a drug habit along with shoplifting and yeah. How a person thinks this is the way to turn your life around is beyond me. 

I so badly want to give my two cents on how the book ends because I hated the ending. Oh, did I hate the ending. The only thing about  the ending that I did like is that everything had closure. A lot of authors like to leave loose strings and you're left wondering what the characters did after all, but this book ties it all up. Nothing is left to your imagination, you get the answer for everything and I really appreciated that. Especially with this book weaving different points of view and just bizarre topics into the story in general. So overall... I'm a 2/5. I just... I just can't give it more. I really struggled through it and I felt myself irrationally angry through most of it and I just can't give a book more than 2 for that because it's not one I would pick up again and it's not one I would necessarily recommend. 

Reviewed for NetGalley. 

Nowhere but Home

Oh how I love Liza Palmer. I have been a Liza Palmer fan for quite some time so as soon as I had the chance to review this one I jumped on the bandwagon of awesome people who were reviewing it. And yay- it didn't disappoint!

Nowhere But Home - Liza Palmer

The strategy on the gridiron of Friday Night Lights is nothing compared to the savagery of coming home . . .

Queenie Wake has just been fired from her job as a chef for not allowing a customer to use ketchup . . . again. Now the only place she has to go is North Star, Texas, the hometown she left in disgrace. Maybe things will be different this time around. After all, her mother—notorious for stealing your man, your car, and your rent money—has been dead for years. And Queenie’s sister, once the local teenage harlot who fooled around with the town golden boy, is now the mother of the high school football captain.

Queenie’s new job, cooking last meals at the nearby prison, is going well . . . at least the inmates don’t complain! But apparently small-town Texas has a long memory for bad reputations. And when Queenie bumps into Everett Coburn, the high school sweetheart who broke her heart, she wishes her own memory was a little spottier. But before Queenie takes another chance on love, she’ll have to take an even bigger risk: finding a place to call home once and for all.

The thing about Liza Palmer novels is that I never feel like I've gotten enough at the end. I always feel like there should be a sequel and there never is and I'm just always like, what the hell, Liza? Help a girl out here. But really, it doesn't matter and I can't be mad for too long because at the end of the day they are really good books all on their own. And I always really love her characters. They are just so inherently screwed up and need professional counseling but who cares because we really all root for the hot messes, don't we? 

And Queenie is a really great hot mess. How could you not be when you have the name Queen Elizabeth Wake and your mother is the town slut who gets murdered by her best friend once said best friend found her sleeping with her husband? I mean, it's very Days of our Lives and I love it. So Queenie is a hot mess who essentially runs from her home town because the Wake family has a reputation of sorts that the children don't live up to because none of the things said about them are actually true. They are living down the shame of their long dead mother. But after a series of jobs that don't work out in more exciting cities, Queenie finds herself back home. 

Of COURSE she runs into the love of her life who is a hometown hero with a good family name and she is not that. She also has a sister who has stayed behind to make a life in the hometown and just wants to break through the stigma of the family name and she thinks that will happen with her son becoming the star football player because in Texas- if you are a star high school football player you are basically royalty. 

The best part? Oh the best part is the job she gets herself to obviously pay the bills. She is a chef and a great one at that, so she becomes the person who makes the last meal for death row inmates. I know, right? So while you have your regular chick lit novel in there, Liza gets clever with you to put the whole death row thing into the book and you see how it wears on Queenie when she analyzes the meal and tries to figure it out. Which is really well done and I loved that aspect to the book. 

Overall? I loved this book. But I love Liza Palmer and I'm a super fan forever. Please check out her website (so you can see the other books of hers you have missed), her Facebook, Twitter, or her blog. 

Dead bodies and almost muggings.

Nobody cares about anything other than my snippet that I maybe saw a dead body. And I don't know if you care that I was almost mugged or not, but I'm going to tell you about it anyways.

So on Sunday I was heading down to St. Paul for the Rhianna concert. I've already talked about this. Well it's like a two and a half hour drive from where I live so it can either be really boring and uneventful or it came be full of crazy fucking drivers who can't merge onto a highway or drive with their blinker on for 30 miles and eventually cut you off because they have no idea what they are doing.

But Sunday was different.

I was just driving along, singing along to some Awolnation, when I see this really nice, black Lexus with Illinois license plates and dark tint windows. Immediately I think, "Oh it's nice to see the recession hasn't hurt the drug dealers coming from Chicago" only to snap out of it when I see that the guy drives like an asshole essentially raping the line between our two lanes. Like I normally would do, I move one more over to my left because I am not sure if this guy realizes he's not the only one on the road. As I do that, a pickup truck pulls ahead so he's kind of next to me, but I can still see the Lexus.

AND THEN.

The trunk of the Lexus flies the fuck open and I obviously slam on my brakes because I don't know what's going on, and the truck next to me does as well. And guess what I saw?

A guy, just laying in the trunk with a jacket on and he looked like he was in the fetal position.

Now, I didn't drive up next to it to get a better look but out of nowhere, the driver of the Lexus kind of swerves and the trunk slams shut. The next thing I know the Lexus very unsafely whips into the next exit and I'm looking at the truck driver and we both have, "Holy shit, what the fuck was that????" looks on our faces.

"You called the cops, right Sara???"

NO. No I did not. Only because A) I didn't get the license plate number, B) I don't know what exit he even took and C) I can't even tell you what mile marker we were even on. I didn't look at any of these things because I was too focused on the maybe dead body in the trunk. Scary shit, peeps. Even now, I can't remember what city I was even near.

So that's my dead body story.

The next piece of action was when I pulled into the parking ramp for Rhianna. The guy at the pay booth informed me that they've had "some incidents" with stuff in the ramp so I should be careful and watchful. Creepy and weird, but duly noted.

After the concert, I was walking and I am so thankful that I parked as close to the exit, but as near to the elevator as I could. When I walked past a few cars, just as I was getting to mine, a GUY popped up between the cars I was just next to and all of the hair on my body went up. Then as I look in my rear view mirror, there are about five guys kind of scattered around the lot, crouching between cars. The whole thing is very sketch.

So I decide to not piss around with my GPS and I back out of my spot and try to haul ass to the exit. But the guy that was literally next to my car, started kind of running after me. I was totally scared. I was kind of annoyed there wasn't anyone in the pay booths otherwise I would have said something to them about the assholes clearly looking for someone to do something to. But nope, nobody around. I took off and thankfully was able to figure out how to get home without my GPS.

But all in one night, hookers. All in ONE night.

This chick needs some pepper spray and a taser.

Don't smoke pot kids, you'll end up looking like Rhianna.

So on Sunday I made the trip to St. Paul for a date night with my friend Amy and we were going to go to the Rhianna concert. I'll just admit I'm not the biggest Rhianna fan. But regardless of that, I wanted to go to this because she has a huge catalog of hits and honestly- I figured I'd dance my ass off.

But I did not.

First up, according to the ticket the show started at 7:30. Her opening act, A$AP Rocky, started at 8. And he was really kind of shitty. Like, unbelievably so. Sure, he is just coming off of an illness so perhaps his game was off, but I cannot take anyone seriously who has a pimp stick, a throne, and tube socks pulled up to his knees. You have lost any street cred you maybe had before.

But he finished at 8:30 and honestly, thank god. And at every other concert I have ever been to in my life, there is at most, a 30 minute stage change over for the headlining act. Which is totally understandable considering how much is involved with a stage act. But 30 minutes is not what we had.

It wasn't even an hour.

It was TWO FUCKING HOURS.

Two hours of admittedly decent music playing, two hours of watching women wearing less than most strippers would start their stage act wearing, two hours of men in short shorts, and drunks getting so drunk they think they are Rhianna's back up dancers practicing their moves in the audience.

By the time Rhianna came on it was almost 10:30 and quite frankly, I was over it before it started. She did a lot of her hits which is exactly what you expect for the price of the ticket. She also does not sign live exclusively. Maybe the drunk people and the teenagers didn't notice, but this concert vet did. I hear your backing track, Rhianna.

My other complaint other than that as a stage performer that is charging people to come see you, you should be on time? Well not only should you be on time, but you should also try to be sober. I said this about Chelsea Handler when she was so fucking wasted that she wasn't even funny and couldn't brush her hair and how since then, I can't even watch her show. I'm that turned off. Well in Rhianna's case, it'd be nice if you could just not smoke immense amounts of weed before you come on stage. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but she would try to put this "I'm sexy and you want me" face and it comes off more like "angry and confused stoner". When your sexy face borders on Pauly Shore, you have a problem. I'm just saying that anyone who tells you they can function while smoking pot are lying to you.

We didn't even stay for the entire concert. By 11:15 I was so incredibly tired and I had a 2 1/2 hour drive home still, and I didn't even feel safe to drive. I figured it was better to leave now than try to get out of the parking ramp with hundreds of drunk drivers all getting onto the highway the same time.

Am I bummed I didn't love it? Yes. Anytime I go to a show and feel like I could have used that money for something else that would have been better, I'm disappointed. I did have a good time with Amy and we had a great dinner at Burger Moe's and it's fun to spend time with my far away friend. We don't get to hang out as much as you could if we lived closer, so I enjoy any time I get with her. Plus, we now have Beyonce tickets and I know that won't suck. Beyonce has a god damn work ethic.

But tomorrow I'll tell you about the dead body and the almost mugging. Gotta leave you hanging.