Friday, May 1, 2020

Book Review and Giveaway - Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire by Jen Hatmaker

My Review
Fierce, Free and Full of Fire is an inspirational self help book about finding (or rediscovering) your true self.

I wanted to read this book because the description was very appealing. I tend to be a people-pleaser and liked that this book addresses that.  I also liked the emphasis on choosing your own path.

Fierce, Free and Full of Fire is divided into five sections:

Who I Am
What I Need
What I Want
What I Believe
How I Connect

The book starts out with an instantly relateable sentence:  "I grew up around well-behaved women." The author then goes on to explain how being well behaved and people pleasing often subverts our own goals and plans.  She writes:

"Understanding and embracing who we are, how we've been created, is the launching pad for living a fearlessly genuine life, where we're no longer pretending or trying to be something other than what we are on the inside" (Kindle location 133).

She talks about labels that we all have -- sometimes from parents, or teachers, or even from ourselves in the past.  I found this a very eye opening discussion.  I think we all (and most especially women) have some of these labels.

I found the idea of seeking our authentic self and doing what we really want to - our goals, our plans - very exciting and liberating.

I especially loved some of her writing about dealing with other people.  "I Want To Connect Without Drama" was something I really related to and appreciated.

I recommend Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire to anyone who is looking for a fresh, unique Christian self help book about living an authentic life and choosing your own dream.

The author has a fresh, sassy voice.  This is my first book by Jen Hatfield, but she has a unique style that makes for a compelling, thoughtful, and fun read!

Book Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker, with cheeky candor and fearlessness, guides readers to a deep dive into how they are wired and provides them with the tools to walk in that identity with freedom and guts.


Stuck in people-pleasing or fear, many women hide and pretend, then end up sidelined in their own lives. But what they want is to be brave, to claim every gift, dream, quirk, and emotion inside, to stop performing and start living.


Beloved New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker understands the struggle to find firm footing in a culture that operates from stereotypes and often unreachable expectations. In this new book, she offers women encouragement, challenge, and humor as she helps them identify everything that makes them tick and gain the confidence to live it all out. She leads them through five self-reflective categories—who I am, what I need, what I want, what I believe, and how I connect—and helps them:

  • identify the exact ways they pretend, and learn instead how to be genuine at all times, in all ways, in all contexts;
  • be empowered to say yes and no without guilt;
  • learn to voice both their spiritual questions and convictions; and
  • opt out of drama and into healthy adult relationships.

With wry humor, earnest passion, and been-there insight, Jen calls women to the life-giving freedom of leaning into the identity, convictions, and community they’ve been given.



Purchase Links


Amazon |Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble Thomas Nelson


Author Bio
Jen Hatmaker is the author of the New York Times bestseller Of Mess and Moxie (plus twelve other books) and the host of the For the Love! with Jen Hatmaker podcast. She and her husband, Brandon, founded the Legacy Collective and also starred in the popular series My Big Family Renovation on HGTV. Jen is a mom to five, a sought-after speaker, and a delighted resident of Austin, Texas, where she and her family are helping keep Austin weird.

Connect with Jen


Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram


Giveaway
Two lucky winners will win a copy of Fierce, Free and Full of Fire. Enter through the Rafflecopter form (below). The giveaway ends at midnight May 7. Winners will be contacted by email and need to respond within 48 hours, or another winner will be chosen. Good luck!
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Book Spotlight and Giveaway - Seas the Day (A Seafood Capers Mystery) by Maggie Toussaint

Book Synopsis

Caterer River Holloway cooks like a dream and is known on Shell Island as a “finder” of things. Which is why a desperate mother begs River to track down her grown son, Chili Bolz, who’s vanished.


Deputy Lance Hamlyn can’t find the missing man, so he teams up with River. The missing person case boils over into something frightening when Chili’s mother falls victim to a brutal assault. Worse, her dying words incriminate River’s friends in both kidnapping and, now, murder. River soon finds herself caught in an unsavory recipe for disaster.


Despite catering events and the return of her absentee boyfriend, River finds the number of suspects growing longer than her food shopping list. Along the way she befriends a black cat who becomes her crime-solving partner. River must locate Chili and discover who killed his mother before her own goose is quite literally cooked.


Maggie Toussaint serves up a fun and captivating read in Seas the Day, the first in her Seafood Capers series.

Author Bio
Southern author Maggie Toussaint writes cozy and paranormal mysteries, romantic suspense, and dystopian fiction, with twenty fiction novels published. A three-time finalist for Georgia Author of the Year, she’s won three Silver Falchions, the Readers’ Choice, and the EPIC Awards. She’s past president of Mystery Writers of America-Southeast chapter and an officer of LowCountry Sisters In Crime. She lives in coastal Georgia, where secrets, heritage, and ancient oaks cast long shadows. Visit her at https://maggietoussaint.com/


Author Links
Facebook | Twitter | Blog | Goodreads | LinkedIn | Pinterest | Booklover’s BenchAmazon Author Central | Website | Bookbub


Purchase LinksAmazon

Giveaway
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Friday, April 24, 2020

Dear Friends - Videos Abby Likes: Tiptoeing Dogs

Dear Friends,

Thanks for stopping by this week! My share today starts with a rainy morning.  Yesterday it was raining pretty hard when I went out to walk.  I don't like rain.  I'm a good girl and I walk in it, but I don't have to enjoy it.  I walk on leash and I was moving slow.  Momma looked down at me and I was tiptoeing through the wet grass.  I figured I could keep my paws dry better that way!

I felt sure other dogs must tiptoe too, so I looked up dogs who tiptoe on the computer.  I found two videos with other dogs who tiptoe around!  The first is a puppy who tiptoes up on his toy before he snatches it up.



The other is a dog named Milton who likes to tiptoe all around the house like a doggy spy.  I think the tiptoeing makes him look mysterious!



I hope you enjoyed these little videos and I hope you are not having too much rain in your corner of the world!

Till next week --

Love,

Abby xoxoxo 

Book Review - Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles

My Review
Simon the Fiddler begins in Texas in 1865.  Simon Boudlin is a fiddler who ends up being conscripted in the Civil War just before it ends.  He plays in a regimental band, and at one of the performances he glimpses an Irish governess who works for one of the military officers.  He falls in love with Doris Mary Dillon at first sight and determines to marry her.  When the war ends Simon makes a band with other musicians, and they travel through Texas.  He never loses sight of his dream though, and this novel is about his journey.

I wanted to read this book because I found the idea of a traveling musician post-Civil War fascinating.  Although I live in the deep south, I have read surprisingly few novels set during the Civil War and this sparked my curiosity.

The book starts at a leisurely pace with an introduction to Simon and his life as a young man and as a musician.  I found it picked up pace after he first saw Doris.  Their courtship - through letters, and at a stop and start pace  because of her status as an indentured servant for a wealthy family - is what makes the book come to life for me.

I also loved the details about music, the descriptions of songs Simon and the musicians played, with old fashioned lyrics and accounts of their performances.  The little ragtag band has adventures as they travel and play - some humorous and some heartbreaking. 

This is such a beautifully written book with passages that read like poetry.  For instance:

"Simon had seen many mezzotints of shipwrecked soldiers on rafts amid the mighty billows being tossed upon the stormy main, and he had imagined ocean waves as perpetually cone-shaped.  It seemed to him the waves would then arrive at a given shore as a collection of triangles.  Then they would fall flat on their faces, dissolve, and their place would be taken by yet another rush of water, et cetera.  Spiky.  He had imagined waves as spiky water.  But what he saw were long rolling terraces of blue water that rose and fell into sparkling foam in hushing sounds, over and over.  They had no end.  He could have watched forever" (pp. 49 - 50).

The story becomes an adventure the latter third of the book as Simon tries to set his plans in motion despite the danger this puts both he and Doris in.  After the sometimes languorous earlier storytelling, I found I couldn't put the book down because I wanted to know what happened with Simon and Doris.

I found Simon the Fiddler to be an unusual book because of the poetic language and the storytelling that was almost like an American fairy tale.  Once I got used to the pacing, it was very appealing and engrossing -- and a journey I would recommend to other readers who enjoy historical fiction (and especially a Civil War setting).

Book Synopsis
The critically acclaimed, bestselling author of News of the World and Enemy Women returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart.

In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position in a regimental band.

Weeks later, on the eve of the Confederate surrender, Simon and his bandmates are called to play for officers and their families from both sides of the conflict. There the quick-thinking, audacious fiddler can’t help but notice the lovely Doris Mary Dillon, an indentured girl from Ireland, who is governess to a Union colonel’s daughter.

After the surrender, Simon and Doris go their separate ways. He will travel around Texas seeking fame and fortune as a musician. She must accompany the colonel’s family to finish her three years of service. But Simon cannot forget the fair Irish maiden, and vows that someday he will find her again.

Incandescent in its beauty, told in Paulette Jiles’s trademark spare yet lilting style, Simon the Fiddler is a captivating, bittersweet tale of the chances a devoted man will take, and the lengths he will go to fulfill his heart’s yearning.


Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Author Bio
Paulette Jiles is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award. She lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas.

Find out more about Paulette at her website.


I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours.

Book Spotlight and Giveaway - Old Friends and New, Another Murder (Sheridan Hendley Mystery) by Christa Nardi



Book Synopsis
A touch of nostalgia, a murder, and good friends.

When a former colleague is implicated in his neighbor’s demise, Sheridan Hendley returns to Cold Creek to prove his innocence. Annoying as Max can be, she can’t imagine the quirky professor is capable of murder. Unfortunately, not everyone shares her opinion. Of course, it doesn’t help that Max threatened his neighbor in a public place soon before the man was murdered. Or that the victim’s drug shipments had a habit of turning up on Max’s doorstep.

Author Bio
Christa Nardi is an accomplished writer and an avid reader. Her favorite authors have shifted from Carolyn Keene and Earl Stanley Gardner to more contemporary mystery crime authors over time, but she still loves a good mystery. Christa has authored the Cold Creek Cozy Mystery Series, the spinoff Sheridan Hendley Mystery Series, and the Stacie Maroni Mystery Series.  She co-authors the Hannah and Tamar Mystery Series. When not reading or writing, Christa enjoys travel with her husband and playing with three dogs and three grand-daughters.

Author Links:
Amazon – https://amazon.com/author/christanardi
GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7257539.Christa_Nardi
Facebook  – https://www.facebook.com/christa.nardi.5
Twitter – https://twitter.com/ChristaN7777
BookBub – https://www.bookbub.com/authors/christa-nardi
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/cccnardi/
Website – https://cccnardi.wixsite.com/mysite
Purchase Link – Amazon

Giveaway
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