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Title:   A Perfect Romance by Layce Gardner Publisher: Bella Books 288 pages Genre: LGBT Synopsis: Love at first sight. How perfectly romantic! When Dana meets Ellen she’s not entirely honest because she doesn't want to look foolish. If she explained that she’s wingman to her BFF Trudy, who is trying to pick up men at an AA meeting, then Ellen would quite reasonably want to back away, slowly. The only way to see Ellen again is to keep going to the meetings and try really hard not to dig herself a deeper hole. But on the day Dana was born the good Lord was handing out shovels and whichever idiot said the course of true love was easy, well, they flat-out lied. Review:  Caution don't read this book while eating or drinking anything or you will wind up with liquid coming out of your nose and spitting food across the room.  I found myself laughing out loud several times while reading this book. Dana is a clumsy, woman who has a knack for getting herself into troubl

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of  Should Be Reading . Anyone can play along! •  Grab your current read • Open to a random page • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page •  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!  ( make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others! ) •  Share the  title & author , too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! My Teaser this week is from  A Perfect Romance by Layce Gardner "Ellen screamed at the room in large, "She's dying!"  Dana blinked rapidly six times (a multiple of three), then closed her eyes and saw a series of romantic snapshots of a future with Ellen: Sharing spaghetti noodles from the same plate, Lady and the Tramp style; Ellen and Dana freezing to death in the Atlantic Ocean, lying on an ice floe while Rosie O'Donnell's cruise ship sinks in t

Title:   Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher Publisher: Razorbill 288 pages Genre: YA Synopsis:  Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker - his classmate and crush - who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why. Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah's pain, and learns the truth about himself-a truth he never wanted to face. Review: What can I say about this book other than WOW. Watching this girls world unfold and knowing how it ends before it even begins is like watching the movie Titanic where you know the boat sinks but you still can't believe it happens in the end. Jay Asher has an amazing ability to get you inside the

Title:   The Season of Risks: An Ethical Vampire Novel by Susan Hubbard Publisher: Simon & Schuster 286 pages Genre: YA Synopsis:  Aglow with the promise of her budding friendship with third-party presidential candidate (and closet vampire) Neil Cameron, Ari Montero returns to school frustrated, like most teenagers, that she’s just not old enough—darn it!—to be accepted in grown-up circles. But Ari isn’t like most teenagers. Half human, half vampire, she is destined to remain at the same tender age at which she crossed over. Her desire to achieve instant adulthood leads her to the Miami clinic run by a vampire notorious for his delusions of world domination. There she is injected with a serum that instantly takes her from 15 to 22. Review: The third book in the Ethical Vampire series.  This series is one of the best new vampire series that I have read. I wouldn't consider this the best book in the series but it did have an interesting storyline. Ari was 13 when she

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of  Should Be Reading . Anyone can play along! •  Grab your current read • Open to a random page • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page •  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!  ( make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others! ) •  Share the  title & author , too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!  My teaser is from  Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher " You needed a name to put down opposite Jessica's. And since everyone at school already had a perverted image of me after Justin's little number, I was the perfect choice, wasn't I?" 

Title :  Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad by Dan Bucatinsky Publisher: Touchstone 256 pages Genre: biography Synopsis:  In 2005, Dan Bucatinsky and his partner, Don Roos, found themselves in an L.A. delivery room, decked out in disposable scrubs from shower cap to booties, to welcome their adopted baby girl—launching their frantic yet memorable adventures into fatherhood. Two and a half years later, the same birth mother—a heroically generous, pack-a-day teen with a passion for  Bridezilla  marathons and Mountain Dew—delivered a son into the couple’s arms. In  Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?  Bucatinsky moves deftly from sidesplitting stories about where kids put their fingers to the realization that his athletic son might just grow up to be straight and finally to a reflection on losing his own father just as he’s becoming one. Review:  Dan has written a funny, revealing book about what it is like to be a new parent.  He talks about his q

Title:   Envy (Empty Coffin) by Gregg Olsen Publisher: Splinter 312 pages Genre: YA Synopsis:  Crime lives--and dies--in the deceptively picture-perfect town of Port Gamble (aka “Empty Coffin”), Washington. Evil lurks and strange things happen--and 15-year-olds Hayley and Taylor Ryan secretly use their wits and their telepathic “twin-sense” to uncover the truth about the town's victims and culprits. Envy , the series debut, involves the mysterious death of the twins' old friend, Katelyn. Was it murder? Suicide? An accident? Hayley and Taylor are determined to find out--and as they investigate, the twins stumble upon a dark truth that is far more disturbing than they ever could have imagined. Review: I had a difficult time getting into this book. The characters were not all that sympathetic and I really didn't care much.  I did however come to enjoy Hayley and Taylor.  As the book progressed and focused more on them instead of the self-absorbed, popular obsessed,

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of  Should Be Reading . Anyone can play along! •  Grab your current read • Open to a random page • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page •  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!  ( make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others! ) •  Share the  title & author , too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! My Teaser Tuesday is  The Guilty One: A Novel by Lisa Ballantyne " The vast majority of clients have had really difficult upbringings...D'you know how much a damaged child in the care system will cost the state throughout the course of its life? Irene narrowed her eyes, considering, then shrugged." 

Title:   The Red Book: A novel by Deborah Copaken Kogan Publisher: Hyperion 344 pages Genre: Fiction Synopsis:  Clover, Addison, Mia, and Jane were roommates at Harvard until their graduation in 1989. Twenty years later, their lives are in free fall. Clover, once a securities broker, is out of a job and struggling to reproduce before her fertility window shuts. Addison's marriage to a writer's-blocked novelist is as stale as her so-called career as a painter. Hollywood closed its gold-plated gates to Mia, who now stays home with her children, renovating and acquiring faster than her husband can pay the bills. Jane, the Paris bureau chief for a newspaper whose foreign bureaus are now shuttered, is caught in a vortex of loss. Like all Harvard grads, they've kept abreast of one another via the red book, a class report published every five years, containing alumni autobiographical essays. But there's the story we tell the world, and then there's the real st

Title:   Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos Publisher: Harper Collins 251 Pages Genre: Autobiography Synopsis:  Nia Vardalos, writer and star of  My Big Fat Greek Wedding , tells her hilarious and poignant road-to-parenting story that eventually leads to her daughter and prompts her to become a major advocate for adoption. Vardalos chronicles her attempts to have a baby, and how she tries everything—from drinking jugs of green mud tea, to acupuncture, to working with two surrogates. Finally, she and her husband, actor Ian Gomez, decide to try adoption and discover a free service: Foster Family Agencies. Then one day, the social workers "match" her with an almost-three-year-old girl, who she knows, instantly, is her daughter. Review:  Honest, funny and honest Nia Vardalos writes about her struggles with infertility, the overwhelming sense of failure while going through IVF and ultimately her decision to adopt through foster care. Nia and her husband adopt a 3 year old litt

Title:   Overcome: Burned, Blinded, and Blessed by Carmen Blandin Tarleton Publisher: RTC Publishing 294 Pages Genre: Autobiography I received this book through netgalley.com as an advanced readers copy. It was released February 20, 2013 Synopsis:  On June 10, 2007, Carmen Blandin Tarleton’s estranged husband broke into her rural Vermont home, beat her with a baseball bat, and doused her with industrial-strength lye. Doctors called it “THE MOST HORRIFIC INJURY A HUMAN BEING COULD SUFFER.” Tarleton spent the next three and a half months in a medically induced coma, and when she awoke, it was to an unimaginable reality: she was blind and permanently disfigured, with burns covering more than eighty percent of her body. Her recovery would include months of painful rehab, dozens of surgeries, and total dependence on family, friends, and strangers for physical and financial care. With so much taken away, no one could have anticipated what Tarleton would gain from her experience: