ReadingGrrls Paper Safari

  Publication Date:  January 29, 2013 Format:  paperback Genre:   Womens Fiction  Publisher:  Grand Central Publishing Length:  480  pages Buy:    Paperback  |  Audiobook  Synopsis Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of  Afterlife , has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves—lines from her favorite author...

Release Date: March 7, 2017 Publisher: Crown Publishing Format : Kindle Pages: 288 pages Genre: Mystery Buy: kindle | Hardcover  Synopsis:  After her mother's suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran…fast and far away. Eleven years later, Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run too? Or something worse? Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to help search, and to ease her guilt at having left Allegra behind. Her homecoming may mean a second chance with the boyfriend whose heart she broke that long ago summer. But it also means facing the devastating secret that made her flee, one she may not b...

Release Date: March 11, 2016 Publisher: Beverly Gandara Format: Kindle Pages: 304 pages Genre: Fiction Buy: Kindle | Paperback Synopsis:  A naïve teen sent out of Cuba to retrieve smuggled family jewels on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion comes of age in New York City at the height of the sexual revolution and earns his political and economic freedom. By a twist of fate, he begins to lose his liberty when his oppressive parents arrive and refuse to assimilate into American Society. Take the journey and discover why success isn’t always measured by what one becomes, but often by what one overcomes. Review:  The cover of this book threw me off and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it but from page 1 I was hooked.  I felt like I was reading a biography not fiction.  I was completely sucked into Julian's life.  How life was in Cuba before Castro and what happened to it and the people afterwards.  The history in this book and the exami...

Release Date: March 22, 2016 Publisher: Ecco Format: Paperback Pages: 368 pages Genre: Fiction Buy: Paperback | Kindle |  Synopsis:  Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems....

Title:   Sophia's Broken Crayons: A Story of Surrogacy from a Young Child's Perspective by Crystal Falk Publisher: Amazon's digital Services Format: E-book Genre: Surrogacy, Children Synopsis:  Why is the sky blue? Why do dogs bark? When will I be tall? Where do babies come from? Kids ask a lot of questions. Some of them are easier to answer than others. Explaining why someone would choose to become a surrogate or why a family would choose a surrogate to help grow their family are even harder questions to answer. Sophia’s Broken Crayons can help you answer those questions.  (50)Review:  A simplistic story to explain surrogacy to a young child.  The book is geared toward ages 2-6 and would be great to help children of surrogates understand why the baby isn’t staying with them and also to help the child that is born through surrogacy understand the process.  It doesn’t get into great detail it just talks about how one family shared their tummy t...

Title: The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik Publisher : Grand Central Publishing 336 pages Genre: Non-Fiction - family, relationships This book is set to be released in January 2011.  I received an advanced electronic copy from the publisher through netgalley.com   Synopsis : One day when Jasmin Darznik is helping her mother pack up to move, a photograph falls from a stack of old letters. The girl in it is her mother. She is wearing a wedding veil, and at her side stands a man whom Jasmin has never seen before. At first, Jasmin’s mother, Lili, refuses to share any information. Months later, Jasmin receives the first of ten cassette tapes revealing a wrenching hidden story of her family’s true origins in Iran : her mother’s troubled history of abuse and neglect, and a daughter she was forced to abandon in order to escape that life. The final tape reveals that her sister, Sara, is still living in Iran .  Review: I got a bit side tr...