April Bookmark Giveaway

For the month of April, I'm doing something different: A bookmark Giveaway. It's a book clip. It measures 2" by 4" total and I stitched it. :) The pattern, floss, and clip itself all came from a kit from Crafter's Pride.

I simply had no books that I could giveaway on here this month and I stole this idea from my friend, Tanzanite. See her blog: http://shelfandstuff.blogspot.com/ where she always has a bookmark giveaway going on. Please enter hers. Tanzanite gets full credit for this idea and for turning me on to cross stitching in the first place. She is also more talented than me and makes her own patterns!

So, leave a comment anytime the month of April for a chance to win this bookmark clip. The winner will be chosen from Jazzy's food bowl at the end of the month, on the last day, at her and my convenience. Be sure to provide a way of contacting you.

The de Lacy Inheritance by Elizabeth Ashworth

This is a decent YA historical novel. It's a bit of an overdone tale.. girl in medieval England is shut up in a castle after she attempts to run away to avoid be married off to an old man with a wart. However, there is a unique twist to this as the heroine's brother is a leper and a hermit who tries to save her from her unhappy fate.



I liked the heroine enough. Though she had her damsel in distress moments, she also had moments when she donned boy's clothes and forged rivers on her trusty steed. I grew tired of her brother's parts though and they are much more plentiful than Johanna's. So much of the book was Richard traveling, Richard being a leper (slightly interesting, this), Richard praying, Richard dousing himself in holy wanter, Richard blabbering about his sins and he new dedication to the lord, Richard remembering Leila.. It should really be the Holy Hermit on the cover, not that lovely girl. 


I also got tired of the religious stuff. I don't think this is a "Christian" novel, but it is way too heavy on the prayer and lord talk.


Nevertheless, it is aimed at the young crowd and I have kept that in mind as I rate and review it. It's not a bad story.. Richard tries to ensure Johanna's and her brothers' inheritance as she experiences first love, forbidden love, and all that medieval stuff.  Just a bit too predictable for me.


Three stars. I received this from the publisher.

Trencarrow Secret by Anita Davison

Trencarrow Secret is a Victorian novel about family relationships, growing up, and marriage. Isabel is a young woman vacationing with her family for the summer. She discovers her father in a questionable situation with her ailing mother's nurse. This brings up numerous questions for Isabel. She discovers her parents had a marriage on convenience. Is she willing to marry Jared (which is expected of her) for the same reason or does she wish to find love? Should she find love, will she have the courage to pursue it? And can she forgive her father for betraying her mother?

The story rarely leaves the summer household, but rather than feeling confined, I was intrigued by the family and their scandals, personalities, and witty remarks at the dinner table. Jared is a pompous arse and has something up his sleeve. Laura is infatuated with a young man and means to have him by any means necessary. Aunt Margot is just Aunt Margot and she made me laugh. Amelia is battling her love for a married man. Ashton is feeling guilty about Amelia. Evaline is frothing at the mouth for Henry who really desires Isabel. And Isabel.. is too blind to see it. There is much miscommunication and minunderstandings fly left and right.

Very slowly, however, Isabel grows up. She begins to come to the conclusion, "marriage isn't about weddings and announcements in the papers." The question is: what is she going to do about it? Jared thinks they are to wed and she thinks Henry wants Evaline. Can all the misunderstandings be corrected before she makes a dour mistake?

Favorite quote: When Henry is speaking to Isabel about her fears (she is terrified of both water and a maze) he says, "You aren't the only one who has demons to fight. The mistake we often make is to believe we have to battle them alone."

Great book and I was thoroughly entertained. When I first read it, it had not been through final edits and I complained that the heroine was not feisty enough. However, I later received some additional scenes that had me thinking, "I see a timid girl, but I also see the woman she will grow to be." The changes made, the glimpse into the woman Isabel will become, and the surprise ending make me give this a five.

Books: Treats For Humans

Look what I made this weekend! I have been wanting a pug bookmark for some time.. well I searched everywhere and I found a cute puppy bookmark on Etsy.com. I asked the designer if they could turn the puppy into a pug and she did! Kitty City Creations provided me a pattern for download and I made a few changes I had Pudgy Pug right in front of me and I literally held bits of floss up to her fur and did some color adjusting. I also changed the text. The pattern said "Is it getting good?" That's cute, but Pudgy wanted it to say something about treats... her favorite thing in the world.

And what does Pudgy say about it? She says that now that I've completed my weekend project on the fake pug, I need to pay attention to the real pug. She has also demanded approximately five treats extra in the course of the day to pay her for all the time she spent modeling and posing for me.

What a demanding doggy!!

Wings by Karl Friedrich

What a novel! One of the best WASP (Women Air Service Pilots) books I have read to date. For that do not know, WASP was created during WWII and was an organization of women pilots that trained at Avenger Field and ferried badly needed aircraft around the United States.

Fifinella, the WASP mascot

This novel contains a colorful cast of characters. The heroine is Sally. She's both tough and frightened. She's a terrific pilot, but she carries some baggage: a dead boyfriend and an abusive father. Thus, she has some confidence issues.

She meets up with other WASP trainees at Avenger, Twila, Geri, and Dixie. Each one of these women has things you like and don't like about her. Twila is strange, but has some good philosophies. Geri is a spoiled rich girl, but she can fly. Dixie.... oh my. This quote is self explanatory:

"I've got balls. They didn't come with this package" -she indicated her body- "but after watchin' my daddy float in a sea of prosperity while everybody around him drowned, I decided I'd better grow me a pair. And I did. They're the first thing I strap on every mornin' before I got outside to meet the world, and the last thing I unstrap at night before I slip into my frilly little pajamas. I've got balls!"

Dixie almost steals the show at times.

PT-19, What the girls first fly at Avenger

The men are colorful as well. There's Skinner, my personal favorite. He's an instructor with a hillarious way of stating things.

"That air was so still yesterday morning, I could have heard an ant fart."

"You don't know your ass from a whole in the ground!"

"But talk about this, and I'll stick my foot so far up your butt you'll feel my toes around your tonsils."

There's Beau who is Sally's love interest. He's partly a coward who wants to avoid the draft, a lousy pilot, but in the end, he has some good traits as well. A nice parting shot from him, "You try so hard at succeeding at life that you fail at living."

And we cannot forget Mr. Waterman. He's def the villian of this tale. For some reason, he not only wants to disband the WASP, but he is out to get Sally. He wants her license revoked and her life ruined and he has the power to do it.

I got to know all of the characters and I felt as though I was in the PT-19s with them. I felt as though I was the one shut up in a manure filled barn while my aeroplane got hailed on and stuck in mud. I cried with the WASP when they received word that their organization was no more. And I laughed. I laughed so much, my husband had to ask me why.

My favorite moment is when Sally is being rebuked by a Colonel who does not think women belong in the Army and is saying as much. He basically implies women belong at home having babies somewhat like the Nazi's women and Sally says, "If you're suggesting, Colonel, that I could better serve my country by whoring, let me assure you that airplanes are the only things I ride."

WHOOO HOOO! YOU GO, GIRL!

I highly recommend this one and readers, you won't regret flying with these gals.

An onion eyed moment, "I wouldn't trade a moment for anything. To be part of the war, and to be around those wonderful planes. To fly 'em. And the adventure . . . There'll never be another time like it. We were so lucky. So lucky. Of all the women in America, only a little more than a thousand of us got to be a WASP. My God, but we did fly the wings off those airplanes. We did it as well as any man!"

Five stars. I got this ARC from the publisher, thus some quotes may not be exact. A week from today, I will be posting an interview with Karl Friedrich.

Once, Two Islands by Dawn Garisch

This has been an intriguing look at secluded island life.. Ergo Island is a fictional island in the South Atlantic sea. It has a very small population, one doctor, a mayor, a police officer, and no school past junior high. It's also tore between old traditions of the ancestors (witchcraft) and modern day technology (a doctor from the mainland.)

No one is more tore than Gulai. Her mother died just four days after birthing her and she was nursed by the local "witch" against her father's wishes.. Her father is the doctor I mentioned above.. Gulai is forced to adhere to her father's way of thinking, but something keeps drawing her back to the witch's cottage (abandoned) and the island a ways away that the witch was exiled too. Then the witch's son comes to live on Ergo....

All the while, Gulai battles with inner guilt as she blames herself for her mother's death. "The world without her would have been a better place. Without her, her mother would have lived and her father would've been happy."

There's a story behind the "witch's" exile and after her exile, things start going wrong on the island (from deaths to politics to earthquakes) and Gulai grows up in the middle of it. She's a very likable character as she has normal growing pains (EXCEPT for her dad giving her a pelvic exam... not normal!) and puppy love in an abnormal place, a place where it's considered acceptable to marry at seventeen and no one frowns on Gulai's dad making her forgo school on the mainland to stay home and take care of him.

The story unfolds at a good pace, slowly revealing shocking secrets, leading to a surprising ending.. I am not going to reveal any more.

Laugh out loud moment: "The earthquake resulted in little structural damage, except to the mayor's back fender when it came suddenly to rest against a boulder, and to a wall of Jojo's outhouse, which collapsed while he was busy in it. Thus is was that history would remember this as the day the mayor drove over himself, and that Jojo, horribly exposed and the survivor of a near-miss, contracted sudden performance anxiety and thereby constipation; he too ended up at the hospital in need of help."

This island is based on a real island, Tristan da Cunha. 

With a population of only 263, it's said to the most uninhabited place on Earth. They did not get television until 2001. The people that reside there are said to all be descended from 15 original people. They have one school teaching children ages five to sixteen. They depend on fishing and there is no airplane access. One must arrive and depart strictly be sea. To view more about this place, check out this website: http://www.tristandc.com/.


The book had a rough start. I almost discarded it in disgust especially when the crazy redhead started suckling the witch's breasts... WTH? However, I stuck with it, got adjusted to the slightly different writing style and in the end, enjoyed the story as I was sucked into the intrigue of island life and its people's unique stories.


Four stars. I got this from the publisher.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

This was an amazing book. I was still reeling long after I turned the last page. In 1941, while Germany was rounding up Jews and throwing them into concentration camps, Russia, led by Stalin, was doing the same to people of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Entire families were gathered in the dead of night, thrown into cattle cars, and carted for days to other areas and placed in work camps. Why? Simply because they did not agree with Stalin.

This is narrated by Lina, who is fifteen in the beginning. She, her mother, and her younger brother are pulled from their home and lugged by cattle car to a work camp. They deal with starvation, scurvy, beatings, and being hauled out of their huts in the middle of the night at gunpoint. Lina's mother must choose between spying for the Russians or watching her children starve. Lina battles with hatred for her captors and the teachings of forgiveness from her parents. All three wonder and worry constantly about their father and husband. Where is he?

From this camp, they are once again hauled away.. to Trofimovsk, the very top of the arctic circle where they deal with lice, scurvy, starvation, and trying to survive the cold, dark winter.

Through all of this misery, Lina experiences first love and tells their story in drawings that she hopes will reach her papa.

The entire novel is well told. There are flashbacks into Lina's past here and there that graudally reveal why she is in the camp.. I found this very well done. I don't normally like flashbacks, but this book does it "just so," not too much, not too little and only what you need to do.

This is actually made my eyes moist so five stars. Beautifully done and educating. I had no idea of this tragedy in history until now. Here is a part of Lina's narrative that just resonated with me, "The NKVD's hostilities strengthened my defiance. Why would I give in to people who spit in my face and tormented me each and every day? What would I have left if I gave them my self-respect?"

I received this ARC from the publisher via Shelf Awareness.