Show Us Your Books

 

Hi Friends!  Thought I would join in on the fun today and link up with Steph and Jana HERE 

 

Sharing some recent reads and summaries and then my thoughts...I always love hearing your thoughts and gathering up your recommendations so wanted to share a few with you too!

 

 

I Heart My Little A-Holes by Karen Alpert

 

 From the author herself:

"There are a Lot of Reasons I Wrote This Book, I Mean, Besides Money

When I had my daughter I remember looking down at my newborn and thinking there’s a reason God made babies ridiculously cute. So we wouldn’t give them away. Or eat them. Because having a kid is like the hardest thing on earth. I mean yeah it’s super rewarding and you can’t help but loving them to pieces, but no one ever tells you before you have kids just how difficult it’s going to be.

And you’d never know it from looking at Facebook or Pinterest. You’d think that having kids is all hunky dory and awesome and smiley, like unicorns flying over rainbows. Wait, unicorns don’t fly. Fine, unicorns with wings. But I digress.

So this is why I wrote this book. To let parents everywhere know that they are not alone. That parenting is hard for everyone. Being preggers, breastfeeding, tantrums, explosive blowout diapers, bedtimes, naptimes, scraping projectile vomit off the ceiling, scraping projectile poop off the wall, the terrible twos, the terrible threes, the terrible fours, etc etc etc.

Okay, pardon me while I get all serious for a moment here. Picture a mom who just had a baby for the first time. Her hormones are bouncing off the walls like a pinball machine that’s being played by a kid who just chugged four Red Bulls, her nipples feel like they’re being eaten by fire ants, and her new baby hasn’t let her sleep more than two straight hours in the past three weeks. This little tiny being is constantly with her, and yet she’s never felt so alone. This is the reason I wrote this book.

Picture a mom standing in the middle of a supermarket where her kid is literally going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because she won’t buy them, and everyone in the store is staring at her like she is the worst parent on earth. This is the reason I wrote this book.

Picture a mom looking at the clock figuring out that she has exactly 84 minutes until her husband comes home from work. Or a dad knowing he has exactly 176 days until his wife comes home from Afghanistan. Or a mom doing it all alone day after day after day because she’s single. This is the reason I wrote this book.

Kids are awesome. We love them to death and once we have them we can’t imagine life without them. But they’re also little a-holes who torture us on a daily basis and make us feel like we’re doing it all wrong. This is the reason I wrote this book. To make people laugh and feel a little less alone in the impossible, awesome, horrendous, amazing, challenging, exciting, disgusting, unbelievable job of being a parent."

 

It was a quick and funny read...more geared towards moms of infants and toddlers but brought back some funny memories for sure!

 

 

Calling Mrs. Christmas by Carole Matthews

 

 
When Cassie Smith loses her job, she wonders how she’ll find her way back into the world of work. Then she has a brilliant idea! Drawing on her love of Christmas, she begins to charge for doing small seasonal jobs for busy people: wrapping presents; writing cards; tree-decorating. She’s soon in huge demand and Cassie’s business, Calling Mrs Christmas, is born.

Divorced millionaire, Carter Randall wants to make Christmas special for his children and enlists Cassie’s help. Soon his increasingly lavish requests start taking up all her time and she’s relieved that she can lean on her loving partner Jim to help her to deal with the rest of her clients.

Then Carter asks Cassie to join his family on a trip to Lapland and, suddenly, Cassie finds herself facing a heart-breaking choice that could change her entire life.

Join Cassie as she takes you on a romantic and emotional festive ride in Calling Mrs Christmas.

 

This was such a festive, fun and quick read...really got me in the spirit and inspired me to get all of my wrapping done- ha!

 

 The Restaurant- Book 1 of a 3 Part Series called The Nantucket Restaurant Series by Pamela Kelley

 

 I can thank my blogging friend Sarah for recommending this one.  WHY I GRABBED IT?  One of the sisters owns her own search firm- so my industry speaks to me and it did not let me down!!

Three sisters. An inherited Nantucket restaurant. One year before they can sell.

Mandy, Emma and Jill are as close as three sisters who live hundreds of miles apart can be. They grew up together on Nantucket, but Mandy is the only one that stayed.

Jill lives a glamorous life in Manhattan as a co-owner of a successful executive search firm. Never married, she is in her mid-thirties and lives in a stunning, corner condo with breathtaking views of the city and Hudson river. Everyone thinks there's something going on with her partner, Nick, because as a workaholic, she spends more time with him than anyone else. But there's never been anything but friendship between them and Nick loves being a bachelor in NYC.

Emma lives in Arizona and is an elementary school teacher and an aspiring photographer. She met her college professor husband, Peter, in grad school and they've been married for over fifteen years. In recent years, she's noticed that Peter has grown distant. But when he shares a surprising secret, she doesn't see it coming and her world is turned upside down.

Mandy followed her high school boyfriend, Cory to  Boston College, and right after graduation, they married and settled in Dover, just outside of Boston. Cory joined a successful hedge fund, while Mandy took a job at a downtown financial services firm as an administrative assistant. She quit a year later, when Blake, the first baby came. Two years later, when Brooke was born, Cory left to open a competing Hedge Fund and they moved home to Nantucket.  Now that the children are older,  Mandy has more free time and is eager to do more than just volunteer with local charity events. But Cory doesn't want her to work. He thinks it doesn't reflect well on him and appearances are everything to Cory. Though when Mandy finds a second cell phone in his gym bag, she begins to question what is really going on.

When their beloved grandmother, Ethel Ferguson passes peacefully in her sleep a week before her ninety-ninth birthday she leaves them quite a surprise. In addition to her Nantucket home, they learned that she was the silent owner of Mimi’s Place, one of Nantucket’s most popular year-round restaurants.  

There was of course, a catch--she left the restaurant equally to Mandy, Emma, and Jill--and also to Paul, the chef for the past fifteen years. 

And before they could sell, all three girls needed to work at the restaurant for a period of one year--or else the entire restaurant would go to Paul.

The same Paul that broke Emma's heart many years ago.

 

Friends?  I FLEW THROUGH THIS ONE....I LOVED IT...the backdrop of Nantucket is delicious and I loved getting to know the characters and especially loved Jill's story line being in my industry.  I am already onto Book 2 in the series- see the next synopsis!

 

 Christmas At The Restaurant- Book 2 of the 3 Part Series called the Nantucket Restaurant Series by Pamela Kelley

Nantucket's famous Christmas Stroll is always the first week of December and this year sisters Mandy and Emma and Paul, the executive chef want to do something extra special for Mimi's Place, the restaurant that they co-own. 

 It will be Emma and Paul's first Christmas together as a couple and Mandy's first holiday as a newly single and divorced mother of two. Although Mandy does have a promising new relationship, though she wants to take things very slow. 

Their sister Jill and her new husband, Billy, are planning to spend the whole month of December on Nantucket too, juggling working remotely for the executive search firm they own together in Manhattan and relaxing and spending time with family and helping out at the restaurant too. 

And Gina, their awesome bartender is spending her first winter on Nantucket and it's a bit of an adjustment--winters on Nantucket are so much quieter than the city life she was used to. She's even more confused when someone she had a major crush on back in the city moves to Nantucket. Suddenly her boring winter is starting to look a lot more interesting.

I just started this one friends..left off exactly where Book 1 ended and know I will fly through this one too!  So excited :)

What are you reading?