Tune in Tuesday (35) - You're the Only One By Maria Mena

This meme is hosted by Ginger at GReads and music. Each week you can post an old or new song so that it gains more interest! So head on over and link up.

For this week I chose something I was just listening to on the radio the other day:  You're the Only One by Maria Mena. I love this song, it' always makes me smile, it's one of my feel good songs so I wanted to share it.

So, what song plays for you?

Welcome Caller, This is Chloe Book Tour - Author's Interview

Hello everyone! Time to kick off the Welcome Caller, This is Chloe Book Tour, and to do so, I'm very happy to welcome author Shelley Coriell to the blog today!

Without further ado, here's the interview:

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To start with, why don't you tell us a little about yourself? I love books. I write books. I talk to my dog and passionately believe in the power of kindness.

Did you always know you wanted to write YA books? Nope. I started out writing dark, edgy adult romantic thrillers with twisted serial killers, but I got to a point where I needed more light and laughter in my life. Enter Chloe and the quirky gang at KDRS Radio. 

Other than writing books, I heard you are a journalist. What was the craziest thing that happened to you while being a journalist?  When I was the editor of a food magazine, I visited a local baker who made a life-size 3-D cake of Madonna. The crazy thing…the cake looked exactly like the pop star…bustier and all.

  

Did any of your experiences influenced you/made it to Welcome Caller, This is Chloe? The basic premise of Chloe’s best friend starting rumors and getting the whole school to ostracize her came right out of my senior year of high school. Happened to a friend of mine who ended up leaving her high school and enrolling in mine. Still gives me the shivers.

  

Could you tell us about Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe, in your own words? GLEE in a high school radio station. Chloe has this big, booming personality, and she’s surrounded by a quirky bunch of radio staff misfits who become like family to her.

Now if you wouldn't mind answering some quick questions…

What's your...

Favorite movie? Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Witty dialogue. New York swank. Unexpected love. The Cat.

Favorite food? Blackberry cobbler

Favorite animal? My rescue weimaraner, Rylee, but I collect frogs. Not real ones.

Book crush? Etienne St. Clair from Anna and the French Kiss. Dreamy sigh.

Favorite book you read last year? The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. Exquisite.

Thanks for having me on your blog, Alex. May your world be filled with good books and great people!

Thanks For visiting!

To learn more about Chloe’s high school radio world and win a $50 electronic/radio store gift certificate or one of ten CHLOE swag packs, go to Shelley Coriell’s website, www.shelleycoriell.com/blog/. Good luck to all!

For further stops in this Blog Tour, please visit The Teen {Book} Scene

At the Movies: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The Pirate Captain might not be the best known pirate of the seven seas, but he has a crew that loves him, Ham Night and Polly, his beloved parrot - even if she's a little fat for a parrot. 

But he also wants to gain the respect of his peers, so he decides to enter the Pirate of the Year Award. Only that, while he does have an spectacular beard and rousing pirate songs, he isn't really all that scary nor does he has the biggest bounty.

And, after being humiliated by other three pirates - all front runners for the Pirate of the Year title -  Pirate Captain decides he's not going down without a fight, and sets out to bet enough bounty to show them he's a great pirate.

Eventually, this quest leads him to meeting Charles Darwin and eventually even tangling with Queen Victoria in a series of strange adventures. 

I found The Pirates! A Band of Misfits to be a cute movie in stop-motion (which I LOVE) by the same people who did Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, I found it to be very clean and vibrant in colors and texture, which can be hard to accomplish with stop-motion, but I found this movie to be technically brilliant. 

I loved the cast of mistfits - the Pirate with a Scarf, the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, etc - and Polly the parrot/dodo. And I loved the villain of the story - Queen Victoria. I found the inclusion of Darwin and his butler monkey Bobo to be a little strange sometimes, but Bobo had some of the best 'lines' and laughs. 

Now, if I have a problem with the story is that it felt a bit sluggish at times, and I thought it was a tad long for a kid's movie. though the kids at the theater where I saw it seemed to like it a lot - and they got pretty involved with the fate of the characters - so maybe it was just me.

Over all, I thought it was a fun movie and I give it a B.

Book Review: Artemis the Loyal by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

At First Sight: Artemis has always been extremely close to her twin brother Apollo, only that lately they have been a bit at odds.

And now, Mount Olympus Academy is all a-buzz because of the Olympic Games, and Artemis would be excited too if not for the fact that, as a girl, she's not allowed to participate as the games are boy's only, which is simply not fair.

But Artemis is not one to suffer injustice quietly, so she and her friends Athena, Persephone and Aphrodite come up with a plan to right this wrong.

Second Glance: Artemis the Loyal is a great addition to the Goddess Girls series (it's the 7th book) but, as always, it can be read on it's own just as well.

Artemis isn't my favorite Goddess Girl, but I'm always surprised by how much I enjoy her books. I loved seeing more of her relationship with her brother in this book, seeing more of their bond.

And I loved the solution she came up with about the Olympic Games. I thought it was a perfectly lovely and fair solution - I swear, for a moment I was afraid I was gonna hate this aspect of the book on the same grounds I loathe Frankie Landau-Banks, but I should have know Joan and Suzanne are two authors I could trust because Artemis surprised me and I LOVED her plan. It was truly fair.

If I have a minor complaint is that the other goddesses really took a backseat in this story, and I thought they were less pressent than in other books of the series.

Bottom Line: Artemis the Loyal is a lovely book that made me grow to like Artemis more than I already did. I loved the message and the treatment of it. This is such a funny, sweet book.

Favorite Quote: "Well, at least you fought for what you believe in," Actaeon told her. "You tried to change things. I admire you for that."

"Really? Thanks," said Artemis, He was such a sweet boy. And cute. But no in a flashy way like Orion, her first crush, Sweet was way better than flashy, she decided"

1/2

Love,

Book Review: A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant

At First Sight: Newly widowed Martha Russell is someone who takes duty very seriously and, upon learning that her brother-in-law -who is to inherit her current house - has a history of taking advantage of the female staff, she decides it's her duty to keep them safe. Best way to do it? Get pregnant fast enough that she can pass the baby as her husband's, and that way she can retain control of the propriety. Her only problem now is finding someone to get her pregnant.

That leads her to Theo Mirkwood. Theo was sent to the countryside by his father, hoping a stint managing one of their smaller states will help him mature some. He didn't expect to be approached by a respectable widow with a shocking proposition: she'll pay him to have sex with her every day for a month, hoping he'll get her pregnant. 

Theo knows he shouldn't agree, since that's the kind of behavior that will keep him stuck in the countryside - as he's only allowed to return to his life in London when his father and the estate manager feel like he has matured - but he's bored and figures he's not likely to find a better offer. 

So, he agrees, engaging in an affair that will eventually change the way he sees the world. 

Second Glance: I had heard lots of great things about A Lady Awakened and then I read Daisy@Between the Pages's review, which warned me not to go in with too high expectations.

I found Theo to be a great character, for me he's one of the things that work really well in the story. He's on the youngish side for a romance hero - only 26 - and he behaves like I expect a young man of means and with no responsibilities to behave, someone who has rarely had to thought of others. But he's not a bad guy, in fact, his heart is in the right place, he just doesn't know what to do to help others, and he is a bit immature. 

I even like the whole agricultural/dairy thing, and how Theo starts to take interest in all that stuff and the lives of the people who live in his estate. 

But Martha... she sucked big time, I don't even dare call her heroine. She's determined to put duty above everything else, always. Martha sees it as her duty to protect the female servants of her estate, but finds no pleasure in, well, anything. She doesn't even want Theo to bother making sex fun between them, she just wants him to get down to business and be uncomfortable while it's happening (honestly). 

The thing is, it never makes sense why she is the way she is, why she's so emotionally unavailable. She was young and her family wasn't pressuring her to marry, but not even with a full London season under her belt, she decides to marry an old man, Mr. Russell, but why?

It's like Martha tries to make herself into a martyr but it's never explained why, so she never made sense to me and that made it impossible for me to like her. I even felt bad for Theo for being saddled with her. 

And the ending? I found it very, meh. 

Bottom Line: I'm sad to say that A Lady Awakened suffers from Crappy Heroine Syndrom. The writing is nice and I really liked the hero and over all plot, but Martha kind of knocked two and a half stars all on her own. 

1/2

PS-  Thanks to Jane from Dear Author, 'cause I won this book in a giveaway she and Sarah from Smart  Bitches Trashy Books did late last December.