July EstellaGram :: Week Five

And! Time for the last three days for July. I had fun doing this for a whole month. :)

I decided to continue into August and then....I went on vacation for a week. So I'm a little behind on my August pictures. But hopefully I can get caught up this week! We shall see. Stay tuned! :)

On to week five:

Day 29 - Zero

{I don't know what the statistical probability of love at first sight would actually be. But I imagine it's a lot closer to zero than to 100. I could be wrong, who knows?}

Day 30 - Yearn

{The Singing Boones by Dale White. Ellen yearns to grow up and fall in love in this story. It's old, but a fun book about a family joining a wagon train heading west to the California Gold Rush. I definitely recommend reading it if you ever get a chance!}

Day 31 - Cozy

{Cozy and comfort kind of go hand in hand, right? Taking place in the hills of Virginia, this series takes me back home again. The accents, the food, the characters, it's just a wonderful series! I wish more people knew about them.}

July EstellaGram :: Week Four

I'M BACK!!!! :D

I know. You're just thrilled to bits, right? ;) I had a wonderful trip. (Might write a small post later, with a couple pictures to tell you a bit about it. We'll see.) It was so good to see my family and get the chance to catch up with some old friends. There's just nothing like going back to the place where you grew up. Lots of memories there! :) Plus I got a couple books read, so hopefully a review or two will be showing up this week. Back to the old routine again and real life! *sigh* Do I hafta?! ;P

Anyway, I need to get caught up on my July EstellaGram posts. So here's week four:

Day 22 - Vintage

{Vintage things don't want to be forgotten. That's my theory anyway. And this is another fabulous series by Kristen Heitzmann!}

Day 23 - Sparkles

{Haven't read this one yet, but I've heard wonderful things about it!}

Day 24 - Heavy

{So yeah. This one is kind of the opposite. Go with it, okay?}

Day 25 - Loud

{When things get loud, this is what you should do.}

Day 26 - Tome

{Tome - a volume forming a part of a larger work. This is my favorite book of this series. But the entire series is awesome! You should read it. Period.}

Day 27 - Coffee

{This series is so cute! I promise that you'll laugh a lot. I did, anyway.}

Day 28 - Refreshing

{It was so refreshing to return to Galveston and enter Bella Neeley's life again! Cannot wait to read book two and my copy should hopefully be showing up soon! Yay!!!}

 

Leaving On a Jet Plane...

Hello my lovelies!

As you've no doubt surmised, I am off on a jet plane today. Literally! :D I'm on my way to visit my family and that requires spending the day in airports and airplanes. Doesn't that sound like fun?

In all honesty, I do enjoy flying. I've done it often enough that it's part of the anticipation of a trip anymore. I love to people watch and listen to conversations and imagine where all those people started their trips and where they are traveling to. Airports are fascinating! The amount of people visiting one in a single day has to be a ginormous number. Here's a great description of an airport:

It's not just the looming threat of the ride ahead-being stuffed into seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube-but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm. 

~ Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Doesn't that just make you want to go on a trip yourself?! That quote never fails to make me smile. While it certainly has a ring of truth, it doesn't make airplanes and airports sound all that wonderful, does it? Regardless, I am definitely looking forward to my adventure! (All trips are mini adventures in my mind. You might have a plan, but you really don't know what may happen. And by the end, once you're home again, you might just decide that 'adventure' perfectly describes your experience. :)

Anyhoo, I do have a point here........what was it again?

OH! Right! So. I'm not going to be able to do any posting in this cozy little spot for the next week. Because my parents do not have internet. *gasp* I know, right?! ;) Therefore, the only thing I will have is my phone and while I'm very fond of it, it does not make for great blog posting options. *sadface*

But! Butbutbut!!! I will be back soon (Lord willing and the creek don't rise) with more reviews and lots of fun! Hopefully. Those reviews are all dependent on me getting some reading done while I'm gone, so let's cross our fingers for that one! (Bleeding Heart here I come.) Point being, don't go anywhere. I Will Be Back!

Meanwhile, I hope to stay connected through twitter and I'm going to try to still read up on the posts of all my awesome bookish friends. (They know who they are. At least they should! ;) Suppose we'll see how that goes. Or I'm always available through email! I love getting email. So if you're bored one day, send me a quick note. I'd love it. :)

Alright, enough already! If you've read this far, thank you! I figure most of you have gotten tired of my ridiculous ravings and exited long before this paragraph. Sorry for all the parentheses and exclamation points. But I can't help it! This is what happens when I get excited for trips! ;)

Have a lovely week! I'll see y'all here once I'm home again and coherent. And probably talking with a thick southern accent. (I pick it up again every single time I go home. ;)

Songstone Blog Tour and Review {Plus Giveaway}

Goodreads :: Amazon :: Barnes and Noble
Kobo :: Smashwords

Kita can meld song into stone. In a world with no written word, storytelling—the ability to meld (or magically impress) song into stone—is greatly honored. The village honors her master as their medicine man, but Kita knows he's secretly a sorcerer who practices black magic using drops of her blood. She fears he’ll use her beautiful gift for a killing spell, so she conceals it from him. Each day, his magic tightens around her neck like a rope. His spells blind the villagers, so they can’t see him for what he really is.

Not that anyone would want to help her. She was found in the forest as a baby and would have died if a village girl hadn't brought her home. But the villagers saw Kita's unusual coloring and decided she belonged to the mysterious tribe who lives in the forests of the volcano, a people feared for their mystical powers. So they fear her too. Now seventeen, she can barely admit her deepest longing: to know who she really is and where she belongs.

Then Pono, a young journeyman, arrives from the other side of the island. He's come to fulfill a pact between their villages: to escort a storyteller back to his village—a storyteller who'll be chosen at the great assembly. Finally, in Pono, Kita sees her one slim chance at freedom and she'll risk her life to take it.

A dark, twisty tale of sorcery, tummy-tingling romance, and adventure, inspired by the folklore of New Zealand's Māori people.

Dark and twisty is a good description of this story! I wasn't sure what to expect upon starting it. Really, I went in pretty blindly as to what it would even be about. This is not a bad thing! It just means that I was quite surprised where the story ended up taking me. :) Ms. Goldfinch weaves you into her world so subtly that you're hooked in before you know it! But I should warn you that it's not a light and sweet journey at all. Instead, it's gritty and hard and painful. This world doesn't pull any punches. On anybody.

Kita has been ostracized all her life, thus she's quite cynical and bitter in the beginning. Quite frankly, I had a hard time even liking her for the bigger portion of the book. She tends to anticipate that everyone will hate her automatically, so she tries to push them away first. Yet she's a contradiction, to the point that she doesn't even understand herself. And that's where I began to like her! She wanted so badly to have friends and family, yet she tried to deny that desire. I had sympathy for her frustration and wanted her to realize she was worthy of all of that. Thus, I was compelled to make sure she was going to get her happy ending because I really wanted her to have one! That's when I knew that Ms. Goldfinch had done her job well. She had me caring for this character and her journey, when I hadn't thought I ever would. A sign of a great writer! :)

There is romance here, but it's very quiet and mostly in the background for much of the book. The realities of this mysterious world make it so any happy endings are difficult and hard-won. And I have to admit that I couldn't always figure out why Pono liked her so well. She certainly wasn't much good at giving him any encouragement. That's not to say there weren't a few sweet moments between Pono and Kita however! ;) And I was rooting for them by the end.

Ms. Goldfinch's writing is very unique. It took me several chapters to adjust to her descriptions of this world around Kita. All the comparisons bugged me a bit in the first chapter, but as I got more into the story, it smoothed out and I no longer even noticed it. So basically, what happened with this book is I started it thinking it was too dark for me and I wasn't really going to like it. But somewhere along the way I was swept up in spite of myself! And by the time I finished the last page, I was in awe of the journey Ms. Goldfinch had laid out behind me. It really has the feel of a legend that's been passed down through generations. Kita's story is challenging and hard, yet it has an inner beauty that can only be experienced by reading it yourself. :)

The bird flew down again and hovered before me, its wings fluttering wildly. I grabbed a handful of pebbles and flung them at it. The hiri darted over my head. Singing out another trill, it flew up through the leaves and disappeared.
I gingerly felt the hot, aching spot on my forehead. When I drew my hand away, I saw a single drop of bright red blood glistening on my thumb. Ungrateful little bird. Shaking my head, I rinsed my burning hands in the stream and washed my face. When I felt my forehead again, I found nothing. It was as if the bird had never touched me.
How strange.

About The Author

Lena lives in a scenic small town in Massachusetts with her husband, two kids, and a very spoiled Black Lab. She writes fiction for young adults, mostly light fantasy with a healthy dose of "sigh-worthy" romance.

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Giveaway

We’re doing a sweet summer giveaway in conjunction with the blog tour! The giveaway is open internationally, and one winner (randomly drawn) will receive:

• A signed copy of Songstone (Paperback)
• A $10 Dairy Queen gift card (U.S.) or a $10 Amazon.com gift card (international)
• A sea glass necklace with turtle charm (designed by The Studio of Glass)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*More information about the blog tour found here.*