Reviewed by Alyssa Katanic

I asked my soon-to-be-nine-year-old daughter what she wanted for her birthday: “I want a book to read about horses!” And here it is: Harness Horses, Bucking Broncos & Pit Ponies by Jeff Crosby and Shelley Ann Jackson.

This is not just your standard book about horses in general and how to take care of them. Harness Horses, Bucking Broncos & Pit Ponies gives a history of many (43 to be exact) different breeds of horses, how and why they were bred with the different characteristic they have, and the important part they play in human history. The illustrations are beautifully done (no photographs here, but great artistry that places the horses in historical settings), which makes it a fun book for young and old, boys and girls alike (I know my son will be stealing this one to check out the scenes of horses in battle).

Showing the horses in historical settings stirs up historical interests without overwhelming the reader with information. We are given a snip-it on each breed, which whets the appetite for looking further elsewhere (a mark of a great book for kids – encouraging further exploration!). As an added bonus, the reverse of the cover doubles as a great poster to hang up and remind young ones of what they learned, which is great for keeping their excitement alive. It would also make a great visual aid if your child had to do a presentation.

Harness Horses, Bucking Broncos & Pit Ponies is a great book for horse lovers of any age! I highly recommend it!

Rating: ★★★★½ 

Alyssa is a wife and stay at home, homeschooling mother of five, with two boxers, two cats, a soft shelled turtle named after Bob the Builder, and 7 frogs (admittedly a homeschooling project gone froggy). In all her spare time, she loves to read and believes that there is no such thing as having too many books!

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Tundra Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Reviewed by Jenna Arthur

What do home cooks look for in a cookbook? Delicious food, easy to follow recipes and crowd pleasers of course! Gudrun’s Kitchen is one part cookbook – full of delicious recipes of soups, stews, candies and puddings – and another an exploration of a family’s story and culture through food. The family history part of the book starts off with a woman named Gudrun, whose home was always filled with love, laughter and children.

Gudrun’s children pulled a collection of their mother’s recipes, handed down through generations, for this outstanding cookbook. Each recipe offers a Norwegian flavor that will leave Norwegians and Americans alike with a warm belly and a taste of home. The recipes are easy to follow and never leave you guessing on where to go next.

The main dish recipes range from a succulent fried chicken to a more spicy and tongue tantalizing curry with rice and lentils. Sweet dishes do not disappoint either. Try the applesauce cake – it is delicious! I have always loved ethnic food, and this beautifully bound cookbook did not disappoint. I give the authors four out of five stars on taste, story, and presentation. Join Gudrun in her kitchen every night and leave your family with a happy belly and a taste of home!

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Jenna lives in the bustling city of Pittsburgh, PA with her fiance and her two beautiful cats. Along with her passion for reading and the literary world, she is also an artist, writer, environmental activist, creative coordinator and aspiring culinary genius. She believes there is nothing better to her then a good book, and lives one cover to the next.

Review copies were provided free of any obligation by Wisconsin Historical Society Press. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Please welcome Spencer Seidel, who is running a Scavenger Blog Hunt to promote his new novel, Lovesick!

About the book

A murder rocks Portland, Maine after police discover an incoherent teen sitting in a pool of blood late one night. Paul Ducharme is found with a murder weapon in one hand, the dead body of his best friend in the other, and no clue how he got to the Eastern Promenade Trail.

A teenage love triangle gone wrong brings Spencer Seidel back with a vengeance in Lovesick (PublishingWorks; $14.95; June 2012), the follow up to his breakout novel Dead of Wynter. Seidel deftly illustrates the trying relationship amid a friend and love interest – each with their own desires, issues and shocking agendas.

Wendy, the girl of Paul’s dreams, has been missing for weeks. Her boyfriend Lee has been murdered–apparently by Paul. It’s an open and shut case–or so most of Portland thinks.

When forensic psychologist Dr. Lisa Boyers is asked to interview Paul, who claims to forget the events leading up to the murder, she reluctantly agrees. In her jailhouse interviews, Lisa helps Paul to recover his memories, but the murder’s circumstances force her to recall her own troubled past.

Media attention mounts. Reporters stream into Portland. All eyes turn to Lisa. She seems intent on exonerating the “brutal teen killer” but quickly finds herself the focus of an over-zealous reporter with a knack for digging up dirty secrets. But the killer who has Lisa in the crosshairs already knows them all.

Excerpt from the book

“Also get people passed out up here.” Bruce continued. “Damn drunks from Preble Street usually. They wander up here and keel over.”

A moment of silence passed in the police cruiser. Jimmy wasn’t really listening much to what his new partner was saying. He was bored and tired.

“There’s a car over there,” Jimmy said, pointing towards a battered old Ford Escort parked near the chain-link fence that ran along the border of the sewage plant.

“Ayuh,” Bruce agreed.

Jimmy felt the car hitch a little when Bruce put the big cruiser into park. Bruce turned on the squad car’s powerful spotlight and aimed it at the parked car.

Jimmy opened his door and got out, sliding his nightstick through the leather loop on his waist. He was a rookie, but he did this naturally and casually, as if he’d done it a million times.

Follow the Blog Hunt tomorrow at Acting Balanced!

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

Found: Hudson Booksellers at Washington Dulles Airport

Publisher’s Description

More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving Saudi Arabia, her life, and her family behind. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie’s consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world.

The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Talbott

Wendy Everly has never felt as if she fit in anywhere. When she was six, her own mother tried to murder her in a fit of delusion, convinced that she replaced her real child. People seem to dislike her upon meeting without knowing anything about her and she just seems to stumble into trouble without meaning to.

At seventeen, she’s living with her brother and her aunt, trying to be good and do well in school, and stay out of trouble for their sake. Then Finn, a boy at her school, starts to stalk her, making Wendy suspicious but interested. He reveals that she is a changeling and tells her that she must return to her true family or be kidnapped by an opposing faction. Is this new place where she truly belongs or will she be just as alien there as she is in the human world?

Switched is a typical teen fantasy book that is supposedly about trolls (AKA trylles). This aspect isn’t necessary at all and seems like an easy way to market it as something unique, when it’s actually just a typical fairy story.

There were some things I liked about the book, such as the trylle society and the dynamic of her blood family as opposed to her human family. The society has a rigid caste system that doesn’t allow for upward mobility. The regular, peasant trylles don’t have any special abilities, so they work in order to contribute. Those in the aristocracy have magical abilities of some sort, but they don’t know how to defend themselves. Trackers only have abilities that go with their trade and are considered very low on the totem pole, but humans hold the lowest position. The blatant hatred of humans and behavior of trylles and people at different levels of the caste system really intrigued me.

The rest of the story was fairly typical for a teen fantasy read. Of course there was a hot guy named Finn that made Wendy act completely senseless and melodramatic. Finn’s character was the most annoying aspect of the book for me; I really liked Wendy except when she acted as if she would die without Finn, as so many heroines do these days. It was also quite creepy that she found it sexy to be stalked instead of meeting and getting to know each other like real people. The plot was a little uneven with pacing and did not pick up until Wendy arrived in the trylle world.

Overall, Switched was enjoyable, but not a spectacular read. The writing was all right and the story kept my interest, but I don’t have a burning need to read the next book in the series.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Elizabeth is a student at Cal State Long Beach. She laughs a lot, loves cats, and lives for music and books. You can read her blog here: http://titania86-fishmuffins.blogspot.com/.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by St. Martin’s Griffin. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Reviewed by Alyssa Katanic

Letters from a Distant Shore, by Marie Lawson Fiala, is a mother’s memoir about her son’s unfortunate experience with AVM (in easy terms: a bad artery to vein connection in the brain), which ruptured, causing a brain bleed. Fiala describes going through their son’s comma and waking, brain damage, hospital experiences, and the deep faith and prayer from around the world that carried them through.

Such a memoir is one to be read with tissues close at hand, yet it is also uplifting as Fiala shares the family’s experiences with healing prayer, and the family, friends, and strangers who surrounded them with love, encouragement, and support.

Ultimately, Letters from a Distant Shore is a story of hope. Hope that our struggles will transform our inner selves for the best. Hope that we have more loved ones thinking of us and praying for us than we realize. Hope that we can walk through life’s tragedies, one step at a time, and truly make it through.

Fiala’s writing and relating is highly skilled and beautiful. Her well-read mind shines through the included quotes and references.

Best of all, their family’s story ends (or rather continues) happily ever after – as much as this life can.

Letters from a Distant Shore is a book that will encourage you to hold the children in your life that much closer, with that much more patience for their difficult days, and thankfulness for every day that you have with them.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Visit Fiala’s website to learn more

Alyssa is a wife and stay at home, homeschooling mother of five, with two boxers, two cats, a soft shelled turtle named after Bob the Builder, and 7 frogs (admittedly a homeschooling project gone froggy). In all her spare time, she loves to read and believes that there is no such thing as having too many books!

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Pasta Queen PR. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

I’m posting The Winter Palace review earlier than planned due to popular demand! 

Reviewed by Lauren Cannavino

The Winter Palace is perfected historical fiction. The characters are lively, the plot thick and the details crisp and plentiful, yet not overdone. Eva Stachniak combines historical facts with brilliant, lyrical adaptation and creates characters that keep the reader turning the pages for more and more. The novel moves quickly even for someone not familiar with Russian history, and the life at court is expertly portrayed for the imaginative reader.

The Winter Palace tells the tale of Varvara, a young Polish girl without a family, who begins her life at the court of Empress Elizabeth as a nobody, then quickly becomes a spy for the royal ruler. Varvara is compassionate, smart, quick and most importantly, sneaky. She forms a relationship, almost against her will, with the slimy Chancellor at court, and begins her life as a palace “tongue”.

When Princess Sophie, who later becomes Catherine the Great, arrives at court, Varvara is assigned to watch the young, foreign princess and report back to the Empress. What no one expects is that Varvara develops a close friendship with Sophie and alliances begin to shift. The Empress, who is not left in the dark about Varvara’s actions or feelings, quickly marries her off to a dashing officer and removes her from court. The friendship, however, does not end and what develops over the years both at court and outside of it, is truly remarkable.

The Winter Palace is a fantastic novel that gets better as it goes on. The characters and the scenery are meticulously developed and made me feel as if I had my ear to the floorboard listening in on the action of the Russian court along with Varvara. This is an excellent read for historical fiction and adventure fans.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Lauren Cannavino is a graduate student, freelance writer, wine lover, and avid reader. Random musings can be found over at www.goldiesays.com.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Bantam. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

For anyone interested in participating in World Book Night, the deadline has been extended to February 6th!

The event will take place on April 23, 2012 across the U.S., UK and Ireland.

During World Book Night, 50,000 people, named as “book givers,” will each be giving away 20 books from a select list with a goal to have 1,000,000 people across the United States alone celebrating reading en masse. There will be adult books and young adult titles given away.

People can sign up here by February 6th to apply to be a “book giver.”

You can see the complete list of titles that includes books from authors like Jodi Picoult, Michael Connelly, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver and Junot Diaz, among others.

Visit the official World Book Night website to learn more.