'My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag... and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha' by Jolie Kerr

Official Summary:
The author of the hit column “Ask a Clean Person” offers a hilarious and practical guide to cleaning up life’s little emergencies

Life is filled with spills, odors, and those oh-so embarrassing stains you just can’t tell your parents about. And let’s be honest: no one is going to ask Martha Stewart what to do when your boyfriend barfs in your handbag.

Thankfully, Jolie Kerr has both staggering cleaning knowledge and a sense of humor. With signature sass and straight talk, Jolie takes on questions ranging from the basic—how do I use a mop? —to the esoteric—what should I do when bottles of homebrewed ginger beer explode in my kitchen? My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag proves that even the most nightmarish cleaning conundrums can be solved with a smile, the right supplies, and a little music. 

Review:

Can a how-to about cleaning be chock full of useful tips and funny? The short answer is a resounding yes! The longer one is that Jolie Kerr manages to deliver a no-nonsense but chuckle inducing step-by-step home cleaning guide for the masses with 'My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag...' - a title that by itself is attention grabbing and fun.

It's not often that how-to's are reviewed on T.T.P., and this is the first none-wedding planning title to make the cut, but it needed to be shared. Kerr's slightly self deprecating, tell it like it is style makes you feel as though your getting advice from a good friend and not reading it because your a disaster of a thirty-something whose never heard of laundry bluing and the amazing thing it does for your whites.

Bottom Line: If you've ever found yourself at a lose when faced with a mess, a yellowed shirt or just need affirmation that your using the right stuff on your floors, this slightly off-kilter guide should be in your arsenal. Doesn't matter if you consider yourself a clean freak or a slob, this one gets a T.T.P. guarantee. You'll like it, and you might even pick up a few new tricks for keeping the kipple* at bay.

*For those that need a definition, well, it is my humble opinion that you should read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Really. Add it to your list now. Thank me in the comments later. In the meantime, the definition as provided by Urban Dictionary:

Kipple is a word coined by the remarkable science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. It refers to the sinister type of rubbish which simply builds up without any human intervention. Eventually, one day, the entire world will have moved to a state of kipplization.

'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' by Jeff Kinney (Book 1)

Official Summary:
Boys don't keep diaries—or do they?

The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to.

It's a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you're ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.

In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley's star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend's newfound popularity to his own advantage, kicking off a chain of events that will test their friendship in hilarious fashion.

Review:
Let me start out by saying that I never actually intended on reading 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid.' It just kind of happened. You don't believe me, do you? That's okay - you try ignoring the same title in the Kindle Unlimited top whatever for months and we'll have a little snoop in on your reading list. If the allure of all the nearly free titles aren't clogging up your to-be-read pile with questionable content in just a couple of days I'd argue that your using the service wrong. Yup. I went there. No. I'm not sorry.

Well, maybe a little bit sorry. But only a little. And only because now you have to suffer through a review of what is arguably one of the worst titles I've ever read. How is this crap so popular? Not only does it inhabit some strange space between a comic strip and a Roald Dahl novel - and I've gotta say that even having this garbage even spark the memory of fantastic children's writer Dahl makes me a bit sick to my stomach. That guy is a genius. This guy knows, has or was a bratty kid -  but there isn't anything redeeming about the content or the main character. The so-called "wimpy kid" is a freaking jerk that is constantly blaming others for his mistakes, admittedly using his friends to avert punishment, shows barely a modicum of respect for the authority figures in his life, and steals from his brother (whose also a jerk, by the way).

The only reason I can think of that this hunk of literary garbage is so widely read is that this kid, this bratty, selfish, dumb kid is an accurate reflection of the state of childhood right now. And that makes me sad.

Bottom Line: I don't care if Kinney comes out with a hundred more of these titles and they make another fifty movies from them, my advice will still be the same: Steer clear. This shouldn't be as popular as it is, and it certainly shouldn't be in the top 100. Ultimately, if this is the direction of our culture, then I'm disappointed. With so many enriching titles out there for children, the popularity of this one is mind-blowing and makes me more then just a little concerned for the reading lists of this country's youth.

'Timebound' & ' Time's Edge' The Chronos Files 1 & 2 by Rysa Walker

Official Summary:

When Kate Pierce-Keller’s grandmother gives her a strange blue medallion and speaks of time travel, sixteen-year-old Kate assumes the old woman is delusional. But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.

Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and her genetic ability to time travel makes Kate the only one who can fix the future. Risking everything, she travels back in time to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the murder and the chain of events that follows.

Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost—if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does Kate have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?

Review:
I'm a sucker for sci-mance (and if that isn't an official term for a science fiction, romance mash-up, then it is now, on this obscure little book review site, you heard it here first!*), especially anything with a time travelling element. Time travel + romance = a pretty good time for the Jessle. That said, this series fits snugly in the sci-mance genre, making it an irresistible new series for me to follow.

Front and center to the story is a love triangle that's created by the timeline shake-ups that occur in 'Timebound.' The main character Kate has a choice between Trey, the guy she met because the timeline shifts and he's suddenly taken her place at school, and Kiernan, the guy from the early 1900's who knew her as 'his Kate' before a timeline shift changes her own memories and makes him a friendly stranger. The relationships get even more bizarre in 'Time's Edge' when dealing with the fallout of the timeline changes purposely made at the end of the first installment that cause Trey to forget that he had ever even met Kate, never mind having fallen in love with her.

That said, at it's core, this is a series about time travel and how changing a past event impact the future. With all the timeline bending that occurs it wouldn't have surprised me if this series had turned out to be a tangled spaghetti ball of a disaster but Walker does a commendable job with this narration; somehow keeping the story engaging and accessible at every turn. Even when the number of secondary and tertiary characters grows in book two the benefit of this tale being told from Kate's perspective really shines.        

Bottom Line: 'Timebound' introduces us to a world that is both captivating and compelling enough to have earned itself a place in Amazon's Kindle World's. 'Time's Edge' keeps the story going while remaining fresh and unpredictably interesting. If you're looking for something a little different in the over crowded YA space, and like time travel novels, this one is most definitely for you.

*Or not... admittedly, I haven't (and don't plan on) actually looking up whether it exists for the purposes of this quick little post here. The way this stuff works is I'll see it somewhere else in a few weeks time, wonder if it came before or after this post, get too lazy to check the date stamp and move on. Besides, if this term doesn't exist yet then it should if only because it is way way way too obvious not to. Then again (yes I'm debating myself here - don't worry this should be the closing remarks coming up now), isn't all YA these days sci-mance? Are sci-mance and modern YA interchangeable terms? Or is some librarian out there pulling out their hair right now because it would actually be YA sub-categorized as science fiction because all YA has romance in it. That's all teens think about, really...

'Gathering Blue' by Lois Lowry

Official Summary:

Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever.

As she did in 'The Giver', Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve, and what could be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira’s plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.

Review:

Many, many years ago, way back in 1994, I picked 'The Giver' from a teacher's extra credit/recommended reading list* and it turned out to be one of those books that you never really shake off. It is hands-down the mother of all the great young adult dystopian stories. With that in mind, imagine my surprise when these two things happened over the course of the last year:

1. A movie was made out of 'The Giver.' Granted. It's a movie I still haven't watched, and for fear of having my memory of one of the foundation novels of my childhood marred, I probably won't.  
2. All of a sudden I became aware of a number of follow up novels that Lois Lawry wrote and released between '00 and '12 that take place in the same universe. 'The Giver', it turned out, was just book one in a four book series. Hallelujah! 

So off I went and before giving it a second thought, 'Gathering Blue' was sitting on my Kindle, waiting to be cracked open. After reading it my first thought was that 'The Giver' is better. Not only does it stand well on its own, but the story of Jonas is told in a succinct form that gives the story a power most novellas don't possess. 'Gathering Blue' with it's story of Kira and her weaving just didn't hit the same notes and it had more obvious call outs to being part of a series.

Bottom Line: Don't misunderstand the statements above, 'Gathering Blue' might not best the earlier installment, but it's still a damned good book. If you haven't picked up 'The Giver' start there and finish this series - if you have, but you didn't know it kept going, it's time to see what happened in Lowry's strange future world where magic exists in small doses and people have forgotten their roots.

* Yeah - I was that kid. In fact, I read every extra credit or recommended title regardless of passing in a report for it. It's a sickness I tell you, a wonderful, glorious, book devouring sickness that only other people who can't help but read anything and everything that someone recommends to you will understand. As an adult its culminated itself as my out of control to-be-read pile and the constant inability to find anything new on the top ten lists of Amazon that even remotely interests me anymore.

'If I Stay' by Gayle Forman

Official Summary:

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. 

Review:

Like a lot of others I picked this up after seeing the movie trailer. For me, it wasn't about preparing to go see the film, (those trips are usually to see the latest and greatest Abrams flicks), but the premise of a comatose girl trying to decide whether she should give up and die or find something worth living for drew me in.

Many other reviewers have commented that the girl, Mia, spends very little time actually contemplating this decision over the course of the novel, but I have to disagree. While the character doesn't brood openly about her decision, every memory she has helps tip the scales against or in favor of waking up and living a life permanently altered by tragedy.

What I did have trouble with is the ending, not because it was poorly written, or out of place - the last pages of 'If I Stay' were exactly what you would hope for given the emotional roller-coaster that the author pushes you through from page one. What I had a big problem with was the preview for the sequel novel 'Where She Went' that followed the closing chapter. For whatever reason, the first chapter of the second novel, told from the boyfriend Adam's perspective now, totally turned me off to not only reading the next book, but spoiled the experience of reading the first one.

Bottom Line: 'If I Stay' is a quick read worthy of it's fan base. An emotional page-turner that doesn't get heavy handed but does feature characters that can be a touch unbelievable. Overall, a solid entry in the young adult category that I'd recommend for anyone looking for something substantial as it raises real questions about life, death, love and family. If you like titles such as 'The Fault in Our Stars' then this one is for you - just learn from my mistake and avoid reading the preview for 'Where She Went'

'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline

Official Summary:

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.  

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

Review:

I've been holding off on this review for a little while now. To be fair, I probably should have posted something immediately after finishing it in the vain of "OMG OMG This book is AMAHSZING! Ahhhhh!" but I really do try to keep that kind of commentary for in-person, arm waving, full on animated, recommendations only. When writing for TTP, I try to keep it a bit more, um, sedated. And that is where I have failed you.

Because this book is absolutely worth picking up and you should have read it two months ago. Love, loss, science fiction, bad 80's pop culture references - it's got it all in spades.

Bottom Line: Sometimes I should just jump on and write the review, arm-waving OMG's and all. If you like video game culture, weird potential future scenarios, or science fiction written in the style of Stephenson (Snow Crash), you'll love Ready Player One: A Novel

'Double Blind' by Tiffany Pitts - Special Blog Tour Review!

Official Summary:

Delilah Pelham’s brother, Paul, is missing. She should probably be worried about that but honestly, he’s been in trouble since the day he learned the words “trust me." In fact, if it weren’t for his roommate, Carl, she would gladly leave him to his fate.

Carl is a good guy, even if he’s a bit of a dork. Okay, a large slice of a dork. Possibly the entire cake. But he wants to help, as do his gamer friends, which is how Deli finds herself in the middle of Hong Kong with the King of the Dorks, running from creepy guys with slicked-back hair and shiny black guns.

Back at home, Carl’s friends aren’t faring nearly as well. All they had to do was monitor the situation and feed Deli’s cat while she was gone. How could that possibly end in bloodshed? There is an answer, of course, but no one ever thinks to ask the cat.

Review:

Before delving into today's review I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of those who traveled here through Sage's Blog Tour Portal. It's been an exciting couple of weeks hasn't it? And I've gotta say that I love being a part of the 'Double Blind' welcome wagon. I can say that right? Of course I can! This is my blog and I say what I want!

So, I've just finished this one (thanks to both Sage and Tiffany) and I've gotta say, while I was a bit skeptical through the first 20 or so pages, this one is absolutely fabulous. Not only does it keep you guessing throughout (as it should, given the title and all) but it's brimming with some of the best character's I've come across since 'Trail of the Chupacabra.' 

If I had to say one thing bad about this book, my statement would follow in the form of a question: Why would you give your leading lady the nickname Deli? Her name is Delilah - so why not Dee, or Lila? Just saying that the first few chapters would have probably been a better experience overall if I weren't constantly imagining a submarine sandwich.

Never mind the sweaty guy behind the counter making this.

Even then, this title proved to be so good that I got passed the perspiration dripping, completely out of shape sub shop guy I kept picturing in my head every time the name showed up after a few dozen pages. A feat that I honestly thought would have been impossible if you'd have asked sometime during the first page or two. In fact, I was so engaged in this one, that I found myself opening it up at work.*

Bottom Line: If you love books like ‘Domestic Violets’, ‘Trail of the Chupacabra’, or the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, I honestly think this one is worth the read. In fact, this one gets the T.T.P. satisfaction guaranteed. Yes, it’s just that good. I promise.

And bonus (!!!) because this is a Blog Tour and not just another book review I've got some additional details to share:

Author Bio

Tiffany Pitts grew up in the Seattle area in a time when the Super Sonics were huge and Starbucks was just a store at the end of the Market. Tragedy struck early in her life as her family moved to New Jersey mere months before Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” album hit record stores. It took nearly a decade to wean herself off the hairspray. But Seattle called her back, so she went; eventually earning a degree in Botany (pronounced “Bar tending”) at the University of Washington.

She made one more valiant attempt to leave the PNW after college by travelling around the country doing not much of value and making very stupid decisions. She is thankful every day that the internet was not a huge deal in those years. Then Seattle called again so she picked up and moved home where she spent many years being a scientist of middling talent in several labs that she absolutely did not blow up—except for that one time and everyone agreed not to talk about that any more.

Now she divides her time between writing fiction and raising two kids who are wonderful but, for some reason, won’t stop licking things. 

Tiffany can be found using the following Social Media coordinates:

Twitter:  @snickerpants

Website:  www.snickerpants.com

or on good ol' Facebook: Tiffany Pitts, Author

*And you'll just need to take my word for it when I say that the only other time I've ever been compelled to read a title during work was when I was still in the throws of the vampire mysteries that shall-not-be-named. I'm not going there right now. Really. I might not ever go there ever again. [angry]