This or That Giveaway № 115 ~ The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin OR The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison #TheWisdomOfHair #TheButterflyClues

 

I have sooooo many books!

The This or That Giveaway! feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to cull my collection and to share some of the many books I have. I get to clear off some of my shelves to make room for more books and give someone else the chance to enjoy these treasures.

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

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The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

Paperback ~ March 2013

Life can be beautiful, but it takes a little work...

“The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed. The day of my daddy’s funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old. People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life.”

In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.

With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome young widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn’t save Mama, but maybe she can save him.

As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permanent in this life—except real love, lasting friendship, and, ultimately… forgiveness.

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The Butterfly Clues
(Lost Girls #1)
by Kate Ellison

Paperback ~ Published February 2012

Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire"--a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.

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Drop your answer in the comments and enter the giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Be sure to check the sidebar for my current giveaways! 

This OR That #Giveaway № 101 ~ Momnesia by Lori Verni-Fogarsi OR The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin #Momnesia #TheWisdomOfHair

  

I have sooooo many books!

The This or That Giveaway! feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to cull my collection and to share some of the many books I have. I get to clear off some of my shelves to make room for more books and give someone else the chance to enjoy these treasures.

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

*****************

Momnesia

by Lori Verni-Fogarsi

Paperback ~ Published March 2012

She's smart, pretty, and runs her own business. So then why does she feel so dead inside? Between work, two kids, and a husband who finds her about as exciting as furniture shopping, this is the story of a (formerly-exciting but now way-too-typical) suburban mom who diagnoses herself with "Momnesia" and sets about finessing a new version of her old vivaciousness:

MOMNESIA (mahm-nee-zhuh) - noun: Loss of the memory of who you used to be. Caused by pregnancy, play dates, and trying to keep the house cleaner than the Joneses.

She finds some adventure pursuing her own interests, and does make some new friends (including the battery operated variety), but still feels like nothing more than a caretaker.

In between dealing with her husband's manic-depressive behavior, drama with her friends, and some naughty Internet escapades, she keeps facing the question, "Is it that I haven't been myself? Or is it that I am being myself but just different than I used to be?" It isn't until she tosses the Invisible Rule Book altogether that she discovers life--and love--have more to offer than she ever imagined!

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The Wisdom of Hair

by Kim Boykin

Paperback ~ March 2013

Life can be beautiful, but it takes a little work...

“The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed. The day of my daddy’s funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old. People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life.”

In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.

With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome young widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn’t save Mama, but maybe she can save him.

As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permanent in this life—except real love, lasting friendship, and, ultimately… forgiveness.

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Drop your answer in the comments and enter the giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*****************

Be sure to check the sidebar for my current giveaways! 

This OR That #Giveaway № 56 ~ A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin OR The Hole in the Middle by Kate Hilton #APeachOfAPair #TheHoleInTheMiddle

 

I have sooooo many books!

The This or That Giveaway! feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to cull my collection and to share some of the many books I have. I get to clear off some of my shelves to make room for more books and give someone else the chance to enjoy these treasures.

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

*****************

A Peach of a Pair

Kim Boykin

Paperback ~ Pub date August 2015

April, 1953. Nettie Gilbert has cherished her time studying to be a music teacher at Columbia College in South Carolina, but as graduation approaches, she can’t wait to return to her family — and her childhood sweetheart, Brooks — in Alabama. But just days before her senior recital, she gets a letter from her mama telling her that Brooks is getting married . . . to her own sister.<

Devastated, Nettie drops out of school and takes a job as live-in help for two old-maid sisters, Emily and Lurleen Eldridge. Emily is fiercely protective of the ailing Lurleen, but their sisterhood has weathered many storms. And as Nettie learns more about their lives on a trip to see a faith healer halfway across the country, she’ll discover that love and forgiveness will one day lead her home.

Read my thoughts here

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The Hole in the Middle

Kate Hilton

Paperback ~ November 2013

Sophie Whelan is the kind of woman who prides herself on doing it all. In a single day, she can host a vegan-friendly and lactose-free dinner for ten, thwart a PTA president intent on forcing her to volunteer, and outwit her hostile ‘assistant’ in order to get her work done on time.

With her fortieth birthday looming, and her carefully coordinated existence beginning to come apart at the seams, Sophie begins feeling like she needs more from her life—and especially from her husband, Jesse.

The last thing Sophie needs is a new complication in her life. But when an opportunity from her past suddenly reappears, Sophie is forced to confront the choices she’s made and decide if her chaotic life is really a dream come true—or the biggest mistake she’s ever made.

Read my thoughts here

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Be sure to check the sidebar for all of my current giveaways!

Release Day! Echoes of Mercy: A Lowcountry Novel by Kim Boykin and My Thoughts

Happy Release Day! 

Echoes of Mercy

Echoes of Mercy: A Lowcountry Novel by Kim Boykin
Print and Kindle Edition, 232 pages
Published April 18, 2016 by River's Edge Media

How can you make up for something that you did as a kid that was both so stupid and so terrible, forty years later it still follows you like a pack of lost dogs? For Billie Warren, it means piling up more and more responsibilities, doing good for the community as the police chief of her Lowcountry hometown. Trying to be the best mother of a teen mom, and daughter to her mom with Alzheimer’s, that she can be.

But Billie’s fragile life is thrown into turmoil when the target of her biggest regret, Crazy Sadie, shows up claiming to have witnessed the only murder in the town's history. Sadie Byrd accuses the nearly dead and sainted Judge Norris of savagely beating his own little girl to death forty years ago. Could Miss Sadie be right? As Billie uncovers the terrible truth of stolen babies and bone-chilling corruption, she will have to risk everything when powerful people are prepared to do anything to keep buried.

My thoughts about Echoes of Mercy ~~ 

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First line—Forty years of atonement ought to count for something. After all, Billie Warren was just nine years old when she did what she did.

So what did Billie do when she was nine that has been haunting her all these years? And has she done enough good in her life to make up for it? Getting answers to those questions I had made me keep reading.

I immediately liked Bille. She's the chief of police of her community and if that's not enough on her plate, she also has a mother with Alzheimer's and a teenage daughter with a child of her own. When Crazy Sadie comes back to town to confess what she knows about an unsolved murder, Sadie becomes wrapped up in a whole lot more than she bargained for and she fears for her loved one's safety.

Echoes of Mercy is a captivating and intense story that is very different from the other stories I have read by Kim. It proves that that she is a very versatile writer with the capability of capturing her readers attention, no matter what she writes.

Thank you, Kim, for the wonderful adventure in Billie's world.

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.

About the author

Kim Boykin was raised in her South Carolina home with two girly sisters and great parents. She had a happy, boring childhood, which sucks if you’re a writer because you have to create your own crazy. PLUS after you’re published and you’re being interviewed, it’s very appealing when the author actually lived in Crazy Town or somewhere in the general vicinity.

Almost everything she learned about writing, she learned from her grandpa, an oral storyteller, who was a master teacher of pacing and sensory detail. He held court under an old mimosa tree on the family farm, and people used to come from all around to hear him tell stories about growing up in rural Georgia and share his unique take on the world.

As a stay-at-home mom, Kim started writing, grabbing snip-its of time in the car rider line or on the bleachers at swim practice. After her kids left the nest, she started submitting her work, sold her first novel at 53, and has been writing like crazy ever since.

Thanks to the lessons she learned under that mimosa tree, her books are well reviewed and, according to RT Book Reviews, feel like they’re being told across a kitchen table. She is the author of A Peach of a Pair (8/4/2015), Palmetto Moon and The Wisdom of Hair from Berkley/Penguin; Caught Up In You, Steal Me, Cowboy, Just in Time for Christmas, Sweet Home Carolina, Flirting with Forever, and She's the One from Tule. 

While her heart is always in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, she lives in Charlotte and has a heart for hairstylists, librarians, and book junkies like herself. 

Connect with Kim

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

 

Be sure to check the sidebar for my current giveaways!

On Tour: A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin and an Excerpt

Visit other stops on the tour here.

A Peach of a Pair

A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin

Publisher: Penguin Random House/Berkley Books

Pages: 304

Genre: Southern Women’s Fiction

"Palmetto Moon" inspired "The Huffington Post" to rave, It is always nice to discover a new talented author and Kim Boykin is quite a find. Now, she delivers a novel of a woman picking up the pieces of her life with the help of two spirited, elderly sisters in South Carolina. 

April, 1953. Nettie Gilbert has cherished her time studying to be a music teacher at Columbia College in South Carolina, but as graduation approaches, she can’t wait to return to her family and her childhood sweetheart, Brooks, in Alabama. But just days before her senior recital, she gets a letter from her mama telling her that Brooks is getting married . . . to her own sister. 

Devastated, Nettie drops out of school and takes a job as live-in help for two old-maid sisters, Emily and Lurleen Eldridge. Emily is fiercely protective of the ailing Lurleen, but their sisterhood has weathered many storms. And as Nettie learns more about their lives on a trip to see a faith healer halfway across the country, she’ll discover that love and forgiveness will one day lead her home.

For More Information

• A Peach of a Pair is available at Amazon.
• Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
• Also available at Indiebound.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

My thoughts about A Peach of a Pair ~~ 

A Peach of a Pair is another heartwarming southern fiction story with wonderful characters that I fell in love with. I loved spending time with all of them and I loved my trip to South Carolina.

Nettie is away at school when she get some devastating news from home, her sweetheart is marrying her sister. She is humiliated and can't face anyone at school and decides to leave right before graduation. She is hired to take care of an elderly woman who is dying. This job provides just want she needs; a new town, a new life, and a place where she can get away from her family, most of all her ex-boyfriend and her sister, the two people who have betrayed her.  

'... the next man in my life, if there ever was one, would be everything Remmy Wilkes and Brooks Carver were not, and above all, he would be faithful. Even if that meant he was unfortunate looking and as dumb as a sack of hammers.'

The job she gets taking care of a pair of old women is not going to be an easy task. Emily has not accepted the fact that her sister, Lurleen is dying and she does not make things easy for Nettie. Nettie has nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to so she has vowed to stick it out and tries to make the best of the situation. She is not going to let Emily run her off.

'Yes, but what she doesn't know is that it makes me even more determined to do my job, because Miss Lurleen is a dear. Or maybe she isn't but in comparison to her evil sister she seems to be.' 

Then there is the town doctor, the one who lined up this job for Nettie. He is ready to abandon his practice here in this small town to follow his dream but he is drawn to Nettie. She works very hard to protect her heart and will not let it get broken again.

'Because, after confiding in him, kissing him, and having him reignite feelings I was sure were forever dead, I knew I could never survive being hurt by him.' 

The sisters decide to take a trip to visit a faith healer. This trip could just as easy take the life of Lurleen as it could heal her. The sisters, along with Nettie, discover so much about themselves and life, as well as the importance of sisterhood, as they travel cross county. Their journey was wonderful to experience right along with them as they leaned on each other to get the healing that they each needed.

'... when you're done running, come back to me.'

And I love that Lurleen was a librarian. The following passage pretty well sums up how we librarians feel about what we do.

'Over a year ago, after she got sick, if you'd asked Lurleen where her last outing would have been, she would have said the library. Just to walk in and smell the books, walk along the shelves running her fingers across the spines of classics that stole her heart, a good mystery or a romance that took her breathe away. To take a young child who swears they hate to read to the stacks and find that one book that unlocks their heart and makes them fall in love with reading.'

Excerpt

Dear Nettie, 

It might seem cruel to send this letter along with a proper invitation, but I couldn’t bring myself to call you, and I wasn’t given much notice regarding this matter. I also know you well enough to know you would have to see the invitation to truly believe it. Although I do regret not having enough time to have them engraved.

I’m sorry to be the one to give you the news about Brooks and Sissy. I love you, Nettie, and I love your sister. I’m not condoning her behavior or the fact that she is in the family way, but you are blood. You are sisters. No man can break that bond, not even Brooks. 

There’s money and a bus ticket paper-clipped to the invitation. I’ve checked the schedules. You should be able to leave Columbia on Thursday the week of the wedding after your morning classes and get back by Sunday night. I know how you hate to miss class, and if you are also missing some wonderful end-of-the-year party, I’m sorry. So very sorry. 

But the milk has been spilled, Nettie. Come home and stand up with your sister. She needs you. She’s a wreck, and it makes me worry about the baby.

Just come home. 

Love,
Mother 

About the author

Kim Boykin was raised in her South Carolina home with two girly sisters and great parents. She had a happy, boring childhood, which sucks if you’re a writer because you have to create your own crazy. PLUS after you’re published and you’re being interviewed, it’s very appealing when the author actually lived in Crazy Town or somewhere in the general vicinity.

Almost everything she learned about writing, she learned from her grandpa, an oral storyteller, who was a master teacher of pacing and sensory detail. He held court under an old mimosa tree on the family farm, and people used to come from all around to hear him tell stories about growing up in rural Georgia and share his unique take on the world.

As a stay-at-home mom, Kim started writing, grabbing snip-its of time in the car rider line or on the bleachers at swim practice. After her kids left the nest, she started submitting her work, sold her first novel at 53, and has been writing like crazy ever since.

Thanks to the lessons she learned under that mimosa tree, her books are well reviewed and, according to RT Book Reviews, feel like they’re being told across a kitchen table. She is the author of A Peach of a Pair, Palmetto Moon and The Wisdom of Hair from Berkley/NAL/Penguin; Flirting with Forever, She’s the One, Just in Time for Christmas, Steal Me, Cowboy and Sweet Home Carolina from Tule. While her heart is always in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, she lives in Charlotte and has a heart for hairstylist, librarians, and book junkies like herself.

Her latest book is the southern women’s fiction, A Peach of a Pair.

Connect with Kim

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Contact Kim

Be sure to check the sidebar for my current giveaways!