Author Spotlight: Jennifer Comstock

Jennifer Comstock

Website: 

http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Comstock/e/B00T5EWAL4/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Biography:

Jennifer Comstock is a short story author and novelist.  Her early work appeared in Medaille College's literary magazine, Prelude.  She is a graduate of Medaille College with a B.A. in Psychology that included a minor in Writing.  She was born in Presque Isle, Maine and has lived in several different areas such as Fort Kent and Dexter, Maine, Toronto, Bolton and Elmira, Ontario, Buffalo, New York and Fort Myers, Florida.  She now resides in Buffalo, New York with her son, Jerrison and their cat, Ender.  When Jennifer isn't taking everyday situations and twisting them into terrifyingly warped short stories, she is most likely to be found running around in one of the many haunted locations in Western New York.

Published Works:

Jennifer has published one collection of short stories so far, and they are fantastic.

Twelve:  Twelve horrifying tales from an old asylum. Twelve minds scraped apart to reveal the unthinkable...

Buy here.

Review: Captivated By You

Title:  Captivated By You
Author:  Sylvia Day
Series:  Crossfire (#4)
Rating:  4/5

Summary:

Gideon calls me his angel, but he's the miracle in my life. My gorgeous, wounded warrior, so determined to slay my demons while refusing to face his own.

The vows we'd exchanged should have bound us tighter than blood and flesh. Instead they opened old wounds, exposed pain and insecurities, and lured bitter enemies out of the shadows. I felt him slipping from my grasp, my greatest fears becoming my reality, my love tested in ways I wasn't sure I was strong enough to bear.

At the brightest time in our lives, the darkness of his past encroached and threatened everything we'd worked so hard for. We faced a terrible choice: the familiar safety of the lives we'd had before each other or the fight for a future that suddenly seemed an impossible and hopeless dream...

Review:

I LOVE this series.  Seriously.  I hate the idea and writing of everything that has to do with Fifty Shades of Grey, but the Crossfire series actually has substance on top of the sex scenes.  Gideon is just... wow, what a man.  His demons just make me love him more.  And Eva, she's perfect in all of her imperfections.

There are two reasons why I gave this book a 4 out of 5 instead of the full rating:  POV shifts and lack of problem resolution.  First, the POV shifts aren't big, just jumping one chapter for Gideon and one for Eva and so on, however it's kind of a pet peeve of mine and it wasn't done in the first three books of the series.  On the second point, I mean it's the repetitive problems we've been seeing for four books now with little to no progress, but there was some progress I suppose.

All in all I cannot wait to read the fifth and final book which just came in the mail!

Waiting on Wednesday #4

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title:  The Inside of Out

Author:  Jenn Marie Thorne

Expected Publish Date:  May 31, 2016

Summary:

When her best friend Hannah comes out the day before junior year, Daisy is so ready to let her ally flag fly that even a second, way more blindsiding confession can't derail her smiling determination to fight for gay rights. 

Before you can spell LGBTQIA, Daisy's leading the charge to end their school’s antiquated ban on same-sex dates at dances—starting with homecoming. And if people assume Daisy herself is gay? Meh, so what. It's all for the cause. 

What Daisy doesn't expect is for "the cause” to blow up—starting with Adam, the cute college journalist whose interview with Daisy for his university paper goes viral, catching fire in the national media. #Holy #cats. 

With the story spinning out of control, protesters gathering, Hannah left in the dust of Daisy’s good intentions, and Daisy's mad attraction to Adam feeling like an inconvenient truth, Daisy finds herself caught between her bold plans, her bad decisions, and her big fat mouth.

Author Spotlight: Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult

Website:  http://www.jodipicoult.com/

Biography:

Jodi Picoult is the author of twenty-two novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Between the Lines, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister’s Keeper. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.

In 2003 she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has also been the recipient an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and Booklist, one of ten books written for adults that have special appeal for young adults; the Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the year; a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America; Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’ Award 2007; Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK, a Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, a NH Granite State Book Award, a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award. She’s the 2013-14 recipient of the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit.

Some Favorite Books:

Vanishing Acts:  Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiance, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it.

In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth - even when it jeopardizes her life and the lives of those she loves. What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted? Vanishing Acts explores how life - as we know it - might not turn out the way we imagined; how doing the right thing could mean doing the wrong thing; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat.

My Sister's Keeper:  Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged... until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

Nineteen Minutes:  Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. 

Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.