Mrs. Mike Review & Next Month's Book

I'll start right in with Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. Mrs. Mike is a tender story about the life and romance of Katherine Mary O’Fallon and Mike Flannigan. If this story doesn’t pull at your heartstrings, you have no soul.

My only real complaint was how quickly the story progressed at the beginning: I wish the authors had developed Mike and Kathy’s story a bit more before they got married. They saw each other on all of 3 occasions before getting engaged and then married. The majority of the book takes place after Mike and Kathy's marriage.

Even the sweetest love story isn't without tragedy, and Mrs. Mike has it in spades. Though they had more than their fair share of misfortune and conflict, this added an element of depth and reality to the book.

A hopeless romantic at heart, some of my favorite parts were Mike and Kathy's first kiss (“It was something I had not known, this melting away into feeling”) and the night they got engaged (“We held each other, and I had never had him so close”). Lovely.

There were a few parts where I didn't relate to the characters all that well, but that might have been a flaw in my reading, as opposed to a flaw in the writing.

Definitely a worthwhile read.

For July, I have selected the book

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ECKSDOT 
by J Washburn

As I mentioned, I'm aquainted with this author. He is an extremely creative guy, so I can't wait to read his work.

From the author: "ECKSDOT is the adventure of Nate and his 'slow friend' Danny as they seek an oracle—an old Japanese 'butterfly lady'—in the hopes of somehow stopping their horrible nightmares of ghost robots—nightmares that have been bleeding into their real lives."

You can learn more about ECKSDOT here.

Happy Reading!

ECKSDOT: Get it While it's Free!

A friend of mine wrote a book, and (for a limited time) it's available for free.

ECKSDOT
by J Washburn

Book description: ECKSDOT is the adventure of Nate and his "slow friend" Danny as they seek an oracle—an old Japanese "butterfly lady"—in the hopes of somehow stopping their horrible nightmares of ghost robots—nightmares that have been bleeding into their real lives.

This book averages 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. I know I'm excited to read this one. As always, you can count on my honest review of this book as soon as I finish reading it.

Get the free book for Kindle here: http://amzn.to/ZzENKW

If you don't have a Kindle, find out how to read the ebook here: http://goo.gl/JKzmA

This deal is only available June 6 - 9, so start downloading!

Pinteresting Reviews

I love me some Pinterest. Here are a few pins that I've tried recently:

Homemade Foot Soak

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If you are on Pinterest, I am sure you have seen this pin floating around. It sounded pretty legit to me, so I decided to test it out. I need summer-worthy feet, after all. My sister and I gave each other pedicures last weekend, starting with this foot soak. Result: blue feet. For realsies. I kind of think that someone added "any kind but I like the blue" to have a little fun at others' expense. Now, I could have handled blue feet if my dead skin "practically wipe[d] off," but that didn't happen either. Fail.


Fudgy Vanilla Brownie

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I pinned this one mostly out of curiosity. "Fudgy Vanilla Brownie" seems like a contradiction in terms. I do love me a good blondie, though, so I thought I'd give this a try. At the top of the recipe, it says "This fudgy vanilla brownie is also called White Texas Sheet Cake, but I didn’t think 'cake' did it justice. It’s amazing!" I had high expectations for this cake/brownie. Maybe I'm just a tough critic, but I really thought this was just a vanilla sheet cake. It wasn't chewy like a brownie or blondie. This is a good recipe for cake, but not quite as amazing as described. Not a winner for me. 


Oven-Fried Orange Chicken

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The caption for this one is right on the money: "this recipe is completely delicious." I totally agree. I made this for my whole family, and everyone loved it. That's a lot of people to please, just sayin'. If you are a fan of the Orange Chicken at Panda Express, you won't be disappointed with this copy cat recipe. Yum. 

That's all I've got for today. (Get the skinny on other pins here and here).

Don't forget to pick up a copy of Mrs. Mike now that it is officially June. I started reading it myself. Here is a tidbit to keep you interested: “And what I say is, men are unpredictable creatures, all of them.”