A Penny For Your Thoughts, Book review, Product review, writing

Love on A Dime by Cara Lynn James

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Love on a Dimeby Cara Lynn James(Paperback)

Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc.

Pub. Date: 06/01/2010

ISBN-13: 9781595546791

Series: Ladies of Summerhill Series

310 pages

Thomas Nelson Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book as part of their BookSneeze.com bloggers book review program. I was not required to write a positive review, and therefore, the review is 100% my honest opinion.

I just received Love on A Dime today, and have been anticipating the arrival of this book in my mailbox for quite some time now.

I have to admit, I was captivated by the beautiful cover, and so, I quickly flipped through, and in less than 2 hours, I finished reading Love on A Dime by Cara Lynn James.

Love on a Dime is about Lillian Westbrook. She’s unlucky in love and is in her late teens. She finds herself still single at twenty-five and in 1899, she is practically an old maid.

Lillian has secretly developed a career for herself by penning dime novels under the name Fannie Cole. Earning her own money is social suicide in and of itself, but doing it writing dime novels makes it worse, even though the novels she writes are moral and encouraging. So Lilly carefully hides her secret from her wealthy suitor, her family, and her friends.

Then enter her former suitor, Jackson Grail who arrives to spend the summer with her family in Newport, Rhode Island, and he has just purchased the publishing house that publishes Fannie Cole’s books.

To make matters worse, Jackson is determined to discover the true identity of Fannie Cole, his top author. Lilly is forced to make choices to keep the peace within her family and maintain her family’s social standing.

Secret identity and the thrill of secret romance is thrown together in this book. This book is not just another romance novel, but much more than just plain summer romance. It is an historical romance and incorporates passages from the Bible. This book may be a typical romance book, but the biblical messages were wonderful.

I highly recommend this book to those who are soul searching and those who are seeking not only to believe in love, but in God once again. Love on A Dime is a good, lighthearted read with wonderful messages and revelation. Thumbs up for it: both for the beautiful cover, and for the wonderful contents.

I rate this 4 stars out of 5.

Cleffairy: It’s amazing how reading and merely turning pages could bring you closer to God. 😀

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A Penny For Your Thoughts, Book review, Down The Memory Lane, Product review, Time Heals What Love And Reason Cannot, writing

Medical romance and nursing uniforms

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One of my most glorious moment as an author was when I was a mere 16 years old rebellious teenage girl. That was the time where I was supposed to be studying for my public examination and concentrating on my studies. However, being me, instead of studying, I daydream and write instead.

One may wonder…what could a 16 years old write? Isn’t she supposed to be studying or busy having a crush on male specimens her age? Well… I was supposed to be studying and busy having crushes on boys my age back then, but I wasn’t quite the same as everyone else. I was different. Very different, and being different in my dictionary would meant, having completed 34 mini novella in a year. How exactly did I accomplish that?

I daresay it was hormones that flames up my imaginations into a hyperdrive, and being someone who could not stand idle, I penned them down instead of letting them go to waste.

I used be fascinated with the genre Medical Romance. One of my first unpublished novella back then in the year 2000, entitled ‘Saving Heartbeats’ was a Medical Romance filled with handsome doctors with smart looking Lab Coats. They were strong characters with finely chiseled figure whom I constantly portrayed as a pillar of strength to the patients and families whose heart and soul were almost broken as a result of illness or disease that threatens to take their loved ones away from them.

The doctors in my novels are often spirited and passionate about what they do and more often than not, I tend to shape them into a workaholic who neglected many aspects of humanity such as their own family as well as their love life.

But have no fear, the author (reads: Me) is a hopeless romantic. There’s always young female doctors walking around in their Nursing Scrubs during their rounds, ready not to only save their patients’ lives, but also to heal heartbreaks and put those workaholic, almost robotic doctors back into one piece when they finally shatter from exhaustion and sheer sadness for not being able to save every single patients that came to them.

2000 was a very fruitful year, and I would give anything to have endless energy and imagination like I had during that year and write Medical Romance again. But for now, I could only imagine Dr. Alexander Summers and Dr. Victoria Kincaid wearing the uniforms above while saving lives of their patients as well as struggle to deal with their own angst and misery as not only doctors, but as human.


Cleffairy: Writing Medical Romance was very energy consuming, as such genre tend to exhaust you when you’re really into it. I am not talking about intimacy or cheap passion or endless research on illness that’s involved here, but the human aspect of Medical Romance where authors tend to drown in their creation and feels the misery of their characters when they’re at their most vulnerable state-authors had to deal with loss and angst too, you see. Somehow, I’m not sure if I’m really cut for writing Medical Romance right now.

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A Penny For Your Thoughts, Book review, E-books giveaways, writing

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

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Like many other authors, they are readers. I’m no different. While I am an author, I am also an avid reader, and apart from going out and having a blast with close friends and families during the weekend, I usually curl up with a few good books scattered on my bed while the rest of my world are dreaming away.

Please don’t call the nuthouse just yet if you found me yakking away about books this coming week, cuz I’ve just finished reading 7 books in total in just one day, and I think each and every one of it deserves a good review.

Some of those books are borrowed from my elder sister, who is also a bookworm, while some others are mine… obtained them from a an access book store in the vicinity of Klang valley. And of course, being a cheapskate, there’s also downloaded books.

I’m gonna review the downloaded one first, cuz I have a pdf copy of it, and therefore, I can share a copy of the ebook with you if you want it.

This is the first book I want to talk about:

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer- recently published on 5th June 2010.

While I hate the movie adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, I find the novels rather addictive. I’ve read Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and last but not least, Breaking Dawn, and even reviewed them. I’ve also read the unreleased/unpublished Midnight Sun draft, and I thought, Twilight Saga has ended for good with Breaking Dawn.

When I’ve heard about The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner a couple of months ago, I got rather excited, and anticipate the novel release.

All right, without further ado, let us proceed with the review.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is set in the ‘Eclipse’ time-line. In ‘Eclipse’, Bella applies for colleges, considers a marriage proposal and worries about a rash of Seattle murders.

She balances her star-crossed love for Edward against her moonstruck love for Jacob; she negotiates peace between the warring werewolves and vampires; and she witnesses a standoff between the ruling-class Volturi and an army of newly transformed vampires who have been violating vampire law.

Bree Tanner is one of these newborns, created solely to destroy her and the Cullens. Her role in ‘Eclipse’ is limited to five pages: Bree becames the Volturi’s prisoner, she begs for mercy, she is denied mercilessly by the Volturis.

But Meyer took a shine to the 15-year-old runaway-turned-vampire and began exploring her brief life as an independent writing exercise. That experiment eventually grew to book length, and Meyer decided to publish it and donating one dollar from every book’s sale to the American Red Cross and also giving fans free access to the text online on www.breetanner.com

Bree begins three months after the title character’s vampire transformation. She is living with other newborns in a Seattle flophouse, quenching her thirst for human blood while trying to figure out just what the enigmatic Riley, a sort of vampire RA isn’t telling the rest of them.

Hint: He’s working for Victoria, the evil ‘Twilight’ vampire who wants to kill Bella and destroy Edward Cullen and family for destroying her bonded partner, James.

Bree remembers little of her human life, other than that it wasn’t great, and her vampire life isn’t shaping up to be much better. Newborn vampires are a nasty bunch of creatues and regularly resort to tearing one another up as entertainment. Her only ally is the humane Diego, who also is conveniently handsome.

The plot yields a few tasty morsels. Fans will discover a few more good reason to detest and loathe Jane, the Volturi’s china-doll torturer, and Fred, a vampire whose superpower is to make people vomit, a nice addition to the world of Twilight.

As far as character development goes, ‘Bree’ bests the rest of ‘Twilight’. Bree and love interest Diego talk and act like real undead teens exploring a crush, as opposed to Edward and Bella’s pathological obsessive-love that defines the other novels.

Meyer’s dialogue in Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is more believable here than almost anywhere else in Twilight-world, but then again, the fans does not read Twilight for reality. People read twilight for the fantasy of it and those unbearably sweet passion.

Frankly speaking, this novel is rather disappointing but I guess it’s somehow expected. What else could you expect from the story of a young teenage girl? Passion and some rock and roll on the bed? I don’t quite think that would be appropriate.

‘Bree’ feels its fullest and most compelling in the last 30 pages, when the Cullens finally show up as Bree’s would-be saviors. Bree fails to notice, even once, how chiseled and godlike Edward is, which feels truly bizarre to fans who have known only Bella’s point of view.

I was left wondering and thinking about Edward and Bella at the end of Bree. Bree, is a good read, but not exactly something I’m used to, considering that I’ve read Twilight Saga that’s enormously told from Bella’s point of view.

Anybody wants a pdf version of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner? Please email me at cleffairy@gmail.com for it, and I will try to send it to you asap.

Cleffairy: There’s always a different story from other perspectives. Life is just about that, isn’t it? Different perspectives.


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The Prophecy Answer Book by David Jeremiah

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Page count: 256 pages, hardcover

Author: David Jeremiah

Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers

Thomas Nelson Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book as part of their BookSneeze.com bloggers book review program. I was not required to write a positive review, and therefore, the review is 100% my honest opinion.

It’s said that the bible is full of codes. And this book is just about that. The codes in the Holy Bible, and the explanation for the events that has been prophesied in the Bible.

Prophecy Answer book explain the prophecy puzzles in plain, simple language. And it can be understood easily. There are 1,000 prophecies in the Bible so it’s natural to wonder, have any prophecies been fulfilled?

Do they really predict the future? And can we really know what will happen at the end of time? When will Armageddon be?

Dr. Jeremiah decodes and clarifies prophecy for the average person. He explains in simple terms what could otherwise be mysterious and even frightening, allowing readers to gain a balanced understanding and assuring perspective of the significance of prophetic events to their personal lives as believers in Christ. This book too, explain how the modern events that occurred every now and then is related to the Holy Bible.

Now, I’ve always loved mysteries. In comparison to the previous book that I received from BookSneeze that’s such a bore, this one is hard to put down, and it made me understand the events that has been predicted in the Holy Bible even more.

This is one book that I would read over and over again and would not get bored. It’s almost like reading the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. The only difference here is that while Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code gives you mind boggling question that could undermine your faith, this book provided logical answers that will strengthen your faith instead.

And yes, I would definitely recommend this to those who doubts what the Holy Bible had predict, as the explanation really does make sense. My favourite chapter of the book is The New Heaven and The New Earth, and I would rate the book 4 out of 5. It’s a good, serious book to read.

Cleffairy: It is nice to have answers for a change.


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