THREE FINAL BOOKS FOR JUNE BLAST-O-BOOKS!

WINNERS FINALLY! 

(But everyone who participated this month, please read this notice!)
Missing Persons: DENISE

Skinny: MICHELLE M.

The Little Women Letters: MARGIE

Congrats winners! Please email me at stephanieelliot@gmail.com NOT with TWO Ts ... there is another stephanie elliot out there who has been getting my emails. If you put Two Ts at the end of elliot you will be sending it to the WRONG Stephanie! I am STEPHANIE ELLIOT with ONE T!

Thank YOU ALL who participated! There will be a GRAND PRIZE DRAWING with lots of books to win when I return from Chicago, probably late July/early August. If you've posted at ALL during the month of June, YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO WIN! I will DRAW one name per POST for each day, and then ALL of those entries will then go into the drawing where two names will then be chosen to WIN a bunch of books and possibly a Target or B&N gift card and some other treats or stuff to go along with it! So stay tuned and keep reading MaNiC! Also, when I get back home, I will have the updated list of MANY MORE great books that will be offered up during the SEPTEMBER BLOWOUT MONTHLONG GIVEAWAY!

OK, we are officially down to the wire and I’ve got three more books to share with you. But not to worry because I’ve already got a KICKIN’ list started of new books that I’ll be bringing to you in the Fall. Because I’m leaving for Chicago in two days, I’m posting the last three books here. Enter once, and I will be choosing THREE winners for these books very soon, so you gotta be quick here. (Or maybe, just maybe I’ll let it go through the weekend and I’ll choose after the fourth of July – I’m pretty sure I can manage to choose winners while out of town, I just know I have to get this post up, because, well, have you tried to pack for five people for almost a month lately? NOT FUN!)

NOTE: Please make sure to go back and check to see if you've won a book -- there was a mistake on one of the previous books and I accidentally listed the wrong winner on one of the books. You may have won!

So, here are the LAST THREE BOOKS of June’s Blast-O-Books! Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you. I’ll be giving you some more details on the giveaway, and will be announcing a grand prize winner with a GRAND PRIZE SURPRISE PACK of MYSTERY books when I return at the end of July. I may even choose two winners like last time!

There will also be vacation posting so please do check in through July…I'll be seeing U2, and REO Speedwagon, and seeing old friends, and having family reunions, and meeting my niece for the very first time, and watching my kids get together with their best friends they haven't seen since we moved here over a year ago, and attending the Very Late Housewarming Party at my old home (Yep,the house we used to live in!), so there will be much to blog about! ... and you can always check out my posts at SheKnows.com Real Moms Guide - I post over there every single day - mostly about women issues and parenting stuff, also some different book reviews too! If you get a chance, stop on by and leave a comment! Thanks!

So, without any further you know what, here are today's final three books! Thanks for taking the ride with me this month! It's been a lot of fun!

MISSING PERSONS by Clare O’Donohue

This one is a Kate Conway Mystery, and it seems I’m becoming a mystery fan, so if you are too, you can expect to find more mysteries here on MaNiC!

When Kate’s soon-to-be ex-husband is found dead, she’s the suspect, and while she might have wanted to kill him, she didn’t do it. While she’s in the middle of this mess, suddenly, her dead ex’s new girlfriend wants to be friends with her – ok, how weird is THAT, and what is UP with that? Pretty mysterious there, huh?

Since Kate is a Chicago (gotta love going back to my roots) Television Producer, she gets a new assignment for a TV series called Missing Persons, and she throws herself into the project, which is about the disappearance of a young woman. She’s got to get 22 minutes of footage but suddenly, she’s discovering that the case on the young woman, and her ex’s death may have something in common.

It’s fast-paced and heart-racing, and since the author has a background in television as a writer and producer, she’s got the inside scoop to make Missing Persons an authentic and exciting read!

SKINNY by Diana Spechler

When I first discovered SKINNY, I knew it was one I had to read, and share with you! It had all the elements I look for in a great book – a protagonist dealing with some inner turmoil, a bit of a YA feel with the kids in camp (love the setting), some sexy sexy, and I already knew that Diana Spechler had written a great first novel, Who By Fire (check it out too!) I was especially attracted to the fact that there was a weight issue there. I guess it’s because for my whole life I have battled with the dreaded calorie. I’ve never been to summer camp though, and in SKINNY, main character Gray heads there as a camp counselor in order to stop a sudden bingeing due to her father’s death, and also to unravel a family mystery.

Below is the blurb of the book:

In the aftermath of her Orthodox Jewish father's death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor Sheena, the self-aggrandizing camp director Lewis, his attractive assistant Bennett, and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father's lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Visceral, poignant, and often wickedly funny, Diana Spechler's masterfully crafted second novel illuminates a young woman's struggle to make sense of the inextricable link between hunger and emotion, and to make peace with her demons, her body, and herself.

Here’s the book trailer of SKINNY.

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly


I am positive I read and loved Little Women when I was a little girl, and for some reason, I think I wanted to be Jo. (Yes, I just went to Wikipedia to confirm – she was the one who wanted to write a great novel, so that is true – I wanted to be, and still do want to be, Jo!)

The Little Women Letters is a fictional take on Jo’s descendants – and I’ve yet had a chance to read it, but anyone, whether or not you’ve read Little Women, will enjoy this “compassionate and spirited tale.” And if you’ve always been a Little Women fan, then well, you will fall in absolute love with this imaginary continued tale of these women!

Here’s the premise:

Vibrant, fresh, and intelligent, The Little Women Letters explores the imagined lives of Jo March’s descendants—three sisters who are both thoroughly modern and thoroughly March. As uplifting and essential as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Gabrielle Donnelly’s novel will speak to anyone who’s ever fought with a sister, fallen in love with a fabulous pair of shoes, or wondered what on earth life had in store for her.

With her older sister, Emma, planning a wedding and her younger sister, Sophie, preparing to launch a career on the London stage, Lulu can’t help but feel like the failure of the Atwater family. Lulu loves her sisters dearly and wants nothing but the best for them, but she finds herself stuck in a rut, working dead-end jobs with no romantic prospects in sight. When her mother asks her to find a cache of old family recipes in the attic of her childhood home, Lulu stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great-grandmother Josephine March. In her letters, Jo writes in detail about every aspect of her life: her older sister, Meg’s, new home and family; her younger sister Amy’s many admirers; Beth’s illness and the family’s shared grief over losing her too soon; and the butterflies she feels when she meets a handsome young German. As Lulu delves deeper into the lives and secrets of the March sisters, she finds solace and guidance, but can the words of her great-great-grandmother help Lulu find a place for herself in a world so different from the one Jo knew?

Some things, of course, remain unchanged: the stories and jokes that form a family’s history, the laughter over tea in the afternoon, the desire to do the right thing in spite of obstacles. And above all, of course, the fierce, undying, and often infuriating bond of sisterhood that links the Atwater women every bit as firmly as it did the March sisters all those years ago. Both a loving tribute to Little Women and a wonderful contemporary family story, The Little Women Letters is a heartwarming, funny, and wise novel for today.

Read an excerpt of THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS.

To enter to qualify for each one of these books (I will draw three separate winners from all the entries, so you’ll have three chances to win), tell me … hmmm, I was going to ask you to name your fave crime show and if you’ve been to summer camp, but then I couldn’t come up with something for the third book, like what is your favorite letter? That’s dumb, so I’m trying to think of something really clever and interesting to ask you…. Let’s see …OK!

Since I’ve been thinking a lot about my OWN manuscript (which has been edited and sent back to my agent!), let me ask you this:

If you could ASK THE EX YOU THINK ABOUT MOST one thing, what would you ask him (or her)?

Thanks for reading and being a part of June Blast-O-Books.

I also blog at SheKnows.com Real Moms Guide. Please take a look at my posts over there if you get a chance!

Don't forget to enter for any of the previous books that you may have missed. AS LONG AS A WINNER's NAME is NOT posted at the top of the blog post, then that means a winner has NOT yet been chosen so you can still enter to win that book but ONLY ONE TIME per book entry PLEASE!

If you're new here, check out the rules and other stuff for the June Blast-O-Books there under that highlighted link back there, or feel free to leave me a comment always and I'll answer it in the thread, or email me at stephanieelliot@gmail.com. It is always at my discretion to change things up, and because of some regulations, I guess I must say that the books I review are given to me by either the authors or publishers or publicists, and I am never paid for my reviews, and they are my own personal reviews, and you know what, because I'm here telling you this anyway, I will also tell you that I never review a book I don't like, because you know what, why waste my time, life is too short to read a crappy book! There. There's my new mantra!