I NEVER PROMISED YOU A GOODIE BAG By Jennifer Gilbert

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I Never Promised You A Goodie Bag

By Jennifer Gilbert

By now you all know that I’m such a fan of memoirs and here’s one that you all will love. I Never Promised You A Goodie Bag: A Memoir of a Life Through Events – the Ones You Plan and the Ones You Don’t is one that when you finish it you will think about it (and the author and what she’s been through!) for days later.

When Jennifer was just 22 years old she was brutally attacked with the intent of murder – stabbed more than 37 times with a screwdriver. Miraculously, she survived, and her memoir is her story of survival, and how she rose above her turmoil to become the successful entrepreneur/event planner of Save the Date special events company in New York.

She is married and the mother to three children, and has learned to find joy, laugh, let go and be happy after years of faking it. You'll find that once she had children, one of her sons, who is totally healthy but has something external going on with him, helped her to find the strength to share what happened to her to heal her internal scars. It's truly an amazing and inspirational story!

Here’s the back-of-the-book blurb:

When Jennifer was just a year out of college, a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced young woman looking forward to a bright future, someone tried to cut her life short in the most violent way. But she survived, and not wanting this traumatic event to define her life, she buried it deep within and never spoke of it again.


She bravely launched a fabulous career in New York as an event planner, designing lavish parties and fairy-tale weddings. Determined to help others celebrate and enjoy life's greatest moments, she was convinced she'd never again feel joy herself. Yet it was these weddings, anniversaries, and holiday parties, showered with all her love and attention through those silent, scary years, that slowly brought her back to life.


Always the calm in the event-planning storm—she could fix a ripped wedding dress, solve the problem of an undelivered wedding cake in the nick of time, and move a party with two days' notice when disaster struck—there was no crisis that she couldn't turn into a professional triumph.


Somewhere along the way, she felt a stirring in her heart and began yearning for more than just standing on the sidelines living vicariously through other people's lives. She fell in love, had her heart broken a few times, and then one day she found true love in a place so surprising that it literally knocked her out of her chair.


As Gilbert learned over and over again, no one's entitled to an easy road, and some people's roads are bumpier than others. But survive each twist and turn she does—sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, and often with both.

Read an excerpt of Goodie Bag here. 

Before & After:

You'll definitely want to check out Jennifer on Kathy Lee and Hoda on Today too! She truly is an inspiration.

Fun Fact: Jennifer Gilbert had a short stint on Real Housewives of New York season 3 but didn’t last long – apparently she didn’t cause enough of a ruckus like Bethenny and crew!

To win a copy of I Never Promised You A Goodie Bag, tell me some items you’d like to have in your very own Goodie Bag if you could design your own, but be realistic – let’s say the items couldn’t cost more than $30. Hahah, like that’s realistic! I’d want a book, iTunes card, Starbucks card, and maybe a really good lip gloss/balm!

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This book is part of the June Promo - enter every day in June for a chance at the grand prize giveaway at the end of the month - a pile of awesome books! - the more times you enter, the more chances you have at winning!


As with all of the books I post on Booking with MaNiC, thanks to the authors and publicists for providing me with the books. Giveaways open to US/Canada residents only. To enter, leave an identifying unique user name or ID (NO anonymous will be accepted – leave an email address if you don’t know how to post to an account!

Winners will be chosen at random by random.org, within THREE DAYS from the date the book is posted on the blog, and one entry ALLOWED per book please. If you scroll through previous posts and if there is NOT a highlighted note at the top, then feel free to enter to win that book too! If there is a highlighted announcement at the top of a post, then that book is closed to comments and a winner has already been chosen. For comments, questions, suggestions, please email me at stephanieelliot@gmail.com. Thanks for your participation! Good luck!