Teaser Tuesday: Malice at the Palace by Rhys Bowen

I stepped into a foyer and looked around with surprise. I had expected something like Buckingham Palace—walls lined with royal portraits, antiques and statues everywhere. But this was more like an ordinary home, slightly outmoded and with a lingering smell of furniture polish and damp. I gave a sigh of disappointment, mingled with a small sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about knocking over priceless objects every time I turned around, the way I did at Buckingham Palace. It was also rather cold in that foyer, with a draft swirling about my legs.. Not too welcoming a first impression for a visiting princess, I thought. But perhaps they were not planning to turn on any form of heat until she arrived.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. I wondered if the queen would have supplied servants of if Princess Marina was bringing her own and they weren’t here yet. I realized that I should have asked to be taken to Major Beauchamp-Chough, not have gone straight to the apartment. Protocol probably demanded that he escort me to my quarters. But it was a long, wet walk back to the front of the building. There was an archway at the end of the entry hall leading to a passageway beyond. As I looked toward it I saw a woman walk across it. She was moving swiftly, almost gliding and making no sound.
“Hello,” I called. “Wait a minute, please.”
When she didn’t stop I ran after her, and found myself standing in a long dark corridor that was completely empty. Where had she gone? There were no side hallways and she would not have had time to open and close a door. That’s when I realized she was wearing a long white dress and her hair had been piled upon her head in little curls. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

From Rhys Bowen's facebook page 

Malice at the Palace (The Royal Spyness Series Book 9) is due out today August 4th

Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission

Book Review: Focus on Me by Megan Erickson

Focus on Me

Author: Megan Erickson

Publisher: InterMix

Genre: Romance, m/m

Synopsis: Colin Hartman can now add college to his list of failures. On the coast-to-coast trek home from California, Colin stops at a gas station in the Nevada desert, and can’t help noticing the guy in tight jeans looking like he just stepped off a catwalk. When he realizes Catwalk is stranded, Colin offers a ride.

Riley only intended to take a short ride in Colin’s Jeep to the Grand Canyon. But one detour leads to another until they finally find themselves tumbling into bed together. However there are shadows in Riley’s eyes that hide a troubled past. And when those shadows threaten to bury the man whom Colin has fallen in love with, he vows to get Riley the help he needs. For once in his life, quitting isn’t an option… from Megan Erickson

Thoughts: There will be spoilers in this review. I highly recommend the book but make sure you have a good supply of tissues handy, you are going to need them. Stop reading now if you do not want spoilers. (Don't worry I don't think it is a MAJOR spoiler, you'll get the spoiler fairly early on if you pay attention).

This book comes with a four kleenex box warning (five Kleenex box warnings are for character death). I could not put it down, despite the tears running down my face. I had to find out what happened. Although I knew, because of the genre that things would be okay, I still had no idea how things were going to get there. Part of the reason this book hit me so hard is because it is a very personal subject. Riley suffers from depression, a very serious depression and this is something I have dealt with myself. For me the Kleenex were needed because I could see myself in Riley. I really felt the pain that Riley felt. The not feeling. The numbness and wishing that you could feel. Ericksson perfectly captured those feelings and that hit me very hard.

As deeply as I felt Riley's feelings, Riley isn't actually the narrator of most of the story and that is another stroke of genius from Erickson. Most of the story is told by Colin and therefore it also becomes a story of what depression does to those who love a person with depression. This perspective is less familiar to me but again the book really captures the feelings that others have told me about. When I was getting better from my depression my mom asked me if there was anything she and my dad could have done differently. I told her no. They loved me and that was enough. But I could see (and I can understand) that this didn't feel like enough. And this is the feeling I get from Colin as well. Intellectually he knows what he has done is enough but it still does not FEEL like enough.

Although I have already mentioned the narrative structure of this novel I want to talk about it some more since it was one of my favourite aspects of the book. The book opens with an e-mail from one man to another (if you have read Trust the Focus you will recognize the writer). That is the only time we are given this persons "voice". The rest of the story is told by Colin as the story unfolds and through e-mails from Riley. We never get to see the replies to Riley's e-mails, although they refer to answers to previous messages. The e-mail sections are much shorter than Colin's sections and this means that the story unfolds quite slowly, and you find things out pretty much at the same pace as Colin. You sort of have to guess at the coming conflict. For me this lent a certain mystery to the story that I really enjoyed.

Overall, although this was a though book to read it is a book I highly recommend.

 Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission

Plan With Me August: Day 1 How I choose my planner

Some of the parts of me are tightly connected other parts are more lose and free flowing. I am an English teacher who likes to read. I am sure you are all shocked. In the four years I have been a teacher I have discovered that one thing teachers like is stationary. Let a bunch of teachers lose in a stationary store and it will be expensive. An extension of this is a love of organization. Now not all teachers will be organized (I will have nightmares about my friend C's desk for years to come, but that's okay my desk gives her nightmares). One of the ways in which my love for organizing comes out is thru my love for planners. I recently saw a planner challenge over on Pintrest (the actual challenge is on Instagram) and I thought I would take part. I'll be posting pictures over there every day but I will write some longer posts here on some of the days.

So today is all about how you choose your planner. Now I've tried many different ways over the years from simple pocket calendars to bullet journals to the big Kikki-K planner I have now. I've done paper planners and electronic planners. Finding the right planner is HARD. And, add to that your planner needs change. That small pocket planner with squirrels I had in 8th grade isn't going to cut it for the slightly scattered teacher, so you have to re-evaluate. 

One thing that has been consistent for me (and a big reason why I abandoned the bullet journal) is a need to see a week at a time. Less or more leaves me feeling stressed. A week is Goldilocks perfect for me. 

My first few years as a teacher I got A5 calendars for teachers that we bought through work and these worked okay for keeping track of what was happening. The had a week per spread. And usually some good information. But something was missing. I realized I wanted to add in pages. I wanted to be able to keep my notes from meetings and my absence sheets with me (I'll talk more about my teacher planner in a later post). I was also tired of carting around all these extra pages that I never use. Enter a Filofax. I had a personal size one in high school and liked it but wanted something bigger. I ended up going for the Filofax Metropol Organiser in red. I thought I wanted the notepad at the back and the business card holders. I wasn't super happy with the colour but a girl can't have everything. The A5 had a horizontal calendar that suited me as it gave me more space to write on each day than my previous vertical calendars had. I kept a short note of what I was planning on teaching for each class, using different colours for each class. I ended up not using the note pad since the top page curled but despite that we were moving along nicely.

Mint

Dark Cherry

Then a friend of mine pictured her Kikki-K calendar on Instagram. I had such organizer envy. And it only grew when I checked out the web page. I was in Organization heaven. I swear I had palpitations. I wanted the Large Planner in Mint. But it was sold out so I ended up getting the Black Cherry one instead. And boy am I glad. The colour suits my beloved Kate Spade handbag perfectly and it just suits me. At first I kept my Filofax pages but I didn't like how they stuck out over the tabs so in the end I ended up getting the Kikki-K pages. And I love them. Right now I am happy with the planner. I can add the pages I need, especially since the planner comes with stickers that you can replace the already printed labels. It is a good size for my handbag and my life. Right now it is perfect for me.

Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission

Throw Back Thursday Review Re-Post: My Ántonia by Willa Cather

I read this book back in 2009 and really enjoyed it. If it wasn't packed away in a box (man do I hate moving) I might have picked it up again now that I've seen my old review. I am in the mood for a well written book. I will say that the attitude that I found sad then I find even sadder now considering all that is going on in the world in general and in Sweden in particular. 

My Ántonia by Willa Cather

Category: Fiction

Synopsis: A story of young women on the American frontier (Nebraska). The story focuses primarily on the title character Ántonia and the rather hard life she end up leading as an immigrant woman in the American west. We also get to see the life of several other pioneer women and the choices they have made.

My Thoughts: I loved this book. It was well written. It had me gripped.
I loved that it portrayed the many different aspects of pioneer life. The hypocrisies, the joys and a the sorrows. I also liked that it was told from the perspective of a man who knew these women. It gave an impression of the women that I had not expected. One can tell that the author is female but I find it interesting that she uses a male to tell her story. I wonder if a man at the time would have seen and commented on the things that the narrator commented on?

I liked that the story followed several different women and showed them as independent characters, capable of taking care of themselves. The girls are all strong and learn to use their strengths to help themselves but also each other, despite what society around them might think.

One aspect that I found very relevant both for the time when the story was written and set and for today was the hypocrisies surrounding men and women and their roles. At the same time as the girls were capable of hard work and industry was admired a girl who worked at a “mans job” was seen as somehow less of a woman. She was looked down upon and talked about. I still find these attitudes today. The women themselves were doing it to survive and to help their families survive something that was required but they were seen as less than the women who lived in town.

Another significant aspect of which I had not thought about was the attitude of the Americans towards the newly arrived immigrants. The immigrants worked hard and were motivated but were often seen as having looser morals and differing attitudes. Lets be honest and say that this attitude still prevails in many societies today (my own included). It is an attitude I find sad.

 Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission

Teaser Tuesday: Curve Ball

Teaser from Sloan Johnson's web page

 I read the first book in this series Wild Pitch and really enjoyed it. Curve Ball is out July 29 and I'll be trying to read it in the car as I am moving south (don't worry my dad will be driving, the trying is due to motion sickness).

Book Review: HIM by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

HIM

Authors: Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy

Publisher: Rennie Road Books

Genre: M/M Romance

Synopsis: They don’t play for the same team. Or do they?
Jamie Canning has never been able to figure out how he lost his closest friend. Four years ago, his tattooed, wise-cracking, rule-breaking roommate cut him off without an explanation. So what if things got a little weird on the last night of hockey camp the summer they were eighteen? It was just a little drunken foolishness. Nobody died.
Ryan Wesley’s biggest regret is coaxing his very straight friend into a bet that pushed the boundaries of their relationship. Now, with their college teams set to face off at the national championship, he’ll finally get a chance to apologize. But all it takes is one look at his longtime crush, and the ache is stronger than ever.
Jamie has waited a long time for answers, but walks away with only more questions—can one night of sex ruin a friendship? If not, how about six more weeks of it? When Wesley turns up to coach alongside Jamie for one more hot summer at camp, Jamie has a few things to discover about his old friend...and a big one to learn about himself.
Warning: contains sexual situations, skinnydipping, shenanigans in an SUV and proof that coming out to your family on social media is a dicey proposition.
From Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

My Thoughts: Happiness. If anyone asked me to describe HIM with one word that would be it. I finished reading it at 2am and let out a satisfied, happy sigh and dried my eyes and fell asleep happy. Jamie and Wes made me happy. Even when I wanted to whack them over the head because they were being very boy they made me happy. They were real.

I connected the most with Jamie for two different reasons, one he is generally a rule follower. He wants to do his best and he generally prefers to do this by the book. However, he is A LOT more laid back than me. There are also some choices that Jamie has to make that I really connected with but I think writing about that would spoil to much of the book so I won't tell you what his choices are.  So, although Jamie is more like my brother in being laid back, there were aspects of his journey that I really connected with and enjoyed.

Although I connected more with Jamie, Wes was also a really good character. He had a naughty streak that appealed to me even though I am a rule follower. I sometimes wish I was more like Wes. I also felt very sorry for him at times. He was a bit to much in his head and his asshole of a dad...well it made me want to take care of him. Also how can you not like someone who likes purple Skittles, they are the best. 

There is sex in it. And it is HAWT let me tell you. There is skinny dipping and naked boys. And...drool :D

HIM didn't just make me happy because the characters made me happy but it also made me happy because it was HILARIOUS at times. The kind of funny that makes you laugh out loud even on public transportation. For example, as someone who spends her days with teenagers this tickled my funny bone:

They're headstrong and irrational. They listen to what I say, and then they go do the opposite.
They're teenagers. And after ten minutes of play I'm basically beating my head against the plexi, praying for my own death.
"Pat," I beg. "Please tell me I wasn't like this." 
"You weren't," he says with a shake of his head. "You were three times worse." Then that traitor has the balls to exit the building, leaving me in charge of thirty sweating hormone-crazed teenage hockey punks.

I do want to tell Wes though that he hasn't really suffered until you add girls to that mix, but he is having a difficult enough time, snicker.

As funny as this book is there is also some angst. I mean it is hard to write a book in the romance genre and not have any angst. Add to it that the main characters are in their twenties and still trying to find their way in life (hey, I'm in my thirties and still trying to figure things out so...) and the angst ramps up some. However, this book has a zero Kleenex box rating and only gets a one and a half smack up the head rating. So a fairly low angst level her. Mostly it is a cozy, funny book that I would recommend as a feel good book.

I recieved HIM as an ARC, the love however is completely genuine. The book is due out July 28th. Ordering links in this post

Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission

Teaser Tuesday: HIM

HIM is due out on July 28th and it is going to be AWESOME

Copyright ©2015 Zee from A Tea Stained Page. This post was originally posted by Zee from A Tea Stained Page. It should not be reproduced without express written permission