Taking The Stage Book Review

jacqui_monet
September 5, 2016

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Title: Taking The Stage

Author: Paige Parsons

Series: n/a (well, not yet anyway)

Genre: Romance, Interracial Romance (BWWM)

Pages: 134

Taking the Stage is the debut novel of Paige Parsons and I have to say I loved every second of it. I’ve never read a romance novel with the intention of  sharing my experience with the public, but I’ve decided to go for it anyway. You know, why not?! That being said, let’s jump right in to it.

This book centers around the working and personal relationships of stage manager Robyn (Roby) Rose and her director Joseph (don’t-call-him-Joey) Davis. Roby has moved back to her home state of Arizona because she suffered a massive personal blow; she caught her husband with his head between the legs of a hot young teacher. Considering that he was the principle of the school that both women worked at, he’s lucky there wasn’t a messy lawsuit along with professional embarrassment. Roby, however, stuck it out for the rest of the school year and then bounced which is more than I can say for myself, I honestly would have walked right out of his office never to be seen or heard from again.

Anyway, after a few weeks or so in good old AZ, Roby is settling into a new apartment and is handed a job at a theatre in town. Roby is chronically late to everything which drives Joseph crazy. He wants to resolve the problem and gives her a choice: 1) every minute late will be docked from her pay or 2) each minute results in a swat. A SWAT!! As in, spanking. There is spanking in this book! At first I thought, “Mm sounds like a sexual harassment lawsuit to me,” because well, he is her boss. But as the book went on I became okay with it  because the spanking wasn’t sexualized. What was sexy though, was the dialogue and their inner monologues about each other. I could feel the sexual tension between them as the story progressed. Throughout the novel, our potential lovers deal with family, meddling mentors and an old flame come back to town in the form of a desperately needed leading actress.

Now, I know I listed above that Taking the Stage is an interracial romance novel but I didn’t really touch on it. In all honesty, the book doesn’t either. The most we get is the occasional description of her skin comparing her to chocolate, which I hate! Why are black characters always described in conjunction with food? Ugh. We don’t describe white characters as mashed potato colored. Anyway, I did like that race never came up. Roby’s blackness is never used against her nor is Joseph’s whiteness used against him. Seriously, I loved that this is a modern story and that race just isn’t an issue.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. Once I got past the um “original” spellings of Roby’s sisters’ names, Taking the Stage ended up being a very quick read. In fact, I wish the book had been a little bit longer; I could stand to know a little bit more about what happened between Joseph and his ex. But when all is said and done, this novel was fun and sexy and full of accurate theatre lingo. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, especially my theatre friends.

Check the links below to get this e-book for yourself!

https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Stage-Paige-Parsons-ebook/dp/B01IWQEP3G#nav-subnav

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/taking-the-stage-paige-parsons/1124141693?type=eBook

Fireworks and Tea Parties

jacqui_monet
August 5, 2016

Okay, so I went to Broken Bow, Oklahoma to visit The Husband’s family and man was it something else. Now B-Bow, as they call it, is one of those towns that’s so small you have to continually zoom in on  google maps and even then you might give up before you find it. It’s the type of place where you wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t lock their doors and people literally “drive in to town”.  At night it pitch black because they don’t have street lights and the bugs try to murder your ankles. It’s a nearly 19 hour drive from where I live, but it’s totally worth it!

While there I saw fireworks and had the chance to shoot them off for the first time. Where I live, it’s totally illegal to do that. I totally freaked out because I just knew I was going to catch my hair on fire; it didn’t help that I witnessed a kid accidentally shoot my Father-in-Law in the face with a bottle rocket. The Husband and I did take time for ourselves, though, at the local library and a tiny coffee shop called Adam and Eve (which totally had a better Caramel Macchiato than Starbucks).

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I also threw a small surprise tea party for The Husband’s maternal grandmother. She loved it even though she hates surprises. I almost got a little misty-eyed when she told me she’d never had a birthday party before. Not one in her whole 78 years life! God, I was grateful that I spent hours and hours baking in my sister-in-law’s kitchen.  The party was  “girls only” which was nice because everyone was comfortable and Grandma P told us stories about her life and I couldn’t help but be thankful for the experience and the time spent with such a wonderful woman.

Look at all the food!
Look at all the food!

Enough gushing and onto the food. With a little assistance from the Mother-in-law, I made glazed croissants, scones, meat pies, individual strawberry cheesecakes, red velvet cupcakes with cutout hearts, Judy’s Trifle Cake and BLTs. I also cold brewed several flavors of green tea for a tea tasting. I don’t know about the other girls but I was a fat baby bird by the end of it!

Alright, that’s all for now. Remember, if you have a book you think I should read and review suggest it to me on my Goodreads!! https://www.goodreads.com/ReadEatDrink.

Kisses

The Invisible Library Book Review

jacqui_monet
July 15, 2016

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Title: The Invisible Library

Author: Genevieve Cogman

Series: The Invisible Library (book 1)

Genre: Sci-Fi; Steampunk; Fantasy

Pages: 351

Review:

I obtained this book as a part of some swag that I received at Phoenix Comiccon this year. I was totally drawn to this book and it was the first one that, based on the blurb on the on the back, I just had to read. The book is about a Librarian named Irene and her new trainee Kai. The pair must locate a book that was owned by a vampire and then stolen when he was beheaded. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t the only ones trying to recover the book. To make matters worse an evil Former-Librarian is on the loose and in the area.

This book contains elements of steampunk, Fae and magic and some supernatural stuff thrown in for good measure. The writing is decent if not a little dry but there is some excellent world building going on and considering that this is a series, it will be exciting to see what comes next for the Librarians.

Ok. So, if you have been following me on social media you know that I’ve been reading this book for what feels like years. Okay, it’s only been a couple of weeks but it feels like forever. I normally read books in days despite their high page count. This book though, was a struggle. It dragged. There would some interesting action going on and then it would drag… again. Getting through it was rough. I’m sure it won’t be that way for everyone. This book and I just didn’t click. Maybe I’ll reread it again in a few years or maybe I’ll just give it way for someone else to enjoy. Oh, well, there are other books out there for me to love.

 

Check out the first few pages of audio below:

Judy’s Trifle Cake

jacqui_monet
June 19, 2016

In Daddy-Long-Legs, Judy goes to to a girl’s college and meets many new types of people, makes life-long friends, travels to places she’d never thought she’d go and experiences incredible new things. Segue! I think that a poor orphaned girl (whose name was literally chosen from a gravestone and the phone book) would love any chocolate dessert that was presented to her while away at her fancy new college. This recipe is recreation of something that my mother used to make for my siblings and I as kids. This version though is very quick and inexpensive. It’s light and airy and oddly refreshing. Judy’s Trifle Cake will leave a great impression on your dinner guests and not just the poor college students.

You will need:

Chocolate Cake ( I used a boxed cake baked in a 13 x 9in pan)

Chocolate Pudding (seriously, I’m not against the boxed stuff you guys)

 

Whipped topping (you can make it from scratch OR Cool Whip)

Vanilla extract.

Fresh Fruit (think berries)

chocolate shavings or mint

Directions:

Prepare the Pudding as the box says and chill in the fridge.

Prepare the chocolate cake but make a few substitutions. Butter for Oil and Milk for Water. Add a cap full of the vanilla extract. Place the baked cake in the freezer for about 10 minutes. Transfer it to a cutting board or tray (upside down) and return to the freezer for another ten. Once completely cool, slice off the top to make it level and all four sides. Next, cut into cubes.

There are a few different ways that you can plate this.

  1. If you have a trifle dish  you can layer everything together. Cake, pudding, fruit, whipped topping until the dish is filled. At the top, garnish with fruit and a sprig of mint.
  2. In a mason jar you can do the same thing treating it like a tiny trifle dish.
  3. On a dessert plate you can  make a square with four cubes, cover with pudding and you can either spoon or pipe the whipped topping. Lastly, garnish!

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you enjoy this super simple dessert!

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Daddy-Long-Legs Book Review

jacqui_monet
June 17, 2016

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Author: Jean Webster

Series: kind of the sequel, Dear Enemy, takes place in the same world but not with our protagonist.

Genre: YA

Pages: 185

When I first saw this book, it was sitting sadly on the shelf at the library. The front cover was particularly boring featuring an ambiguously aged girl sitting with a pen and paper half smiling out of a window. Then I thought, “Daddy-Long-Legs? Really? What is this, the true life story of Little Miss Muffet?” So, being the strange ol’ bird that I am, I checked the book out.

You know the old saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover?” It totally applies here. Daddy-Long-Legs was a great read. With only 185 pages, I inhaled the books in a couple of hours. Two words: page turner.

First published in 1912, Daddy-Long-Legs tell the story of an orphan named Jerusha aka Judy who gets sent to college anonymously by a man who donates to the orphanage. This mystery benefactor will pay for her tuition, books, food, clothes and any and all incidentals along the way. Judy is told that she can attend school without fear of being indebted to him, but on two conditions.

  1. Judy must write a letter to him every month until she graduates knowing full well that he will never write her back.
  2. She cannot know who her benefactor is.

At first I was worried when I realized that all but the first ten pages were written in a letter format. Yet, this style never got stale. Judy’s letters were so detailed that while reading, I forgot that there wasn’t any actual dialogue. The letters are also pretty funny especially when she is angry about something. Also, the book gets its title from the way Judy begins nearly all of her letters: “Dear Daddy-Long-Legs.” She calls him this because at the orphanage, she was got a glimpse of his leggy shadow.

Another worry I had, was the book’s publish date because I hate reading a book and experiencing some type of language barrier. (For example, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere; it’s good but the British slang is confusing. I guess I don’t watch enough BBC.) Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with that one bit. It’s almost as if Jean Webster debuted this book yesterday! The diction sounds current if not a more polite way of speaking. You wouldn’t even realize that this took place in yester-year if it weren’t for the cost of things being so little back then. The story also has interesting twists and turns like Judy falling in love with her roommate young uncle, school dances, vacations with wealthy friends and potential boyfriends.

So, I’ve concluded that I love this book and I stand behind it all the way. I mean, if the only thing I don’t like about it is the outside cover, it’s great! If you read this and decided you want more, films have been made in the US (several times), Korea and Japan as recent as 2005. There are even anime and stage versions that have been created. I haven’t seen all of them yet, but I will say that the Fred Astaire film is great, but has some very bizarre sequences that are literally excuses to have him dance.

 

If this book interests you, check out the links below to experience it for yourself!

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PV801Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/daddy-long-legs-webster-jean/1120679007

 

What Goes Around

jacqui_monet
June 12, 2016

This time last year, I was sitting on a plane headed back to Phoenix when I struck up a conversation with my seatmate. She was a pretty black musician going home to Montana. We talked about  music, the gig life and other randomness. Then the man sitting next to my left begins to converse with us because he just had his novel, which takes place in Billings, published. We talked for a good hour or so and it was a very cool experience to see an author out in the wild like that. Later I bought The Porcupine of Truth and I’ve been holding on to it in hopes that one day I would meet the author again and have him sign it.

Here we are, a year and some days later, and it happened! I saw the Bill Konigsberg would be at a Barnes and Noble signing is books and speaking. When I got there, I sat in the car to put on some lipstick and I got way too excited and dropped the open tube on my white shirt. Grrr! Anyway, I approached the door to the bookstore and there he was, holding it open for me. I played it cool though and acted like a normal person. I walked around the store for a while and then set out to find him again.

Long story short: I didn’t act like a total fool, Mr. Konigsberg signed my book and remembered me! He even remembered that I was an actress; he was super cool!

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PCC Day 4

jacqui_monet
June 5, 2016

So, I skipped Saturday so I could sleep and recover from the hours upon hours of walking. The fourth and final day, though, proved to be fulfilling. I cosplayed as Catty Noir from Monster High and got a lot of positive remarks on the pink hair. I was also a panelist for the Farewell to Downton Abby which was fun. We discussed the timeline of the show, favorite arcs and characters, how the deaths affected the show and the modernization of the estate as the show progressed. I’ve decided that I absolutely prefer panels in which the audience is encouraged to participate. Maybe it’s the actor in me, but I crave the instant feedback that a lively crowd provides.

After my own panel I was able to sit in on a panel called Brighter Tomorrow featuring authors Jason M. Hough, Alexandra Olivia, Lexie Dunne and Patrick Hemstreet. They discussed how science fiction used to be about optimism and futurism  and whether or not we can go back to that era or  continue on the path in which apocalyptic and dystopian novels prevail. It was pretty enlightening to hear their thoughts and they took a lot of question from the audience. I got a chance to ask a question, which was pretty cool. I wanted to know  about their views on racial diversity and disabilities as it pertain to utopias. All four of the authors took turns answering but what Jason Hough had to say, stood out to me. He said that he is afraid of the hive mind that is already starting to present itself via the internet on sites like facebook. He said that when he was young and when his parents were growing up you only really spoke to  the people around you and you learned to discuss your differences of opinion civilly. Today, however, you can go online and virtually only talk to like-minded people. You can viciously argue against those whom you disagree or block them entirely and only speak to and hear from those that think the way that you do. Mr. Hough said that was the dark side to utopia and that he is trying to raise his children against the hive mentality.

After the panel, I was able to have Mr. Hough sign the copy of his book that I picked up on Thursday and I was also able to obtain a signed copy of Alexandra Olivia’s debut novel The Last One which sounds very interesting. Its about a woman who is on an outdoorsy reality competition and when things start to go really wrong, she still thinks its all a part of the show.

Well, that’s all for now. Check back for a new book review post next week!

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PCC Day 2

jacqui_monet
June 4, 2016

Today was pretty fun. I took The Niece for the first time to have one of our many bonding excursions. We saw movie cars like Lighting McQueen and the Mystery Machine. We also sat in on a panel about one of my favorite shows Eureka (Syfy Channel), which was fun although not as lively as the panel I sat on yesterday. This was not the fault of the panelists though, it was just a very different crowd.

Today I got the chance to meet an author whose work I have really enjoyed over the past few years: Frank Beddor! What?!  The author of The Looking Glass Wars and all that has since followed. It’s a pretty cool series, so if you are into Alice in Wonderland, steampunk, revenge, intrigue, love and awesome action sequences, check it out!

Also, I was dressed up as Miyuki the mechanic from the anime Basquash. Frank Beddor touched my jacket and said it was soft and fancy. I didn’t squeal in delight, but sadly I did smile way too big when we took a picture together. But, whatever. Who cares?! See you at con. <3

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Me and Frank Beddor.
Suede jacket by Tia Hawkes.
Suede jacket by Tia Hawkes.

Phoenix Comicon Day 1

jacqui_monet
June 2, 2016

IMG_4411This weekend I’m at Phoenix Comicon. Day one was victorious! I  was a panelist this afternoon debating whether or not the villains from Disney’s Once Upon a Time deserve to have a happy ending. This was my very first time serving as a panelist and my cohort had never been a panelist either. We were both nervous  that no one would show up and I have to say I had a case of the first timer jitters. But, the room was packed and lively and everything went off without a hitch!

After the panel, I walk the Exhibitors Hall and picked up some swag! I love getting free books. I also got to meet Sebastian A. Jones the creator of the new comic book Niobe which he co-wrote with Amandla Stenberg from the Hunger Games movies. Did I mention that I cosplayed as Serena from Pokemon XY?

All in all, I had a pretty good day today. If you run into me at PCC this weekend, make sure to always and definitely say hi!

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Rules of Summer- Book Review

jacqui_monet
June 2, 2016

rules-of-summer-by-joanna-philbinAuthor: Joanna Philbin

Series: Rules of Summer (book 1)

Genre: YA

Pages: 368

I recently read Rules of Summer, the first book in a series of the same name, by Joanna Philbin. The story centers around two girls summering in the Hamptons. The girls are from two completely different worlds and are there for two totally different reasons.

Isabel Rule is the youngest daughter of the Rule family. She’s kind of a black sheep. She doesn’t fit in well with her older siblings, she isn’t interested in the same things as her peers from the exclusive Georgica Club and doesn’t really feel the love from her parents either. She’s been living in California at a boarding school and this is her first time being back with her family since she’s been away.

Rory McShane is coming to the Hamptons from New Jersey. She’s a pretty good student with two best friends and no boyfriend to speak of. Her family consists of a mom who can’t really take of herself and a revolving door of step-dads-to-be. Rory doesn’t want to deal with her home life nor does she want to work at Mario’s pizza place again. So, when her aunt hooks her up with a gig to be an errand girl for an uber rich family for the summer, she is totally down. If only the Rule’s youngest daughter was such a terror.

Rules of Summer was a very fun read. The first chapter was a little slow though, I think I read one of the pages like three times. But after that, it totally takes off!  Hot guys and surfing, make overs and family secrets. This book has a little bit of everything. It’s not very deep, I’ll admit, but the story does have some heart. As the summer progresses, Rory and Isabel learn more about each other and come to realize that they aren’t all that different. Despite only being in high school, they both want to experience true love, to be understood my their families and to be more independent. Like any YA novel worth its salt, there are secrets, misunderstandings, missed opportunities and mean girls. There were some unresolved issues at the end that frustrated me until I learned that there would be a sequel. I really did like this book and I plan on reading the second one soon.

This book came out in paperback right as the summer of 2014 was kicking off, so here are the hottest songs from that summer to set the mood!

If this book interests you, check out the links below to experience it for yourself!

http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Summer-Joanna-Philbin/dp/0316212040

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-of-summer-joanna-philbin/1113742188

http://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/rules-of-summer/179648