#FuturisticFriday review: Love The Wine You’re With by Kim Gruenenfelder

Photo Credit: St. Martin’s Press

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

Love The Wine You’re With

Summary: Three best friends decide to open a wine bar in Echo Park LA, where they encounter the trials and tribulations of dating, love, and life in Kim Gruenenfelder’s Love the Wine You’re With.

“Gruenenfelder’s women are smart, likable and good to each other.” —Kirkus Reviews

Jessie is finally about to realize her life-long goal of owning her own house, the first step to a wonderful marriage, kids, and life with her boyfriend of three years, Kevin; except after they find the perfect place, Kevin suddenly gets cold feet.

Nat is having a passionate affair with her gorgeous British boss Marc—unfortunately, he’s married. Now what?

Holly is an actress who still waits tables to pay the bills, and who is coping with the recent loss of her father. A particularly bad audition, where she snaps and tells off a big director, leads her to wonder what to do when you stop loving what you do. (And also what to do about her hot neighbor. Because, you know, hot neighbor.)

After each girl finishes a particularly awful workday, the three friends meet at their favorite wine bar, which has been sold by its owner for a huge profit and will close that night. In a moment of tipsy brazenness, Jessie suggests that the three of them open their own wine bar in the gentrifying Echo Park area of Los Angeles. An unapologetically girly place for good wine and good friends—which leads to a challenge for each woman: how do you fix a life that’s not actually broken, but needs an upgrade? Continue reading →

#FuturisticFriday review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Photo Credit: Atria Books, June 13th

This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Summary: From Taylor Jenkins Reid comes an unforgettable and sweeping novel about one classic film actress’s relentless rise to the top—the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated. Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late 80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn’s life unfolds through the decades—revealing a ruthless ambition, an unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love—Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn’s story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

Filled with emotional insight and written with Reid’s signature talent, this is a fascinating journey through the splendor of Old Hollywood into the harsh realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means—and what it takes—to face the truth. Continue reading →

Literary Friday ya’ll….

So…. Last week I was at Book Expo. It was really great and I enjoyed seeing old friends and finally meeting some of these people that I’ve been talking and emailing with for years! When I came home, though, it was back to being cat mom and super aunt.. One of my cats started feeling bad so we had to go to the vet (she’s beginning to feel better), my nieces came over and Little A had a cold and Miss A had a million stories to tell and treasure hunts for us to go on! Continue reading →

24 Books To Share With Your Best Friend for National Best Friends Day!

Today is National Best Friends Day. And over at Traveling With T, I’ll be sharing books to share to with your BFF from current reads to authors who have their fingers on the ups & downs of friendship and even some nostalgic reads that will take you back to the innocent days of childhood reading…. Continue reading →