"Start Where You Are Note Cards" by Meera Lee Patel

Meera Lee Patel, author of Start Where You Are, created a beautiful 12 note card and keepsake box set. The front of each card is decorated with a beautiful watercolor design and quote. The inside and back of the cards are blank, except for the copyright.

The quotes are primarily from famous authors, though some historical figures are also included:

• Courage, dear heart. --C.S. Lewis
• Simplify, simplify. --Henry David Thoreau
• If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood, and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. --Anotoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through, no matter what. --Harper Lee
• Be patient and touch. Someday this pain will be useful to you. --Ovid
• Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. --Oscar Wilde
• One never knows. --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want. --F. Scott Fitzgerald
• At first glance it may appear too hard. Look again. Always look again. --Mary Anne Radmacher
• Only in the darkness can you see the stars. --Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. --Arthur Ashe
• Fears are paper tigers. --Ameila Earhart

The quotes cover a variety of uplifting, inspirational topics. Some could be used to send for a specific occassion (overcoming fears, some life challenge), but others seem to be the type of thing that you would send "just because" with any kind of note inside.

Since they're so artistically designed, anyone would be delighted to receive one. My favorite cards are Amelia Earhart's tiger, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's boat, and Oscar Wilde's card, which features a colorful elephant.

I'm a little disappointed that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's name is not hyphenated and doesn't have an accent on the attribution of the cards. However, that's quite minor and the only thing that's not absolutely perfect about these cards. It is kind of funny though since he is the only author represented on two cards and he is the one with his name misprinted.

I will actually keep the box the cards came in, too. It's decorated with colorful leaves and says "Every answer is inside you."

All in all, I love these cards and can't wait to send them out to my friends and family.

I received a copy of this note card set from the publisher, but was not required to post a positive review.

Review: "The Never-Open Desert Diner" by James Anderson

Working a delivery route on a remote stretch of Utah highway, Ben Jones is just an eccentric character as the residents that he serves. Ben's cash is running low from the route that isn't profitable enough to pay his bills. The first half of the book gives an interesting peek into the lives of those societal outcasts, such as Walt who owns a diner that hasn't been officially open since his wife died, a preacher who carries a cross through the desert everyday, and a mysterious woman squatting in an abandoned house in a never-developed subdivision.


The woman, Claire, is hiding out avoiding her husband, whom she is in the process of divorcing. Though she at first threatens Ben to stay away, he's drawn to the mystery of her after seeing her play the cello through the papered up windows of the abandoned house. When people start snooping around the desert, he suspects it is Claire they're after, but he can't give her up--he's falling in love with her.

I absolutely loved the first half of the book because of the detail and complexity of the residents of the desert. I enjoyed reading how each one had a particular way of interacting with Ben, and he respected and understood the residents in a way that no outsider ever could. When he met the preacher along the road, they'd pretend to smoke a cigarette together. Walt, the owner of the diner always could seem to sense Ben's presence and was never particularly nice, but Ben considered Walt his best friend.

As Ben learns more through his customers and a police interrogation, things start to get muddled for Ben as he tries to sort out the right course of action.The second half of the book definitely holds more surprises, but for all the shock value they provided, it was ultimately not as interesting to me as the first part. The mysteries are resolved through an information dump at the end to explain all of the loose connections, which was not engaging or rewarding, especially after my initial excitement with this novel.

It's a decent read for anyone who likes in-depth looks at unique characters, combined with some mystery and suspense, but some parts were a little too dark for me.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Review: "The Grownup" by Gillian Flynn

Even in short story form, Gillian Flynn presents the high suspense, twisting reality that fans began to expect following Gone Girl's success. The Grownup is under 65 pages and has a small trim size, so the story is indeed very, very short. Plan to spend less than an hour devouring this read. I'd say it's about the length of two chapters of a novel, which is actually a helpful way of understanding this book. The first half is basically a character sketch - going deep into the history and motivations of our unnamed narrator. From learning to be a con-artist from her mother, to delving into prostitution, to pretending to be psychic, her past is captivating in how she shows her ability to read, understand, and therefore manipulate, people.

 For the second half, she explores her next entrepreneurial enterprise - home visits. A worried client, Susan, visits the psychic shop repeatedly before fully explaining that she fears her house is haunted and has been negatively affecting her stepson, making him  as evil as the darkness the house seems to exhale. The psychic agrees to help, thinking this a quick scam to make some good money, but she soon realizes that something strange is going on, and that her fake psychic cleansing remedy won't save the family, or herself.

Originally published as "What Do You Do?" in George R.R. Martin's Rogues anthology, this ghostly tale of deception is suspenseful even in its brevity. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the short story, the plot twists are so sharp, with one following immediately after another, that the ending feels rushed and compressed. You don't have time to process one change before something new happens.  It's still a great read for a quick thriller as long as you're ready for just how quick it will be.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "Bradstreet Gate" by Robin Kirman

When a Harvard student Julie Patel is murdered, one of her professors, Storrow, falls to blame. The fact that he was dating a student, Georgia, was revealed through the investigation as well as through Georgia's jealous friend Alice's expose that she wrote following the murder. Beyond that, even students who had limited interaction with Storrow came forward with stories of interactions that seemed normal enough at the time, but odd in retrospect.

The novel is broken up into three parts: Harvard years, after Harvard, and ten years following the murder. The first section was excellent - full of suspense, mystery, and interesting characters. I was completely captivated and would've given the first section a five star rating. However, once I started the second section, things quickly went down hill. I kept expecting it to get better, but the characters' coincidental encounters just did not hold my interest. The book was screaming that the students had no reason to stay in touch after school, yet they kept going back to each other. By the third section, I couldn't wait for it to be over, since it was obvious nothing else would happen in the book.

If you're looking for a mystery that leaves you thinking "what just happened?" this might be it. I don't know how to interpret the ending, and it did not fulfil anything I was hoping to get from the conclusion of a mystery novel. If the first section hadn't been so good, the last two might not have seemed so bad, but at such a close comparison, I finished feeling very disappointed.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "I Take You" by Eliza Kennedey

I Take You follows lawyer Lily Wilder in the week leading up to her wedding in Key West where she grew up. The only problem is, she can't decide whether or not she wants to get married. Her continued promiscuity with coworkers, men she meets at bars, and men from pretty much anywhere has her friends, family, and even herself a little concerned. The first third of the book is mostly about her partying, drinking, having sex, and doing drugs mostly as part of her bachelorette parties (she has three). She also seems unable to help her profane language, which comes out at the least opportune moments.

As if she didn't have enough going on trying to plan a wedding while thinking about whether or not she wanted to go through with it, her law firm also has her working on preparing a witness for a deposition. She quickly realizes she's out of her depth when she opens the file and sees some very incriminating emails that show her witness admitting to fraud.

Lily's fiance, Will, seems to be near perfect - an archaeologist who is absolutely head over heels for Lily, but also has a lot on his mind. They got engaged after only two weeks of knowing each other, and the wedding is just six months later. Do they know each other well enough to get married? That's the question that Will, Lily, and all of their family and friends wrestle with throughout the book.

It is a funny and captivating book in all of the crazy antics of Lily, her family, and everyone they encounter, though Lily is an endlessly frustrating narrator. She's outspoken, obnoxious, and continuously makes horrible life decisions that just make her terribly unlikable.  She is overly rude and often just plain mean. But she does learn from them and we do get to see character growth that leaves the novel with a satisfying conclusion and slightly minimizes the negative feelings toward the narrator.


It's definitely not for everyone, but I thought the story was interesting and I was very invested in seeing how it was resolved until the very last page.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.