friendships

Like Moonlight at Low Tide by Nicole Quigley (Guest Post, Review & Giveaway)

December 11, 2017 by Suzie Waltner Leave a Comment

About the Book

Title: Like Moonlight at Low Tide

Author: Nicole Quigley

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

Release Date: 2012

When high school junior Melissa Keiser returns to her hometown of Anna Maria Island, Florida, she has one goal: hide from the bullies who had convinced her she was the ugliest girl in school. But when she is caught sneaking into a neighbor’s pool at night, everything changes. Something is different now that Melissa is sixteen, and the guys and popular girls who once made her life miserable have taken notice. When Melissa gets the chance to escape life in a house ruled by her mom’s latest boyfriend, she must choose where her loyalties lie between a long-time crush, a new friend, and her surfer brother who makes it impossible to forget her roots. Just as Melissa seems to achieve everything she ever wanted, she loses a loved one to suicide. Melissa must not only grieve for her loss, she must find the truth about the three boys who loved her and discover that joy sometimes comes from the most unexpected place of all.

Click here to purchase your copy!

Dating the It Guy by Krysten Lindsay Hager (Guest Post, Review, Snippet & Giveaway)

December 6, 2017 by Suzie Waltner 1 Comment

Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult
Publisher: Clean Reads
Publication date: March 21, 2017

Emme is a sophomore in high school who starts dating, Brendon Agretti, the popular senior who happens to be a senator’s son and well-known for his good looks. Emme feels out of her comfort zone in Brendon’s world and it doesn’t help that his picture perfect ex, Lauren, seems determined to get back into his life, along with every other girl who wants to be the future Mrs. Agretti. Emme is already conflicted due to the fact her last boyfriend cheated on her and her whole world is off kilter with her family issues. Life suddenly seems easier keeping Brendon away and relying on her crystals and horoscopes to guide her. Emme soon starts to realize she needs to focus less on the stars and more on her senses. Can Emme get over her insecurities and make her relationship work? Life sure is complicated when you’re dating the it guy.

Besides mining her teen years and humiliating moments for her novels, Krysten is also a book addict who has never met a bookstore she didn’t like. Krysten writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. She is the author of True Colors, Best Friends…Forever?, Next Door to a Star, Landry in Like, and Competing with the Star (The Star Series: Book 2). Her debut novel, True Colors, won the Readers Favorite award for best preteen book. Krysten’s work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Beavercreek Current, the Bellbrook Times and on Living Dayton.

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Emme Trybus is a typical teenage girl with parents who are both too interested and little odd, best friends she hangs out with, and some boy trouble. But her favorite person—her grandmother—is in the hospital and her grandfather seems to forget where he is a little more often than comfortable.
As Emme navigates her family issues as well as dating the most popular guy in school, her home life and insecurities from her previous relationship keep getting in the way.

Krysten Lindsay Hager reminds readers of the angst of adolescence: the doubts, the relationships, the assumptions—as well as the hardships of growing up in a way that both frustrated and encouraged me. Emme makes some poor choices sometimes, turns to the wrong people for support, while doing her absolute best to be there for the family she loves.

Dating the It Guy is one girl’s journey to trusting herself, letting go of hurts she’s hanging on to, and growing up even when life is painful. It’s a story of family, friends, and finding yourself. It’s a story of discovering connections and seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes.

My Rating:

Disclosure statement:
I receive complimentary books for review from publishers, publicists, and/or authors, including NetGalley. I am not required to write positive reviews. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

1. The story was inspired by watching a bio of JFK Jr. However, it was a video of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s ex-boyfriend doing kind of a shy, humble thing that had me thinking about Brendon’s mannerisms. There’s a wink to that in the story where Emme says there’s an ad that’s been in a locker for years of a male underwear model.

2. The high school Emme attends is actually based on my own. Even the bathroom she hides out in is the bathroom that was across the hall from my journalism class. And yes, I hid out there myself on occasion.

3. The book actually started out as a short story I wrote in a college creative writing class. My prof said the story had a J.D. Salinger feel to it (Franny and Zooey, which I hadn’t read at the time), so I always thought I’d end up expanding the story into a novel.

4. That college creative writing class was the basis for the high school course Emme takes. The Rory character came about from all the sarcastic comments my friends would make during class. I was picturing a modern-day version of Edie Segwick as I was writing the Rory character.

5. The bookstore Emme and Brendon visit in Detroit is actually John K. King Books. I was obsessed with this place when I lived in Michigan and I would visit to the downtown and Ferndale locations whenever I had a research paper. It’s a huge building that used to be a factory and now it’s full of books!

6. I never say what political party Senator Agretti belongs to and it’s interesting as I hear people assuming different things.

7. The Sweetie Gals singing group Brendon and Emme talk about is based on the Spice Girls. That whole bit about Brendon being a fan came from an interview I did years ago with a hockey player named Mike Knuble who said he had their album when I asked if he had anything on his ipod he was embarrassed of and he said he had a Spice Girls album.

8. I actually turned in the first few chapters of the story as my grad school final for a children’s literature class. My prof loved it and gave me great feedback, so I had a great foundation to work from.

9. I named Margaux after Margaux Hemingway. I had been reading about her and how she put on a very confident front, but there was an insecure, almost little girl side to her. I blended this with characteristics of some incredibly self-assured girls I knew to create a character who has an overconfidence to her that is masking something.

10. My own experiences with a family member with dementia inspired where the scenes with Emme and her grandpa—likewise the info about the living will. I figured if I had to go through something so difficult a few times over then maybe I could use it to help someone else.

I took a drink of water, and it dribbled down my chin. Lovely—I was sure all the girls at the country club drooled openly. Brendon walked over to my side of the court and asked if he could have some of my water because he had finished his sports drink. I never share drinks since I saw a story on the news about how meningitis was spread through stuff like that, but I handed him the bottle. I was surprised he’d want to drink after me, but maybe he was a step away from dehydrating, and it was between sharing my spit or death.

“Wanna quit?” he asked. I nodded and went to change. There was only one other girl in the locker room as I washed up and pulled my hair up. I went out to meet Brendon, and he asked if I wanted to get some frozen yogurt. I started to answer when the girl in the locker room came out behind me.

“Hey, stranger. Haven’t seen you around lately,” she said, putting her hand on Brendon’s arm.

“Hey, Cassie,” he said.

“What have you been up to?” she asked.

I’ve seen dogs chase the mail carrier with more dignity. Brendon shrugged and said he had been busy. He introduced me, and her eyes darted over to me just long enough to size me up. I hated girls who acted like having another female in the room was competition.

“Well, give me a call sometime,” she said, walking away.

What was her problem? She didn’t know whether or not we were dating. It was like it didn’t matter if I was his girlfriend or not because I wasn’t “good enough.”

Giveaway bundle includes: A Dating the It Guy journal, bookmarks, and makeup bag.

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December 9-Pause for Tales

Befriend by Scott Sauls

October 13, 2016 by Suzie Waltner Leave a Comment

Befriend: Creating Belonging in an age of Judgement, Isolation, and Fear by Scott Sauls wasn’t quite what I expected in this book. But that’s not at all a bad thing.

In a world where much of our communication with others is via Facebook, text messages, instant messages, 140 characters on Twitter, or photos on Instagram, we’ve lost a lot of personal interaction. An opportunity to go deeper. Be more understanding. Give a piece of ourselves to others. In short, we’ve limited ourselves to our circle of friends online and in our cell phone contacts. How many of us even take the time to send a personal, meaningful email to a friend or family member?

What Scott Sauls encourages readers to Befriend is to step away from the computers, to put down the cell phones, and make real connections. And again, the challenge is to step outside our circle of influence and get to know people who are different than us—the poor, the wealthy, people with different political views, the disabled, and children to name just a few.

At the beginning of the book, Sauls offers three ways to read his book: read a chapter a day (to ruminate on each challenge), as a small group study, or reading it through in one or two sittings. I can definitely see the advantage and potential for deeper friendships as well as servant opportunities that would benefit a small group.

Even reading Befriend in a few sittings challenged me to reach out to others. Others who don’t live in my neighborhood (or city or country). Those who have less (or more) than me. People who view life through different eyes than I do. Because in the end, my relationships should be a reflection of Jesus, and he hung out with every type of person.

***The publisher provided me with a free copy of this book. I was not required to write a positive review and was not compensated in any way. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Beauty of Community Done Well

December 24, 2015 by Suzie Waltner Leave a Comment

Do you long for friendships that last longer than life itself? Friends you can count on for anything. Friends who show up no matter how hard or busy your lives are, no matter what kind of suffering any of you are going through?

During her lifetime, Kara Tippetts cultivated her community carefully.She and another member of that community, Jill Lynn Buteyn, teamed up to write about what sharing life with someone going through suffering looks like in the flesh. Kara Tippetts’ suffering was not an easy road. Not for her, her family, or those friends who love her. Her journey with cancer was chronicled on her blog, Mundane Faithfulness, and the blog only expanded her community.

In the book, Buteyn carries the burden of explaining what showing up in suffering looks like and Tippetts offers her own insights at the end of the chapter.

This book was hard to read. There is sadness and sorrow in sharing, as Tippetts calls it, the hard in someone’s life. We want to be able to fix the problem, to offer answers. But that’s not always what God calls us to. Sometimes all our loved one needs is someone to run to the store for them, to do a load or two of laundry for her family, or to simply sit and be still.

After reading this book, I long for a community like this, and now I have a blueprint as how to make it happen. Kara Tippetts loved those around her with a big love. A love that will touch lives well into eternity in heaven as her community rejoicing in seeing her whole and healthy again.

If you know someone who is suffering, if you’re suffering yourself, or if you just long for lasting and meaningful friendships, this book is a resource filled with practical and specific insights, observations, and suggestions. Just be sure and leave the tissue box near!

Just show up is available at your local Family Christian or online

***David C. Cook and Family Christian provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. All opinions expressed are my own.