The Kari AnnAlysis

I’ve never done a monthly wrap-up post, but it’s a new year, might as well try new things. Kind of like my last post on Cover Wars.

Books Read:
Dead to the World
The Life O’Reilly
Pet Peeves
Gods Behaving Badly
Truly, Madly
The Lovely Bones
Dead as a Doornail
Tainted
To read the reviews for these books, click here.

Pages Read: 2393

Bookmarks Given:
1. 0 Books
2. 2 Books
3. 2 Books
4. 2 Books
5. 1 Books
*There was one book I didn’t give a rating to because it was short stories.

Favorite Book: Tainted
Least Favorite Book: Dead as a Doornail

Giveaways:
I gave away Truly, Madly and had quite a few entries. The Duty of Love didn’t fare so well. No entries, but if you are interested, let me know. If I don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’ll give it to my church for the church book sale.

Goals for February:
1. Get some reading done for my 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge
2. Finish up the books I have from publishers/borrowed/contests and read the ones I’ve bought
3. Read 9 books. That may be a stretch. I didn’t realize I read so many in January, but it’s a goal

Looking Forward to in February:
Starting the Private series and finishing the Sookie Stackhouse series.

Release: February 2, 2010

Webber’s Website and Blog

I got this book from Goodreads.com and Librarything.com. I held a giveaway for one copy and it went to Yan at Books By Their Cover. When I signed up for the book, I thought it sounded cute: Lucy Valentine comes from a line of matchmakers and she takes over the business, but her powers are taken. Great right? OMG! IT WAS AWESOME!

Lucy Valentine isn’t like the rest of her family, well not really. As mentioned before, she comes from a family of famous matchmakers. Lucy, however, was zapped by an electrical surge and lost the ability to read auras (they match my color coding them). She didn’t lose it all, she can now find things that are lost by holding/shaking someones hand.

When Lucy’s dad is caught thong up on a beach with someone other than his wife, he takes some time off putting Lucy in charge. While skeptical, she wants to make the family proud.

She ends up looking for a little boy, a long lost love and a murder. The problem with all of these things are, Lucy has to do them without sharing her “psychic” ability. Or so she thinks. Once it is all out in the open, her life actually becomes easier… except for solving the murder. That’s never easy.

Let me tell you. If you have ever read the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, go out and buy this the day it comes out! I absolutely fell in love with LucyD and was so excited to see that there is another book in this series coming out in August and another one in the works. Yippee!!

There are so many things about this book that I like. I liked Lucy from the start because she has all she could ever want in her trust fund, but decided to go her own way and earn her own money.

This book also has some great characters like the crazy Grandma Dovie, her driver Raphael, her 3-legged cat and one-eyed hamster and of course the sexy PI Sean.

There are a lot of things that reminded me of the Stephanie Plum books in this, with a little twist of the mind, known as Lucy’s “gift”, if you will. And if you’ve ever read my reviews on the Plum books, you already know, I’m addicted.

The only thing about this book that normally takes bookmarks away from my grading is that I figured out the really big twist before it came out. There were a couple of times I questioned it, but I did a fist pump when it came out and I was right. I’ve been reading too many of these books

This is a very fast-paced, fun read. It took me just a couple of sittings to finish it. I didn’t even have time to get on here and change my page number on my reading tracker!

I am going to give Truly, Madly 4 bookmarks. I know I didn’t have any complaints about it, but I’m giving the rest of the books room to blow me away in the future!

Hey all! First, thanks for entering my giveaways! And without further ado, the winner to Truly, Madly is:

Yan at Books By Their Cover

And no one entered The Duty of Love giveaway. I will leave it up there for another week. If no one enters, I’ll give it away at my church book sale. 

Keep your eyes peeled for more giveaways. I have a couple on my shelf that I am ready to clear out.

Hello all! Hope you are having an amazing start to 2010! I sure am! I have started a new shift, which makes it wonderful to be home by 7:30 p.m. instead of midnight. It’s also wonderful, and a bit strange, to be able to spend so much time with my husband on week nights. For the past year and a half, I’ve worked a 2-11pm shift. He’s in bed when I get home and I am in bed when he leaves so it was a maximum of 2 minutes a day that we saw each other. Wonder how long until we get on each others nerves?

The change of the new shift i wonderful, but I’m having a hard time getting my sleep schedule on track. I was used to sleeping until about 9:30 every morning. Now I get up at about 6:15. I was going to bed around 12:30, now I’m going to bed around 11:15-11:30. So as you do the math, you see I’ve lost a few hours. Today, I am pooped, but I’ll get it back on track by next week and be as bright as the sunshine (I know the morning crew loves me coming in all cheery).

This change of schedule has also changed my blog. OBVIOUSLY! I haven’t posted anything since the 3rd. While I have more time to read in the evenings, I have to take more breaks so I don’t fall asleep at 8:30 LOL. Also, Michael and I have been taking turns on the laptop. I’ll play for a while, then pass it off to him. We continue this until bedtime. That will change next week. I am really excited! I have ordered this:

YAY! I can’t wait to get this in my lap! We got a Wii and Wii Fit for Christmas from my dad. But we decided that if we would both be home in the evenings, we should probably get another computer since we both are on it so much. I decided with this 1. because it was right around the same price as the Wii bundle and 2. all I needed it for was to keep my blog updated and maybe some work emails and what not. It’s so pretty! I can’t wait!

Now down to business! Tomorrow is the last day to enter in the Truly, Madly book giveaway. While I had planned on keeping the Duty of Love open until January 20th, it’s not been getting much traffic. So, I will also end this giveaway at midnight tomorrow as well! So, get your entry in here too!

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be posting a review soon on Life O’Reilly.

So if you’ve been keeping up with my On My Bookshelf posts for the past couple of weeks, then you already know I got two copies of Truly Madly and that means one will go to one of my lucky readers.

Now since I got these from Goodreads.com and Librarything.com, I will ask that you post a review of the book when you are done reading.

Normally I make the giveaway periods a month, but since this book comes out in February, I want to make sure I get it sent out so you have time to read and review before the release date. So, this giveaway will end at midnight on Saturday,  January 9th. I will announce the winner on Sunday the 10th and send it out on the 11th.

Here’s what Goodreads.com says about the book:

Meet Lucy Valentine; sassy, fabulously original…and psychic.

Lucy hails from a long line of matchmakers known as Valentine INC. According to family legend, the Valentines have been blessed by Cupid with the ability to help couples find true love. Trouble is Lucy’s powers were zapped away by an electrical surge and now all she can find are lost objects.

But what good is that in the matchmaking world?

Lucy is about to find out when she tries to solve a murder and winds up falling into a romance of her own.

Here’s how you enter the contest:
+1 Leave me your email address
+2 Put this on your sidebar or tweet about it (leave me both links)
+3 Tell me about one of your matchmaking experiences

Again, this ends at midnight January 9th. I am really excited about this book and hope you are too!

Now, here’s my matchmaking experience: My senior year of high school, my homecoming date asked me to go shopping with him to get his outfit. We were going to go meet his dad at the mall, go shopping and have lunch. Although I had known this guy since kindergarten, I had never met his dad. The next weekend, he was at the homecoming game to watch his son and I thought my mom would hit it off with him. I introduced them and the next day he came to my cross country meet. They talked for a while, started dating, quit dating and now almost 6 years later, they are still together. Maybe Valentine Inc. should hire me