Seven Cities Of Delhi by Rajiv Chopra #Book Review #AmReading

In my mission to always support our wonderful Indie authors out there, I decided to purchase a book a little out of my usual genre, by photographer and writer, Rajiv Chopra.

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Here is he, with a pen rather than his camera – his usual weapon of choice!

I have been following Rajiv’s work for a long while, and was extremely excited at the thought of his book, Seven Cities Of Delhi, which was to be a combination of photography and historical facts about the glorious city of Delhi, and I wasn’t disappointed!

Makes me want to go again and actually explore more, rather than just go shopping! (Oh, and eat Gol Gappe!!!)

My review!

Star rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’ve appreciated the photography of Rajiv Chopra for a few years via social media. I have visited Delhi several times and enjoyed my time there too. So when I read that there was a book combining both, I felt a compulsion to buy.
Seven Cities of Delhi? Who knew? I have read many tales and historical novels about various rulers who dominated Indian history, and it was really fascinating to read about how they left their marks on the capital of India.
Rajiv’s photos, in black and white, gave a grainy, almost to the era feel to the pictures, I wanted to step inside to see the colour!
If you love to read about long-forgotten Indian history, and have a fascination with the beautiful photographic structures, I recommend this book!

Available on Amazon here.

My Amazon review here.

My Goodreads review here.

How To Fall In Love Again (Kitty’s Story) By Amanda Prowse – #BookReview #RituReviews @MrsAmandaProwse

Another Monday, another review!

If you remember, a while back, I reviewed two amazing books by best-selling author, Amanda Prowse: Anna and Theo. They were part of a One Love Two Stories set, where you read the same story from two perspectives.

Image result for amanda prowse

I’m still fangirling!

Read my reviews here:

Anna

Theo

Well, just as I was getting over the fantastic story, she only went and published a third book that links with them!

This one is entitled How To Fall In Love Again (Kitty’s Story) and is about a secondary character from the previous two books, whose life is entwined with both Theo and Anna.

Image result for how to fall in love again amanda prowse

First, the official blurb:

Amanda Prowse, queen of heartbreak fiction, asks if you can ever find love in your twilight years, after living a lie?
Kitty Montrose is packing up her house, and the memories that go with it. Under this roof, she’s seen her children grow up, her grandchildren arrive, and her marriage come and go.
Kitty knows better than most that the twists and turns of life can bring joy, despair, and everything in between. But when she was a little girl, she had hoped for more. She dreamed of finding her true soulmate. Someone to laugh with, cry with, and share her twilight years.
Then Kitty meets Theo, an old flame. The timing was never right for their lives to intertwine. Can Theo and Kitty find a way to fall in love again? Or is it too late for them both?

My take:

Kitty is a young girl, brought up in a perfect family. Her parents dote on her, the housekeeper like an extra mother figure. Her cousins are the brothers she never had.
The dark shadow of depression threatens to cloud the happiness of their family, so Kitty seeks solace through her passion for swimming, escaping to the pool whenever she can.
Being sent to boarding school to be spared the visions of her haunted mother and long-suffering father, she meets several characters who will shape her life to come.
Angus and Theo.
First love and friendship.
It’s easy to confuse the two.
Pregnancy, marriage, another pregnancy, revelations, the loss of loved ones, the finding of new special folk, and a story that comes full circle in the end.
A beautiful tale filled with hope that shines through the difficulties Kitty faces.

My Review:

After surfacing from the book hangover of both Anna and Theo, I was thrilled to find out there was a third book, that linked to their story; that of Kitty.
Amanda Prowse has a way of telling the story from different perspectives, which makes you see a situation in totally separate lights. I was hooked from start to finish, and it was exciting to read parts of the entwined story which you remembered so clearly from the previous books, yet, they were written in a way that added another dimension to the knowledge you already had.
I rooted for Anna through her story, I wanted to champion Theo through his ups and downs, and I cried for Kitty, and cheered for her happy ending!
I shan’t give anything away (no one wants spoilers!) but suffice to say, Kitty’s story kept me gripped!
Even though I have been busy nursing my unwell father, this book was unputdownable! (don’t worry, no fathers were neglected during the reading of this book!)
How To Fall In Love Again (Kitty’s Story) can be enjoyed as a stand-alone, but personally, I recommend reading all three – it just adds to the experience!!

 My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Reviewed on Goodreads and Amazon.

Buy How To Fall In Love Again here

Buy Anna here

Buy Theo here

About Amanda:

Amanda has always obsessively crafted short stories and scribbled notes for potential books, but it wasn’t until she was forty that she began writing full time. The result was Poppy Day, the story of an army wife, whose incredible love for her husband gives her the courage to rescue him from hostages in Afghanistan. This was followed by the number 1 bestseller What Have I Done? Amanda now has ten novels and four novellas published.
All of Amanda’s books in the No Greater Love series share common themes in that they are contemporary love stories, the main characters are women, just like you and I, who find themselves in extraordinary situations for love.
Her new series is the No Greater Courage series, tales of women facing the trials that life throws at them and having to dig deep to find the will and strength to succeed. This series includes the A Mother’s Story and Perfect Daughter, which continue to receive brilliant reader and press reviews.
Amanda’s ambition has always been to create stories that keep people from turning the bedside lamp off at night, great characters that ensure you take every step with them and tales that fill your head so you can’t possibly read another book until the memory fades…
Currently, Amanda lives in the West Country with her husband and their 18 & 19-year-old boys Josh and Ben.

Follow Amanda on Twitter @MrsAmandaProwse, or join Amanda on Facebook.

Check out her website: http://amandaprowse.org/

#BookReview – Victor by Sacha Black @sacha_black

I’ve been reading plenty this year, but recently, events beyond my control meant that I was so tired, I couldn’t stay awake long enough to read more than a couple of pages of any book every night.

Now, usually, I can’t read in a moving car. Trains and planes are fine, but reading in a car gives me headaches and nausea.

This time, however, I tried to read, and, lo and behold, no headache or sickness!!! I managed to plough through a WHOLE book in the car on my way to see Pops!

And that book was none other than the sequel to Sacha Black’s Keepers, named Victor.

Read the review of book one here!

Victor (The Eden East Novels Book 2) by [Black, Sacha]

Here’s the info.

When Eden East kills someone, she expects them to stay dead. It’s only polite, after all.
Exhausted from battle and finally bound to her soulmate, all Eden wants to do is attend university and spend time with Trey. When her demon-ex, Victor, suddenly returns from the afterlife, Eden’s convinced he’s out for revenge. The last thing she expects is for him to ask for help, especially when he’s being controlled by evil forces.
But when an enchanted lock and key go missing, she’s no longer sure who she can trust. If Eden can’t find them in time, not only will her life, and her heart, be torn apart, the very world she lives in could be destroyed – forever.
Victor will transport fans of The Red Queen, The Young Elites, and The Lunar Chronicles to a world unlike any other…
The Eden East Novels:
  • Book 0 – Sirens (coming soon)
  • Book 1 – Keepers
  • Book 2 – Victor

And here’s my review…

Star rating – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It’s been a while now since Keepers was published. I devoured that and was waiting eagerly for the next instalment, Victor.
And I can honestly say I was not disappointed at all.
The story picked up from the end of Keepers and within moments of opening the first page, I was right back in the action.
Beautifully written, with evocative language, Black kept me on the edge of my (car) seat the whole way through the book. I could feel the emotions and picture the scenes within my mind.
I loved the developing relationship between Eden, the protagonist, and her Balancer, Trey (who, might I say, is a hero of dreams!)
The constant reappearances of the should-be-dead Victor had me racing through the pages.
And the ending… Oh My!
Trutinor, what is going to happen?! (Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but WHAT AN ENDING!)
I am now going to be constantly checking for news of book three! Hurry up Sacha Black!

Reviewed on Amazon – Here and Goodreads – Here

Buy your copy here.

If you don’t know Sacha, why not?

She is blogging event organiser extraordinaire, being the birth mother of the Annual Bloggers Bash and Awards, and an author of four books, two fiction, and two non-fiction, with more due soon! And she is a loving wife and mother too, to top it off!

Sacha Black has five obsessions; words, expensive shoes, conspiracy theories,  self-improvement, and breaking the rules. She also has the mind of a perpetual sixteen-year-old, only with slightly less drama and slightly more bills.
Sacha writes books about people with magical powers and other books about the art of writing. She lives in Hertfordshire, England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son.
When she’s not writing, she can be found laughing inappropriately loud, blogging, sniffing musty old books, fangirling film and TV soundtracks, or thinking up new ways to break the rules.

Find out more about Sacha and her books here.

I do love Sacha, she has been ace at giving me, ahem, gentle nudges when it came to getting that first draft finished too!

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Timeless Echoes by Balroop Singh #bloghop #poetry #newrelease

Please allow me to invite fantastic poet and word-master, Balroop Singh to my blog on a blog hop for her new poetry book, Timeless Echoes.

Might I add a quick apology here to Balroop… somehow all the info for her blog hop ended up in my spam folder and I missed the date I should have scheduled this post! Oops! I was mortified! But all is rectified and here is the promised post!

Balroop book

Book Blurb: Certain desires and thoughts remain within our heart, we can’t express them, we wait for the right time, which never comes till they make inroads out of our most guarded fortresses to spill on to the pages of our choice. This collection is an echo of that love, which remained obscure, those yearnings that were suppressed, the regrets that we refuse to acknowledge. Many poems seem personal because they are written in first person but they have been inspired from the people around me – friends and acquaintances who shared their stories with me.

Some secrets have to remain buried because they are ours
We do share them but only with the stars
The tears that guarded them were as precious as flowers
Soothing like balm on festering scars.

While there are no boxes for grief and joy, some persons in our life are more closely associated with these emotions. Their separation shatters us, their memories echo, we grieve but life does not stagnate for anyone…it is more like a river that flows despite the boulders. When imagination and inspiration try to offer solace, poetry that you are about to read springs forth.

Book Information:

Title: Timeless echoes

Author: Balroop Singh

Genre: Poetry

Available at: Kindle Click on the link

US UK DE FR ES IT NL JP BR CA MX AU IN

The Editor’s Review:
Half of what we say are lies although they might be considered true, but truth with one’s self is an accepted bundle of lies except for those rare moments of self-realization. These lines right at the start of Timeless Echoes, ‘Each moment is precious, we try to cage it within our heart, where it perches in perfect rampart, embalmed by memories,’ reveal how this book is a healer, promising to lay bare the ills of the soul as it soothes, cleanses, and nurtures; instilling in us a will to learn and live without fear, and a will to not hurt others: ‘Why can’t our hearts feel the hurt we hurl at others?’
Balroop’s new book is a steadfast repudiation of those ills that we painfully hide under the covers of our flesh to present the polished exterior as truth. This magnetic collection of poems highlights our precious human lives with all their varied emotions and imposing relations: the lives often blinded by the strictures of the self-made duplicity, an excessively common phenomenon. ‘Listen to your heart, my friend. It knows you well,’ she writes.
I treasure these ‘forgetting fragile facets of love, facade of fading memories, echoes of dwindling love, is all I have now, yet love echoes refuse to subside’ believing that love echoes are soul-launched signals, ready to hug our pretenses to forge a divine assimilation because the struggle has always been with the self that we excommunicate to build up a wall, which obscures the travails plaguing the core. And finding a path to the core is the cure since there’s no villainy in the soul.
As Balroop proclaims ‘love is such a strange emotion, it gives less, it claims more…the facade of love is so delusive,’ I concur how our infirmities require urgent banishment, more pressing now than ever. And once I’ve made peace with the self, ‘the dark corridors are like meadows, they glow with my presence.’ Yes, without an iota of my own falsehoods plaguing me.
  • Mahesh Nair

BAlroop

Balroop Singh

Author Bio:

Balroop Singh, a former teacher and an educationalist always had a passion for writing. She is a poet, a creative non-fiction writer, a relaxed blogger and a doting grandma. She writes about people, emotions and relationships. Her poetry highlights the fact that happiness is not a destination but a chasm to bury agony, anguish, grief, distress and move on! No sea of solitude is so deep that it can drown us. Sometimes aspirations are trampled upon, the boulders of exploitation and discrimination may block your path but those who tread on undeterred are always successful.

When turbulences hit, when shadows of life darken, when they come like unseen robbers, with muffled exterior, when they threaten to shatter your dreams, it is better to break free rather than get sucked by the vortex of emotions.

A self-published author, she is the poet of Sublime Shadows of Life and Emerging From Shadows, both widely acclaimed poetry books. She has also written When Success Eludes, Emotional Truths Of Relationships Read FREE with Kindle Unlimited and Allow Yourself to be a Better Person.

Balroop Singh has always lived through her heart. She is a great nature lover; she loves to watch birds flying home. The sunsets allure her with their varied hues that they lend to the sky. She can spend endless hours listening to the rustling leaves and the sound of waterfalls. The moonlight streaming through her garden, the flowers, the meadows, the butterflies cast a spell on her. She lives in San Ramon, California.

You can visit her blog at: http://balroop2013.wordpress.com

Connecting links: https://twitter.com/BalroopShado

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Emotional-Shadows/151387075057971

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BalroopSinghsrao/posts

https://www.pinterest.com/balroops/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7340810.Balroop_Singh

https://www.amazon.com/Balroop-Singh/e/B00N5QLW8U/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Excerpt:

Moments That Echo

Each moment is precious

We try to cage it within our heart

Where it perches in perfect rampart

Embalmed by memories!

Moments of love croon around us

Offering eternal passion that blinds

Drowning in the deluge of delusion

Validating ephemeral enchantment!

Moments of joy glisten on the sand of time

Fleeting away faster than dappling light

Peeping through the corridors of life

At the mercy of others’ delight!

Woeful moments smile through strife

Each one stretching far and wide

Into every nerve and sinew

Sneering at our impertinent divide!

Each moment an experience in itself

We grow in its glow to wend and win

Divesting the ignorance of our thoughts

Solace echoing within!

Thank you Balroop for all the amazing information on your new book. I have read many of Balroop’s poems via her blog, and she has an amazing way with words, the imagery she creates is fantastic!

Please, buy this book, read and review it! We all know how much genuine reviews mean to our Indie author friends!

Happy Guide by Michael Kinnaird #BookReview #Competition #Giveaway

Ever wondered how to create a lifestyle where you genuinely feel happy? Fulfilled? Content? Ready for other challenges?

It’s all about mindset, to be honest, and a healthy lifestyle.

If you are feeling good on the inside, you’ll project feeling good on the outside.

And if you are feeling happy within yourself, you ‘ll be more willing to face challenges that you encounter in day to day life.

I read a book recently, Happy Guide by Michael Kinnaird, which was a short, succinct guide to how to retrain your mind, and ultimately, your body to be ‘happy’, leading to a more fulfilling life.

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I have been feeling a little bleurgh recently, and reading this gave me a kick up the backside, to start thinking about the root causes of my bleurgh-ness.

  • I need to sort my diet out.
  • I need to add some physical exercise to my day.
  • I need to ensure I am sleeping better, and more regularly.
  • I need to set some goals which I really want to achieve.
  • I need to learn to step back from things and learn to say no.

I’ve always been a pretty positive person, and that will never go away, but I fear it had slightly dimmed, with my exhaustion recently.

This book reminded me of the various stages I needed to go through to get my ‘happy’ back.

  • break bad habits
  • picture positive changes in my life
  • plan for a successful, happy future
  • eat and drink better
  • exercise
  • use nature’s medication and meditation, not be reliant on drugs
  • sleep better
  • clear my mind as well as my surroundings of clutter
  • start down the road to HAPPY!

A lot of the advice in the book is common sense. There were many chapters I read and smiled at, knowing my Pops says the same.

But it was great to have it all in one place, and in an order, that was easy to follow, and it left me feeling that I could succeed, and feel more fulfilled too!

And, lucky for you readers, I have access to three copies to be won by three of you!

I was approached by Michael’s brother, James, asking if I’d be interested in hosting a competition/giveaway.

And so here I am, happily giving these copies away, though, it’s not that easy! Here’s what I request of you, to be considered for one of the three copies.

“Happiness in a line” – tell me in one line how you achieve happiness. The three answers that touch a chord win a copy of the book, either digital or physical.

You have until Midnight (UK time)  Sunday 3rd June to post your entries in the comments below.

Good Luck!

Find out a little more about the Happy Guide by clicking here.

I’m always happy to help fellow writers and bloggers, though I wasn’t familiar with the book. They kindly sent me a copy to read, so I would feel confident with giving away their baby, alongside my own thoughts.

 

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