Illegitimately yours, Michael and Me: A memoir of secrets, adoption and DNA

Jan26

Book Link

From Amazon:

The story of two siblings, two ‘illegitimate’ children bonded with love, ambiguous origins and a destiny determined to keep them apart.


Author Catherine Taylor takes time out from writing erotic fiction to relate her true-life story of growing up as an adopted child with her foster brother Michael. This often harrowing tale reveals their lives in the sixties and seventies, and through to Mother’s Day 1985 when Michael suddenly becomes a ‘missing person.’

In 2017, Catherine set out to resolve the facts surrounding her adoption by taking a DNA test. The results are not what she expects. An ambitious undertaking follows using genealogy records, DNA-matched relatives and the construction of a family tree of over three thousand people. As pieces began to fall into place, her search takes an unexpected turn.

While seeking an elusive parent, Catherine is vastly unprepared to receive news of Michael. The closed door of an unsolved mystery is suddenly thrown wide open and Catherine is faced with the aftermath affecting many more lives than her own.

My Review:

Taylor has written a touching genealogical memoir. Having had my own DNA checked, twice, I found a lot of relatives and three new first cousins and we interact regularly. I believe in what this uthor did, her research, her tenacity to know who her family was, the whole bit. With DNA, a can or two of worms are opened. Not all people want to know the familial tree, some are gutted without this type of information. Sometimes, a family line gets complicated, but I’ve not seen any family line that was perfect. No one is perfect. I felt the author’s anguish in my heart. Five stars.

Sing Me a Soap Opera

Jan26

Book Link

From Amazon:

“There’s always more to relationships, between the starting gate of your dreams and the finish line, which sometimes is not our favorite place to land. But once in a while, the lucky ones get a second chance.”

Take Kendal Harper for example. When Kendal, a widowed fantasy author, is strong-armed into writing a romance story about love with a co-worker and the conflicts that arise, the reluctant writer only takes the assignment because of the huge financial advancement.

After several failed attempts to complete her assignment, Kendal accepts a position at a physician’s office where she learns this job doesn’t support the necessary diagnosis to solve her problem either – until an attraction that’s likely to go nowhere grips her hard, fast, and maybe forever.

My Review:

Ricci has done it again! This is a perfect short read novelette with all the feels, angst, love, fears, and more woven into a tapestry of unexpected dimensions. This is a must read!

Grow confidently in your faith: A lifelong journey to becoming more like Jesus

Jan24

Book Link

From Amazon:

“An inspiring and practical primer to Christian growth, Growing Confidently In Your Faith is easy-to-read and enjoyable; the narrative is laced with creative anecdotes, and punctuated with pointers to gently push the reader forward into spiritual maturity.” –Janey DeMeo, founder of Orphans First, Bible teacher, author “With depth, Carol shares the truths of God’s Word in a manner that will pierce through doubt, shame and pain.” ~ Dixie Diamanti, Life Purpose Coach & Author “Chock-full of spiritual truth, Godly wisdom, and tips for practical application, Carol’s devotional book is sure to bless its readers.” ~ Linda W. Yezak, Author/Editor/Speaker Do you want to grow more confidently in your faith? In Carol Round’s latest book, “Growing Confidently in Your Faith: A lifelong journey to becoming more like Jesus,” the author brings the principles and teachings of Jesus into our lives with practicality so readers can apply them to their daily lives. With depth, the author shares the truths of God’s Word in a manner that will pierce through doubt, shame and pain. She leaves you with a comforted heart and a real hope for the future. You will walk away each week with greater inspiration, wisdom and peace as well as a greater understanding of God’s love for you and how He walks us through every hurt and pain, turning them to victory for His glory.

My Review:

What a wonderful book for Journaling each week with thoughts and takeaways to ponder oneself and one’s relationship with Jesus. Morning devotional time is important to me, and reading this book each week along with my daily devotionals is perfect.

The Flame Tree

Jan23

Book Title: The Flame Tree

Series: The Hong Kong Collection

Author: Siobhan Daiko

Publication Date: January 19th, 2023

Publisher: Asolando Books

Page Length: 300

Genre: Asian Historical Fiction

Twitter Handles: @siobhandaiko @cathiedunn

Instagram Handles: @siobhandaiko_asolandobooks @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #WomensFiction #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page:  https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2022/10/blog-tour-flame-tree-by-siobhan-daiko.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The Flame Tree

By Siobhan Daiko

Blurb:

In the spring of 1939, dashing young William Burton and the beautiful Constance Han set sail from London on the same ocean liner to Hong Kong.

Romance blossoms while they enjoy games of deck quoits and spend sultry tropical evenings dancing under the stars. Connie is intrigued by Will’s talent for writing poetry, and she offers to give him Cantonese lessons to help him with his new job— a cadet in the colonial service.

But once in Hong Kong, Connie is constrained by filial duty towards her Eurasian parents, and their wish for her to marry someone from her own background. She can’t forget Will however and arranges to meet him in secret under the magnificent canopy of a flame of the forest tree—where she fulfils her promise to teach him to speak Chinese.

Before too long, trouble looms as Japanese forces gather on the border between Hong Kong and mainland China. Will joins a commando group tasked with operating behind enemy lines, and Connie becomes involved in the fight against local fifth columnists.

When war breaks out, they find themselves drawn into a wider conflict than their battle against prejudice. Can they survive and achieve a future together? Or do forces beyond their control keep them forever apart?

Based on a little-known true story, The Flame Tree is a tale of love and survival against all the odds.

PRAISE FOR SIOBHAN DAIKO

“Siobhan Daiko will tug at your heartstrings, and leave you desperate for more…”

~ Ellie Yarde, The Coffee Pot Book Club.

“Daiko is an author you’ll want to add to your historical fiction favourites.”

~ Netgalley Reviewer

Buy Links:

Universal Link: https://mybook.to/TFTHK

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3VWaWzI

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3VX4iJy

Amazon CA: https://amzn.to/3SrD6Qj

Amazon AU: https://amzn.to/3VWbUMm

Author Bio:

Siobhan Daiko

Siobhan Daiko is a British historical fiction author. A lover of all things Italian, she lives in the Veneto region of northern Italy with her husband, a Havanese dog and a rescued cat. Siobhan was born of English parents in Hong Kong, attended boarding school in Australia, and then moved to the UK—where she taught modern foreign languages in a Welsh comprehensive school. She now spends her time writing page-turners and enjoying her life near Venice.

Her novels are compelling, poignant, and deeply moving, with strong characters and evocative settings, but always with romance at their heart. You can find more about her books on her website http://www.siobhandaiko.org

Website: https://siobhandaiko.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/siobhandaiko

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AsolandoBooks

https://www.facebook.com/siobhan.daiko

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siobhan-daiko-74993651/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siobhandaiko_asolandobooks/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.it/SiobhanDaiko/_saved/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/siobhan-daiko

Amazon Author Page: author.to/SiobhanDaiko

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7091256.Siobhan_Daiko

This entry was posted on January 23, 2023. 2 Comments

A Mother’s Loss

Jan22

Book Link

From Amazon:

Two women share a loss no mother should have to bear, connected across time.

Present day: Liz Stamford uproots her family to the Norfolk countryside to escape a traumatic loss. Their new house, a renovated pub, holds a ghostly secret from the past. Liz tunes into those memories; uncovering a loss which tethers a young girl into the fabric of her new home. Grief drives Liz to solve the mystery of the girl in her dreams who cannot rest in peace.

1860: Sarah Whiting lives with her mother and siblings in the Crown and Hare pub. One night she is attacked by her stepfather. The consequences of his actions lead to heartbreak and scandal for the family.

Can Liz discover what dreadful events haunt her new home? Can she solve the mystery and bring peace to Sarah?

My Review:

This is a heart-rending story of love and loss, and connecting two different time periods together. Plenty of strife, sadness, abuse, and love. A mother’s love is the backbone of a child’s life. Unfortunately, repeated, incestuous rape brings on pregnancy, unwanted yet birthed. Drastic changes happen with all in both timelines. This book touched me deeply.

Note: Triggers for those who’ve been sexually assaulted.

Pilot Who Knows the Waters 

Jan20

Book Title: Pilot Who Knows the Waters

Series: The Lord Hani Mysteries (#6)

Author: N.L. Holmes

Publication Date: June 15, 2022

Publisher: WayBack Press

Page Length: 330

Genre: Historical mystery, political intrigue

Twitter Handle: @nlholmesbooks @cathiedunn

Instagram Handle:  @n.l.holmes  @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalMystery #AncientEgypt #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page:   https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2022/10/blog-tour-pilot-who-knows-waters.html

Blurb:

Hani must secretly obtain a Hittite bridegroom for Queen Meryet-amen, but Ay and the faction behind Prince Tut-ankh-aten are opposed–to the point of violence. Does the death of an artisan have anything to do with Ay’s determination to see his grandson on the throne? Then, another death brings Egypt to the brink of war… Hani’s diplomatic skills will be pushed to the limit in this final book in The Lord Hani Mysteries.

Guest post for When Angels Fly

When I think of fascinating moments in the millennial history of Egypt, the reigns of Akhenaten and his immediate successors come to mind. This slice of the mid-fourteenth century BCE is marked by Amenhotep III “The Magnificent” on one end—a moment during which Egypt was at the height of its imperial power and wealth—and on the other, the brief reign of “King Tut”, whose youthful face is so well known to us because of his fabulous tomb. In between lies a terrain completely unsuspected until its rediscovery just more than a hundred years ago. To this day, our knowledge of Akhenaten and his times remains spotty, reconstructed from slender archaeological clues. But this is what we think we know:

The son of Amenhotep seems to have co-ruled with his father for a few years under the name Amenhotep IV. At this period, the elder king was gradually setting in place a religious shift that emphasized royal power by claiming that he himself incarnated all the most powerful gods of the Egyptian pantheon. This was a step beyond the traditional idea of a divine king. He often referred to himself as the Shining Sun Disk (pa-Aten Djehen), that is, a manifestation of godhead. We can’t know what role his teenaged son played in this campaign, but he was obviously drinking it in. Picture 1—face of Akhenaten

When Amenhotep IV became the sole ruler, he moved fast to take his father’s theology to its logical extremes. Over a period of several years, the Aten (Amenhotep III) not only absorbed but replaced the other gods, especially Amen-Ra, the mighty “Hidden One”, whose powerful priesthood had long been a target of royal animosity. The young king changed his name from Amen-hotep, Amen is Satisfied, to Akh-en-aten, Serviceable to the Aten. Many of his courtiers likewise jettisoned their old-god names, and eventually his henchmen even desecrated people’s tombs by chiseling out the mention of other gods in their names. The world’s first Thought Police! Within a few years he built an entirely new capital in Middle Egypt, in a place where the cliffs seemed to form the hieroglyph of the horizon—and called it Horizon of the Aten.

Little by little, the temples of other gods were shut down, their tens of thousands of priests and lay employees sent packing, and their extensive lands requisitioned for the Aten. Akhenaten himself was the high priest of the new cult, and it was exclusively through him that one made himself heard by the god, unlike the old religion, where everyone’s prayers were valuable. The afterlife, which was traditionally conceived as an eternal life like that on earth only perfectly full of comfort and good things, was now the bleak prospect of fluttering around the altars of the Aten while Akhenaten offered sacrifice.

We can only imagine the confusion and anger of the populace, deprived of their dearest traditions and hopes. Especially the fury of dispossessed priests and bureaucrats. The suppression of the temple system had sent the economy crashing to the ground, bringing misery to many. But the king either didn’t know or didn’t care. There was just one hole in his theology: what happened when the Sole Mediator died?

Akhenaten did die, and he was only in his thirties. It seems that he might have taken a brother as a co-ruler before his death to pave the way to the reign of his baby son, but this youth predeceased the king. There is some evidence that the successor of Akhenaten was his queen, the beautiful Nefertiti, who ruled briefly before she, too, died. These years immediately following the death of the Heretic King are murky. No doubt there was pushback against the changes he had wrought, fed by hope of a return to the old ways after his disappearance. Nefertiti was advised if not controlled by her father, Ay, a powerful military commander. Was he for or against the Atenist religion? He seems to have been a pragmatist who followed the path most likely to maintain him in power.

At some point in this period after the death of Akhenaten, a strange event took place. Hittite documents tell us—it is never mentioned in the Egyptian archives—that some unidentified queen of Egypt approached the Hittite king to request the hand of his son, who would thus rule over Egypt and unite the two empires. This was mind-blowing stuff. The Hittites were Egypt’s chief rivals! At first, scholars assumed that the queen in question was Tutankhamen’s widow, but external dating issues make it increasingly likely that this episode took place before the boy-king’s reign. So who was she? Maybe Nefertiti? But wouldn’t she have wanted to see her own son on the throne, if he was her son? A more likely candidate is Meryet-aten, the eldest daughter of Akhenaten and his wife. After the death of his brother, Akhenaten seems to have promoted Nefertiti to a kind of co-rule, making her essentially a second king. Thus, he needed a queen to fulfill public duties, and his daughter was promoted to this place. She likewise served as her mother’s “queen” under Nefertiti’s solo reign. Was she the one who sought support from Egypt’s enemies against partisans of her young brother?

All of this is speculative, and we’ll see in a minute why.

One can imagine that this plotting and conniving used the promise of a return to the old ways as its leverage. The priests of Amen would surely have supported anyone who started unraveling Akhenaten’s reforms. Meryet-aten disappeared from sight without a trace. Was there a violent conflict—a civil war?  And then, the nine-year-old Tut appeared on the throne, and the world’s face seemed to have come around to the front again. In almost no time, the Heretic’s capital was abandoned for a return to the traditional double capitals of Thebes and Memphis. The temples of Amen-Ra and the other gods were restored and their priests reinstated, and the economic wheels began once more to roll. Little by little, all the changes that had turned society on its head were were reversed, as Tut published manifestos highly critical of his father. We have to see the ideas of adults behind all this. No doubt Grandpa Ay. And also a certain officer named Horemheb, who apparently gained the boy-king’s confidence.

So the reign of Tutankhamen must have seemed like the return of a golden age to the people of Egypt! There is an epilogue of sorts, because, as we know, the youth died suddenly at nineteen—without issue. Nobody was left of the family but old Ay, who ascended the throne for four years, then died in his turn. And who stepped up to fill the gap next? Horemheb, who completed the reversal of the Heretic’s experiment by razing his old capital to the ground and tearing down every monument, chiseling Akhenaten’s name and likeness from wherever they appeared. Worse still, every mention of his reign and those that followed were expunged from the historical record! Within a few generations, it was as if Akhenaten and his family had never existed, until archaeologists in the nineteenth century came across an inexplicable city in the middle of nowhere that went by the name of Horizon of the Aten.

[Note: All images are in public domain.]

Buy Links:

Universal Link (if you have it): https://books2read.com/u/47gPVa

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilot-Who-Knows-Waters-Mysteries/dp/1735291676/

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZQWK45J/  

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Pilot-Knows-Waters-N-L-Holmes/dp/1735291676/

Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Pilot-Knows-Waters-Lord-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B09ZQWK45J/

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pilot-who-knows-the-waters-nl-holmes/1141493258?ean=2940166467379

Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/pilot-who-knows-the-waters/n-l-holmes/9781735291673

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=pilot+who+knows+the+water

iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6442831285

Author Bio:

N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel, and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin (also a writer today) used to write stories for fun. Today, she and her husband live in France with their chickens and cats, where she weaves, plays the violin, gardens, and dances.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.nlholmes.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nlholmesbooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nlholmesbooks

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/n-l-holmes/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/n.l.holmes/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nlholmesbooks/

Book Bub: https://www.instagram.com/n.l.holmes/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/N-L-Holmes/e/B0858H3K7S

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20117057.N_L_Holmes

This entry was posted on January 20, 2023. 2 Comments

A Dutiful Son

Jan19

Book Link

From Amazon:

What will Fitzwilliam Darcy do when his beloved father stands between him and happiness?

Darcy has always emulated his wise and honourable father, George Darcy. But following a sinister act of betrayal by a former family friend, his father rejects his most benevolent principles.

When Georgiana forms a friendship with Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy convinces his father to allow the association to continue. However, Elizabeth soon presents a thorny problem: she entices Darcy as no other lady has before, and with his father’s current outlook, he would not approve of her as a daughter-in-law.

Still, Darcy’s problem may resolve in time: his father, after getting to know Elizabeth, is certain to recognise her many admirable qualities and change his mind. But what if he does not?

In this Pride & Prejudice Regency variation, Fitzwilliam Darcy is caught between the influences of love and duty. Which of these will wield the greatest power?

My Review:

I have decided that “A Dutiful Son” is my most favorite reimagined version of Pride and Prejudice. Miller can weave the characters perfectly and change each of the character’s verbiage and thoughts easily. Or at least, Miller makes it look easy to do. Any fans of early 1800s romance will want to read this book.

This entry was posted on January 19, 2023. 2 Comments