Scars and Stilettos, by Harmony Dust - Blog Tour and Book Giveaway

A lot of us think that we have a hard life. We whine and complain about the little things that go wrong in our life. Little do we realize, there are other people out there who are going through things worse than we are. In Scars and Stilettos, by Harmony Dust, we are taken through the life a young girl who has to struggle just to survive and make it to the top.

Harmony's story starts out around the age of three years old when she was shown pornography by a male relative. At the age of five, two female friends of the family had a "slumber party" with her. By the age of seven, she was threatened by a boy to take her panties off. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end. She wound up dating a friend of the families and he was completely controlling. He drove her finances into the ground causing her to find extra means of income. Through all of this, she maintained her place in college, striving to succeed and get a psychology degree.

In order to make more money to support herself and her boyfriend, she started to strip. At first it was really awkward. Then as time went by, it became easier and easier. As time went by she began to hate it more and more. Then one day, a friend of hers invited her to church. She decided to go and loved it. She felt like that was the place for her. With God in her life, there wasn't anything that she couldn't do. This prompted her to break up with her boyfriend and quit stripping.

After God came into her life and helped her turn it around, she met and married a wonderful Christian man. She also received her MA in Social Welfare and is part of a company called, Treasures, which help other women in the sex industry get out.

I recommend this book for everyone to read, especially those who are going through problems and feel as though there is no hope for them.

This review is part of a blog tour for Scars and Stilettos. Click here to see what other bloggers on this blog tour think about this book.

I also have a chance for you to win a copy of Scars and Stilettos by Harmony Dust for yourself.

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Giveaway ends Friday, 7/09/10, at 11:59pm EDT. Winner will be picked using a random number generator. Winner will have 72 hours to reply to my email with mailing info. If no response in that time, a new winner will be picked. US only, 18 and over. Book will be mailed by me.

LitFuse Publicity and Kregel Publications provided the books for review and giveaway. I was not compensated in any way for this review. 

How To Get Your Kids To Embrace Reading During The Summer

 Twittermoms and HarperCollins are getting together and looking for people to write blog posts on how they get their kids to read (click here to learn more). This isn't hard for me because my daughter loves to read. I will admit that we do occasionally have our melt downs where she doesn't want to read or wants to just read a short book, but most of the time it isn't a hard thing to get her to do.

During the summer most kids have a harder time wanting to read because it is either a nice day outside or there is something on TV that they want to see or perhaps there is a video game that they want to play. One thing that you can do or that I do is sign your child up to a summer reading program with the library. Our library holds a summer reading program where children state how many books they think they can complete over the summer. Once they do this, they read their books and bring their tally sheets to have it signed off weekly. Each time they have it signed off, they get to pick out a prize. This creates a great incentive for a child to keep reading. Once they are done reading the amount of books they signed off for, they can pick out a book to take home and keep.

Another thing I do is go to a bookstore and have my daughter pick out a book that she wants to read. When she is done with that particular book, we will go back to the store and pick out another one. A good thing about this is that they can keep the book vs. having to return them when checked out from the library.

One other thing that one can do is have a picnic reading session. This can be really fun. You take a picnic basket with your blanket and sit at a park and read. I find my daughter enjoys reading more when I read with her vs. having her read on her own. And if you have a picnic reading session, you can eat (what kid doesn't like to eat) while your reading.

A finale thing you can do to get your child do read is have them read books over the internet. They have a ton of sites where your child can read a book in his or her age bracket/reading level. What child wouldn't love to pull a book up on the internet and read it? Children now days love computers and seem to be more competent with them then we are, so I can see where this would be fun. I have actually had my daughter do this and she really enjoyed it.

“I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms blogging program to be eligible to get an "I Can Read!" book. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”



I Can Read! Books Become an I Can Read! Member

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship, by Jeffrey Zaslow

How close are you to your closest friends? Did you meet them in college, high school, or grade school? Not many people can say they are still friends with the same people they met up with in grade school, let alone have a strong lasting bond with a group of friends for a long period of time. Most of the time when we attend a different school or even go away to college, the bond that was there, slowly dissipates. And other times when we become married we start a new life with our “new” family and we slowly see things starting to trickle away. But there are some people who can actually make it work and keep a strong bonding friendship for years and years and years. And that is what happened between Angela, Cathy, Diana, Jane, Jenny, Karen, Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Sally and Sheila. The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship, by Jeffrey Zaslow.

Every so often, the girls from Ames get together and reminisce about the past and engage in conversation about the present. When they are together at these reunions, they feel as though they are still those young girls in the pictures that they pull out to look over. And throughout this book, we are taken on that very journey with them as they discuss how their lives began and what they went through that led up to such an incredible bonding friendship.

It all started about forty some years ago when two of the girls were born in the same hospital days after each other. Little did they realize, they would become great friends later on. Some of the girls met up in kindergarten or first grade, whereas, a couple of them were pulled in by being friends with some of the girls already a part of the group or living next to them.

As they started to mature, they began going to formals and on dates, of course, some more than others. They experienced their first concerts, parties, hair changes, first jobs and even ostracizing. After growing up some more, they headed off to college. This is where you would suspect that their friendships would start to break off, but it didn’t. They maintained a steady friendship through letters and later on emails. Marriages, kids, health scares, divorce and even deaths couldn’t keep these girls friendships from separating. And to this day, they are still just as close.

Throughout the book we also learn about the benefits of women having close friendships. There are different studies on how close friendships can lead to women living a longer happier life. Some of the research showed that people with friends tend to be a lot healthier than those who didn’t have any. Another research showed that women with strong friendships tended to have better marriages.

While reading this book I learned a lot about the benefits of having lasting friendships. It made me want to call or write my friends and thank them for being in my life. There is nothing that can replace the closeness of a friend and this book proves it. I highly recommend this as a must read.

Somewhere to Belong, by Judith Miller

Have you ever lived in one type of “world” and was put into another one? Or lived in one place and chose to visit another? In a sense, that is what happens to the two girls in this story, Somewhere to Belong, by Judith Miller. This is the first book in the Daughters of Amana Series, which is set in the Amana colonies in 1877.

Johanna Ilg, a 24 year old girl, has lived in one of the seven Amana colonies all her life. Much like the Amish community, they dress in solid dark colors, eat in communal settings, and rely heavily on God. Johanna’s older brother has chosen to move away from the colony and live in Chicago. This peaks her interest, but her parents don’t approve of her wanting to visit Chicago. The only form of the outside world that she gets are visitors to the area, until the Schumachers move in.

Berta Schumacher, a 16 year old girl who hails from Chicago, has moved to the Amana colonies with her parents. She is devastated that she has to live in an area where life is pretty much dull compared to what her life was like in Chicago. With her stubborn ways, she wrecks havoc in her new world.

Johanna is chosen to show Berta the ways of the Amana colonies and has a hard time getting the young girl under control. Throughout their up and down times together, they become closer than expected and learn to confide in each other. Little by little secrets start to come out and unexpected situations arise. These are what leave Johanna and Berta to make the biggest choices in their lives.

I highly recommend this book. It was a great read. Judith Miller’s writing makes you dive into the book and has you feeling as though you are right there experiencing everything that the people are going through in the book.

This book was given to me by Bethany House in exchange for an honest review.

Food Allergy False Positives, Maybe, But I Don't Think So.

Just the other day, I was flipping through the television channels when I came across a news snippet about kids and food allergies. For a brief moment they talked about how kids can have false positives and not even be allergic to half of the things that the tests are saying they are allergic to. They were trying to warn parents to be careful with some of these test because half of them don't come out right.

Well, I beg to differ. I have a daughter who has been tested a couple of times and I can say for a fact that she IS allergic to the items listed on her results. I have seen her react to some of the nuts or seeds or even beans. It is not a fun thing to go through when you see your child's facial expression change from happy to sullen. It is scarey to think that can this be the moment when I am going to have to use the epi pen. Now, I don't mean to harp on anybody, but some of these people who are going on the news and saying that "kids and food allergies" aren't real, really piss me off. They don't have to talk to people before their child eats something. They don't have to sit and worry if their child is going to be okay when they are at school. If they had to, I bet they would sing a different tune.

I remember being on the internet and looking at some other people's posts to see what they had to say about food allergies and you would be surprised how many people I found who thought food allergies was just in the brain and not real. Once again, shocking, but true. It really amazes me how this is becoming a topic of discussion. At least, a little bigger than it should be.

Now I have heard of people who have had a bad reaction to food and then went for testing and it came back negative. But I have never heard of anyone who tested positive for a food allergy and then was able to eat it. I know they have different levels of food tolerance and maybe that is what they are talking about. And if it is, they need to say so instead of saying food allergies aren't real. Maybe it is just me, but I know I have enough Twitter/Blog friends to know that food allergies are REAL and not just something that is made up in one's head. Because I am not the only one, who has to worry about themselves or their child and food.

Friendship For Grown-Ups: What I Missed & Learned Along The Way, by Lisa Whelchel

Lisa Whelchel, wrote this book about how, as adults, we still have to deal with the ups and downs of having to make "true" friends.


This book is basically her journey and what she had to go through and come to terms with when trying to make and keep friends in her adult life. You read about how she came off to some people as though she was 100% perfect, even though she had a ton of major flaws that she let rule her life. You also read about how she opened up to others to the point of crying so much that they could no longer be around her. Along the way she writes about how she had to rely on God tremendously in order to get over the emotional friendship break-ups that she had to go through. She talks about the people who mean the most to her and why and also about the people who really weren't there for her too.

Even though she wrote the book based on her personal life, it is my belief that it was intended to help the reader in finding "true" friends in their own life. I do recommend this book to be read by others. I'm not sure that everyone will benefit from it, but it still makes a good read.

Disclosure: I received this book in return for a honest review from Booksneeze.

Melvin the Magnificent Molar, by Julia Cook and Laura Jana, MD.

I was introduced to Melvin the Magnificent Molar, by Julia Cook and Laura Jana, MD. through Twitter Moms, and I'm glad I was. It is a great book to introduce your children as to what happens with their teeth.

Greatly illustrated, Melvin takes you through the process of what your child needs to do to keep their teeth healthy and clean. As in, brushing the "green sleeping scummies" off their teeth, a well drawn out description of what happens when they go to the dentist, and your child writing the tooth fairy a letter. There also is a really great song for your child to sing while they are brushing their teeth.

My daughter LOVED the book. The minute she saw it, she sat down and read it. Then she brought it over to me and asked me questions about the different things in it that she did not understand. I think the writing style and pictures are perfect for children to read and look at and understand on their own. Even though my daughter has already started going to the dentist, she enjoyed the book. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a child that is going to the dentist or even has already been to the dentist.

Disclaimer: I was provided a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.