Mama Bear Reviews

It is the last day of 2016. It seems that many are very ready for this year to be over and I can't say that I disagree. This year has been filled with a lot of craziness but it has moved so quickly that I am not sure I am ready for it to be 2017 quite yet. One positive of this year is that I read a lot of good books this year and want to share some of my favorites of 2016 in this post. These are not in a particular order but I will start with Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. This is a sci-fi thriller and had a lot of interesting twists that kept it interesting from start to finish. Dark Matter has an interesting twist on the do over plot. What if you had the ability to go back to a certain point in your life and change a decision that you made? Another book that I loved in the sci-fi genre was The Blood Mirror by Brent Weeks. This is book number 4 in the Lightbringer series and there will be at least one more. It took a lot of prompting from my husband to ge...

Another online book community that I love is Goodreads . Goodreads is a great site to use for following your favorite authors. You can follow an author and be alerted when they have a new book coming out. I love this because it can be so hard to remember when an author is releasing a new book and I always love to get them as soon as possible. You can also follow friends on Goodreads and find out which books they are enjoying and add those books to your to be read list. Goodreads also has giveaways every day. Many of these have really good odds and provide a wonderful opportunity to discover a new author. A book that I won recently from a Goodreads giveaway is Your Soul is a River by Nikita Gill. This is a beautiful collection of poetry. A lot of it deals with heartache and grief but I found most of the poems to be very hopeful and uplifting. In the last few days I have found myself picking it up to read different poems over and over again. There are not many places...

Have you checked out bookstr.com? It is an online community for book lovers. One of the things that I really love about Bookstr is that they have giveaways throughout the month where you can sign up for a chance to win books. Who doesn't love free books? It is also a good website for getting book recommendations and keeping up with your favorite authors as well. A book that I won recently from Bookstr was Victoria by Daisy Goodwin. The premise of this book really intrigued me. This story is about Queen Victoria in her early years when she first becomes queen. In the book she is in her late teen's just learning more about her new role as queen while also struggling with a crush on her advisor and a mother that may over step a bit. This book is a bit of a cross between historical fiction and historical romance. While there is not actually that much romance involved there is a lot of Victoria trying to figure out her own interests. She is actually still quite childish at this ti...

I have always had a love of reading and have been toying with the idea of starting a blog to share that love with others. Well here it is from the very beginning. Welcome! I received an advanced copy of a book this last week and loved it so much that I knew it would be the perfect way to kick off this blog. The Fifth Letter by Nicola Moriarty is a wonderful story of friendship and secrets. A group of four women who have been friends since high school go on their yearly vacation together. Over time their relationships have become a bit strained and as an idea to help them know a bit more about each other they all decide to write an anonymous letter spilling their deepest secrets. One of the women has however written a fifth letter with a dark secret she has kept against another member of the group. When Joni finds this letter she tries to figure out which of her friends could have written the letter. She even goes as far as enlisting the help of a priest. There is of course the fa...