book love + a giveaway

today i am taking some time to share one of my favorites things in life- books. hope you had a great week! this summer we celebrated five years of book club- yay! last spring, i shared five tips for starting a book club if you are interested in checking out my advice. one of the books we read this summer was, luckiest girl alive, by jessica knoll {which i greatly enjoyed!} even more, we were able to skype with the generous and adorable author, jessica in july. she took time out of her vacation to spend at least thirty minutes talking to us {so, so nice of her!} and it made me love the book even more! she was amazing– super sweet and very genuine. during our chat about the book, she also talked about the plans reese witherspoon has regarding the movie version. can’t even wait to go see it with friends. have you read the book? in honor of my love for jessica knoll and her awesome book {and pumpkin spice lattes- which debut september 8} i am giving away a free copy of the book and a $10 gift card to starbucks. enter below by saturday, september 12!

currently on my bookcase:

in the country stories by mia alvar:  these nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from mia alvar, a
remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men
of the filipino diaspora. here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers
uprooting their families from the philippines to begin new lives in the middle east, the united states, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning
back again.

where’d you go bernadette by maria semple {almost finished and loving it/super funny and unique}: bernadette fox is notorious. to her microsoft-guru husband, she’s a
fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary
architect, and to 15-year-old bee, she is a best friend and, simply, mom. then bernadette disappears. it began when bee aced her
report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to antarctica. but bernadette’s intensifying allergy to aeattle–and people
in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in
India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is
problematic.

the sunlit night by rebecca dinerstein: a stunning debut novel–which jonathan safran foer calls “lyrical as a poem, psychologically rich as a thriller.” in
the beautiful, barren landscape of the Far north, under the
ever-present midnight sun, frances and yasha are surprised to find
refuge in each other. their lives have been upended–frances has fled
heartbreak and claustrophobic manhattan for an isolated artist colony; yasha arrives from brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father’s last wish:
to be buried “at the top of the world.” they have come to learn how to
be alone.

circling the sun by paula mclain: paula mclain, author of the phenomenal bestseller the paris wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial kenya in the 1920s. circling the sun
brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—beryl markham, a
record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with
safari hunter denys finch hatton and karen blixen, who as isak dinesen
wrote the classic memoir out of africa. brought to kenya
from england as a child and then abandoned by her mother, beryl is
raised by both her father and the native kipsigis tribe who share his
estate. her unconventional upbringing transforms beryl into a bold young
woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent
understanding of nature’s delicate balance. but even the wild child must
grow up, and when everything beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is
catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

a Rafflecopter giveaway