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Modern Persuasion by Sara Marks

Source: Giveaway Win
Kindle, 220 pgs.
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Modern Persuasion by Sara Marks is a novel in which Emma Shaw passes up the love of Frederick Wentworth and his marriage proposal at college graduation in favor of returning to New York City for a career in publishing. During their time apart, they have both built solid careers — hers in publishing and his in Hollywood.

“Rationality won over love.”

Eight years later, her reputation as the “queen of book tours” proceeds her and Frederick Wentworth has little choice but to let her take the lead when his own editor goes down in a scuffle.  The multi-city book tour across the country should be the perfect opportunity for two professionals to get over their losses eight years ago and declare a truce, but even as the sparks start again, each has reason to push them aside and embrace anger and depression instead.  Will Emma and Freddie ever learn to move beyond the hurt of the past and rekindle their love?

Marks’ re-imagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is outrageous in some places given the characters she develops.  Their backgrounds in Hollywood make some of them eccentric, while others with their basis in Austen’s novel were modified to meet the modern setting.  The scenes at PubCon (which is pretty close to what some Book Expo America stints have been like) were pretty hectic, but very close to the truth.

Although the scuffle taking Freddie’s editor out of the picture seemed a bit much, a device was needed to throw him and Emma together.  Readers will note that there is quite a bit of telling rather than showing through description and dialogue, which puts the reader at a distance for a good portion of the book.  Modern Persuasion by Sara Marks ends up being a delightful read about overcoming grief of more than one kind, rekindling lasting affection and love, and chasing dreams that are bigger than you expect.

RATING: Tercet

About the Author:

Sara Marks is an author, knitter, Wikipedian, and librarian from Massachusetts. Born in Boston, her family move to Miami, Florida when she was 3. There she spent the next 14 years of her life. She attended Florida State University for 3 years, but graduated with an A.A from Miami Dade College and a B.A. from Florida International University before moving back to Boston for graduate school. She hasn’t left Massachusetts since (except to visit people and places in the world). Now, over fifteen years later and over 10 years of participating in National Novel Writing Month, she is releasing her first novel, Modern Persuasion, with Illuminated Myth Publishing. Sara works with local writing group Mill Pages, which creates an annual anthology of short stories, poems, and art work. She is a member of the Society of Independent Publishers and Authors (SIPA), a group supporting writers in the Merrimack Valley.When she isn’t writing, Sara is an academic librarian at University of Massachusetts Lowell. She has a masters degree in library science and another in Communications. She is an active Wikipedian who has been editing Wikipedia for over 10 years. She spent 6 years as a member of Toastmasters International where she twice earned the status of Distinguished Toastmaster, the highest status members can achieve. She is one of the local organizers for National Novel Writing Month. She is an avid knitter who designs and publishes her own patterns. She love unicorns, Paris, and the color purple.

New Authors Reading Challenge 2017

Mailbox Monday #431

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has a permanent home at its own blog. To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links. Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Martha, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what I received:

Loving Robert Lowell by Sandra Hochman

Turner Publishing proudly presents the first of three new literary works by Sandra Hochman, author of Walking Papers. When asked in 1976 by a reporter from People Magazine if her first two novels were autobiographical, Sandra Hochman replied, “My real life is much more fabulous than the books. One day I plan to write about it–men, Paris and women’s liberation. It will probably be called Unreal Life.”

Hochman first met Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Robert Lowell in 1961 at the Russian Tea Room in New York. She was to interview him for Encounter magazine. Hochman was twenty-five and had recently returned from Paris where she had lived with her husband for four years. They were now separated. Lowell was forty-three with plans to leave his wife. Hochman remembers it as the day that changed her life. The two poets fell in love instantly, and before the night was over, they had vowed to stay together forever. In Hochman’s first literary work in almost forty years, she writes in startling detail about the torrid and ultimately doomed affair that would follow.

Modern Persuasion by Sara Marks, a giveaway win from Diary of an Eccentric.

Which would you pick: the person you love or your own dreams?
What would you do if given a second chance at that decision?

Eight years ago Emma Shaw picked her career and family over the man she loved, Fredrick Wentworth. Since then she has built a career in publishing and spends her free time making sure her father and sisters are taken care of. Fredrick has spent the same years building his career as a screenwriter under increasing public scrutiny as a celebrity. When the editor of Fredrick’s first book is injured, Emma is forced to travel with Fredrick on his book tour.

Tension builds for the two former lovers over the course of the tour. Emma and Fredrick must face their emotional baggage and their misunderstanding about how their break-up impacted the other. Will they be able to find their way back together for a second chance at love?

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter: A Memoir Writing Workbook by Beth Kephart, which I purchased the minute she announced it.

What are we supposed to do with that lovely, infuriating, instigating, mischievous blank page? Who are we, when we’re being uncommonly honest? Where do we stand, in the landscape of truth? How do we discover and profess the story of our life when lives are such strange and messy things? Frankly, why bother?

In Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. Beth Kephart offers an insider’s look at the making of true tales-and an illustrated workbook to guide the wild ride. Combining smartly selected samples with abundantly fresh ideas, dozens of original exercises with cautions, questions with answers, Kephart inspires, encourages, and persistently believes in those with a story to tell. Write this, Truth says. Read this. Consider this. Discover who you are. Have some honest fun with words.

Truth could not come from a more authoritative source-Beth Kephart, who, as an award-winning writer of 22 books, an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, a winner of the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (motivational category) for Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, a nationally renowned speaker, and a partner in Juncture Writing Workshops, has mastered the art of leading readers and writers toward the stories of themselves. Truth should find a home among high school teachers, college professors, workshop leaders, autodidacts, secret writers and public ones. It is the perfect (graduation, birthday, holiday, friendship) gift-to others, and to oneself.

Dunkirk by Joshua Levine for review for TLC Book Tours.

The epic history of Dunkirk, May 1940: when more than 300,000 trapped Allied troops were dramatically rescued from destruction at the hands of Nazi Germany by an extraordinary seaborne evacuation.

The true history of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians involved in the evacuation during the nine days from 27 May–4 June 1940 has passed into legend.

Now the subject of an epic motion picture from director Christopher Nolan, starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Mark Rylance – the story Winston Churchill described as a ‘miracle’ is narrated by bestselling author Joshua Levine in its full, sweeping context.

Including new interviews with veterans and survivors, this book goes behind the scenes to explore the real lives of those soldiers, bombed and strafed on the beaches for days on end, without food and ammunition; the civilians whose boats were overloaded; the airmen who risked their lives to buy their companions on the ground precious time; and those who did not escape.

Told from the viewpoints of land, sea and air, Joshua Levine’s Dunkirk is a dramatic account of this glorious defeat.

What did you receive?