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GIVEAWAY!! Blog Tour: The Seven Steps to Closure by Donna Joy Usher with a guest post by the author plus an excerpt
The Seven Steps to Closure
written by Donna Joy Usher
published by Lush Publications
find it here: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Goodreads
Why did I pick this book: I participated in the blog tour hosted by CLP Blog Tours. (I received a copy of this book for review purposes.)
Did I enjoy this book: I did enjoy this book, especially the last half of it.
For me, the first half of The Seven Steps to Closure was okay. I had a hard time connecting with Tara and really feeling for her. She just seemed kind of pathetic rather than sympathetic.
However, I LOVED the second half of the book. The trip to India was fantastic. I got caught up in the romance…in the “will they or won’t they” aspect. I laughed out loud, especially during the plane scene. In fact, Tara made me laugh quite often in this part of the book.
As for the characters, Tara was heartbroken but on the mend. Jake is an asshole. Matt was my favorite…I loved him. Tara’s mother was a trip. The crazy pets she found were always worth a good chuckle. I also really enjoyed hearing about what was going on in Tara’s friends lives. Too often, the secondary characters stay in the background even though we want to know what is happening in their lives as well as the main character’s. In this book, we get some details and glimpses into what the friends are doing. I liked that a lot.
Would I recommend it: I would recommend this book to any chick lit fan.
Will I read it again: I will not.
About the book – from Goodreads: Tara Babcock awakes the morning after her 30th birthday with a hangover that could kill an elephant – and the knowledge she is still no closer to achieving closure on her marriage breakup. Things go from bad to worse when she discovers that, not only is her ex-husband engaged to her cousin – Tash, the woman he left her for – but that Jake is also running for Lord Major of Sydney.
Desperate to leave the destructive relationship behind and with nothing to lose, she decides- with encouragement from her three best friends – to follow the dubious advice from a magazine article, Closure in Seven Easy Steps.
The Seven Steps to Closure follows Tara on her sometimes disastrous- always hilarious – path to achieve the seemingly impossible.
Every Free Chance Book Reviews is pleased to welcome -Donna Joy Usher, author of The Seven Steps to Closure, to the blog today. She has prepared the following guest post for all of you.
I still remember the day a girlfriend lent me The Diary of Bridget Jones. I had never read chick lit before – preferring instead fantasy, had never even heard of it, and here I was getting drawn so far into this book that I couldn’t stop till I had finished. I staggered into the work the next day on a few hours’ sleep and thus began my love affair with chick lit.
They say to write about what you know – and what I knew was heartache, betrayal and eventually real happiness, so many years later when I began to write it seemed only natural that my first novel would be chick lit. They also say that your first protagonist is likely to be a version of yourself. I have to admit that a lot of inspiration for Tara initially came from me and my experiences, but as my writing progressed she began to take on attributes unique to herself. Like any child, there are resemblances to the parent, but Tara is not a version of me.
I find inspiration for my stories all around me. People I meet inspire characters, dreams I have evoke emotions I weave into my tales. Long walks on the beach with an open mind normally will provide me with an answer to a question I may have had about my storyline. I also find talking about my book helps me add layers and depth, creating three dimensional characters and a tale people can relate to.
The Seven Steps to Closure began with a dream I had in 2007. I woke up the next morning and started writing. Although most of the original novel is gone – it was long and boring with no real storyline – the original dream still exists in the book as a flashback scene. When I realized how dreadful it was, I put it aside while I rethought the whole thing. Many years later I came back to Tara, and, feeling she had an important story to tell, I started again. I am sure that a lot of women will relate to Tara, and her trials and tribulations on her roller-coaster path to obtaining closure. I hope that the story will help and inspire other women whose hearts are breaking, but at the very least, it’s an entertaining read with plenty of laughs.
I know people have said that chick lit is dead, but I totally disagree. Perhaps it is no longer the fashionable genre, having been overtaken by horror, but the beauty of chick lit is that we bond with the characters on a level we can’t possibly with other genres because we are the characters in the chick lit novels. Our lives are a series of chick lit tales: discovering love for the very first time, having our hearts broken, getting married and having children. We move through life, sometimes the protagonist, sometimes the best-friend, the mother, the horrible boss; we are constantly shifting from story to story as our lives touch those of the women around us. So how could chick lit ever die?
About the author: Born in Brisbane, I started my working life as a dentist. After 15 years of drilling and filling I discovered there was more to life, and put pen to paper. Now I drill by day and write by night.
When not doing either of those things I like spending time with my husband and two little dogs, fishing and camping, motorbike riding, traveling, drinking wine on my deck and eating chocolate. Last year I ran my first half marathon and took up paddle boarding.
I have lived in a myriad of places: Melbourne, Perth, England, Rockhampton, Roxby Downs, Sydney, Cairns and am now situated on the New South Wales Central Coast.
Find Ms. Usher here: web, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads
And now for the GIVEAWAY!! Ms. Usher is offering 3 ebook copies to 3 lucky winners! Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below for your chance to win.
Please enjoy the following excerpt from The Seven Steps to Closure.
So there we all were sitting at this table, me with my special shirt on, and I like a naive idiot am wondering what the stage show was going to be, when out comes the first stripper. I looked at Nat, who shook her head.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It said stage show. I didn’t realise they meant strippers.’
I’ve never really been able to get into the male stripper thing. Maybe because they all look gay, prancing around like show ponies, groping their own packages and thrusting them into women’s faces. That night was no exception. The guys were whipping off bits of clothing left, right and centre, while I tried to have a conversation about the coming nuptials with Nat and Dinah. One of the strippers, trying to get my attention, got down on his hands and knees in front of me and started wiggling his red g-stringed buttocks in my face. Everybody else was screaming, but I could see some coarse, black hair poking out from under the G-string, so I was pretty grossed out.
Then Mr Hairy Bottom insisted on dragging me up on stage. I fought pretty hard, but the girls from the table behind us grabbed my legs and threw me bodily onto the platform. I landed on my hands and knees with my bum in the air and my mini skirt up around my hips, flashing my G-string at the crowd. The girls held me down and smacked me on the bare ass, (they were pretty drunk by this stage), while Mr Hairy Bottom waggled his package about an inch from my nose. It was totally humiliating.
He sat me on a stool and started swinging his hips to ‘Man I Feel Like A Woman’. Much to my disgust he held a towel in front of himself and whipped off his G-string. I, thankfully, could only see the blue and white striped towel, but he grabbed my hand and stuck it on his crotch. I could feel his sad, limp dick through the fabric of the towel, and to my dismay, the tip of my little finger missed the towel grazing his soft, waxed balls.
Now I want to get one thing straight. I am normally not that fond of penises. I mean obviously I liked Jake’s, but I have never, ever had an urge to see a strange man’s package, let alone feel one. I certainly didn’t appreciated being forced to touch his, and given a choice I would have taken putting my hand into a jar full of huntsmen spiders over this. As thoughts of herpes and syphilis flashed through my head, I leant forward and whispered in his ear, ‘If you don’t take my hand off your dick this minute you’ll be using a straw to pee through for the rest of your life.’
A look of horror crossed his face, and I smiled sweetly at him and raised one eyebrow. He let go of my hand pretty quickly, but not before I felt a slight hardening of his dick and I realised with a jolt that I must have turned him on. It put me right off my dinner.
Happy reading wherever you are and whenever you get a free chance!!!
4 Comments
by Samantha
Thanks for being in the tour Chrissy!
by The Every Free Chance Reader
No problem, Samantha! =)
by Donna Usher
Thanks Chrissy for your lovely feedback about The Seven Steps to Closure. I’m glad it made you laugh. Have a great Christmas.
by The Every Free Chance Reader
You’re welcome! And thank you for the opportunity to read your book. I love a good laugh.
Merry Christmas, Donna!