ABOUT THE BOOK
At 35, Paige Kelley is feeling very "in between." She's still working her temp job after two years, still not dating three years after her divorce, and still melting at every chubby-cheeked toddler she sees while her biological clock ticks ever louder. Paige even moves back home to help her ailing, high-maintenance mother.It's not exactly the life she'd dreamed of!When her Getaway Girls book club members urge Paige to break free and get on with her life, she's afraid. How will her mother react? How can Paige honor her widowed mother and still pursue her own life? The answers come from a surprising source.
A trip to Scotland and a potential new love interest help launch an exciting new chapter in her life, and lead Paige to discover that God's plan for her promises to be more than she ever imagined.
This latest release in the Getaway Girls collection delivers a smart, funny, and warm account of one woman's challenge to reconcile who she is - a dutiful Christian daughter - with the woman she longs to be.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Turning The Paige, go HERE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Jensen Walker is an award-winning writer, popular speaker, and breast-cancer survivor who loves to touch readers and audiences with the healing power of laughter.Born in Racine, Wisconsin (home of Western Printing and Johnson’s Wax—maker of your favorite floor care products) Laura moved to Phoenix, Arizona when she was in high school. But not being a fan of blazing heat and knowing that Uncle Sam was looking for a few good women, she enlisted in the United States Air Force shortly after graduation and spent the next five years flying a typewriter through Europe.
By the time she was 23, Laura had climbed the Eiffel Tower, trod the steps of the Parthenon, skied (okay, snowplowed) in the Alps, rode in a gondola in Venice, and wept at the ovens of Dachau. She’d also learned how to fold her underwear into equal thirds, make a proper cup of English tea, and repel the amorous advances of a blind date by donning combat gear and a gas mask.
Laura is a former newspaper reporter and columnist with a degree in journalism who has written hundreds of articles on many subjects ranging from emu ranching and pigeon racing to goat-roping and cemetery board meetings. However, realizing that livestock and local government weren’t her passion, she switched to writing humor, which she calls a “total God-thing.”
Her lifelong dream of writing fiction came true in Spring 2005 with the release of her first chick lit novel, Dreaming in Black & White which won the Contemporary Fiction Book of the Year from American Christian Fiction Writers. Her sophomore novel, Dreaming in Technicolor was published in Fall 2005.
Laura’s third novel, Reconstructing Natalie, chosen as the Women of Faith Novel of the Year for 2006, is the funny and poignant story of a young, single woman who gets breast cancer and how her life is reconstructed as a result. This book was born out of Laura’s cancer speaking engagements where she started meeting younger and younger women stricken with this disease—some whose husbands had left them, and others who wondered what breast cancer would do to their dating life. She wanted to write a novel that would give voice to those women. Something real. And honest. And funny.
Because although cancer isn’t funny, humor is healing.
A popular speaker and teacher at writing conferences, Laura has also been a guest on hundreds of radio and TV shows around the country including the ABC Weekend News, The 700 Club, and The Jay Thomas Morning Show.
Another book in this series is Daring Chloe
She lives in Northern California with her Renaissance-man husband Michael, and Gracie, their piano playing dog.
My Thoughts: I've read both Daring Chloe and Turning the Paige. I recommend them both when you are longing for some great girlfriend-type bonding. I enjoyed the fun of the first book as the women tried to reenact the adventures read in their book club selections.
Boy do I wish our book club meetings were adventurous like that! (No offense)
I thought the mother-daughter dilemma in Turning the Paige was riveting. My mother can be controlling, but not so manipulative. You really feel for Paige. I must say that I did not see the twist coming toward the end of the story. I still don't know how I feel about it. I think in chick-lit you don't want to see a twist like that, but you understand that things happen like that in life. Oh, you have to read the book to understand.
If you would like an opportunity to get caught up with the Getaway Girls, I'm giving away Daring Chloe and the advanced reading copy of Turning the Paige.
Comment to this post by telling me where you would like to get away to.
For the last twenty years, I’ve always wanted to visit Australia. I don’t know why. And two of my favorite blogging buddies, Rel and Kristy, live there too . Maybe one day...
Giveaway ends sometime on April (April already!) 3, 2009.
7 Your say:
The book review was great and I'd like to be entered in the giveaway.
We are travelling to Mexico in a few weeks. If we don't get kidnapped I'd like to escape to Ireland :)
I love these kinds of chick-lit books. I think I would like to get away anywhere right now...but if I had to choose, it would probably be a cruise to somewhere sunny & warm!!!
I would love to be entered in a draw for these 2 books. I'd like to getaway to Hawaii . . somewhere warm and beautiful. ~ Karen
kj.scholten@sbcglobal.net
This sounds great! Please enter me!
I travel so much with my band that I'd like to 'escape' just to go home for a while. :)
Anna
writer_weaver(at)yahoo(dot)com
or dancingqueen18 @ PBS
I was hooked on Laura's writing from the time I read "Dreaming in Black and White." And I appreciated your thoughts, CeeCee.
There's only one place I would love to get away to, because I can't get enough of it, and that's New England. Anywhere in New England. Vermont & New Hampshire in the fall, Cape Cod in the summer, lighthouses on the Maine coast . . . you get the picture.
Thanks for the chance to win this book!
cjarvis [at] bellsouth [dot] net
I think I would love to escape to... Ireland. I went to Scotland a few years ago for 8 days and did not want to return home. Since my ancestry is Ireland...I think I could definately feel at home there. Can I stay for at least a month? (smiles)
Don't include me in the drawing, CeeCee, as I've already read the books. I echo your thoughts on the twist in the book - it was definitely unexpected.
And if I could escape to anywhere...maybe to the ocean, or I would love to take an historical tour of the eastern US.
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