Review of 'Moms Raising Sons to Be Men' by Rhonda Stoppe

Hello Mama Bookworms!

Hi.  I am Christi and I am a mom of only boys.  I always wanted a little girl when I was in my baby making years, but God blessed me with two boys that are my light and my life instead.  Seeing all my friends go through what they're going through with their teenage daughters right now makes me thank God that He knew what he was doing and didn't listen to me.  I don't think I could handle a girl!  Not to say that raising boys is any easier, but it suits me just fine.

One thing I have always been thankful for are the invaluable resources out there that help us moms that are raising boys, a job that is very important, and one I do not take lightly.  Which is why I'm excited to be featuring a wonderful resource that guides moms to raising their sons to be men.

Welcome to the Takeover + Review Blitz for Moms Raising Sons to Be Men by Rhonda Stoppe, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Moms Raising Sons to Be Men 

Author: Rhonda Stoppe 

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers 

Release Date: March 7, 2023 

Genre: Religion / Christian Living / Women's Interests/ Parenting 

Bringing up boys isn’t for the faint of heart, but bestselling author Rhonda Stoppe has been there before—and she’s here to help! Drawing on insights from fellow boy-moms and from Scripture, Rhonda reveals why walking with Christ is every mom’s key to parenting well. 

You’ll discover how motherhood gives you unique opportunities to grow in faith as you draw nearer to God through prayer, Bible study, and mentorship from godly women. You’ll also find practical advice for shaping your son in character and faith as you encourage his passions, teach him biblical masculinity, and protect his spirit without smothering his individuality. 

Your success as a mother doesn’t depend on what your son does with his life, but on how you obey God’s guidance on this mission of motherhood. Moms Raising Sons to Be Men provides the biblical hope, wisdom, and encouragement you need to help your son live a life without regrets!

“You will be encouraged, enlightened, and empowered to become the mom you’ve always wanted to be—and to guide your son into becoming the man God intended.”

—Cindi McMenamin, national speaker and author of When Women Walk Alone

4

Book Review of "Between Two Kingdoms" by Suleika Jaouad

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: Between Two Kingdoms

Author: Suleika Jaouad

Publisher: Random House Publishing

Release Date: February 9, 2021

Genre: Sociology of Death

A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman's journey from diagnosis to remission and, ultimately, a road trip of healing and self-discovery.

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

0

Book Review: Act Before You Overthink by Lison Mage

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: Act Before You Overthink

Author: Lison Mage

Publisher: The Mindful Experience Pty Ltd

Release Date: April 20, 2022

Genre: Psychological Nonfiction

Are you an Overthinker?

Too clever for your own good? Unable to make a decision even after overanalysing data in enormous spreadsheets? Feeling stuck and anxious imagining countless what-if scenarios?

Act Before You overThink, to free your mind, skyrocket your productivity and improve your well-being.

Based on more than 365 interviews with overthinkers, Lison Mage uncovers and debunks the three myths of overthinking that hold you back from reaching your full potential, in your career and relationships.

Backing up her findings with psychological studies and behavioural sciences, Act Before You overThink offers practical strategies and tools addressing the different types of overthinking, to break free from stress, self-doubt and perfectionism.

You will learn how to:

• Gain control over your deepest fears and show up as your most empowered self,
• Balance thinking and doing, setting you on a path to greater joy and purpose,
• Build confidence and decisiveness when facing complex choices

Don’t wait any longer to get out of your own way! It’s time toliberate your mind, improve your decisions, and gift the world your best self.

0

Book Review: A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: A Tangled Web

Author: Leslie Rule

Publisher: Citadel Press

Release Date: April 28, 2020

Genre: True Crime

In the tradition of her acclaimed mother, Ann Rule, author of The Stranger Beside me, bestselling author Leslie Rule exposes the trail of a sadistic sociopath, identity their, and killer...

 
It was a bleak November in 2012 when Cari Farver, thirty-seven, vanished from Omaha, Nebraska. Texts sent indicated that the hardworking mother had quit her job, abandoned her son, and cut ties with everyone. Cari’s boyfriend, Dave Kroupa, accepted the breakup at face value. Her mother, Nancy Raney, however, had doubts. “I need to hear your voice,” Nancy begged. When the texter refused to speak, Nancy reported Cari missing.  
 
While no one saw or spoke to Cari, more than 12,000 sinister emails and texts were sent in her name over the next years. Police believed Dave and his girlfriend, Shanna “Liz” Golyar, when they reported that the missing woman was cyberstalking them. The tormentor was eerily aware of Dave’s every move, knew when Liz visited and threatened the couple. It never occurred to Dave that Cari was a victim—that the real stalker had killed before, and was planning to kill again.
 
Leslie Rule tracks the heart-pounding path to long-awaited justice—from a twisted past to the deadly deception and the high-tech forensics that condemned the killer to prison.

0

Book Review: The Evil Within by Darren Galsworthy

Title: The Evil Within

Author: Darren Galsworthy

Publisher: HarperElement

Release Date: March 3, 2016

Genre: True Crime

Previously published as Becky, this is the heartbreaking story behind the murder of 16-year-old Bristol schoolgirl Becky Watts, a crime that shocked the nation and tore a family in two.

A vulnerable and shy girl, Becky Watts was brutally murdered and dismembered by her own step-brother on 19 February 2015. As her father Darren discovered the horrific details of what happened to his darling girl, his world fell apart.

Writing about the darkest hours, Darren uncovers what Becky’s relationship with her step-brother Nathan, a child he had raised as his own son, was really like. He recalls the devastation of discovering the truth about the depravity with which Becky was torn from him in the safety of her own home. And he recounts the torment of the legal battle to see his step-son sentenced to life behind bars.

Both heartfelt and haunting, searingly honest and unflinching, this is the ultimate story of a family tragedy. 

0

Book Review: Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule

Title: Small Sacrifices

Author: Ann Rule

Publisher: Estate of Ann Rule in conjunction with Renaissance Literary & Talent

Release Date: July 5, 1988 (Original Publication Date) -July 2, 2018 (This Publication)

Genre: True Crime

Anne Rule's shocking and powerful account of the destructive forces that drove Diane Downs, a beautiful mother, to shoot her three young children in cold blood.

On the evening of May 19th, 1983, Diane Downs arrived at Mckenzie-Willamette Hospital driving a blood splattered Nissan. Inside were her three children (Christie Ann 8, Cheryl Lynn 7, and Stephen Daniel 3) in critical condition, lying in the back seat suffering from fresh gunshot wounds. Downs herself had been shot in the arm and immediately told authorities that a “bushy haired stranger” flagged her down on the side of a nearby deserted road and proceeded to shoot her three children, and then herself. She claimed she barely managed to get into the car and drive off, leaving the man behind. Two of Downs’ children, Christie Ann and Stephen Daniel, were expected to make a full recovery, while Cheryl Lynn passed away shortly after arriving at the hospital. Downs’ strange and cold reaction to this news was what immediately heightened the suspicions of the hospital staff and authorities, contributing to her becoming the lead suspect. As the investigation continued, her version of the story became more convoluted and new evidence against her led to her arrest.

In 1989 SMALL SACRIFICES was made into the popular TV movie of the same name starring Farrah Fawcett, which earned her an Emmy nomination. 

0

Book Review: The Deep Places by Ross Douthat

Publisher: Convergent Books

Release Date: October 26, 2021

Genre: Biographies

In this vulnerable, insightful memoir, the New York Times columnist tells the story of his five-year struggle with a disease that officially doesn't exist, exploring the limits of modern medicine, the stories that we unexpectedly fall into, and the secrets that only suffering reveals.

“A powerful memoir about our fragile hopes in the face of chronic illness.”—Kate Bowler, bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason 
  
In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, D.C., to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which according to CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition--and no medically approved cure.

From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed "hypochondriacs" are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath.

The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths there is always hope.

0

Blog Blitz + Giveaway: An Alphabet for Change by Steve Hallblade

 

Welcome to the Blog Blitz for An Alphabet for Change by Steve Hallblade, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: An Alphabet for Change
Author: Steve Hallblade
Publisher: Good Soil Press
Release Date: May 21, 2021
Genre: Devotional

An accessible and thoughtful book that provides concrete steps for people to take as they seek to be genuinely transformed in their relationship with Jesus. 

The alphabet provides a simple road map that will draw you into the readings and encourage you to take practical steps toward personal transformation.

6

Book Review: Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur

Publisher: Mariner Books

Release Date: October 15, 2019

Genre: Biographies & Memoirs

A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.

On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me. 
 
Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms.  

Wild Game is a brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us.

❥ Content Warning: May be triggering for some readers due to adult subject matter

0