The Mountains Bow Down: Book Review and Giveaway

From the Publisher:

About The Mountains Bow Down: Everything's going to work out. Time away always makes things better . . ..

That's what FBI Special Agent Raleigh Harmon believes as she boards a cruise to Alaska. A land of mountains and gems and minerals, The Last Frontier is a dream destination for this forensic geologist who's hoping to leave behind a hectic work schedule and an engagement drained of romance.

But when a passenger goes missing and winds up dead, Raleigh's vacation suddenly gets lost at sea. The ship's security chief tries to rule the death a suicide, but Raleigh's forensics background points to a much darker conclusion: Somewhere onboard, a ruthless murderer walks free.

Engulfed by one of her toughest cases yet, Raleigh requests assistance from the FBI and receives her nemesis-perpetual ladies man Special Agent Jack Stephanson. As the cruise ship sails through the Inside Passage, Raleigh has five days to solve a high-profile murder, provide consultation for a movie filming onboard, and figure out her increasingly complicated feelings for Jack-who might not be such a jerk after all.

And that's only her work life. Family offers even more challenges. Joined on the cruise by her mother and aunt, Raleigh watches helplessly as disturbing rifts splinter her family.

Like the scenery that surrounds the cruise ship, Raleigh discovers a situation so steep and so complex that even the mountains might bow down.

My Review and A Book Giveaway:

I was a little bit worried when I realized I was starting Sibella Giorello's Raleigh Harmon series by reading the 4th book, but instead of being a problem, reading The Mountains Bow Down simply made me want to go back and check out the first 3 books in this series. My kids were sick and we weren't out of the house any, but I managed to sneak in reading time and finished it in only a day or two. I enjoyed the plot twists and the unpredictability of the murder mystery. I also appreciated the lack of guts and gore. The way Giorello beautifully paints the setting with words was also a big draw for me, as I would love to visit Alaska some day! Overall, this was a really good, quick read, mystery novel.

Did I mention that my kids were sick while I was reading this?? Yeah, well you now can benefit from my sleepless nights. As a result of too many all nighters I didn't realize I had received my copy for review, and by the time the second was on the way I found the original. So, now I have a copy to give away to one lucky reader. Simply leave a comment on this post and we'll let random.org choose a winner on April 1st at 11AM EST. Don't forget to leave your contact info in the comment.

Sibella’s celebrating the release of The Mountains Bow Down with a blog tour, a Cruise prize pack worth over $500 and a Facebook Party! Don't miss a minute of the fun.

One Grand Prize winner will receive:

• A $500 gift certificate toward the cruise of their choice from Vacations To Go.


• The entire set of the Raleigh Harmon series.

To enter click one of the icons below. Then tell your friends. And enter soon - the giveaway ends on 4/1! The winner will be announced at Sibella’s Raleigh Harmon Book Club Party on FB April 5th, 2011! Don’t miss the fun – prizes, books and gab!

About the Facebook Party: Join Sibella and fans of the Raleigh Harmon series on April 5th at 5:00 pm PST (6 MST, 7 CST & 8 EST) for a Facebook Book Club Party. Sibella will be giving away some fun prizes, testing your trivia skills and hosting a book chat about the Raleigh Harmon books. Have questions you'd like to chat about - leave them on the Event page.

This review is part of the LitFuse Publicity Groups' blog tour, so you can read what other bloggers have to say about this book as well by clicking here.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review and a copy to give away to one reader. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. All opinions are 100% my own.

The first day of kindergarten here was fabulous! The school is great, the teacher is precious, and the other classmates provided my oldest with lots of ideas for chatter this afternoon with her sisters. Win, win!!



Speaking of winning... the winner of the Staples $25 gift card (after a quick coin toss) was from comment number 2. So MimiB please shoot me an email with your mailing address and I will get your card right out to you. Thanks!

STAPLES Back to School

It is almost back to school time here.... or should I say Off to School for the first time?!? We'll officially have a Kindergartner in the house next week, and school shopping has been high on our list of things to do lately.

Somewhere amidst all our shopping and planning and paper signing, Staples sent us some really cool back to school products for review.

Some of our favorites:

I personally loved all the goodies from the DoSomething.org line of products. I think it is outstanding that as a company Staples donated over $125K to start off their Do Something 101 Back to School supply drive!

The new kindergartner of the house loved setting up her own personal desk in her room with the Glam Rocks Stapler, Pen, and Calculator. She is all about staplers these days, and the Go Glam products fit her personality to a T.

The best part: Staples has offered a $25 Gift Card to one of my readers to help with back to school shopping. For my local readers, I know there isn't a Staples within 35 miles of here, but their website is completely user friendly and really makes you want to say "that was easy" about shopping there.

To enter to win simply leave a comment here letting me know if school's in yet where you live or not... and any advice you may have about first day jitters for the mommy is also greatly appreciated! Contest will end on Monday, Aug. 23rd at noon.

This review was written as part of Staples Back to School Blogger Tour. Staples provided me with a goodie bag of items for review and the $25 Gift Card to give away to one of you. As always the opinions given are my very own.

Rayovac Powers Your Summer!

Whoa, it's been a v ery long time since I've posted over here! Things have been zooming along at break neck speed lately, but I had to stop and take a minute to share the news about Rayovac's Power Your Summer Promotion.

Simply go to Rayovac Powers Your Summer and enter to win daily prizes ranging from Bikes, Camping Supplies, Cameras, and a Summer Supply of Rayovac Batteries!! So easy!!! Even though our summers are primarily KID powered, the winters would get pretty long without our games... many of which require batteries.

If you use Twitter, then be sure to check out their Twitter event on June 30th as well.


Discolsure: The first 99 bloggers to promote the Rayovac Powers Your Summer Event won a prize packaage from Rayovac.

FedEx Out of Office Blog

This time of year while we're trapped in the house for days due to the cold weather, I'm on the lookout for crafts and project ideas to keep the girls busy. I've found a couple of great new ideas over at the Out of Office blog from FedEx Office. It offers ideas for projects, parties, and presents year round!

For example, the Four Silly Sisters will soon be making winter place mats for our kitchen table, inspired by a post from the Out of Office blog. Our biggest difficulty will be 40 miles between us and the nearest FedEx Office store.

In addition to the craft ideas, I've found many of the posts on the Out of Office blog to be useful for home organization and gift ideas as well. They've got everything from chore charts to ways to re purpose your children's art work..... boy am I going to need these in the near future!?! I can't even imagine the volume of school work that is going to come home once the trio enter "big school".

I'm not a crafty person at all, and I have a house full of little people who are craft lovers. Therefore, I've enjoyed perusing this new site for ideas, and I look forward to using these ideas as inspiration for beating a bit of winter boredom.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of FedEx Office. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

ABC Bible Verse Songs for Kids- Review

The Four Silly Sisters all love to perform. They love to sing, and dance, and grab an audience. So it was with great pleasure that we received a copy of Ms. Candace's ABC Bible Memory Verse Songs from her Sonbeams site. What better way to hide God's word in their little hearts than by setting those words to music. I seldom forget the words to songs once I have learned them. I can still remember all the songs from the musicals I performed in as a child, and considering how terrible my memory is these days, it must be the music that is keeping all those words locked in up there!

Ms. Candace has done a great job of selecting the verses to correspond with each letter of the alphabet and putting it all to music. The girls especially enjoy the upbeat tempo songs. I think this will be a great tool to use for helping the girls to memorize Bible verses. It will also be handy to keep in the car so that I can listen along with them and memorize a few more verses myself, although the memorization doesn't come quite as easily as it once did! I plan to share our copy with the girls' Sunday school teachers at church as well to see if they would be interested in using it for Scripture memorization.

You can hear samples of the songs by clicking here and scrolling down to ABC Memory Verse Songs... I think it may say there that it is only available as a download, but the CD is now available.

Sonbeams is having a sale and from now until Monday November 30th you can buy these CDs with shipping for only $10. That doesn't leave much time, but if you are interested pop on over there and check out the ABC Bible Verse CD's even if you don't get to it by Monday because they are still reasonably priced at $13.95.

Thank you Ms. Candace for the opportunity to review this product. I look forward to enjoying the fruits it will provide... my sweet children's voices singing Bible verses!!

Click here to go to Sonbeams website!



Disclosure: I was given a copy of the music for this review and am using affiliate links in this post.

Sesame Street K'NEX Review and Contest

The Four Silly Sisters all really love the K'NEX Sesame Street building sets. The folks at Team Mom sent us the Police Station to review, and it is a big hit.

As a mom, I love that the K'NEX sets promote imaginative play. There are lots of options so they can build and rebuild and rebuild. I just love that a good building set utilizes many important skills and encourages thinking and problem solving while also providing hours of enjoyment!

The girls all like to take turns putting the things together in their own ways and then discussing their creations with each other.

These building toys are also very durable and good quality. We have a couple of sets that we purchased and were given for reviews last year around Christmas time, and after a year of hard play they are none the worse for wear.

We very much enjoy the K'NEX Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection building set that we received from Team Mom for this review, and we are likely to purchase more in the future.

You can find the K'NEX Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection building sets, of which there are 4, on their web site, as well as Target, Walmart, and Toys "R" Us stores.

Additionally, K'NEX is sponsoring a Video Contest in which you have the chance to win $1,000 worth of K'NEX Building Sets. See the official rules for details on how to enter located on their web site.