#Book #Review "Keep Me Posted" by Lisa Beazley plus #GIVEAWAY! To 4-18!

Description:

Two sisters share the surprising highs and cringe-worthy lows of social media fame, when their most private thoughts become incredibly public in this fresh and funny debut novel.

Sisters Cassie and Sid Sunday have not done a bang-up job of keeping in touch. In their defense, it hasn’t been easy: life veered in sharply different directions for the once-close sisters. Today, beautiful and big-hearted Sid lives an expat’s life of leisure in far-off Singapore, while harried, iPhone-clutching Cassie can’t seem to make it work as a wife and a mom to twin toddlers in Manhattan.

It doesn't help that Sid spurns all social media while Cassie is addicted to Facebook. So when Sid issues a challenge to reconnect the old-fashioned way—through real, handwritten letters—Cassie figures, why not?

The experiment exceeds both of their expectations, and the letters become a kind of mutual confessional that have real and soul-satisfying effects. And they just might have the power to help Cassie save her marriage, and give Sid the strength to get her life back on track.

But first, one of Cassie’s infamous lapses in judgment comes back to bite her, and all of the letters wind up the one place you’d never, ever want to see them: the Internet...

MY TAKE:

4 STARS

I don’t have a sister, but I do understand the close sister bond because I had that with my BFF well into adulthood. We were inseparable, and the problem in this book seems that Cassie has other things on her mind when she is with her sister that her sister. It breaks my heart so much because I wish I could feel these two sisters’ bond better than what I did while reading this. I feel that part is missing from this book. They seem more like good, close friends instead of the inseparably close sisters they are supposed to be. Both of these sisters, Cassie and Sid, write letters by hand back and forth to each other with Cassie from the US and her sister Sid in Singapore with their families, they are all ready to preserve their memories they write to each other on such beautiful papers that are available, which is done intentionally as they both believe this type of communication is going to be such a treat later in life for these sisters to reread these letters and relive the memories made even more beautiful and special from the paper, or even for the people who end up reading these letters after these sisters are gone. These letters will be priceless. It was Cassie's idea to do this, and I thought it was a great idea, too! These sisters will be preserving their already beautiful memories to each other the old-fashioned way. How beautiful for future generations to enjoy these, too! We do end up learning a lot about the sisters this way, too, and Cassie feels this dying art would be a great way to keep it going and alive, especially for the younger generation in the family. I wish the sisters would have talked more about the papers and the other things that went with them letters as I found it fascinating. We got to go into one paper store with Cassie and hear how she decided on which papers to buy and that was fun! I would have liked more of that! The problem is Cassie writes SO fast, or at least I thought so! Sid can't even reply to Cassie's previous letter when Cassie would have a NEW letter in Sid’s hands already! We don't find out if this drove Sid crazy, but it sure would have bothered me getting letter after letter after letter like that so quickly, and my not being able to keep up with her! I need to feel what I am reading, and sadly, I did not get the feeling that these sisters were as close as what we were led to believe. I just did not feel their spark that sisters usually have the way I feel I should have. Cassie is the sister who thought it would be really neat to write the letters by hand and mail them back and forth to each other instead of using email or any part of the computer, (or even the birds, pigeons! lol!) She thought it would be neat to go back and write like people had been writing for forever. Letter writing by hand is almost a lost art, and we have to keep it alive! (Kind of how elementary schools no longer teach kids to print! Using your hands to write with for ANYTHING is long gone!) That is so wrong, in my opinion!) That was a very strong point in this book, and the author talked about it a lot. I do hope that helps because it is neat to read hand written letters years later! Some letters in my family filled in a lot of missing history. HOW can people jot off a quick note without knowing HOW to print? Sorry, but the elementary schools NOT teaching our children how to print is very, very wrong.
I felt the first part of the book was a little long and a little boring in places. The book really talks about everyday things and how they happen, but it had an underlying tone with some of the things that were talked about that both sisters had some good money, but what they spent was outrageous! I don’t know how Cassie’s family lived on one salary with the way she shopped, dropping $3,000 on ONE large set of clothing! OW! She wanted her twin boys in the best schools at the youngest age, you know that type of race there can be between families with their kids. Ugh! I didn’t want to read about that, and we get a lot of that in the first part. As for Sid, we don’t hear things like that too much from her, thankfully, because we know how that kind of competition goes! Thankfully the author did not bring this between the sisters at this time. This book is entertaining and humorous in places, and it was needed to set up part of the storyline up for later in the book, before . . . everyone finds out everything! This is how it happens! Later, Cassie has an amazing idea to preserve their letters by scanning the letters and saving them into a computer program. The problem that happens is somehow these letters go LIVE ON THE INTERNET!!! Their neighbors, their parents, and their SPOUSES could read everything these two sisters wrote about whatever, whoever, and more! The world could read EVERYTHING they wrote down in those letters, even private thoughts about who they thought was handsome and more things like that that as a married woman we do NOT want our husbands to know that we have even thought about that! We have somewhat broke a trust issue with that. It goes on and on and on! Now the book REALLY PICKS UP SPEED! From this point on I have NOTHING to complain about! I wish the entire book was like this! If you like or love women's fiction, there is so much MORE to this book, you are going to really enjoy it! It’s worth the read! I received this book for FREE from the Publisher, Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley, in exchange to read and write a review about it. "Free" means I was provided with ZERO MONIES to do so, but just to enjoy the pure pleasure of reading it and giving my own honest opinion no matter whether it is positive or negative. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the law set here: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html The Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255, 16 CFR 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising Federal Acquisition Regulation.

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