Splash Into Summer Blog Hop (5/25 - 31)

I love these blog hops. It's a great way to spread the word about a blog. I usually try to have a book for each day of the event. This time I have managed to almost have enough.

I tried to pick books that are beached themed or have Summmer in the title. I also picked a Military one in honor of Memorial Day. All these books are gently used bought at my local second hand book store run by the "friends" of the local library.

It's appreciated that you be follower to win one of the books.

All review verbage was taken from GoodReads.

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen
Philandering doesn't pay, but in Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip, it does provide a hilarious homicidal romp. In Hiassen's Florida wilderness realm, no bad deed is left uncompounded: After wayward husband Chaz Perrone attempts to exterminate his attractive heiress wife, Joey, he becomes a hit target himself. Fast-paced and funny.

The Summer of the Swans by Betsey Byars (Newberry Award)
Sararsquo's life has always flowed smoothly, like the gliding swans on the lake, until her little brother Charlie disappears. Then Sara is forced to see her life in a whole new way.

California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker
The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more -- unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has brought about the end of the orange groves and the birth of suburban sprawl. It is the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And the decapitated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse.

A hideous crime has touched the Beckers in ways that none of them could have anticipated, setting three brothers on a dangerous collision course that will change their family -- and their world -- forever.

And no one will emerge from the wreckage unscathed.

The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunning
"Maybe that's one of the reasons people get dogs, to kind of close up the empty places inside them."

Eleven-year-old William never needed a friend more than now. After his parents' separation, his father's new engagement, and his grandfather's dying without any warning — adopting big, beautiful Riley is
the first thing in a long time that has made him feel better. That is, until Riley innocently chases a horse.

Local law states that any animal that chases livestock must be put to sleep. Suddenly William stands to lose another thing close to him. Together with his "totally unsurpassed" friend Grace, William begins a campaign to reverse the county commissioners' decision. But with a community divided on the issue, and the bully Ellis Porter trying to stop them at every turn, will they be able to save Riley's life?

The Corps - Book 1 Semper Fi by W.E.B. Griffin
First in the author's five-volume series The Corps, SEMPER FI sets the stage for WW II. It is the '30s, and we meet the old corps, as it existed between WW I and WW II -- on station in Shanghai, at Quantico, in Washington, all nicely contrasted with civilian life stateside.
But the calendar is moving relentlessly toward a fatal day in 1941. When it comes, we understand why nothing could ever be the same again -- and what it's going to take to win the awful conflict into which we have been bloodily and unpreparedly thrust.

Beach Girls by Luanne Rice
Beach Girls explores the complex and contradictory territories of love, family and friendship. Luanne Rice's sensuous prose and unforgettably rich and textured characters guide us toward a truth that lies within and sometimes beyond our dreams—an enduring strength that we all must embrace to find our way home and into the hearts of those we cherish most. Beach Girls is an enthralling novel of haunting beauty that will resonate long after the final page is turned.