As a new mom, I was absolutely meticulous about filling out my son’s baby book.  For months, I added (yes, added!) pages to the book because I simply had to write down every milestone and every cute thing he said or did once he began to walk and talk.  However, the faster he grew up, the less time I found to sit down and make note of all of the cute things.  I’m sorry to say I am now a slacker and have found myself more often sharing his cute antics on my blog and on Facebook.

Bnter.com (pronounced “banter”), a social network designed for capturing conversations, proves a modern way to save those precious moments and share them with family members, friends, and followers. Web- and app-based, Bnter.com can be accessed from your laptop, ipad, or smart phone. Simple to use, free and fun, Bnter.com offers an organized means of sharing those funny moments in a more visually appealing way than simply sharing them in your Facebook or Twitter stream.

Signing up with Bnter was easy and quick and offered me a way to share what I wanted to say with visual appeal and save what I said.  Parents will love it because it’s a great way to have all of those recorded cute memories in one place with quick and easy access to look over later.  I also found several of my Twitter friends there and can now follow along in their conversations, too.  You can also connect with your Facebook friends at Bnter.

The next time you feel guilty about not keeping up the baby book for your child, check out Bnter and see how easy it is to save and share those precious memories.  You’ll be glad you did!

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of the Bnter Campaign and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

A few years ago while cleaning out boxes and boxes of books in my storage shed, I came across my massive collection of Sweet Valley High books from when I was a teen. I devoured these books as soon as they were released and had quite a sizeable collection! When I learned that a new book, Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later
by Francine Pascal, was released this year and that it would chronicle the lives of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield as adults, I couldn’t wait to see how the twins had turned out after we had all “grown up”.

The book arrived on a Friday afternoon, and I read it before the night was over. I simply couldn’t wait to see what happened in the end. However, the storyline and characters were so way off base from any other Sweet Valley book I had read in the past that the whole entire book was simply unbelievable. Really.

The whole book revolves around a huge betrayal and fight between the twins, but it takes a long time into the book to reveal exactly how this turmoil came about. Needless to say, it involves a man, but the man involved and which twin he chooses just doesn’t add up if you were a Sweet Valley reader. The fight between the twins literally drags on through the entire book, with both Jessica and Elizabeth saying and doing things completely out of character. Apparently, Jessica speaks “Valley Girl-ease” now, peppering every sentence with “like”, and Elizabeth curses like a sailor when she’s really mad. Even their mother, Alice Wakefield, drops the “F-bomb” in this book. That part was definitely a turn-off for me.

You will also encounter some of your old favorite characters from the SVH series in this book, and it was interesting to find out what became of them and where they were in life and who ended up with who. Again, some of the stories were very far-fetched and left me shaking my head more than once. One character you will definitely remember from these books comes out as being gay.

In the end, everything works out (doesn’t it always in Sweet Valley?), but the end result left me wondering what in the world had just happened and if I were, indeed, reading about the same characters I grew up with. Nothing added up, nothing was the same, and in the end I was a bit disappointed in the direction the entire book took. I’m not sorry I read it at all, but I was underwhelmed.

I was provided a copy of this book for review purposes. All opinions are, of course, my own.