Wednesday 14 May 2014

(ARC) Book Review (331): Royally Lost - Angie Stanton


Royally Lost






Royally Lost is a delightfully fun, lighthearted, and quick contemporary romance read that will keep you entertained the whole way through.

Following both Becca who is vacationing in Europe with her family and Prince Nikolai of Mondovia (a fictional European country) who both want to escape their families and their parents expectations, fate seems to keep bringing these two together, and so they take the hint and start to meet up everyday and they soon start falling for each other.

Nikolai is not happy with where his life is going, with numerous dinners and events to attend he just wants to do his own thing, to not have his every decision made for him, the last straw comes when his parents inform him that he will be attending military school against his wishes,so he does what any other teenager does when their parents won't listen, he runs away, and it's while on his adventure that he meets Becca.

Becca has a similar problem, after her Mothers death her Dad seems to stop paying attention to her and her brother Dylan, so when he remarries she and Dylan don't take to kindly to their new Stepmother Vicky, so when Vicky arranges this trip for some family time, they're not entirely on board with the idea, adding to Becca's unhappiness is the fact that her Dad won't let her go to the college that she wants, the one her Mom went to, instead ends up being enrolled in a college of her Dad's choosing.

So when these two meet the sparks fly, and they are able to be each other's distraction for a while although Nikolai has not told Becca who he is, and so they act like any other normal couple, taking in the sites and making the most of their short time together with the help of Dylan, but when Becca does find out that he's a Prince she realises that their time will soon be over, he has duties befitting a Prince which doesn't include a relationship with some American girl especially when he has girls all over him and can be with whomever he wants, all the while evading the ever annoying paparazzi and his Fathers security who are out looking for him.

What are they to do when they realise they mean more to each other than a holiday romance, when they have to part ways and say goodbye for good, knowing that they being on account of who Nikolai is, by all rights should never see each other again, especially living on opposite sides of the world.

This was such a fantastic contemporary, I've never read anything else by Angie before, but I hope to remedy that sooner rather than later, her characters are extremely likeable and her world building and storytelling top notch.

Highly recommended for all contemporary romance fans out there.

I give this 4/5 stars.


Angie Stanton never planned on writing books—she wanted to be a Rockette. However, growing up in rural America with her brothers’ 4-H pigs as pets, she found that dance didn’t quite work out. Instead, she became an avid daydreamer. After years of perfecting stories in her head, she began to write them down, and the rest is history. When not writing, she loves watching natural disaster movies, going to Broadway musicals, and dipping French fries in chocolate shakes.
Best selling books by Angie include Rock and a Hard Place, Snapshot, Dream Chaser,Snowed Over and Love ‘em or Leave ‘em. All are contemporary romances.
Angie’s next release is titled Royally Lost and releases on May 6, 2014. Stay tuned for more info.
Agency Representation: Jane Dystel of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, New York.
For regular updates and some silly nonsense, please like Angie on Facebook:
Twitter: Angie_Stanton


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Friday 9 May 2014

Feature & Follow Friday.


The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee’s View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it’ll allow us to show off more new blogs!

What living author or authors would you like to have dinner with? (Try to think beyond JK Rowling)

So while my first answer would and always will be Stephenie Meyer, for something different I would go with J.R Ward (aka: The Warden), I love the Black Dagger Brotherhood (BDB) series and I think she'd have a lot of stories to tell, plus I could try to find out some tidbits from the next book!


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Tuesday 6 May 2014

Book Release Blitz, Excerpt & Book Review (330): Rush Too Far (Rosemary Beach #1.1) - Abbi Glines



Rush Too Far (Rosemary Beach #1.1)

Rush Too Far would easily have had to be one of my most anticipated releases of this year.

After completely falling in love with the Rosemary Beach series last year I was eager to get my hands on a copy, although Rush Too Far is a retelling of the first book Fallen Too Far but told from Rush's point of view, and though it's the same story I find that with Abbi's writing, this book feels like a completely new version of the story, one I've never read before, being inside Rush's head and reading about what he was thinking and feeling as well as having us, the reader understand precisely why he did the things that he did, has made me an even bigger fan of his character than before.

From the first interaction between Rush and Blaire, to the infamous peanut butter scene (which for some reason got me all emotional) and the instant when Rush who had tried so hard to keep his distance so h wouldn't develop any feelings for her, realises that not only has he fallen in love with Blaire but she's it "the one".

But there's still the issue of the secret that everyone seems to know about, everyone except Blaire who remains oblivious, you see Rush did something years ago that effectively changed her life forever, and once she finds out what it is they'll be over, so Rush delays telling her trying to prolong their time together for as long as possible, but the truth will always find it's way of getting out, can he be forgiven or will their relationship be over before it's even begun?

I wish that Abbi would re-write the next two Blaire and Rush books in Rush's point of view, I would really love to know what he was thinking when Blaire drops her bombshell, I'd do anything to be able to read that.

Filled with all the characters we loved and hated from the first book (Nan I'm talking about you), this will do nothing but keep you entertained the whole way through, and leave you desperate and eager for more Rush.

There's nothing that Abbi releases that I don't buy and like, and this was no exception!

Highly recommended.

I give this 5/5 stars.

Read on for an early look at the highly-anticipated follow-up to Fallen Too Far, Never Too Far, and Forever Too Far, the three new adult novels that launched the #1 New York Times bestselling Rosemary Beach series by Abbi Glines
They say that children have the purest hearts. That children don’t truly hate because they don’t fully understand the emotion. They forgive and forget easily.

They say a lot of bullshit like that because it helps them sleep at night. Such sayings make for good, heart-warming clichés to hang on the walls, to bring out a smile in people passing by.

I know differently. Children love like no other. They have the capacity to love more fiercely than anyone else. That much is true. That much I know. Because I lived it. By the age of ten I knew hate and I knew love. Both all-consuming. Both life-altering. And both completely blinding.


Looking back now I wish someone had been there to see how my mother had sown the seed of hate inside of me. Inside of my sister. If someone had been there to save us from the lies and bitterness she allowed to fester within us, then maybe things would have been different. For everyone involved.

I never would have acted so foolishly. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a girl was left alone to take care of her ailing mother. It wouldn’t have been my fault that the same girl stood at her mother’s graveside, believing that the last person on earth who loved her was dead. It wouldn’t have been my fault that a man destroyed himself after his life became a broken, hollow shell.

But no one saved me.

No one saved us.

We believed the lies. We held onto our hate, and I alone destroyed an innocent girl’s life.

They say you reap what you sow. That’s bullshit, too. Because I should be burning in hell for my sins. I shouldn’t be allowed to wake up every morning with this beautiful woman in my arms, who loves me unconditionally. I shouldn’t get to hold my son and know such a pure joy.

But I do.
Because, eventually, someone did save me. I didn’t deserve it. Hell, more than anyone it was my sister who needed saving. She hadn’t acted on her hate. She hadn’t manipulated the lives of our family members, not caring about the outcome. But her bitterness still controlled her while I had been delivered. By a girl…

No, she wasn’t just a girl. She was an angel. My angel. A beautiful, strong, fierce, loyal angel who had entered my life in a pick-up truck, carrying a gun.


Abbi Glines is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Rosemary Beach, Sea Breeze, Vincent Boys, and Existence series. A devoted booklover, Abbi lives with her family in Alabama. She maintains a Twitter addiction at @AbbiGlines and can also be found at facebook.com/AbbiGlinesAuthor and AbbiGlines.com.

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Book Review (329): Breakable (Contours Of The Heart #2) - Tammara Webber


Breakable (Contours of the Heart #2)

Publication: 6th May 2014
Publisher: Penguin Berkley
Pages: 368
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age Appropriate: New Adult
He was lost and alone. Then he found her.
And the future seemed more fragile than ever.

As a child, Landon Lucas Maxfield believed his life was perfect and looked forward to a future filled with promise — until tragedy tore his family apart and made him doubt everything he ever believed.

All he wanted was to leave the past behind. When he met Jacqueline Wallace, his desire to be everything she needed came so easy…

As easy as it could be for a man who learned that the soul is breakable and that everything you hoped for could be ripped away in a heartbeat.
My Thoughts.
Breakable is the retelling of Tammara Webber's fantastic book Easy, but this time we get Lucas/Landon's side of the story.

Being a huge fan of Easy, to say that I was beyond excited when I discovered that this book was being written is not a lie (a happy dance may have been involved).
And I have to say that I adored Breakable probably more so than Easy, and that's because of Lucas, his story was always so much more intriguing to me than Jacqueline's was, so to open the book and not only find that we get Easy from his point of view but we also get at the start of every chapter his past, after the heartbreaking events that took his Mom away from him and in a sense his childhood innocence which also left him with a world of guilt, we get a look into his life after the event that changed his and his Dad's lives forever and up to where we first meet him in Easy.

Punishing himself with alcohol and drugs, we see Lucas lose his sense of self, failing at school he just doesn't care, it doesn't help that after his Mom's death that his Dad closed himself off, and barely speaks to him, which makes Lucas believe even more that his Dad blames him for what happened to his Mom when he was thirteen.

After a downward spiral that lands him in jail, Charles a friend of his parents helps him to get back on his feet and to make something of himself, and it's through hard work and perseverance that he accomplishes just that, which ultimately brings him to the class where he notices Jacqueline for the first time, while she remains ignorant of his existence until the night she is almost raped, saved by Lucas she tentatively starts to let Lucas in, but will his past hold him back from moving forward with his life and find happiness with the first and only girl he's ever loved?

I love this trend that seems to be happening with the New Adult genre with the books being rewritten in the males point of view, I also seem to find them more enjoyable than the original story, one nitpicky thing I just wish that the epilogue was set much farther in the future than just six months, I wanted to know where Lucas and Jacqueline were in say ten years time and what they were up to, but that's just one little thing that doesn't affect the story in any way.

For those of you who were big fans of the first book, you definitely need to pick this book up, Tammara has written a story that far surpasses the first and will leave you clamoring for her next release.

Highly recommended.

I give this 5/5 stars.


 I write New Adult Romance. Easy is my New York Times bestselling NA contemporary novel, the first in the CONTOURS OF THE HEART series. Coming soon: Breakable - Lucas's story! BETWEEN THE LINES is my contemporary Hollywood YA/NA series. All books are available from select booksellers and online from: Amazon, Amazon UK, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, and the Book Depository.

I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life. Before writing full-time, I was an undergraduate academic advisor, economics tutor, planetarium office manager, radiology call center rep, and the palest person to ever work at a tanning salon. I married my high school sweetheart, and I'm Mom to three adult kids and four very immature cats.

Website+Facebook+Twitter+Instagram+Goodreads


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Sunday 4 May 2014

(ARC) Book Review (328): Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) - Charlaine Harris


Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1)

Publication: 8th May 2014
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 320
Genre: Paranormal
Age Appropriate: Adult
FIRST IN A NEW TRILOGY

From Charlaine Harris, the bestselling author who created Sookie Stackhouse and her world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, comes a darker locale—populated by more strangers than friends. But then, that’s how the locals prefer it…

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...
My Thoughts.
I admit that this is the first ever Charlaine Harris book that I've ever read, although I do own a considerable amount of books in her Sookie Stackhouse series, lack of time hasn't given me a chance to pick them up so far, so when I was given the chance to review this book I jumped at it the synopsis, having me intrigued from the get go.

Written in multiple point of views, three to be exact, we follow Manfred who has just moved to town, being an online psychic he craves the quiet and unobtrusiveness of living in Midnight, whilst being a close knit town this is a place where nobody inquires about your past or your personal life, which suits the residents to a tea, and allows them to keep their secrets close to their chests.

Next up we have Bobo, the owner of the town's pawnshop Midnight Pawn and landlord of Manfred, Olivia (whom no one seems to know what she does, although she does travel a considerable bit) and Lemuel who only comes out at night.
Bobo like pretty much all of the residents is hiding a secret, could it have something to do with the disappearance of his girlfriend Aubrey, or something from his past that he doesn't want any of his friends knowing.

The final point of view comes from resident witch Fiji, who runs a new-age type store and holds classes once a week, practicing her trade in her spare time, that's when she's not busy crushing on Bobo.

Rounding up the rest of the residents we have, Rev the local Reverend who keeps to himself as doesn't have much of anything to say, Joe and Chuy a couple who run the combined antique and nail salon, Madonna who runs the diner and her husband Teddy who is the town's handyman and finally the Lovells, Dad Shawn and his kids Creek and Connor, who run the Gas'N'Go, the kids aren't allowed out of Shawn's sight, and has the residents questioning if they a part of witness protection.

The story revolves around the discovery of Aubrey's badly decomposed body found while most residents were having a picnic, and discovering who the murderer is, of course top of the suspect list is Bobo, but with an alibi and the fact that she disappeared whilst he was away, the murderer is anybody's guess, and let me just say I could never have picked it in a million years, it was a shocking and an unexpected surprise.

I found that the first three quarters of this book were quite boring, nothing happened and I was finding it hard to stay interested in the story, however the last quarter we had some action and the inevitable reveal of Aubrey's murderer, I'm intrigued enough to continue on with the series and I just hope that it's a lot more action packed than this first book seemed to be.

I give this 3/5 stars.


Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing for over thirty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She switched to novels a few years later, and achieved publication in 1981 with Sweet and Deadly.

After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris launched the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, a Best Novel 1990 nomination for the Agatha Awards. Harris wrote eight books in her series about a Georgia librarian. In 1996, she released the first in the much darker Shakespeare mysteries, featuring the amateur sleuth Lily Bard, a karate student who makes her living cleaning houses. Shakespeare’s Counselor, the fifth—and final—Lily Bard novel, was printed in fall 2001.

By then, Harris was feeling the call of new territory. Starting with the premise of a young woman with a disability who wants to try inter-species dating, she created The Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasy series before there was a genre called “urban fantasy.” Telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse works in a bar in the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001. Each subsequent book follows Sookie through adventures involving vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. The series, which ended in 2013, has been released in over thirty languages.

Sookie Stackhouse has proven to be so popular that Alan Ball, creator of the HBO television series Six Feet Under, announced he would undertake the production of a new HBO series based upon the  books  He wrote and directed the pilot episode for that series, True Blood, which premiered in September of 2008.

In October 2005, the first of Harris’s new mystery series about a young woman named Harper Connelly debuted with the release of Grave Sight. Harper has the ability to determine the cause of death of any body. After four novels, this series is on hiatus.

Now Harris is working on a trilogy of graphic novels with Christopher Golden and artist Don Kramer, “Cemetery Girl.” On her own she is writing a new series set in the small town of Midnight, Texas.

Harris has also co-edited a series of very popular anthologies with her friend Toni L.P. Kelner, aka Leigh Perry. The anthologies feature stories with an element of the supernatural, and the submissions come from a rare mixture of mystery and urban fantasy writers.

Professionally, Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the American Crime Writers League, Sisters in Crime, and the International Crime Writers Association. She is a past member of the boards of Sisters in Crime and MWA, and she has served as president of the MWA. She is also a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America, just to make sure she’s covered.

Personally, Harris has been married for many years. She mother of three wonderful children and the grandmother of two. She lives in central Texas, and when she is not writing her own books, she reads omnivorously. Her house is full of rescue dogs.



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Cover Reveal: Ugly Love - Colleen Hoover


Ugly Love

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

Never ask about the past.
Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

Hearts get infiltrated.
Promises get broken.
Rules get shattered.
Love gets ugly.
UGLY LOVE hits bookshelves August 5th. Pre order your copy today!
Amazon Kindle
Apple iBookstore
Barnes & Noble
Blio
Books-a-Million
Google ebookstore
IndieBound

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Slammed, Point of Retreat, This Girl, Hopeless, Losing Hope, Maybe Someday, and Finding Cinderella. She lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys. Please visit ColleenHoover.com.

Connect with Colleen on Social Media
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ColleenHoover
Twitter: @ColleenHoover
Instagram: @ColleenHoover

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Wednesday 30 April 2014

Book Review (327): The Bridesmaids:True Tales Of Love, Envy, Loyalty...And Terrible Dresses - Eimear Lynch


The Bridesmaids: True Tales of Love, Envy, Loyalty . . . and Terrible Dresses

Age Appropriate: 15+
The Bridesmaids was one of those books that hooked me from the synopsis, chances are that at least once in your life you will be asked to be somebody's bridesmaid/maid of honor, if not you then at least somebody that you know, if you are really lucky you won't end up bridesmaid to a bridezilla.

Being asked to be part of a bridal party, to be a part of the happy couple's special day is a privilege, and let's face it you feel special because out of the many number of friends and family, you were one of the chosen few.

I loved reading all the stories in here about people's different experience's, from the good, the bad and the ugly, every tale was interesting and relatable.
Some people found themselves at the beck and call of the bride, some got fired and the age old problem with being a bridesmaid, the dress, you know the one that you would never ever wear again and which you also seem to spend an obscene amount of money on just to wear it that once.

And while most of these stories are anonymously written with only an initial and age of the person, I would have loved some pictures of the hideous dresses, but I can understand why there weren't any, it's a pity though.

Intentional or not I loved that the cover to this book felt like the paper some people use for wedding invitations, it was a nice touch to go along with the pretty design on the front cover.

All in all I really enjoyed this book, with most stories only being a few pages long, it's a quick read, highly recommended, even for those who don't generally read non-fiction, give it a go.

I give this 4/5 stars.


Eimear Lynch is a writer and editor who has worked at Condé Nast Traveler, Town & Country, and Bloomberg Businessweek. A five-time bridesmaid, she lives in Brooklyn.



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