Book Review: The Deal by Elle Kennedy

April 26, 2015April 24, 20153 Comments

Genre:

New Adult, information pills Contemporary, Romance

Pages:

358

Part of a Series?:

The first in the Off-Campus series

Release Date:

February 24th, 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

Check your local bookstore!

GoodReads

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she’s carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush’s attention, she’ll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice… even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.

…and it’s going to be oh so good.

All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he’s worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he’s all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn’t take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn’t going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.

My Review:

In my continued quest to find really good sports related NA romances, I found The Deal by Elle Kennedy, and I’m so incredibly glad that I did.

I’m becoming more of a hockey fan as I read more and more romances that take place along the hockey life. Seriously. I might watch more hockey.

I liked The Deal a lot because while it had some similarities to Sarina Bowen and her series, it really stood on its own. While there was a definite seriousness to The Deal, there’s also a lightheartedness too. It was awesome just to see these two characters come together, under the weirdest circumstances. Hannah enlists the help of Garrett to win the heart of another boy and instead falls for him. He’s sexy and impossible and I know he drives me crazy, but I’m with Hannah…he leaves me panting and wanting more too.

I love Hannah the most though. She’s so…real and she makes me laugh. I love that she falls madly in love with a boy she barely knows and enlists the help of Garrett to figure out how to get him. It’s absolutely fantastic and sounds like a romantic comedy where the plan is obviously doomed to fail but you enjoy the journey to the explosion any way. You know that Garrett helping Hannah is just going to lead to them falling in love but I loved every single minute of it.

Simply put, I enjoyed this book. I loved Garrett and Hannah and I loved their antics and their ups and downs and I loved the integration of hockey and I loved Logan too, who had a small part but will be in the next book and my god I can’t wait for that! Elle has a way of making you care not just for her main characters, but for all the people she introduces and I love that.

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: The Ivy Years Series by Sarina Bowen

April 25, 2015April 24, 2015Leave a comment

Genre:

New Adult, viagra 100mg Contemporary, Romance

Pages:

A lot

Part of a Series?:

4 books + 1 Novella

The Year We Fell Down
The Year We Hid Away
Blonde Date
The Understatement of the Year
The Shameless Hour

Release Date:

N/A

You Can Find the Book At:

Check your local bookstore!

GoodReads

Barnes and Noble (You can get the full series PLUS novella for 6.99 on Nook!)

Book Depository

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Life at the elite Harkness College is brought to you in four tales, each one sexier and more heartbreaking than the last. Contains: hockey hotties, snarky T-shirts, a slow-burn love affair, a liar (with reasons,) a virgin (with reasons,) and one adorkable basketball player.

Book 1: The Year We Fell Down
The sport she loves is out of reach. The boy she loves has someone else.
Corey was supposed to start college as a member of the women’s ice hockey team. Instead, she’ll spend it in a wheelchair. The only upside? Her too-delicious-to-be-real neighbor across the hall.

Book 2: The Year We Hid Away
She’s hiding something big. He’s hiding someone small.

Dorm rooms are supposed to be for sleeping, studying, and partying. Not for hiding your eight-year-old sister.

Novella: Blonde Date
A blind date. A nervous sorority girl. A mean-spirited fraternity prank. What could go wrong?

Book 3: The Understatement of the Year
What happened in high school stayed in high school. Until now.

Michael Graham will never tell anyone the truth about himself. Too bad his past walks right into the locker room on the first day of hockey practice.

Book 4: The Shameless Hour
For Bella, the sweet-talking, free-loving, hip-checking student manager of the Harkness men’s hockey team, sex is a second language. She’s used to being fluent where others stutter, and the things people say behind her back don’t (often) bother her. So she can’t understand why her smoking hot downstairs neighbor has so much trouble staying friends after their spontaneous night together. She knows better than to worry about it, but there’s something in those espresso eyes that makes her second guess herself.

Rafe is appalled with himself for losing his virginity in a drunken hookup. His strict Catholic upbringing always emphasized loving thy neighbor—but not with a bottle of wine and a box of condoms. The result is an Ivy League bout of awkwardness. But when Bella is leveled by a little bad luck and a downright sinister fraternity stunt, it’s Rafe who is there to pick up the pieces.

Bella doesn’t want Rafe’s help, and she’s through with men. Too bad the undeniable spark that crackles between the two of them just can’t be extinguished.

My Review:

I hadn’t planned on reviewing the entire series as once but I fell massively behind in reviews and need so desperately to catch up. Know this: I love every single book in this series, including the novella and these short reviews will not do this entire series justice like I had hoped to do!

The Year We Fell Down: I’m so glad, especially after reading the entire series, that this is the first one. Corey and Hartley have a beautiful friendship that expands into so much more and I enjoyed every single minute of it. But it’s more than that. I enjoyed this book because of Corey’s struggle. She cannot play the sport she loves the most in the world because of an injury she got while playing. And she falls for a boy who can’t play either…but only until he’s healed. And he’s taken too! It’s a lot of heartbreak for her, and it’s painful to watch her go through it and I want to hug her and be her best friend and cheer her on. I loved the first book because it was her story.

The Year We Hid Away: There are so many reasons that I loved this second book and it boils down to Bridger. I love Scarlet and her part in the story and what she does for Bridger and for the romance in the story but it’s Bridger that makes me care from beginning to end. He’s given up so much and taken on so much more in order to keep his sister taken care of and safe. It makes me fall in love with him, easily, because I know what it’s like to sacrifice your own cares and worries and life for the love of a sibling. I root for the two of them to end up together because of him, because from the beginning I want him to succeed and be happy.

The Understatement of the Year: I can’t even begin to explain how much I love this book. I have not had the chance to read a male to male romance novel like this before. Or really ever. And I loved every single bit of it and I need more. Now. Not only does Sarina tell a wonderful romantic story between the two main characters, it really captures the struggle to be gay, both as an out gay person and someone who is hiding. Rikker and Graham struggle but they have a great friendship and eventual relationship, and it’s incredibly sweet and over the top sexy as hell.

The Shameless Hour: I just read this recently because it just came out! And I can honestly say…it’s my favorite. I think it comes down to the fact that I just genuinely love Bella and Rafe so much. I feel a connection to both of them. I love Bella and everything she is. I love that she embraces who she is, but also she struggles with it when it’s blasted all over campus. It’s hard to deal with being a girl, open about her sexuality, when people tend to judge girls about their sex lives. It’s easy to feel familiar when reading Bella’s POV. And I love Rafe because he’s so genuine. He could come across in so many ways but he’s beautiful and charming and kind and I love every little bit of him. Their story is incredibly sweet and I love watching them fall in love.

———–

All in all, I think Sarina creates an incredible series with beautiful romances wrapped around the love of hockey. I’m not a huge hockey fan but I can totally get behind sexy hockey players, both girls and guys, and fun and deep and awesome romantic stories. Everything about it makes me so happy. I wish there were more in this series but I know that these are books that I will definitely revisit them in the future!

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars

March Book Wrap Up!

April 1, 2015Leave a comment

Books Pledged to Read in 2015:

150

Am I On Track:

3 books behind

Books Read So Far:

Total Books For March:

11.5 (I read a comic book but I so counted it)

Forever Princess (Re-Read)

Mortal Danger

Princess Leia #1

The Alex Crow

Wait for You

Insurgent (Re-Read)

Awakening (ARC)

Pitching for Amalie

Not After Everything (ARC)

The Year We Fell Down

The Year We Hid Away

Blonde Date

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Note: I’m severely behind on reviews right now but I’m working on it!

Book Review: Inspire by Cora Carmack

January 28, 2015January 26, 20151 Comment

Genre:

New Adult, ampoule Romance, sick Fantasy

Pages:

284

Part of a Series?:

First Novel in a Trilogy (?)

Release Date:

December 15th, more about 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

Book Depository

GoodReads Summary:

Kalliope lives with one purpose.

To inspire.

As an immortal muse, she doesn’t have any other choice. It’s part of how she was made. Musicians, artists, actors—they use her to advance their art, and she uses them to survive. She moves from one artist to the next, never staying long enough to get attached. But all she wants is a different life— a normal one. She’s spent thousands of years living lie after lie, and now she’s ready for something real.

Sweet, sexy, and steady, Wilder Bell feels more real than anything else in her long existence. And most importantly… he’s not an artist. He doesn’t want her for her ability. But she can’t turn off the way she influences people, not even to save a man she might love. Because in small doses, she can help make something beautiful, but her ability has just as much capacity to destroy as it does to create. The longer she stays, the more obsessed Wilder will become. It’s happened before, and it never turns out well for the mortal.

Her presence may inspire genius.

But it breeds madness, too.

My Review:

Seriously. Cora. How can you do this to me? First, you made me fall in love with Carson. And then Silas. Then, let’s face it, I’ll probably fall madly in love with Torres. But in the meantime, I just fell madly in love with Kalli and Wilder.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it was going to be good because the Rusk University series has seriously made me fall madly in love with Cora as a writer. I read Inspire because it was on sale for 99 cents and I couldn’t really turn down a deal like that, especially when I was feeling a little slumpy (despite the hundred books sitting in a pile, waiting to be read), so I decided to buy it.

And I just love it. It was such a beautiful and addicting book. I didn’t think it was possible for Cora to make me love her more as a writer but it was. I immediately absolutely love Kalli. You’re in her head, and you feel her struggle. She’s a goddess, a muse, weighed down by this power that she has to use…but also is dangerous to use as well. You feel her struggle and you just want her to have a normal life. She immediately felt like someone I would want to be best friends with, and not just because she would help my writing flourish haha.

Then we enter Wilder. And they immediately have a connection, from their brief encounter at the grocery store, to their first encounter…in…the…shower, I was sold on them. Their romance was quick, thrilling, sexy, hot. There is a thread of fate between them and I knew that I wanted them together so badly. They had an incredibly chemistry, and there are some seriously steamy scenes between them that made me blush in all the best ways possible. You really want to root for them. You really want Kalli to have a normal life even though she really can never possibly be normal.

And that’s where things get complicated. The book is in split point of views, so that we get both sides of the story, Kalli and Wilder. And when we learn things about Wilder that Kalli doesn’t know (which I can’t say, because, you know, spoiler free), your hands are clutched tightly to the pages, frantically flipping, waiting for the moment when things are going to implode, because inevitably shit is going to hit the fan. And when it does, I was in near tears, hoping that things were going to work out. This book is an emotional roller coaster. It made me laugh and blush, and it made me pant and it made me tear up more than once.

What really gets me about this book though is that its so different from anything we’ve seen from Cora yet. She says that fantasy is actually her forte, what she had spent many years writing and that she went with the contemporary of Losing It, to try and get published. Now, having read Inspire, you can see how that was something she felt so comfortable writing for so long. It seems effortless, the world and characters that she has created and I bought into almost immediately. And its a story of Greek mythology that I definitely don’t think is out there. Kalliope and her sisters, the muses, you don’t see versions of that at all.

All in all, Cora completely scores with this fantasy romance, with her characters, her steamy scenes and the mythology she weaves into the novel. Its beautiful and she leaves me with such an epic cliffhanger that I was super disappointed when the book ended. Luckily, hopefully, I won’t have to wait too long to find out what happens next!

Rating:

4.5 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

January 28, 2015January 26, 2015Leave a comment

Genre:

New Adult/Young Adult Romance

Pages:

392

Part of a Series?:

The first in a series of companion novels

Release Date:

June 1st 2012

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with “freaky” scars on her arms. Even Echo can’t remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.

But when Noah Hutchins, medical the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo’s world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she’ll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

My Review:

Katie McGarry has been floating around in my peripheral vision of YA/NA literature for quite some time now. I think the first book I noticed by her was Crash Into You, which I believe is the third in the series. But I remember a lot of hype around it when it came out and I remember seeing it on the shelves of bookstores and all that and I remember thinking, well I’ll read it soon.

Now I’ve been in one of the worst slumps I’ve ever had. Ever. Guys, last year I read 208 books. With less than a month left in this year, I’m at 120 books. 120. I read two books total in the month of November. I have a stack of roughly 100 books that need to be read and I just can’t read right now. Its awful.

That being said, this book really helped to pull me out of a seriously rough slump. I immediately fell for both characters. They both felt real and it was easy to fall in love with them. I felt like it was easier to fall in love with them than it was for them to fall in love with each other. That was seriously cheesy. But very very true. They had instant chemistry and I believed in them right off the bat. Their romance had ups and downs, and it was difficult and there were secrets and it wasn’t perfect, but that’s what made it good. Romance isn’t perfect, relationships definitely are NOT perfect. And their romance is great.

What I really loved about this book is that the characters are great in themselves, separate from each other. Echo and Noah both have incredible stories, they’re both trying to figure out their lives and move on and come to terms with the things that have happened to them. And I’ve read books where it can seem cheesy or overdone or too dramatic but it didn’t feel like that at all. Everything that the two of them go through, especially Echo, really feels real. Even though I’ve never gone through these sorts of things, I felt connections with them. I felt their journey, their emotions.

Bottom line, great book. I’m excited to continue onto the rest of the series because truly, a great romance, a great character story and Katie is a fantastic writer.

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Cover Reveal: “All Played Out” by Cora Carmack

January 21, 2015January 21, 2015Leave a comment

I am SO excited to bring you today’s cover reveal. Cora Carmack’s third novel in the Rusk University series, information pills All Played Out, online will be hitting bookstores in May (ugh, viagra the agony of waiting!) and I’m so excited for it. I love the first two books, and they’ve been massively inspirational for me. OH! I just can’t wait. In the meantime, I have to be satisfied with salivating over this brand new cover, and now I get to share it with you!

Let’s do this!

About Cora Carmack

Cora Carmack is a twenty-something writer who likes to write about twenty-something characters. She’s done a multitude of things in her life– boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre), stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). She enjoys placing her characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too. Her first book, LOSING IT, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.

You Can Find Her At:

Website / Facebook / Twitter / GoodReads

About the Rusk University Series

All Lined Up

In Texas, two things are cherished above all else—football and gossip. My life has always been ruled by both.

Dallas Cole loathes football. That’s what happens when you spend your whole childhood coming in second to a sport. College is her time to step out of the bleachers, and put the playing field (and the players) in her past.

But life doesn’t always go as planned. As if going to the same college as her football star ex wasn’t bad enough, her father, a Texas high school coaching phenom, has decided to make the jump to college ball… as the new head coach at Rusk University. Dallas finds herself in the shadows of her father and football all over again.

Carson McClain is determined to go from second-string quarterback to the starting line-up. He needs the scholarship and the future that football provides. But when a beautiful redhead literally falls into his life, his focus is more than tested. It’s obliterated.

Dallas doesn’t know Carson is on the team. Carson doesn’t know that Dallas is his new coach’s daughter.

And neither of them know how to walk away from the attraction they feel.

Amazon / Barnes and Noble / iTunes

All Broke Down

Dylan fights for lost causes. Probably because she used to be one.

Environmental issues, civil rights, corrupt corporations, and politicians you name it, she’s probably been involved in a protest. When her latest cause lands her in jail overnight, she meets Silas Moore. He’s in for a different kind of fighting. And though he’s arrogant and infuriating, she can’t help being fascinated with him. Yet another lost cause.

Football and trouble are the only things that have ever come naturally to Silas. And it’s trouble that lands him in a cell next to do-gooder Dylan. He’s met girls like her before fixers, he calls them, desperate to heal the damage and make him into their ideal boyfriend. But he doesn’t think he’s broken, and he definitely doesn’t need a girlfriend trying to change him. Until, that is, his anger issues and rash decisions threaten the only thing he really cares about: his spot on the Rusk University football team. Dylan might just be the perfect girl to help.

Because Silas Moore needs some fixing after all.

Amazon / Barnes and Noble / iTunes

And now the Cover Reveal!

First person in her family to go to college? CHECK.
Straight A’s? CHECK.
On track to graduate early? CHECK.
Social life? …..yeah, about that….

With just a few weeks until she graduates, Antonella DeLuca’s beginning to worry that maybe she hasn’t had the full college experience. (Okay… Scratch that. She knows she hasn’t had the full college experience).

So Nell does what a smart, dedicated girl like herself does best. She makes a “to do” list of normal college activities.

Item #1? Hook up with a jock.

Rusk University wide receiver Mateo Torres practically wrote the playbook for normal college living. When he’s not on the field, he excels at partying, girls, and more partying. As long as he keeps things light and easy, it’s impossible to get hurt… again. But something about the quiet, shy, sexy-as-hell Nell gets under his skin, and when he learns about her list, he makes it his mission to help her complete it.

Torres is the definition of confident (And sexy. And wild), and he opens up a side of Nell that she’s never known. But as they begin to check off each crazy, exciting, normal item, Nell finds that her frivolous list leads to something more serious than she bargained for. And while Torres is used to taking risks on the field, he has to decide if he’s willing to take the chance when it’s more than just a game.

Together they will have to decide if what they have is just part of the experiment or a chance at something real.

Pre-Order All Played Out at your local bookstore or the following links!

Amazon / Barnes and Noble / iTunes

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