Book Review: The Collector by Victoria Scott

December 4, 2014December 2, 2014Leave a comment

Genre:

New Adult, buy information pills Fantasy, Contemporary, Romance

Pages:

352

Part of a Series?:

The first in the Dante Walker trilogy

Release Date:

April 2nd, 2013

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

Dante Walker is flippin’ awesome, and he knows it. His good looks, killer charm, and stellar confidence have made him one of hell’s best—a soul collector. His job is simple: weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp. Old Saint Nick gets the good guys, and he gets the fun ones. Bag-and-tag.
Sealing souls is nothing personal. Dante’s an equal-opportunity collector and doesn’t want it any other way. But he’ll have to adjust, because Boss Man has given him a new assignment:

Collect Charlie Cooper’s soul within ten days.

Dante doesn’t know why Boss Man wants Charlie, nor does he care. This assignment means only one thing to him, and that’s a permanent ticket out of hell. But after Dante meets the quirky Nerd Alert chick he’s come to collect, he realizes this assignment will test his abilities as a collector…and uncover emotions deeply buried.

My Review:

I’ve been wanting to read this book for quite some time now. I absolutely ADORE Victoria’s Fire and Flood. I just recently finished the sequel to that, Salt and Stone, and I just love her. She’s super sweet and her books are great and I’ve been wanting to read The Collector for awhile now. So when it went on sale for Nook for only 99 cents, I was SO there.

I nearly finished it in one night except I had to go to work fairly early the next day so that was a total failure but I immediately finished the next moment that I was able to. I LOVE this book. I love that its told in the point of view of Dante because you alternately want to punch him in the face and throw him down on the bed and make out with him? I mean, a bright red Escalade? Who does that?! But then he’ll do something incredibly sweet for Charlie, like carry her out of the woods and it KILLS my heart. He’s addicting as a character, and he has a natural character progression. Nothing about his transformation through out the novel seems forced or wrong. You watch as Dante changes and its beautiful. Its my favorite part of the book.

But I also just love Charlie as well. She’s SUCH a great person, which would kind of drive me crazy but it doesn’t because everything she does seems so genuine and real. As soon as you meet her for the first time in her room, dorky and fantastic, I knew I was already madly in love with her. She’s not your typical heroine. Most heroines are always beautiful, even if they don’t know they’re beautiful. They think they’re ugly or average but of course, they’re extraordinary. But that’s not Charlie. She’s straight up not classically beautiful at all. She has frizzy hair, a limp, crooked teeth, freckles, the whole nine yards. And I know it can sound kind of stereotypical and all that but Charlie really wins everyone over with her beautiful personality. She’s so beautiful on the inside that she brings in her best friend and, eventually, Dante, because she’s such an incredibly beautiful person. Obviously that’s a huge part to the general plot of the story but I loved that about this book. Its good to see a character that is so genuinely good on the inside that Dante slowly falls for her, not immediately. I really really enjoyed the freshness of that.

What really got me about this story was that its something I haven’t really read before. Dante is a collector the devil, basically. Its his job to go around, marking people for their sins and collecting them for the devil’s collection in hell. He’s sexy and kind of addicting but he’s a bad person. He’s working for a bad guy and yet you kind of can’t help but be on his side, no matter what he’s doing. Dante is kind of an anti-hero who eventually becomes a hero and its not really something we see a lot in books, not written this well, with this kind of story line. I read a LOT so sometimes I need a really good, fresh story to keep me addicted and satisfied and this book definitely did that. After reading this (now I need to read the next two), and reading the first two books of the Fire and Flood series, I’m completely sold on Victoria Scott as a writer. She’s fantastic, she’s great at world building and her characters are unique and fresh and relatable. I can’t wait to see more. I’m hoping to get The Liberator soon!

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Cover Reveal: Relapse by S.L. Stacy!

October 14, 2014October 14, 2014Leave a comment

I am very excited to bring you all today’s cover reveal.

You all know that I am wary when supporting indie authors, stomach self-published authors, etc. I was tricked not too long ago, by a self-published author, who I tried really hard to promote and so now I’m wary. However, today’s author is a great friend of mine, and I am SO happy to promote her. Her first novel was fantastic and I’m happy to bring you information on her sequel, Relapse.

If you would like to learn more about her first novel, Reborn,

you can check out my spoiler free review here.

About S.L. Stacy

S. L. Stacy is the author of Reborn and soon to be Relapse. She loves reading and writing in the young/new adult, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and sci-fi genres. She writes what she likes to call “smurt”(smart smut). She also thinks she’s really clever. When she’s not writing, Ms. Stacy likes to science, go to zumba, read, and obsess over fictional characters.

About Relapse

Release Date: December 2nd, 2014

Jasper might be gone for good, but Siobhan can’t escape the memory of him.

Or, rather, Psyche’s memories of him—memories of a kinder, gentler man, not the one who lied and manipulated her. She should have tried harder to reach him—to save Jasper from the darkness consuming him. Guilt—maybe that’s the reason why she still sees his face everywhere she turns. That, or she’s going crazy.

And Siobhan really doesn’t have time to lose her mind. Her best friend is in love with their enemy and is addicted to an alien drug. The Alpha Rhos blame her sorority for their sister’s death and take their quest for vengeance too far. Desperate, the Gamma Lambda Phis call on the help of the most deceitful Olympian of all, making her a promise they’re not even sure they can keep.

Once again, Siobhan finds herself not knowing who she can turn to or who she can trust. She comes to realize that her greatest enemy is the darkness within herself.

The Official Trailer for Relapse

Relapse Fun Fact!

Check out the first sentence from the book!

“I throw open the door to The End, thunder crashing behind me as I duck inside.”

….

…..

……

…….

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Now the Cover Reveal!

SO beautiful. It was designed by the lovely H.N. Sieverding, another self-published author, who you can check out at her website here.

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What do you guys think? Share in the comments! Don’t forget to follow SL Stacy on her blog, linked above, and on Facebook and Twitter! And make sure to get your hands on a copy of Reborn and get excited for Relapse!!

Book Review: As Long As You Love Me by Ann Aguirre

September 29, 2014September 26, 2014Leave a comment

This review is based a review copy given to me by Ann Aguirre and her publicity team. This is no way had any influence on this honest, viagra spoiler free review

Genre:

New Adult, physician Romance

Pages:

352

Part of a Series?:

Second Book in the 2B series

Release Date:

September 30th, 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

Most people dream about getting out of Sharon, Nebraska, but after three years away, Lauren Barrett is coming home. There are the justifications she gives to everyone else—missing her family, losing her college scholarship. And then there’s the reason Lauren can’t admit to anyone: Rob Conrad, her best friend’s older brother.

Football prowess and jaw-dropping good looks made Rob a star in high school. Out in the real world, his job and his relationships are going nowhere. He can’t pinpoint exactly what’s missing until Lauren comes back to town, bringing old feelings and new dreams with her. But he’s the guy that women love and leave—not the one who makes them think of forever.

Though she’s terrified of opening up, Lauren’s ready to take that chance. Because the only thing more important than figuring out where you truly belong is finding the person you were meant to be with.

My Review:

While there will be no spoilers for this novel in this review, there will be spoilers for the first novel, I Want It That Way. You can check out the review for that novel here.

I had absolutely loved the first installment of this series, featuring Nadia and Ty, and I knew that I wanted to read the rest of the series, definitely. Ann posted that she needed reviewers for her books and I immediately signed up in the hopes of getting this book, and I was successful. YES.

Now, I’m not going to say that this book is bad. Because that is definitely not the truth. There are a LOT of things that I highly enjoyed about this book and I’m going to talk about that first.

First off, I really loved Lauren, the main character. When we get to know her in I Want It That Way, we learn that she’s having a tough time, that college just isn’t working for her and that she wants to go home, back to the place that she’s comfortable with. Nadia, the MC of that novel, is frustrated and has a hard time but I immediately felt a kinship with her and this increased tenfold in this novel, where Lauren gets her own story. She has a lot of the same issues that I have struggled with myself, the shyness that people don’t see because you’re so good at hiding it. The anxiety. The insecurities. The anxiety. Lauren was a character I could connect with so much because of the anxieties she had and hid so well, and her aversion to change.

I also liked just the general story of it. You never know where you’re going to find love and I think Lauren finding it with her best friend’s brother, the boy she’s had a crush on for most of her life…I think that’s not only super cute, but its fun. Its expected but not. Its like…a fantasy of your own school girl crush coming to life and I really liked it. It was really sweet more than anything else. Rob and Lauren had a sweet story and watching them fall in love was addicting and fun, and I loved the unpredictability of it. What happens later in the story, that rocks their relationship off its course, really came unexpectedly to me. I knew something would happen but what happened completely blew me away and I like being surprised in romance novels. That makes me happy.

Plus, whew, those steamy scenes. I was in love with both of them so much after each sexy scene. Rob and Lauren spend a lot of time building up their physical romance and they had ME panting for them to do more which caused for some sexy anticipation that kept me turning the pages.

The only thing that really didn’t give me the full five stars vibe was that it seemed to take awhile to really get to what a conflict would be. It seemed like the first 3 quarters of the novel was spent with their romance, which was great but I couldn’t really figure out if anything was actually going to happen, to stir things up. It took a while to get to that, and so it was kind of a struggle to keep turning the pages. I was waiting for the drama to unfold, like it does with most romances, and it seemed to take awhile. It was only my love of the first novel that really kept me from shutting the book and I’m glad I stuck with it. But if you don’t have the resolve, it might be hard to get past the big chunk of romance to get to the conflict of the actual novel.

Other than that though, another winning romance new adult book by Ann. I’m eagerly awaiting for the third one (which I just requested an early copy on NetGalley, eek!), especially since its about two characters that I think are going to be SUPER fun to read about. If you haven’t read the first one, definitely head out to a bookstore and pick it up and pick up THIS particular novel tomorrow when it releases!

Rating:

3.75 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: I Want It That Way by Ann Aguirre

August 30, 20141 Comment

Genre:

New Adult, there Romance

Pages:

352

Part of a Series?:

First in the Series

Release Date:

August 26th, 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

Nadia Conrad has big dreams, and she’s determined to make them come true—for her parents’ sake as well as her own. But between maintaining her college scholarship and working at the local day care to support herself, she barely has time to think, let alone date. Then she moves into a new apartment and meets the taciturn yet irresistible guy in 1B….

Daniel Tyler has grown up too fast. Becoming a single dad at twenty turned his life upside down—and brought him heartache he can’t risk again. Now, as he raises his four-year-old son while balancing a full-time construction management job and night classes, a social life is out of the question. The last thing he wants is for four noisy students to move into the apartment upstairs. But one night, Nadia’s and Ty’s paths cross, and soon they can’t stay away from each other.

The timing is all wrong—but love happens when it happens. And you can’t know what you truly need until you stand to lose it.

My Review:

I knew, immediately, when Ann Aguirre announced that she’d be releasing a New Adult series this summer with the titles “I Want It That Way”, “As Long as You Love Me” and “Shape of My Heart”, I just had to read it. I mean, come on, the titles are Backstreet Boys’ songs! Beautiful. Plus Ann is such a sweetheart and I want to read more New Adult novels.

I think the most difficult part of reading this novel for me is that new adult and romance are not what I read. I had to remind myself quite often that its a romance novel, so plot points were SUPPOSED to be like that. I mostly read novels where romance is just one of many facets. I kind of liked that this was a learning experience for me. I told myself I would branch out this year and I really am trying to do that.

Once I was able to really understand and approach the book the right way, different from most of the books I usually read, I really enjoyed it. I still think romance isn’t quite my thing but I think I’m open to reading it more often.

Nadia is the first character in awhile, besides Cath in Fangirl, that I really felt an instant connection to and I think that’s because she’s older. I always feel a connection to the characters I enjoy reading but usually they are teenagers and there are some things I’m dealing with in my own life that are so different than a teenagers: college, midterms, jobs, careers, bills, falling in love in a complicated way. Nadia lives such a normal college life, and so it felt so familiar and easy to read her story. I think the rest of the story became so easy to me because of the connection I made with Nadia from page one.

Especially since she drops a couch and rips her jeans on the first page. That completely sounds like something I would do.

But the story of Nadia and Ty is really beautiful, and I think I loved it so much because of the involvement of Ty’s child. It was hard enough dealing with the complications of Nadia and Ty trying to make their romance work, but throwing in the addition of a child just throws everything through a loop. But despite that, I really spent most of my time in the book slowly falling in love with Ty and slowing falling in love with the little boy too.

Plus, there are some seriously fun and good steamy scenes in there. I think there’s a fine art to writing a really GOOD steamy scene and I think Ann has that down so easily. All the scenes felt right and not just there to add more steam (I hate that), and they made me blush, which is always fun while reading. It enhanced the romance between the two main characters, which I loved, and it wasn’t steamy just for the sake of that.

Bottom line, great beginning to the series. I loved that it left off on the two characters that are going to be featured in the next book, enough so that you will be curious and want to read the rest of the series. I definitely can’t wait for the release of the next book!

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: Don’t Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout

June 21, 2014June 19, 20141 Comment

Genre:

Young Adult, doctor Thriller

Pages:

384

Part of a Series?:

Nope

Release Date:

April 15th, decease 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

Samantha is a stranger in her own life. Until the night she disappeared with her best friend, approved Cassie, everyone said Sam had it all-popularity, wealth, and a dream boyfriend.

Sam has resurfaced, but she has no recollection of who she was or what happened to her that night. As she tries to piece together her life from before, she realizes it’s one she no longer wants any part of. The old Sam took “mean girl” to a whole new level, and it’s clear she and Cassie were more like best enemies. Sam is pretty sure that losing her memories is like winning the lottery. She’s getting a second chance at being a better daughter, sister, and friend, and she’s falling hard for Carson Ortiz, a boy who has always looked out for her-even if the old Sam treated him like trash.

But Cassie is still missing, and the facts about what happened to her that night isn’t just buried deep inside of Sam’s memory-someone else knows, someone who wants to make sure Sam stays quiet. All Sam wants is the truth, and if she can unlock her clouded memories of that fateful night, she can finally move on. But what if not remembering is the only thing keeping Sam alive?

My Review:

I love Jennifer L. Armentrout and she blows my mind over and over again. I read the Lux series and was massively in love, mostly with Daemon Black. Then I read the Covenant series and my god, that series is incredible. I just recently read The Return, which is the spin off new adult series to the Covenant series and there will be a review for that later. But when her standalone novel came out, and it was hitting bookshelves everywhere (literally, everywhere, taunting me and my wallet all the time), I knew I had to cave in and buy this. So I did.

And I read it in one night.

Which I realize is not exactly a hard thing for me to do. This is legit the girl who read a 750 page book in 5 hours and 45 minutes. If a book catches me, I can read it in mere hours. Which is what this book did to me, easily.

This was a very different book from Jennifer. For a moment, I forgot I was reading it by her because it just didn’t read the same as others I had read from her in the past. It was creepy and scary and literally had me turning the pages frantically to find out what happened next. Jennifer has always managed to make me laugh and to swoon but she’s never scared me before, not like she has in Don’t Look Back.

Don’t Look Back builds this mystery around the main character, Samantha, who is very nearly killed, and must figure out what happened to her, and her best friend. Problem is, she doesn’t remember who she is or who her best friend is, which, you know, makes things kind of difficult. Kind of. Then Sam starts to go…kind of crazy. She’s receiving cryptic notes and seeing things and hearing things that shouldn’t be there. Its incredibly creepy and Jennifer writes it so well. It reads like a horror movie, almost, a thriller, but its better than any movie I’ve watched. I’m not a huge fan of horror/thriller, I tend to find them lacking good stories, good characters, but this one was just perfectly chilling.

I also think its incredible that she’s able to weave such beautiful relationships throughout the book. Sam literally has to rebuild her relationship with everyone: friends, family, boyfriends, boys who are super cute who she wishes was her boyfriend instead, that sort of thing. And it all feels so incredibly authentic and confusing. So many of her relationships before her memory loss were frustrating and needed work, and now its even harder. These people remember what she was like, and she has to completely meld the two pieces of her together. Its confusing and that journey is taken so well through out the book.

There is also the conclusion of it, which obviously, as I write this, will be spoiler free. I hate ruining books for people. For awhile, I’d had a tiny inkling of what was going to be going on, but when it all came to an end, it was not the way I expected it. I knew the person responsible for a lot of the things going on, that part seemed to be creeping into my mind slowly. The why and how of it completely threw me off guard and I was wide-eyed all the way up until the last page. Way to go, Jennifer, for a completely surprising conclusion, and for scaring the crap out of me this entire novel. I was reading this at about 2 am and that probably wasn’t the best idea I’ve had.

Must read though. Seriously. If you like Jennifer Armentrout, you will like this very different novel from her. If you’re not a fan, read it anyway. If you’ve never read her books, then this would be a fun one to start with. Just remember to keep the lights on while you do so.

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: All Lined Up by Cora Carmack

May 25, 2014May 21, 20144 Comments

Genre:

New Adult, buy more about Romance

Pages:

320

Part of a Series?:

I believe it is the first of the Rusk University series.

Release Date:

May 13th, viagra 60mg 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Cora Carmack follows up her trio of hits—Losing It, Faking It, and Finding It—with this thrilling first novel in an explosive series bursting with the Texas flavor, edge, and steamy romance of Friday Night Lights.

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.

My Review:

One thing that I always want to accomplish when writing my book reviews is absolute honesty. I don’t write reviews to please, or to make people happy or any of that sort of thing. So I’m not going to lie when I say that I haven’t been overly impressed with Cora Carmack yet. I ADORE her. I follow her on everything and I think she’s an absolute doll and I think that she’s fantastic with her fans. I’ve read her previous books and have enjoyed them, but not hugely impressed.

However, with All Lined Up, I was really really excited. VERY excited. Its about romance and football. I LOVE it. There aren’t a lot of books with sports in it and so I was very highly excited about it. I’m also writing a NA/YA contemporary romance that centers around a baseball centered town (once The Awakened is done being written) so I was also excited to get some inspiration. Which I have. Which is bad because I need to finish my YA sci-fi first.

Moving on though, I said in a Jenny Han review earlier this week that even though one book of an author may not impress you, you should never just write off that author and I’m very glad I did that in the case of Cora Carmack. While her previous books haven’t made a deep impression on me, this one most definitely did.

From page one to the last page, I was hooked. I was addicted to the romance, and I was highly addicted to the story of the football team and whether they’d win or not. Cora does an absolutely fantastic job of balancing the romance and the sports in the story. She also does a great job of doing justice to the sport, while also making sure that its accessible to those who may not be into sports. I think that’s a hard thing to do but she manages it so easily and I think that comes a lot from balancing the point of view between both Dallas and Carson. We get the romance on both sides and the football on both sides, but very different views of each and it plays out quite nicely.

Which brings me to the characters themselves. I love Dallas because she is so real. Her feelings toward love, and trusting people are so real, and her animosity toward football makes so much sense and I start hating football too. And I love football! She just feels so real and her emotions are raw and genuine and you can’t help but feel them with her.

And Carson! Thank you Cora Carmack for giving me yet another book boyfriend to be massively in love with. I have a weakness for hot athletic boys and you bring this one into my life like a hurricane and I just couldn’t handle it. I love a struggling athlete, and that is exactly what Alex is going to be in my own sports novel. I love that Carson feels so deeply, about everything. I love that he works so hard too. He wants to succeed so badly and he works everyday in order to make that happen. It’s not easy for him and its not handed to him. He genuinely has to work really hard to make it happen, and I love that. It makes you love him even more.

Basically, this book made a Cora fan. She had a great story, perfectly balanced with romance and sports and excitement and sexy steamy scenes. She creates memorable, real characters in both Dallas and Carson and everyone that surrounds them. I literally sped through this book so fast that when I reached the end, I was so sad that it was the end. Cora has a real voice for romance and I hope there are more in this series because I’m ready for more football and sexy boys!

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars