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BLOG TOUR - Book Review: Chaos Bound by Sarah Castille

7/1/2016

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What They Say

After enduring months of torture at the hands of the Black Jacks MC, and betrayed by his own club, Holt “T-Rex” Savage, a junior member of the Sinner’s Tribe Motorcycle Club, will stop at nothing to get revenge. But falling for a beautiful woman with dangerous ties to his sworn enemy was never part of the plan…
Raised by the Black Jacks, Naiya Kelly grew up fast, furiously, and with little to lose. But now that she’s put her MC days behind her, she is free to do what she wants—until she meets a man who imprisons her, body and soul. She swore she’d never give her heart to a biker, but Holt is the most passionate, protective man she’s ever known. But will Holt be forced to betray his one true love to exact his revenge?

My Review

Weeeeeelllll, this was an interesting read. I actually thought it was a new adult novel, but it's not. It's a bit too rude/swear-y for that. Which isn't a problem, I just thought this was going to be a new adult book. But, never fear, Chaos Bound was an intriguing read. I've never read a book about a motorcycle gang - and I'm not really sure I would want to again, because they are a vicious bunch. Locking people up for months on end (Holt) or kidnapping a lass at her mother's funeral because her mother owes them a debt (Naiya). Motorcycle gangs really don't get a good rep in this book, even the Sinners, who are kinda OK, but also really violently vicious. 

For what it's worth, this was an intriguing read, makes me glad I read it, and to know to steer clear in future as reading about motorcycle gangs who like to kill each other make me feel weird/nauseous/mildly frightened. There's also a very good chance I could never watch Sons of Anarchy, as I suspect that is much, much worse. What I liked was that Holt and Naiya were kinda the same people, in many ways, and seeing them look out for each other, in their revenge mission was sweet, kinda (because they were, after all, still trying to kill someone, although Viper really did deserve for people to kill him, because he really was horrifically awful). 

On the flip side, it drove me to the edge of distraction to read about sweet butts. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A SWEET BUTT IS BUT OH MY GOD HOW DEGRADING A TERM. It's clearly a term for girls who hang around motorcycle clubs, but if I had done a shot for every mention of the word sweet butt, I would have been drunk before I was even a quarter through the book. It riled me up so much I'm writing about it!!!! If I never see that word/term again it will be too soon. 

Chaos Bound was an intriguing read, I read it in a couple of days and the chemistry between Holt and Naiya was fantastic, although Tank was my favourite character. I loved Tank, he seemed to sweet and sensitive, despite his name. I feel like if I'd read the other books in the series I would probably have had a better handle on this book, but as a standalone it worked, you just felt like there were bits missing, holes that needed filling, etc, but apart from that it was an interesting, enjoyable read. 
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Book Review: Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz & Kat Helgeson

6/3/2016

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What They Say

Gena and Finn would have never met, but for their mutual love for the hit TV show, Up Below. Regardless of their differences--Gena is a recent high school graduate whose social interactions largely take place online, while Finn is in her early twenties, encountering the difficulties of job hunting in a poor economy and contemplating marriage with her longtime boyfriend--the two girls realise that the bond between them is more than fan fiction. But when disaster strikes and Gena's world turns upside down, only Finn can save her, and that, too, comes with a price. Told through e-mails, text messages, journal entries, and blog posts, Gena/Finn is a story of friendship and love through social media in the digital age.

My Review

My first thoughts on finishing this book? Wow. I've seen this book around the interwebs, featured on people's WoW posts, etc, and I've had it to read for a little while, but finally decided to jump in and what a freaking read. Epistolary novels are rare, and very hard to get right, but Gena/Finn is almost perfect in every way. It had it all. The fandom (which I suspect is based on Supernatural, not that Hannah would tell me when I asked), two AMAZING characters, and some pretty heart-wrenching scenes and secrets.

I'll get the not so good out the way first - the ending. Like 80% into the book there's this entire twist, something happens, and while it was horrifying and had me staring at my screen to see if it was correct, it also left me with tons of questions and a rather unexciting ending. This book was light & fun for sooooo long, and then it all of a sudden got very serious, and I would have just gone in a different direction, because I wasn't honestly sure what it was supposed to accomplish. 

Now, the good stuff, and there's a lot of good stuff. I've genuinely got no idea if this was supposed to be a F/F romance with Gena & Finn, BUT that's what I was shipping. From when Gena and Finn first meet each other, they just click. And to be able to bring that across in blog posts/emails/text messages is something not many authors can pull off but the pairing of Moskowitz and Helgeson pull it off effortlessly. I was flipping the pages, desperate to read more, more, more. It was intoxicating, like being pulled into your favourite TV show. It's the kind of friendship I would love to have, to be able to talk about anything with somebody, any time of day, no matter what. Even better was when they DO meet IRL, it was so not weird, I've never genuinely read a book with two characters who just clicked like Gena and Finn.

Their relationship went from like 0 to 100 superfast, but it never felt forced. It just seemed natural, and sometimes it is so much easier to talk to someone behind a laptop than it is someone face to face. It's the kind of relationship you can't get enough of, and I never knew where it was going, but I wanted to be along for the whole ride. It's a book you literally devour, I carried it everywhere with me and read it in one sitting, because I just wanted more, more, more, more, more. It was so intense, so all-consuming. I can't WAIT to get a physical copy of this, to read it again, and see the artwork. See how it was supposed to be formatted all good and proper, because I am so buying myself a copy of this book. Maybe the ending let me down a little bit, but a lot of this book is amazing. This is a special book, and I loved it. 
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BLOG TOUR - Book Review: The Way To Game The Walk of Shame by Jenn P Nguyen

6/1/2016

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What They Say

Taylor Simmons is screwed.Things were hard enough when her single-minded dedication to her studies earned her the reputation of being an Ice Queen, but after getting drunk at a party and waking up next to bad boy surfer Evan McKinley, the entire school seems intent on tearing Taylor down with mockery and gossip.Desperate to salvage her reputation, Taylor persuades Evan to pretend they're in a serious romantic relationship. After all, it's better to be the girl who tames the wild surfer than just another notch on his surfboard.Readers will be ready to sign their own love contract after reading "The Way to Game the Walk of Shame, "a fun and addicting contemporary YA romance by Jenn P. Nguyen.

My Review

When I signed up for the blog tour for The Way To Game The Walk of Shame, I was dead excited because it sounded right up my alley. I love books with faux-romances, where the guy and the girl end up liking each other for real, and I like it EVEN MORE when the two are so completely opposite to one another. So I was super excited to get reading, and learn more about Evan and Taylor.

The Way To Game The Walk of Shame got off to a bit of a slow start, I felt. It took a while to really warm up, but once Evan and Taylor start fake-dating, things pick up the pace a little bit, especially as they just get on so well. Like, so well that you can hardly believe these two people have said barely any words to each other, ever. So well that you just can't fathom that this whole thing wouldn't have happened if Taylor hadn't woken up in Evan's bed the morning after a party, because they were clearly fated to be together. It's intriguing to me that two people who barely speak, and have to be co-erced into fake-dating can get along so well right away, with no awkwardness, but there was no awkwardness between Taylor and Evan. 

This was an interesting read, probably not my favourite book ever, but a fairly decent YA novel. I liked that we got to see both Evan and Taylor's points of view, and I appreciated the fact that Taylor had a goal, and wanted to achieve it and I understood how using Evan helped that goal - I got irrationally annoyed when, a few days after the party, Taylor was dropped from sorting out an event from her teacher because she wasn't paying attention, as if the teacher was listening to gossip, it was all a bit out of hand. It just really irritated me, because are teachers REALLY like that? REALLY? But I liked how Taylor handled it, how she drove into the skid and did whatever was necessary to keep her reputation (NOT THAT SHE SHOULD HAVE TO, BUT YA KNOW). 

The Way To Game The Walk of Shame was a good little read. I LOVE that we got to see what happened at the party, too. It was like Jenn READ MY MIND, because you always, always, always want to see the scene that was the catalyst for the whole book and it was beautiful. I loved Taylor and Evan and this was such a fun, cute read. And am I the only one who wants a spin-off with Aaron? He seemed SO SWEET. 
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BLOG TOUR - Book Review: All The Feels by Danika Stone

5/30/2016

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What They Say

College freshman Liv is more than just a fangirl: The Starveil movies are her life… So, when her favorite character, Captain Matt Spartan, is killed off at the end of the last movie, Liv Just. Can’t. Deal.
Tired of sitting in her room sobbing, Liv decides to launch an online campaign to bring her beloved hero back to life. With the help of her best friend, Xander, actor and steampunk cosplayer extraordinaire, she creates #SpartanSurvived, a campaign to ignite the fandom. But as her online life succeeds beyond her wildest dreams, Liv is forced to balance that with the pressures of school, her mother’s disapproval, and her (mostly nonexistent and entirely traumatic) romantic life. A trip to DragonCon with Xander might be exactly what she needs to figure out what she really wants.

My Review

When I started All The Feels, I had no idea what I was getting in to, but this is actually one of the most fun and swoon-worthy books I have ever read in my life. Now I'm a bit of a fangirl, but I am in no means part of any kind of fandom. I love shows, but I don't get crazy over them, although I will confess that once upon a time, I used to read fanfiction about the band Simple Plan. Just one story, and it was the best story ever, but I used to be crazy obsessed with them, so when Quizilla was still a thing, this lass wrote the best Simple Plan stories. And I would actually read them again, if I knew where to find them. Alas, they are lost to the internets.

It's so hard to put into words how All The Feels made me feel. It made me deliriously happy, the kind of happy I used to get reading books years ago, where my tummy feels all tingly, and you just know there's two characters with that special connection and when they eventually kiss it's just the best thing ever. I got that feeling reading this book, because Xander and Liv and just the BEST. I loved how Xander just went along with Liv's crazy plan to bring Spartan back, no questions asked, because that's just what kind of friend he was, and alternatively I loved that Liv couldn't care less how Xander dressed or acted, which was amazing. I legitimately loved him, from his crazy clothes, to his weird British accent, to his mannerisms, not to mention his apparently gorgeous half-naked chest. I was SWOONING all over the place. I finished the book and let out the happiest of sighs. 

I literally loved everything about this book. Liv's love for fandom, for Starveil, DragonCon (which makes me want to go to a con SO FREAKING BAD), Xander, Xander, Xander, Xander, Xander, their cute text convos, the whole #SaveSpartan campaign, just the whole lot of it. It was everything I love wrapped up in a book, but the greatest ever writing in the history of writing. Danika Stone is AMAZING. She just gets fandom, she gets what it's like to fall in love as a teenager, she just gets it all. I need more, though. More from Danika or more from Liv and Xander, because oh man, I just loved them. This was absolutely the perfect read for me, it was everything I love about the YA genre, and as much as I love more serious YA books, I also love the light-hearted ones I can swoon over and smile at and get so much joy from. 

All The Feels will literally make you feel all the freaking feels. You'll love Liv's determination to bring Spartan back, no matter what; you'll love Xander's quirkiness, because boy is he quirky, but he pulls it off the way Ted pulls off red cowboy boots (and I'm being genuine!!! Ted Mosby pulled off those cowboy boots), the writing will have you flying through the book at a rate of knots, I finished it in a few hours, and it was the best few hours I have ever spent. There was a letter at the beginning of this book from Holly West, the editor, and she encapsulates everything I felt about this book into that letter, she was telling the truth ABOUT IT ALL. And I loved every page, and every single fandom quote at the beginning of each chapter (but mostly the Castiel quote from Supernatural that never fails to make me LOL). Buy this book. Read this book. FANGIRL OVER THIS BOOK.
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BLOG TOUR - Book Review: The Darkest Lie by Pintip Dunn

5/19/2016

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What They Say

“The mother I knew would never do those things.
But maybe I never knew her after all.”
 
Clothes, jokes, coded messages…Cecilia Brooks and her mom shared everything. At least, CeCe thought they did. Six months ago, her mom killed herself after accusations of having sex with a student, and CeCe’s been the subject of whispers and taunts ever since. Now, at the start of her high school senior year, between dealing with her grieving, distracted father, and the social nightmare that has become her life, CeCe just wants to fly under the radar. Instead, she’s volunteering at the school’s crisis hotline—the same place her mother worked.
 
As she counsels troubled strangers, CeCe’s lingering suspicions about her mom’s death surface. With the help of Sam, a new student and newspaper intern, she starts to piece together fragmented clues that point to a twisted secret at the heart of her community. Soon, finding the truth isn’t just a matter of restoring her mother’s reputation, it’s about saving lives—including CeCe’s own…

My Review

The Darkest Lie was a book I was really looking forward to reading, and let me tell you, this is one heck of a whodunit. Confession: I figured out who it was waaaaaayyyyy early, but I didn't make the connections that put it all together, so yay for Pintip Dunn for tripping me up on that! It was interesting to see Cece's reactions to her moms death, I mea n you go through something like your mom being accused of having sex with a minor, then on top of that, she kills herself? That's hard to take, harder still because Cece thinks of her mom as her hero, basically, and she can't imagine her mother ever doing anything like that, ever. So when things start to not add up, she starts to investigate, which might just land her in the same sitch as her mom.

This was one of those books that frustrated me, because Cece was quite hard to like. She distrusts everyone around her - the new boy, Sam; the lad at the counselling place, Liam; and she has her reasons too, but I kinda felt like she needed to let SOMEBODY in, because you can't bottle up all of that emotion and be okay. It's just not possible. It felt like she was ready to explode at any moment, Cece was like an unexploded bomb sometimes. I have no idea how she hadn't exploded before now. 

I really enjoyed The Darkest Lie. It was thrilling, and I did like Cece, I just wanted her to be a bit more open, a bit less paranoid, because not everyone was out to get her (just one person was, in the end...) and Sam was like a new puppy, and they just clicked and I wanted them to be this perfect match, but Cece made it quite difficult for him! I love that he persevered. He's a guy after anyone's heart, that one. This was a read that kept me on the edge of my seat to the very last page. 
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