Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs, Reviews, Romance

Confessions Of A Queen B* by: Crista McHugh

Les

I’M BACK!!!!!!! Sorry for my absence. I have let work, illness, and life take me away from the reading and blogging I have grown to love. I have decided that one day a week I will blog, even if it has to be shorter than I would like. I need to take back my life and return to this passion that holds such a special place in my soul.

So without further ado…………..

Confessions of A Queen B* is a book I received at a book convention following meeting the author. She is a super funny and sweet lady.

Can I just say I love the title of this book. Notice the asterisk next to the B, at first I thought this is going to be the confessions of the most popular girl in school. WRONG! This is the confessions of the Queen Bitch of the school, please don’t confuse them, they are so far apart from each other. Everyone probably remembers the Queen Bee in their high school. I know I do. Do you remember the Queen Bitch? I have to admit that I do, because I was either her or her best friend. I never hold my tongue, so the good, the bad and the ugly always come out. But while me and Alexis the main character in this story may have a lot in common we are also different.

Alexis is super smart, pretty and mean as hell. She has a blog that everyone is scared to end up on. She posts blogs about random wrongdoings of teachers and students at her school. People avoid her, and are afraid of her. They think she is a heartless bitch. I have found that most people who are believed to be heartless (like myself) are the exact opposite, but they have closed them selves off due to specific things that have happened. For Alexis, it is the incident where her best friend reads her diary in front of the whole school in junior high, and so she decides she will never be a victim of the popular kids harassment or the butt of their jokes ever again. So she shows no fear and turns the tables on them, and they fear her for it. I know this feeling, I was picked on in school. I had decided enough was enough, no more holding my tongue, and I stood up for myself and I never looked back. I didn’t take anyone’s crap, so I was left alone to do my own thing.  Any way this is just me saying that I connected with Alexis, and I was kind of like her.

Enter Brett, too nice to be my favorite type of guy, but amazing nonetheless. he is Alexis’ partner in health class, for the parenting of the “baby”. He is the star quarterback, and the object of the Queen bee’s obsession. Alexis and Brett argue and get under each others skin like crazy, and the Queen Bee (Summer) is not happy about him spending time with Alexis. Brett however is enjoying spending time with her, and driving her crazy.

 

So now that my rant, and the characters are out of the way, lets move on. This story starts when Alexis gets paired with Brett, when names are drawn out of a hat for a health class project, where they have to be parents to the fake baby. Automatically, Alexis thinks that Brett is the typical jock, who will pawn all the work off on her and she will be stuck with the spawn of Satan the whole time. He surprises her by suggesting they trade off every 24 hours. Then, uh oh she realizes when a piece of paper falls out of his back pack that he didn’t pick her name out of the hat, he had really picked someone else’s name. Now she believes he has an ulterior motive to working on the project with her.

So they are driving each other crazy, Alexis knows nothing about babies, but Brett having younger twin sisters, he knows a lot and that aggravates her. Then lets get to the issues. There is someone filming the cheerleaders in the locker room. one of those cheerleaders is Alexis’ sister. She brings it to Alexis and so of course the Queen B finds the camera and leaves a message for the person filming it. She thinks its all done with when they take the videos down, but it’s not. You know me you will have to read it to find out the rest of what happens.

This is the part I don’t understand about Alexis, she is the Queen B, right? Well why is she trying to hide that she is hanging out with Brett after school? She is trying to hide from the rumor mills, but why? My guess is she cares what people think, and doesn’t want any of the headache that will come about being spotted with the “Golden Boy” of the school. I mean if your the Queen B, then you shouldn’t care what people think. I believe no one should care what people think. Also, its kind of sad that she has closed herself off so much that she only has two friends.

All in all this was a great story and a quick read. I will admit to you that there are a couple of editing errors, but none so major that I wanted to put the book down. I set out today to read this book just so I could blog tonight and i have accomplished my goal.

So go out read it! I will be moving on to the second book! Go easy on me guys, I am a little rusty here.

Yep it feel GREAT to be back!!!!!!!!!!

Books

Nobody But You by Jill Shalvis

debra

Nobody But You is Book 3 of the Cedar Ridge series by Jill Shalvis.  Ms. Shalvis is one of my favorite authors.  She excels at writing contemporary romances set in small towns inhabited by wonderful character, some of who are a little quirky—which I love to read.

The Blurb:  After an overseas mission goes wrong, Army Special Forces officer Jacob Kincaid knows where he must go to make things right: back home to the tiny town of Cedar Ridge, Colorado. All he needs to scrub away his painful past is fresh mountain air, a lakeside cabin, and quiet solitude. But what he discovers is a gorgeous woman living on a boat at his dock.

Sophie Marren has nowhere else to go. She’s broke, intermittently seasick, and fighting a serious attraction to the brooding, dishy, I’m-too-sexy-for-myself guy who’s now claiming her dock. Something about Jacob’s dark intensity makes her want to tease—and tempt—him beyond measure. Neither one wants to give any ground . . . until they realize the only true home they have is with each other.

My thoughts:  It is with a heavy heart that I give this book only a grade of 3 stars.  I really enjoyed both Books 1 and 2 in this series and was eagerly awaiting this book.  However, this book fell just a little flat for me.  I liked the hero, Jacob.  He is the twin of Hud, the hero of Book 2.  He left Cedar Ridge and his brother at age 18 and went into the military.  He faced tragedy in the military and has returned home, but is slow about returning to the family because of how he left after an argument with his brother and not knowing how to fix things.  Upon returning home, he meets Sophie, a down on her luck woman who is working on turning her life around after a very ugly divorce.  I had a hard time getting into the character of Sophie until the very end.  A few times, she really irritated me.  The other thing I had an issue with was the “resolution” of 2 subplots.  One involving a problem with the resort owned by the family that we have been learning about since book 1.  The problem was resolved in essentially one paragraph.  I remember thinking, “How did that happen?” The other involved the sister of the family.  I thought she would be getting her own book, also.  Usually, that is how it works—all the main characters get their book, but her story was fairly resolved in just a few paragraphs also.  Perhaps it is best explained by saying I felt the ending was rushed.  This is a very unusual thing with Jill’s writing.   She always writes so well and this is the first book I felt was rushed at the end.  Perhaps it was just me.  I will always look forward to Jill’s next book (She is starting a new series in June).  She is a wonderful writer.

 

 

Books, fantasy, great reads, Reviews, Urban Fantasy

Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop

Karen

Marked in Flesh

Oh wow this was an emotional roller coaster for me. I actually waited 24 hours before I wrote this post. First the blurb and then I’ll tell you how I feel, and keep it spoiler free.

Since the Others allied themselves with the cassandra sangue, the fragile yet powerful human blood prophets who were being exploited by their own kind, the delicate dynamic between humans and Others changed. Some, like Simon Wolfgard, wolf shifter and leader of the Lakeside Courtyard, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn, see the new, closer companionship as beneficial—both personally and practically.


But not everyone is convinced. A group of radical humans is seeking to usurp land through a series of violent attacks on the Others. What they don’t realize is that there are older and more dangerous forces than shifters and vampires protecting the land that belongs to the Others—and those forces are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect what is theirs…

The first 50% I spent just wanting anything to break the suffocating tension. And the last 50%? It wasn’t like a bubble bursting, more like something dropped down a steep incline, you never will stop it but at first you think you can catch it then it moves faster and faster until you just have to let it go. And the end, ugh just a touch of sweetness. Amazing! I would tell you more but I feel it’s impossible without discussing something that might spoil it for you.

If you follow the series read the other three don’t short yourself and miss this. I would not recommend starting this series with this book though, start at the beginning with Written in Red

trust me it’s amazing!

Books, great reads, indie author, paranormal romance, Reviews, Romance

Fallen Hearts by Angela Colsin

debra

Fallen Hearts is Book 4 of The Crucible Series by Angela Colsin, an independent author I recently found.

As always, first the Blurb:

Most humans live in blissful ignorance of the supernatural, unable to see what they don’t believe exists. Such used to be the lot of Stephan Forrester, a normal mortal leading a regular life, at least until the day vampires abducted him. With his family murdered in the attack, Stephan finds himself alone and dying of an obscure, incurable illness contracted in the vampires’ lair.
Using what time he has left to seek justice, Stephan sets out to eliminate the offenders until only one remains. However, locating this final target means doing something he doesn’t think possible—actually working with a vampire.
Entombed against her will and forced to hibernate for seventy years, Maddox only awakens when a mortal with a vendetta frees her from the grave. He needs help locating the same vampire who buried her alive, and ironically, she senses a connection to her human savior in the form of a blood link. But Stephan’s intense hatred for vampires makes honoring that link impossible.
Even so, Maddox is unlike any vampire Stephan’s ever encountered. As charming and intelligent as she is beautiful, she reminds him of what it means to actually live, mending his wounded heart. In turn, Maddox finds it hard to separate from Stephan, or resist the passionate responses he elicits, and their unexpected bond strengthens as time goes on.
But time is the one luxury Stephan doesn’t have, and saving him from his illness could prove fatal to them both.

My thoughts:  I have really enjoyed finding and reading this author’s books.  I have enjoyed each story a little more than the previous one.  I have enjoyed this book most of all so far.  I thought the story very good with the right level of emotional angst, especially on the part of Stephen.  He had to most change in this story.  After everything he went through at the hands of the vampires, being forced to work with one threatened to take its’ toll on him.  He already has enough to deal with concerning the death of his family and the disease he contracted.  Forced to come to terms with Maddox not being like all the other vampires he encountered was difficult for him.  Maddox had her own angst to work through, albeit for different reasons.  And, she had to deal with the many societal/technological changes that have occurred since her forced hibernation.   We saw a couple of characters from previous books that play a role in this story as well as have a large part of a previously started story arc realized. I just knew something was out there in the previous books and glad to see it come to fruition.  I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

Happy Reading,

Debra