Tag: book reviews

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, 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

Books, great reads, Reviews, Romance

Dirty by Kylie Scott

Karen

Dirty

I was able to grab an ARC from netgalley of this book and let me tell you I couldn’t be more excited. I loved the series Stage Dive so I was eagerly anticipating this spin-off Dive Bar series and I wasn’t disappointed. Honestly I read so little contemporary but this series is one of the few I actually look forward to every year. But let’s do this in order! Blurb first..

The last thing Vaughan Hewson expects to find when he returns to his childhood home is a broken hearted bride in his shower, let alone the drama and chaos that comes with her.

Lydia Green doesn’t know whether to burn down the church or sit and cry in a corner. Discovering the love of your life is having an affair on your wedding day is bad enough. Finding out it’s with his best man is another thing all together. She narrowly escapes tying the knot and meets Vaughan only hours later.

Vaughan is the exact opposite of the picture perfect, respected businessman she thought she’d marry. This former musician-turned-bartender is rough around the edges and unsettled. But she already tried Mr. Right and discovered he’s all wrong-maybe it’s time to give Mr. Right Now a chance.

After all, what’s wrong with getting dirty?

This book was everything I love from Kylie Scott, flawed characters that never do or say what you want, a story line that forces you to stay up all night and just keep reading, oh and amazing sex that’s just a little, well dirty. I was so worried that we would lose the Stage Dive series magic and that this would just fall flat but it does the opposite. I want to hear everyone’s story. I’m sucked into this crazy world now too committed not to want to read it out to the end.

Loved it! The best part?? Right now the preorder is only $4.99 on Amazon! What a great price! Here is the link..

 

Pre-Order, now!

Books, fantasy, great reads, Reviews, scifi

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Karen

Six of Crows

I just finished this book and I must discuss! I loved it…loved, loved, loved it! But this book broke two of my rules as a reader so it leaves the question, can a book be good enough that no matter what the author does we will forgive?  Let’s talk about the book first because frankly this book deserves it.

This blurb: Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…

A convict with a thirst for revenge.

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.

A runaway with a privileged past.

A spy known as the Wraith.

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

If you feel like this blurb doesn’t give you enough information don’t feel bad, the whole book is like that. Getting info is like squeezing water from a rock, you are always desperate for more and never feel as though you have enough. But it’s so successful in this sorry because it keeps you in suspense the whole time, always wondering what is going to happen next, always curious about the main characters themselves. It’s beautifully done too, I never wanted to put the book down because I was lost, I always wanted to find out that next secret or see what the next part of the plan was.

The characters themselves: they were so dark, damaged and honestly somewhat bad that it was refreshing. They rarely did what I wanted them to do, or reacted the way I expected them to at first, so I was forced to really get to know them and once I was fully committed to what they were doing and truthfully…I liked them. Ugh the anxiety! The odds are always against them and no matter how smart Kaz is, things don’t always go their way, I felt like I need an anxiety pill halfway through this book (or some Vodka) I was so stressed, and dedicated to knowing what happened.

******THIS PART MAY FEEL LIKE A SPOILER***** Though I don’t spoil any of the story itself I do make a reference to the ending, if you don’t want to read about that be done with this blog, thanks for reading! Otherwise read on but you have been warned!! If you decide to stop here hey that’s okay I recommend you read the book, you can always come back..

 

 

 

Now let’s talk about the things I usually hate that this author did that I forgave or overlooked. (1) The multiple POV. This is a personal preference for me but usually I DNF books that are written from multiple POV’s. I don’t care if it’s in the first person or third person but when it jumps from person to person to person and I’m constantly having to adjust to a different personality and style per chapter I usually get frustrated. For some reason it worked in this book, because the characters are so closed off I feel I would have never learned anything personal if we didn’t jump between people. (2) The cliffhanger. Ugh this is a deal breaker for me. Now there are degrees of a cliffhanger and as far as this one goes it’s borderline. I feel like authors write cliffhangers for two reasons, because they can’t decide/or can’t write an ending or they want you to read the next book. This felt like the latter. I hate that. I’m going to read it anyway, 90% of the book is resolved, why, why, why?? Maybe you read it and don’t feel like it was a cliffhanger? I did. That being said I will still read the second book, I fact I just preordered it on Amazon. I just like it when my stories are tidy, all finished up with no lose ends.

Okay that being said this book was still amazing, you need to get it and read it. Now!