I’d say it was fun, December, but then I’d be lying.

31 December, 2018 11:39 am , 7 Comments ,


I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

Is it already the end of the year?! Holy cow did December fly by.

Well, this month was a whirlwind. I scrambled to get gifts out in the mail in advance. Since there’s only one post office for my town, it gets swamped around this time of year. A dog that I had fostered back in November and who was adopted right before Thanksgiving, wound up being returned. So, she came back to stay with us while she waited for her forever family. I honestly thought we’d have her for Christmas since she was returned right before the holidays, but she found a forever home right before Christmas. She was a sweetheart and I’m sad that she’s gone, but glad that she has finally found a loving home. I also wound up getting the flu the week before Christmas. I don’t think I will ever complain about a simple cold with sniffles again. Right as I was starting to feel better, the government shut down, which meant I was furloughed until further notice. The first couple of days were nice because I still needed to rest up and recover from the flu, but now I’m getting a little stir crazy. Like I said, this month was pretty intense. I’m hoping that next month is a little less chaotic.

 

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Review: Alphas: Origins by Ilona Andrews

28 December, 2018 8:20 am , 2 Comments ,

Alphas: Origins
(Alphas 0.5)
by Ilona Andrews
Publisher: Intermix
Publication date: April 19, 2016
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating:

Karina Tucker is driving a van of children home from a field trip when an unplanned detour to a seemingly ordinary rest stop changes her life. There, she witnesses a world beyond humanity’s sight, of frightful powers and chaos, where she is in death’s grip… before an irresistibly dangerous male saves her—only to take her captive.

For she is a rare commodity in the shadowy realm she’s entered.

Karina soon finds herself caught in a violent civil war where those with inhuman powers strive to destroy each other without mercy. And it becomes all too clear that she must make a choice: submit and become a pawn, or take hold of her own destiny and fight for survival against impossible odds.

 

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Posted in: Urban Fantasy , Tagged: ,

Review: My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life by Rachel Cohn

21 December, 2018 7:51 am , 7 Comments ,

My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life
by Rachel Cohn
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Publication date: Dec. 18, 2018
Genre: Young Adult
Rating:

In the Land of the Rising Sun, where high culture meets high kitsch, and fashion and technology are at the forefront of the First World’s future, the foreign-born teen elite attend ICS-the International Collegiate School of Tokyo. Their accents are fluid. Their homes are ridiculously posh. Their sports games often involve a (private) plane trip to another country. They miss school because of jet lag and visa issues. When they get in trouble, they seek diplomatic immunity.

Enter foster-kid-out-of-water Elle Zoellner, who, on her sixteenth birthday discovers that her long-lost father, Kenji Takahari, is actually a Japanese hotel mogul and wants her to come live with him. Um, yes, please! Elle jets off first class from Washington D.C. to Tokyo, which seems like a dream come true. Until she meets her enigmatic father, her way-too-fab aunt, and her hyper-critical grandmother, who seems to wish Elle didn’t exist. In an effort to please her new family, Elle falls in with the Ex-Brats, a troupe of uber-cool international kids who spend money like it’s air. But when she starts to crush on a boy named Ryuu, who’s frozen out by the Brats and despised by her new family, her already tenuous living situation just might implode.

My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life is about learning what it is to be a family, and finding the inner strength to be yourself, even in the most extreme circumstances.

 

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Posted in: YA Contemporary , Tagged: ,

Review: The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy by B.T. Gottfred

7 December, 2018 12:05 am , 10 Comments ,

The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy
by B.T. Gottfred
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Publication date: May 8, 2018
Genre: Young Adult
Rating:

Everyone assumes that Zee is a lesbian. Her classmates, her gym buddies, even her so-called best friend. So many people think that Zee likes girls, even Zee is starting to wonder. Could they be onto something?

Everyone assumes that Art is gay. They take one look at his nice clothes and his pretty face and think: well, obviously.

But there’s more to Zee and Art than anyone realizes. When Art first meets Zee, he knows he’s found someone special–someone magical. Zee may not be able to see that magic in herself, but Art is bound and determined to show it to her.

What develops is a powerful connection between two people who are beautiful in all the ways they’ve been told are strange. As they explore their own complexities in gender, sexuality, and identity, they fall for the complexities they find in each other. With his trademark frankness, B.T. Gottfred delves inside both characters’ heads in this story about love and living authentically.

 

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Posted in: YA Contemporary , Tagged:

Review: My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

3 December, 2018 12:12 am , 9 Comments ,

My Favorite Half-Night Stand
by Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: Dec. 4, 2018
Genre: Romance
Rating:

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

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Posted in: Romance , Tagged: ,

Review: Fury by Rachel Vincent

30 November, 2018 12:07 am , 2 Comments ,

Fury
(Menagerie #3)
by Rachel Vincent
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Publication date: Oct. 30, 2018
Genre: Fantasy
Rating:

1986: Rebecca Essig leaves a slumber party early but comes home to a massacre—committed by her own parents. Only one of her siblings has survived. But as the tragic event unfolds, she begins to realize that other than a small army of six-year-olds, she is among very few survivors of a nationwide slaughter.

The Reaping has begun.

Present day: Pregnant and on the run with a small band of compatriots, Delilah Marlow is determined to bring her baby into the world safely and secretly. But she isn’t used to sitting back while others suffer, and she’s desperate to reunite Zyanya, the cheetah shifter, with her brother and children. To find a way for Lenore the siren to see her husband. To find Rommily’s missing Oracle sisters. To unify this adopted family of fellow cryptids she came to love and rely on in captivity.

But Delilah is about to discover that her role in the human versus cryptid war is destined to be much larger—and more dangerous—than she ever could have imagined.

 

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Posted in: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy , Tagged: ,

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Scythe by Christina Bauer (GIVEAWAY)

28 November, 2018 12:10 am , 3 Comments ,

Scythe
by Christina Bauer
(Dimension Drift Worlds, #1)
Publisher: Monster House Books LLC
Publication date: April 24 2018
Genres: Dystopian, Fantasy, Young Adult

Truth time. I go to a Learning Squirrel High School. Don’t judge.

On second thought, judge away. Learning Squirrel is one step above attending class in a junkyard. But what do you expect? Everything’s made out of garbage these days. At least, I have my freelance work to keep Mom and me housed, clothed, and fed. How? I’m your regular high school science geek for hire, except my work manipulates space-time. The good news is that these gigs pay really well; the bad news is that the government likes to kill people like me. Whatever. I’m not worried; hiding from their detection systems is easy for me.

Then I screw up one of my illegal projects. Badly.

In fact, things go so sideways that my house slips into two-dimensional space-time. The shift only lasts for a few seconds, but that’s long enough to set off a dozen government alarms. If those goons track me down, Mom and I are as good as dead. Long story short, I need to pay someone off, hide the evidence, and keep us safe.

Unfortunately, that means asking the Scythe for help. He runs the local underground crime scene and has absolutely no conscience…Or at least, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. It’s hard to think straight when a guy’s that hot in an ‘evil Mafioso kingpin’ kind of way. Most importantly, the Scythe is a crime lord who can conceal my slip-up with a few clicks on his minion’s computer keyboards. But the man has his price. In this case, the Scythe wants me to finish a certain dimensional prototype for him in twenty-four hours. I can do it, but it might mean Learning Squirrel High gets blown up in the process. Oh yes, and there’s also my new hot classmate who may or may not be an alien…and he says he’ll do anything to help me.

This job won’t be easy, but I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes. Maybe.

 

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Posted in: Excerpt, YA Fantasy , Tagged:

Review: Adventures in Online Dating by Julie Particka

26 November, 2018 10:28 am , 5 Comments ,

Adventures in Online Dating
by Julie Particka
Publisher: Entangled: August
Publication date: Nov. 12, 2018
Genre: Romance
Rating:

For Alexa, the answer to everything comes down to numbers. Three sons. One divorce. One great life…except her boys are getting older and they really need a man in their lives. Enter the number twenty, as in after twenty minutes with someone she knows whether or not she wants them in her life. So, she hatches a plan to meet any man who even remotely strikes her interest—for a twenty-minute date at her favorite coffee shop. It’s the perfect plan to find her perfect match in the most efficient way possible.

Too bad coffee shop owner Marshall isn’t keen on the idea. He doesn’t want his shop to be her speed dating zone—especially since she’s made it clear he’s too young to be a contender. But Alexa finds herself drawn to Marshall in ways she can’t quantify. There’s no easy answer, and once the kids become involved, her well-ordered world threatens to fall apart—twenty minutes at a time.

 

 

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Posted in: Romance , Tagged: ,

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Perfect Odds by LaShanta Charles (Giveaway)

21 November, 2018 12:17 am , 5 Comments ,

Perfect Odds
by LaShanta Charles
Publisher: Imani Ink
Publication date: Nov. 6, 2018
Genre: Romance

Calista Brenner refuses to let go of her past. She had her entire life figured out…except, maybe that was only in her mind. Being stood up for her own wedding should be a clue. Regardless, she’s determined to fix this. She just needs a plan and if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s planning. It doesn’t matter that she’s a whirlwind of clumsy chaos. All she has to do is stay away from the gorgeously irritating Jayce Cranston and her wedding-her life-will be back on track. That’s exactly what she wants. Right?

Jayce Cranston has somehow let himself be bamboozled. One minute he’s enjoying his quiet existence in his home in the outskirts of Buffalo, NY and the next he’s dealing with a beautiful alcoholic and her penchant for trouble. And with business manager out of the office, he has to actually . . . deal with people. Surprisingly, the little ball of clumsiness is making that task so much easier to handle.

Neither of them could have guessed that Calista’s past would decide it wants to be her future and will stop at nothing to make that a reality. Could she accept that maybe her carefully laid plans weren’t as careful as she thought? Will Jayce be able to show her that he’s worth a chance and, together, their oddities can be perfect?

 

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Posted in: Excerpt, Romance , Tagged:

Review: Spectacle by Rachel Vincent

19 November, 2018 7:49 am , 3 Comments ,

Spectacle
(Menagerie #2)
by Rachel Vincent
Publisher: Mira
Publication date: May 30, 2017
Genre: Fantasy
Rating:

When their coup of Metzger’s Menagerie is discovered, Delilah and her fellow cryptids find their newly won freedom brutally stripped away as they are sold into The Savage Spectacle, a private collection of “exotic wildlife.” Specializing in ruthless cryptid cage matches, safari-style creature hunts and living party favors, the Spectacle’s owner, Willem Vandekamp, caters to the forbidden fetishes of the wealthy and powerful. At the Spectacle, any wish can be granted—for the right price.

But Vandekamp’s closely guarded client list isn’t the only secret being kept at the Spectacle. Beneath the beauty and brutality of life in the collection lie much darker truths, and no one is more determined than Delilah to strip the masks from the human monsters and drag all dark things into the light.

 

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Posted in: Fantasy , Tagged: ,