Book Review: Not That Easy by Radhika Sanghani! (@radhikasanghani)

Not That Easy (Virgin #2)
Author: Radhika Sanghani
Publication Date: November 3, 2015
Published: Berkley
Source: NetGalley

My Rating:

Ellie used to be a virgin, but now she’s a woman with sexual experience. Well, some sexual experience. She also has debt, an unpaid magazine internship, and three flatmates who left her with the single room to match her single status.
That’s okay. She doesn’t want a boyfriend anyway—she wants several. And if the sex is exciting enough, her ruthless magazine editor boss can exploit her dating life for a column.
After countless hook-ups, a disastrously fiery encounter with some heat lube, and one orgasm class, Ellie is faced with the sad reality of her sexual ineptitude. But when she starts to witness the emotional wreckage she’s leaving in her wake, Ellie realizes that sex can be hard, and there’s a down side to giving it up too easy.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sleeping with number 2 or 222, or whether they’re The One or just a one-night stand - the only important thing is that you actually enjoy the sex and feel comfortable.”

This is a completely different Ellie than the one we met in VIRGIN. She’s moved on from her virginal days and is ready to explore her sexuality, and when I says explore, I mean Ellie wants to bang everything in sight, referring to this as her “slutty phase”, which I'll touch on in a bit.

Book Review: Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke (@apriltucholke)

Wink Poppy Midnight
Author: April Genevieve Tucholke
Publication Date: March 22, 2016
Published: Dial Books

My Rating:

Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.
Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.
What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying.

I’m not strategic in my reviewing process. I sit at the computer, in front of a blank doc and try to form enough of an opinion to push out a few words. But, with Wink Poppy Midnight it’s taken me ten minutes to get to this point because only one word springs to mind when I think about this title: weird.

Good weird or bad weird?

Book Review: Eight Days A Week by Amber L. Johnson (@whereisjakeryan)

Eight Days A Week by Amber L. Johnson
Publication Date: November 6, 2014
Published: The Writer's Coffee Shop
Source: The Writer's Coffee Shop

My Rating:

Gwen Stone has secrets she’s not ready to reveal. After a recent promotion at work, she needs a caretaker for her children. She’s frenzied and in a lurch and pretty much ready to hire the first person who comes along. So she does.

Andrew Lyons needs to get out of his sister’s apartment, and a Craigslist posting may be the answer to his prayers. But what he thought was an ad for a room rental turns into a job offer he can’t refuse. Accepting the nanny position could change his life, if only he had a clue how to be a grownup.

A working mother, a shirtless manny who looks good in a towel, two children who need more than than a babysitter, and hours of kids’ TV can only spell disaster for everyone involved.

Because a manny should always mind his own business.

And he definitely shouldn’t fall in love with his boss.

Blog Tour: Love and Other Unknown Variables by Shannon Lee Alexander - Review (@shanlalexander) (@entangledteen)

Love and Other Unknown Variables by Shannon Lee Alexander
Publication Date: October 7, 2014
Published: Entangled Teen
Source: YA Bound

My Rating:

Charlie Hanson has a clear vision of his future. A senior at Brighton School of Mathematics and Science, he knows he’ll graduate, go to MIT, and inevitably discover solutions to the universe’s greatest unanswered questions. He’s that smart. But Charlie’s future blurs the moment he reaches out to touch the tattoo on a beautiful girl’s neck.

The future has never seemed very kind to Charlotte Finch, so she’s counting on the present. She’s not impressed by the strange boy at the donut shop—until she learns he’s a student at Brighton where her sister has just taken a job as the English teacher. With her encouragement, Charlie orchestrates the most effective prank campaign in Brighton history. But, in doing so, he puts his own future in jeopardy.

By the time he learns she's ill—and that the pranks were a way to distract Ms. Finch from Charlotte’s illness—Charlotte’s gravitational pull is too great to overcome. Soon he must choose between the familiar formulas he’s always relied on or the girl he’s falling for (at far more than 32 feet per second squared)

Buy Links:

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Book Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (@barrylyga)

I Hunt Killers (Jasper Dent #1) by Barry Lyga
Publication Date: April 3, 2012
Published: Little, Brown and Company
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?
Jasper "Jazz" Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could—from the criminal's point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret—could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Early Book Review: Butterfly Kills: A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery by Brenda Chapman (@brendaAchapman)

Butterfly Kills: A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery by Brenda Chapman
Publication Date: February 24, 2015
Published: Dundurn Group
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

Jacques Rouleau has moved to Kingston to look after his father and take up the position of head of the Criminal Investigations Division. One hot week in late September, university student Leah Sampson is murdered in her apartment; in another corner of the city, Della Munroe is raped by her husband. At first the crimes appear unrelated, but as Sergeant Rouleau and his new team of officers dig into the women's pasts, they discover unsettling coincidences. When Kala Stonechild, one of Rouleau's officers from Ottawa, suddenly appears in Kingston, Rouleau enlists her to help. Stonechild isn't sure if she wants to stay in Kingston, but agrees to help Rouleau in the short-term. While she struggles with trying to decide if she can make a life in this new town, a ghost from her past starts to haunt her. As the detectives delve deeper into the cases, it seems more questions pop up than answers. Who murdered Leah Sampson? And why does Della Monroe's name keep showing up in the murder investigation? Both women were hiding secrets that have unleashed a string of violence. Stonechild and Rouleau race to discover the truth before the violence rips more families apart.

Book Review: I'll Be Watching You by Beverly Barton (@avonbooks)

I'll Be Watching You by Beverly Barton
Publication Date: October 9, 2014
Published: Avon
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

Ella, sweet Ella, you were meant to be mine. You can’t begin to imagine all the things I want to do to you. When the time is right, I will come for you . . .
A series of hand-delivered letters leaves Ella scared for her life. Someone is watching her. Wanting her. Someone promising revenge.
Desperate for the nightmare to end, Ella will do anything to discover the truth. Even join forces with a man who comes with his own danger warning . . .

Book Review: The Imaginary Life by Mara Torres

The Imaginary Life by Mara Torres
Publication Date: August 5, 2014
Published: Grupo Planeta
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

Meet Fortunata Fortuna, at a crossroads but ready to make her mark on the world
What goes through your head when the person you love leaves you? What do you do with your life when you have to start it all over again? Do you make it up? Nata’s world fills with unanswered questions when Beto leaves her. But time doesn’t stop, and the stories that Nata begins to tell herself about her own life lead her to a place where everything becomes possible again.
Original and contemporary, this debut novel, a finalist for the Planeta Prize, has the nerve center of a confessional and introduces readers to Fortunata Fortuna, a character the world won’t soon forget.

Book Review: Bad as in Good by J. Lovelace

Bad as in Good by J. Lovelace
Publication Date: July 29, 2014
Published: Strebor Books
Source: Author, in exchange for honest review

My Rating:

Teeming with dramatic plot twists and wickedly delightful erotic frills, a passionate story about two lovers struggling with heartbreak, heartthrobs, and self-fulfillment.
Many of us fall into unrelenting cycles that lead us to inevitable heartbreak, knee-weakening, nearly unbearable period of withdrawal where we curse our indiscretions and promise to do better next time. But why? Why do we do this to ourselves?
That's the question Erin is constantly asking herself.
Along for the ride is Tariq, a young man battling his past as well. While their romantic lives intertwine, they find it almost impossible to break free of the merciless beast that is love and its ugly stepsister, heartbreak.
At first, Erin's attraction to Tariq is like a drug addiction she can’t ignore, but as drama ensues and the ugly past comes back to visit, both Tariq and Erin realize how bad as in good love truly is.

Book Review: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper (@Jtropper)

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Publication Date: August 6, 2009
Published: Orion

My Rating:

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family—including Judd’s mother, brothers, and sister—have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd’s wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.
Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch’s dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family.
As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd, it’s a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd’s father died: She’s pregnant.
This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

Book Review: Shimmer by Elena Dillon (@ElenaDillon)

Shimmer (Breathe #2) by Elena Dillon
Publication Date: August 28, 2014
Published: Smashwords
Source: Mark My Words Book Publicity

My Rating:

Chandler Raines and her “dad” are on the run. Never staying in one place for very long. It’s just not safe. When they arrive in Lafayette, Louisiana, Chandler quickly realizes this is the place she wants to call home. Friends, a cute boy, and competitive cheerleading have her taking dangerous risks to have the life she always wanted. Risks she promised she wouldn’t take.
When her lies catch up to her, a decision has to be made. Stay or run? Will the evil that’s chased them for the last four years catch up to them? When Chandler’s past comes screeching into the present she’ll have to sacrifice everything to keep what she loves safe. But will it be enough?

Book Review: I Want It That Way by Ann Aguirre (@MsAnnAguirre)

I Want It That Way (2B Trilogy #1) by Ann Aguirre
Publication Date: August 26, 2014
Published: Harlequin
Source: Netgalley

My Rating:

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.