Book Blitz: Twelve Months of Awkward Moments by Lisa Acerbo (Excerpt, Giveaway)


Twelve Months of Awkward Moments
Lisa Acerbo
Publication date: August 30th 2018
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
Dani can’t wait for senior year at college. A straight-A scholar whose anxiety is a daily struggle, being awkward, introverted, and studious has become a way of life. She vows this year will be different. It’s time to move beyond her comfort zone, but that’s not easy.
Dani’s wild roommate and handsome best friend hate each other; her crazy family won’t leave her alone; and a new job forces her to be social. Unfortunately, when college romance finally calls, Dani is unable to answer thanks to a stalker who has her all tied up.
Can she stay alive long enough to find love and graduate?

Blog Tour: Until We're More by Cindi Madsen (Review, Giveaway, Excerpt)


Chelsea is smart, funny, gorgeous, and the best friend I’ve ever had. Ever since she left, I’ve been a wreck. I’ve been focused on keeping my family’s MMA gym afloat while I train and coach fighters, anything to not miss her more. But now she’s finally back, along with her grumpy, possessive cat, and things are weird between us.
By weird, I mean I can’t stop thinking about her in that way. She’s in the room next door, and it takes all my control not to storm in there, sweep her up, and bring her back to my bed. Even stranger, I’m pretty sure she’d be into it.
And this time, I’m not going to stop fighting until we’re more.
Each book in the Fighting for Her series is STANDALONE:
* Until You’re Mine
* Until We’re More


About the Book

Until We’re More 
by Cindi Madsen
Series
Fighting For Her Series
Genre
New Adult
Contemporary Romance
Publisher
Entangled Embrace
Publication Date
August 27, 2018
Purchase Your Copy Today!
Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo  |  iBooks

Book Review: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

The Kiss Quotient

Author: Helen Hoang
Publisher: Berkley (June 5, 2018)
Paperback, 336 pages

Summary
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases--a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice--with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan--from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...

Guest Post: Peekeboo's Corner - New Author Alert! Richard Lloyd Parry

Good evening friends, and welcome back to Peekaboo’s Corner.
This week, we are going to start a new segment that I like to call “New Author Alert.” New to me, anyway. Thanks to my (overwhelming and overstated) love of natural disasters, I picked up “Ghosts of the Tsunami” by Richard Lloyd Parry, and damn, guys, I fell in love.
Our New Author Alert for this week is, you guessed it, nonfiction author, reporter, and world traveler Richard Lloyd Parry.

I won’t be discussing him as a person, because that’s too much effort, and also I don’t really care.
What I do care about is that he wrote a book that punched me in the gut.
The premise of Ghosts of the Tsunami is simple. Parry wrote about the 2011 earthquake, and resulting tsunami, the people it affected, the lengths they had to go to, the horrors they had to endure, and the way the country came away from it. (This is the one that also resulted in a nuclear powerplant meltdown, but Parry doesn’t discuss that as much.)  
This was the first thing I’d read by Parry, but I immediately went to the library and got his other books, and since I was impatient, I began reading them both at the same time.

My thoughts so far:

People Who Eat Darkness - the story of the murder of Lucie Blackman, a British woman living in Tokyo. I have literally never heard of this murder before, but I started it tonight during my dinner break, and I burned through 50 pages real fast. It’s un-put-downable (except for working. Stupid job.)

In The Time Of Madness - This is a deep dive into the events of Indonesia and the fall of General Suharto. I know nothing about this place, or this person, but it’s gripping so far.

Are you into nonfiction? Do you have any recommendations for me? I’ll take all of them.

Dear Diary: Sort of mini hiatus?

Sorry I've been sort of AWOL, friends. It's been a crazy month for me. Toward the end of July I started having weird blind spots in the center of my field of vision that would come and go for about an hour or so at a time. After having my vision basically crap out on my every day for a week, I finally went to the eye doctor, who said my optic nerve in both eyes was elevated and slightly tilted. Boy, did I learn a lot about eyes and the optic nerve! He referred me to another eye doctor to get some photos of the backs of my eyes, and he basically said that pressure in my skull/brain was causing me optic nerves to become elevated (or basically sort of pop out into the ball of my eye, rather than just chilling back behind it like they usually do).



That eye doctor then referred me for an MRI to rule out the possibility of an actual tumor in my brain or any blood clots, and when my MRI came back clean I got my diagnosis of Pseudotumor Cerebri, or Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension. Basically, there's too much cerebrospinal fluid in my brainbox (either because my body is making too much of it, or not absorbing it back into itself correctly) and it's causing pressure on my brain.


Dr. Eyeballman put me on a drug normally used for Glaucoma and, weirdly, altitude sickness that's supposed to help reduce the amount of fluid in my head. It made me pretty sick for the first week or so, and I still can't drink soda because of a weird side effect where the bitter sensors in my tongue are extra sensitive to the carbonation and make it taste like rancid armpit (GROSS), as well as having weird tingling in my heads, feet, and lips that comes and goes. I've also been just really TIRED, and have had an almost constant low-grade headache as well as a lot of blurring in my vision, as well as being hypersensitive to light and sound... BUT, I haven't had any blind spots since I started the medication, so we think it's working! And I go see a neurologist today to talk about next steps, so I'll know more about what the next month or so will be like for me then.

With dealing with all this eyes/brain stuff this past month, it's been taking most of my energy getting through my workday. What little energy I have left is used up with my family (it takes a LOT of energy mothering a 2- and 4-year old!) Anyway, I've been doing about the bare minimum to keep my blog up and running, keeping my tour commitments and trying to get reviews posted for ARC's I've committed to. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things in September, and get some discussion posts up. I'm a little disheartened because I think most of the traffic through here tends to be when I'm hosting a giveaway, so when I didn't have a New Release Giveaway Hop for August my traffic died WAY down. On top of already struggling with depression, it's been tough to make myself keep going with my blog... I've also fallen behind on reading other bookish blogs and keeping up with commenting and the like...


But you know what? I really LIKE blogging, and I do it for me. And I've connected with a few other book bloggers that I'd like to think of as friends. So I'm going to stick around. I'm starting to ramp up some of my crafting projects for the fall, so I might share about some of those here. One of these weekends soon I hope to experiment with some new candle scents, colors, and GLITTER I recently acquired, so I'll post about that a bit. If you've got some fun fandom candle recs, I'd love to hear them. :)

Book Review: The Real Deal by Lauren Blakely

The Real Deal

Author: Lauren Blakely
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (July 10, 2018)
337 pages
Goodreads     Amazon

Summary
April Hamilton wants you to know she hasn’t been on GigsforHire since that time she sold her futon after college. She doesn’t even spend that much time online. And even if she did, she would not be looking up personal ads. But going home alone for her family's summer reunion is an invitation for every single relative to butt into her personal life. She simply can’t handle another blind date with the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker from her hometown. So when she finds the GigsforHire ad for a boyfriend-for-hire, she’s ready to pay to play.

Heading Home and Need a Buffer? I’m the REAL DEAL. 

Theo Banks has been running from the past for years. He’s this close to finally settling all his debts, and one more job as a boyfriend-for-hire will do the trick. He’s no gigolo. Please. He’s something of an actor, and he knows how to slip into any role, including pretending to be April’s new beau -- the bad boy with the heart of gold.

Even if it means sleeping in close quarters in that tiny little bed in her parents’ inn. Even if it means spinning tales of a romance that starts to feel all too true. What neither one of them counts on is that amid the egg toss, the arm wrestling, and a fierce game of Lawn Twister that has them tangled up together, they might be feeling the real deal.

She only wanted to show her family once and for all that she had no need to settle down.

He didn’t expect to have the time of his life at her parent’s home.

They didn’t plan on loving every single second of the game.

But can a masterful game of pretend result in true love?

Blog Tour: The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo by Kerrigan Byrne (Review, Excerpt, Giveaway)

The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Kerrigan Byrne
Series: Victorian Rebels, book 6
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperback (August 28, 2018)
384 pages

Summary
The bravest of heroes. The brashest of rebels. The boldest of lovers. These are the men who risk their hearts and their souls—for the passionate women who dare to love them…

He is known only as The Rook. A man with no name, no past, no memories. He awakens in a mass grave, a magnificent dragon tattoo on his muscled forearm the sole clue to his mysterious origins. His only hope for survival—and salvation—lies in the deep, fiery eyes of the beautiful stranger who finds him. Who nurses him back to health. And who calms the restless demons in his soul…

A LEGENDARY LOVE

Lorelei will never forget the night she rescued the broken dark angel in the woods, a devilishly handsome man who haunts her dreams to this day. Crippled as a child, she devoted herself to healing the poor tortured man. And when he left, he took a piece of her heart with him. Now, after all these years, The Rook has returned. Like a phantom, he sweeps back into her life and avenges those who wronged her. But can she trust a man who’s been branded a rebel, a thief, and a killer? And can she trust herself to resist him when he takes her in his arms?


Book Review: Bad Reputation by Stefanie London

Bad Reputation

Author: Stefanie London
Series: Bad Bachelors, book 2
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca (August 7, 2018)
Mass market paperback, 384 pages
Goodreads     Amazon

Summary
Wes Evans, son of Broadway royalty, just wants to achieve something without riding on his family's coattails. Too bad the whole world is talking about his sex life after the notorious Bad Bachelors app dubs him "The Anaconda." But when he sees a talented ballet dancer, he knows she is exactly what he needs to make his show a success.

Remi Drysdale only had one thought when she fled Australia for New York--never mix business with pleasure again. Ever. She gets the perfect chance to reclaim her career when a handsome stranger asks her to audition for his show. Remi promises herself not to tangle with the guy who holds her career in his hands...no matter how enticing his reviews are on the Bad Bachelors app...

Blog Tour: The Governess Game by Tessa Dare (Review, Excerpt, Teaser, Giveaway)


He’s been a bad, bad rake—and it takes a governess to teach him a lesson.
The accidental governess.
After her livelihood slips through her fingers, Alexandra Mountbatten takes on an impossible post: transforming a pair of wild orphans into proper young ladies. However, the girls don’t need discipline. They need a loving home. Try telling that to their guardian, Chase Reynaud: duke’s heir in the streets and devil in the sheets. The ladies of London have tried—and failed—to make him settle down. Somehow, Alexandra must reach his heart . . . without risking her own.
The infamous rake.
Like any self-respecting libertine, Chase lives by one rule: no attachments. When a stubborn little governess tries to reform him, he decides to give her an education—in pleasure. That should prove he can’t be tamed. But Alexandra is more than he bargained for: clever, perceptive, passionate. She refuses to see him as a lost cause. Soon the walls around Chase’s heart are crumbling . . . and he’s in danger of falling, hard.

About the Book

The Governess Gameby Tessa Dare
SeriesThe Girl Meets Duke Series
GenreAdult
Historical Romance
PublisherAvon Books
Publication DateAugust 28, 2018
Purchase Your Copy Today!
Amazon  |  Avon Romance  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Google Play  |  iBooks

Book Review: Head Over Heels by Serena Bell

Head Over Heels

Author: Serena Bell
Publisher: Loveswept (June 5, 2018)
ebook, 221 pages
Goodreads   Amazon

Summary
They thought they were wrong for each other. That was before she moved in. . . .

Chase:
Take it from me, never hire your best friend to be your live-in nanny. Because it’s a lot easier to be friends with a woman who isn’t prancing around your house in yoga pants. As a newly full-time dad, I needed help fast. I knew she was good with kids. And I thought things between us were strictly platonic. Now, with Olivia Stratten crashing in my guest room and steaming up the bathroom with the scent of her shampoo, it’s getting harder and harder—no pun intended—to remember all the reasons we’re supposed to be incompatible.

Liv: When Chase Crayton asked me to watch his five-year-old daughter until he could find someone full-time, I was afraid we’d drive each other nuts. But with Chase’s job on the line, I couldn’t say no. What I didn’t anticipate was how combustible our chemistry would be in close quarters. Neither of us did. After all, we first met on a blind date, and by the end of it, we were laughing about how terrible we’d be as a couple. In the two years since, nothing ever happened between us, not even a kiss—not until last night. . . .

Head Over Heels is a standalone novel with no cheating, no cliffhangers, and a satisfying happily ever after.


Rating: 4 stars
Review
First of all - UGH, first person present tense. WHY? Thankfully, Serena Bell makes it work for her for the most part. This book is very reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally with the whole premise of "Can men and women just be friends?" Head Over Heels is fun and lighthearted, but at the same time it absolutely made me cry towards the end because Bell really made me care about the characters.

Chase and Liv are total opposites - Liv is high maintenance and into interior decor, and Chase is happiest going for an extended camping trip during which he doesn't bother to shower. They meet on a blind date and instantly know that a romantic relationship would never work out for them, but somehow they end up becoming best friends, and that's all they'll ever be... or is it?

Chase and Liv both have dark things in their past that effect the adults they've become, and that hold them back and trap them. This is a really fun friends to lovers, opposites attract romance, but it also is a book about how Chase and Liv deal with their childhood trauma. They both have struggles they need to overcome and I love that there is so much character development for both of them throughout the book. Also, Chase's daughter Katie is the most adorable thing in the world and I want to hug her and squeeze her and play Princesses and Fairies with her and squeeze her little cheeks. While there are plenty of serious issues being dealt with, there is also a LOT of fun to be had, and the back and forth between Liv and Chase is so great.

I'm not usually a big fan of stories with single moms/single dads/kids, but I'm glad I gave Head Over Heels a read. I definitely recommend it for anyone who loves a good friends to lovers romance. 

Discussion: Real life bookish friends

This post is inspired by one Laura posted over at Boats Against the Current about real life bookish friends. In her post, Laura talks about how most of her bookish friends are people she's met online, especially through book blogging. It got me to thinking about how lucky I am to have so many booknerds in my life.

I have many bookish friends, though we don’t always have the same taste in books.

I come from a family that reads, and growing up my dad always had a western in his hands and Mom always had a romance novel. Now they both seem to gravitate towards mysteries/thrillers, which is nice because they share books. My brother is a voracious reader and some of our sci-fi/fantasy interests overlap, but he’s much more into sci-fi and I think thrillers/horror while I go more toward sci-fi/fantasy and romance. My sister-in-law is also a reader, though honestly I have no idea what she likes to read. Hmm...

I have a weirdly large number of friends from high school who got their MLS degree and are now librarians, if that gives you an idea of how many bookish people I surround myself with, haha. I remember once in middle school, there was a “rule” about no reading at the table because lunchtime is for socializing. Friend A told Friend B “Hey! No reading at the table!” and Friend B said “But Elley is reading…” The response was “Yeah, well, she gets a special pass, she’s never not reading.” So you can pretty much picture high school me right there. We also tried to start a literary club, and all I really remember about it is that we each picked a weird alliterative color name; Friend A was Prissy Purpy, another friend was Gwen Green, and I think I was Lana Lellow. ...And I am still a giant nerd to this very day.

I am lucky enough to have two BFFs who are readers, though one of them looks down her nose rather at my current love of romance novels. She recommends amazing books, though, and they tend to be ones that really make me think. We seem to talk mostly about fantasy, and she was bugging me to read A Song of Ice and Fire looooong before the show ever came out on HBO. She also introduced me to Margaret Atwood ...I really should listen to her more.

My other BFF lives an hour and a half drive away but has really similar reading tastes, so we talk a LOT, but it’s mostly online over Facebook messenger and the like. You may recognize her from her monthly guest posts on my blog, Peekaboo's Corner. Someday she'll figure out how we can do a long distance podcast, and then we'll REALLY set the bookish world on fire. Oh wait, fire and paper is bad...

My husband is also a reader, though not as voracious a reader as I am. He reads mostly Dragonlance books and the Wheel of Time series, and while I tried to get into them I thought they were boooooriiiiing. Still, sometimes I read a book that I know he’ll love, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and then I will throw it at his head (sometimes literally) and yell “READ THIS RIGHT NOW!” Sometimes he does, and then we can talk about books together, which is pretty much the perfect romance, haha.

Since I started book blogging and actually USING my Twitter account (for mostly book stuff) I feel like I'm connecting with the bookish community as a whole, and I feel like I'm starting to forge little fledgling friendships with a few others online. It's hard because the online community, while great at connecting people from all over the globe, can feel a little impersonal sometimes. I just started participating in the #otspsecretsister project this round, which is sort of a like a giant bookish Secret Santa project that runs for 6 months, and I feel like I'm getting closer to that bookish group as well.

How about you? Do you have many bookish friends? Are they online or IRL or a mix of both?

Book Review: The Counterfeit Boyfriend by Cindi Madsen

The Counterfeit Boyfriend

Author: Cindi Madsen
Publisher: Cindi Madsen Books (June 25, 2018)

Goodreads   Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)

Summary
My twin brother’s talked me into a lot of crazy things, but taking his place on a road trip with his girlfriend so he can party with his friends is a whole new level of insanity. What’s even more insane is I somehow find myself agreeing to it—thanks, alcohol, guilt, and bribery. I’m determined to undo the arrangement, but then I meet Gwen, this sexy redheaded hurricane of energy and brains.

And then she kisses me. Just like that, I’m driving her up the coast, on our way to a wedding with a mess of complications. With each hour and each stop, I’m falling harder and harder for a woman who doesn’t know my actual name.

I’m trying to do the right thing. Or the lesser of the wrong things. All my life I’ve had to clean up my brother’s messes, but for the first time ever, I’ve landed the upper hand in one of our switcheroo schemes. Now I’ve just got to come clean and convince Gwen that I’m the brother she should be with.


Rating: 4 stars
Review
This book is so cheesy and unrealistic and I just adored it. It got off to a bit of a rocky start and I almost stopped reading it after the first chapter, but kept going in the hopes that I could count it for a particular category in a book bingo challenge I'm participating in. Turns out it didn't fit the book bingo category, but I'm glad I kept reading anyway! Counterfeit Boyfriend is told in the first person past tense, which seemed really odd to me and sometimes came off as feeling pretty awkward and cumbersome. The POV switched between Ethan and Gwen, and it's really interesting to get each of their viewpoint into what they're feeling and what's happening, and this way the reader really gets the full impact of the number of times/situations in which if the timing/wording/circumstances had just been a SMIDGE different, everything would have turned out in such a different way.

This book is fun fluff, and besides, I'm a sucker for both the road trip romance trope as well as the mistaken identity trope. Gwen and Ethan are so cute together, and the level of banter!

"I know you're strong and all, but you're not the Hulk."
"Are you sure about that? Have you ever seen me get angry enough to test that theory? I mean I'm not confirming or denying anything, but I'd also like to point out that you haven't seen me and Superman in the same room, either."


Later the whole Hulk/Superman thing comes up a couple more times, and it's just hilarious and touching and nerdy and I love it. This whole book is just a great summer beach read, and is great if what you're looking for a cheesy trope-y fluffy romp, with a dollop of heartbreak, a sprinkle of grand gestures, and a whole heck of a lot of happy-ever-after.

Book Blitz: The Geek and the Goddess by Allie Everhart (Excerpt, Giveaway)


The Geek and the Goddess
Allie Everhart
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: Romance, Young Adult
People always say they wish they could predict the future. But not me. I already know my future. I’m going to lose my sight. I don’t know exactly when, but it’s going to happen. And it’s the reason I’ll never fall in love.
At least that’s what I thought. Until one day a guy walks into my chem class and changes all that.
I thought for sure he’d avoid me after he saw how people at school treat me. The teasing. The nicknames. Just being seen with me is enough to ruin his reputation, yet this guy still wanted to date me. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
That’s how it began. How it ended is not at all what I expected. Ours is an unlikely love story.

Book Blitz: The Girl Who Sees by Dima Zales (Teaser, Giveaway)


The Girl Who Sees
Dima Zales
(Sasha Urban, #1)
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: New Adult, Urban Fantasy
I’m an illusionist, not a psychic.
Going on TV is supposed to advance my career, but things go wrong.
Like vampires and zombies kind of wrong.
My name is Sasha Urban, and this is how I learned what I am.










Book Review: Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

Sea Witch

Author: Sarah Henning
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (July 31, 2018)
Hardcover, 368 pages
Goodreads   Amazon

Summary
Everyone knows what happens in the end. A mermaid, a prince, a true love’s kiss. But before that young siren’s tale, there were three friends. One feared, one royal, and one already dead.

Ever since her best friend, Anna, drowned, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. A freak. A curse. A witch.

A girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears offshore and, though the girl denies it, Evie is convinced that her best friend actually survived. That her own magic wasn’t so powerless after all. And, as the two girls catch the eyes—and hearts—of two charming princes, Evie believes that she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.

But her new friend has secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad, or on two legs, unless Evie finds a way to help her. Now Evie will do anything to save her friend’s humanity, along with her prince’s heart—harnessing the power of her magic, her ocean, and her love until she discovers, too late, the truth of her bargain.

Rating: 5 stars
Review
fell in love with Sea Witch, and I fell hard. I'd kind of like my heart back please, and maybe some tape or glue so I can try to piece it back together? Thanks.

I kept thinking I knew what to expect next from this book, and then no. No I did not. It's written in the first person present tense, which I don't really love but Henning makes it work for her with a few minorly awkward seeming areas. Interspersed through the main story being told in Evie's (present tense) voice, there are flashback chapters told from an omniscient view that alternates focus on various major players. Just when I'd start to get comfortable and smug, thinking I knew what was in play and what was coming next, there'd be one of these expository chapters that would reveal the inner mind and motivations (and machinations) of various characters. Then suddenly it was like my whole world was tipped on its axis and I was like "Wait, what? WHAT?!?!" I just... I can't... This book... *sigh*

Just amazing. Words can't express the level of amazing this book is. Are we sure this is Sarah Henning's debut novel? And, um, can she please have a whole dragon hoard of almost-finished novels that will be ready to publish very soon that are just as mind-blowingly amazing as Sea Witch? Because I have definitely added Sarah Henning to the top of my auto-buy list.

Evie is a great character and, having heard that this is sort of an Ursula (from Disney's The Little Mermaid) origin story, I kept trying to figure out where she'd go to the bad. I have a soft spot for villains, especially believable villains who are the hero of their own story, or who fall while trying to do the right thing. I love the complexity of the relationships between them all, and I had some major second-lead syndrome going on too.

Monthly Wrap-Up: July 2018

2018 Reading Challenge




Books read in July: 12

Books read in 2018: 109/150

I had been tracking the children's books ARCs I'd been reading all year, and decided I didn't like counting children's books in my number of books read. SO! Edited my dates read in Goodreads to get an accurate snapshot of how many middle-grade and above books I've read this year. ;)


#RippedBodiceBingo


The Ripped Bodice's 2nd Annual Summer Romance Bingo runs from June 1 to August 31

Each square represents a book you've read this summer, and you fill in the square with the title & author once you've met the criteria. To get a bingo you need to get 5 in a row (vertical or horizontal) and for each row you complete you can enter to win prizes at https://www.therippedbodicela.com/bingo



My progress for July: 9

    • Damsel in Distress: Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn (read 7.1)
    • Fairy Tale Retelling: Beast by Lisa Jensen (read 7.13)
    • Queer Historical: A Gentleman Never Keeps Score (read 7.14)
    • Tech in the Big City: Status Update by Annabeth Albert (read 7.20)
    • Book That is Now A Movie: Matchmaker's Playbook by Rachel Van Dyken (read 7.22)
    • Heroine's Eyes are Described Using the Ocean: The Princess Bride (the good parts version) (read 7.24)
    • Fashionista: Born to Be Wilde by Eloisa James (read 7.24)
    • Extreme Location: Duke By Default by Alyssa Cole (read 7.31)
    • Firefighter: Under Control by Shannon Stacey (read/marked DNF 7.31)
Total: 17/25

Book Review: Grump: The (Fairly) True Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by Liesl Shurtliff

Grump: The (Fairly) True Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Author: Liesl Shurtliff
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (May 29th, 2018)
Hardcover, 304 pages
Goodreads   Amazon

Summary
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rump, comes the true story behind another unlikely hero: a grumpy dwarf who gets tangled up in Snow White's feud with the wicked queen.

Ever since he was a dwarfling, Borlen (nicknamed "Grump") has dreamed of visiting The Surface, so when opportunity knocks, he leaves his cavern home behind.
At first, life aboveground is a dream come true. Queen Elfrieda Veronika Ingrid Lenore (E.V.I.L.) is the best friend Grump always wanted, feeding him all the rubies he can eat and allowing him to rule at her side in exchange for magic and information. But as time goes on, Grump starts to suspect that Queen E.V.I.L. may not be as nice as she seems. . . .
When the queen commands him to carry out a horrible task against her stepdaughter Snow White, Grump is in over his head. He's bound by magic to help the queen, but also to protect Snow White. As if that wasn't stressful enough, the queen keeps bugging him for updates through her magic mirror! He'll have to dig deep to find a way out of this pickle, and that's enough to make any dwarf Grumpy indeed.


Elley the Book Otter is MOVING

Hello friends! I'm MOVING my blog from Blogger over to Wordpress. If you're following me via Bloglovin, you don't need to do a...