Book Review: Devoted to Pleasure by Shayla Black

Devoted to Pleasure

Author: Shayla Black
Series: Devoted Lovers, book 1
Publisher: Berkley (July 3, 2018)
Goodreads     Amazon

Summary
The first in an all-new sexy contemporary romance series from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shayla Black.

Bodyguard and former military man Cutter Bryant has always done his duty--no matter what the personal cost. Now he's taking one last high-octane, high-dollar assignment before settling down in a new role that means sacrificing his chance at love. But he never expects to share an irresistible chemistry with his beautiful new client.

Fame claimed Shealyn West suddenly and with a vengeance after starring in a steamy television drama, but it has come at the expense of her heart. Though she's pretending to date a co-star for her image, a past mistake has come back to haunt her. With a blackmailer watching her every move and the threat of career-ending exposure looming, Shealyn hires Cutter to shore up her security, never imagining their attraction will be too powerful to contain.

As Shealyn and Cutter navigate the scintillating line between business and pleasure, they unravel a web of secrets that threaten their relationship and their lives. When danger strikes, Cutter must decide whether to follow his heart for the first time, or risk losing Shealyn forever.

Book Review: First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Philips

First Star I See Tonight

Author: Susan Elizabeth Philips
Series: Chicago Stars, book 8
Publisher: Avon (June 27, 2017)
(first published August 23, 2016)
Paperback, 273 pages
Goodreads     Amazon

Summary
A star quarterback and a feisty detective play for keeps in this sporty, sexy, sassy novel—a long-awaited new entry in the beloved, award-winning, New York Times bestselling author’s fan-favorite Chicago Stars football series.

Piper Dove is a woman with a dream—to become the best detective in the city of Chicago. First job? Trail former Chicago Stars quarterback, Cooper Graham. Problem? Graham’s spotted her, and he’s not happy.

Which is why a good detective needs to think on her feet. “The fact is . . . I’m your stalker. Not full-out barmy. Just . . . mildly unhinged.”

Piper soon finds herself working for Graham himself, although not as the bodyguard he refuses to admit he so desperately needs. Instead, he’s hired her to keep an eye on the employees at his exclusive new nightclub. But Coop’s life might be in danger, and Piper’s determined to protect him, whether he wants it or not. (Hint: Not!) If only she weren’t also dealing with a bevy of Middle Eastern princesses, a Pakistani servant girl yearning for freedom, a teenager who just wants of fit in, and an elderly neighbor demanding Piper find her very dead husband.

And then there’s Cooper Graham himself, a legendary sports hero who always gets what he wants—even if what he wants is a feisty detective hell bent on proving she’s as tough as he is.

From the bustling streets of Chicago to a windswept lighthouse on Lake Superior to the glistening waters of Biscayne Bay, two people who can’t stand to lose will test themselves and each other to discover what matters most.

Blog Tour: Love Scene, Take Two by Alex Evansley (Review, Giveaway)

Love Scene, Take Two
Alex Evansley
Published by: Swoon Reads
Publication date: June 12th 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Debut author Alex Evansley delivers a sweet summer romance in this inventive novel about a young heartthrob and teen author falling in love.
Teddy Sharpe is kind of famous. He might actually be on his way to being really famous, especially if he’d nailed an audition for the lead role in the movie adaption of the newest bestselling young adult book series. There’s just one problem: He totally blew the audition. And he’s stuck in a tiny North Carolina airport. And his maybe-ex- girlfriend kind of just broke up with him.
The weekend isn’t exactly looking good until Bennett Caldwell, author of the very book series he just auditioned for, takes pity on him and invites him to her family’s lake house. Away from the glitz and glam of Hollywood for a few days, Teddy starts to relax . . . and somehow he and Bennett just click. But dating is hard enough when you aren’t the subject of several dozen fanblogs, and the Internet is full of juicy gossip about Teddy and Bennett . . . gossip that Bennett might not be prepared to handle.
Chosen by readers like you for Macmillan’s young adult imprint Swoon Reads, Alex Evansley’s debut novel, written from both Bennett and Teddy’s perspectives, will have teens laughing, swooning, and falling in love along with these fantastically relatable characters.

Book Review: Infamous (Famous #2) by Jenny Holiday

Infamous

Author: Jenny Holiday
Series: Famous, Book 2
Publisher: Jenny Holiday
Publishing date: March 20, 2018
Kindle, 272 pages
Amazon  Goodreads

Summary: Is he brave enough to face the music?

All that up-and-coming musician Jesse Jamison has ever wanted is to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. When a gossip website nearly catches him kissing someone who isn’t his famous girlfriend—and also isn’t a girl—he considers the near miss a wake-up call. There’s a lot riding on his image as the super-straight rocker, and if he wants to realize his dreams, he’ll need to toe the line. Luckily, he’s into women too. Problem solved.

After a decade pretending to be his ex’s roommate, pediatrician Hunter Wyatt is done hiding. He might not know how to date in the Grindr world, how to make friends in a strange city, or whether his new job in Toronto is a mistake. But he does know that no one is worth the closet. Not even the world’s sexiest rock star.

As Jesse’s charity work at Hunter’s hospital brings the two closer together, a bromance develops. Soon, Hunter is all Jesse can think about. But when it comes down to a choice between Hunter and his career, he’s not sure he’s brave enough to follow his heart.

Rating: 5 stars

Review: I grow increasingly convinced that Jenny Holiday is incapable of writing a book I don't fiercely love. Like the first book in the Famous series, this is another slow burn, friends to lovers story, this one a M/M romance where the first book was a M/F romance. Can I just say, I love the inclusion of more than one type of couple in this series? Usually you see a series that's all M/F, or all M/M, but I think this is my first series with a straight couple in one book and a gay couple in another. And apparently slow burn friends-to-lovers stories are my new favorite.

Jenny Holiday writes a mean slow burn romance. Gah. Words, there are none. Jesse Jamison is on his way to stardom with his band, Jesse and the Joyrides. (LOVE the band name!) He's got this formula he follows so he knows who to sit next to on the train to avoid conversation (which is hilarious, smart, and adorable) but makes the choice to sit next to a super hot guy (Baby Silver Fox, he calls him), whom he winds up really enjoying talking to.

Hunter (aka Dr. Baby Silver Fox...) just got out of an 8 year long bad relationship where basically his boyfriend kept him in the closet in regards to his family and friends, so he's moved to Toronto for a fresh start. He's a hospitalist (uh, basically a pediatrician for the hospital instead of at a medical practice?) and oh, my god, could there be a more perfect man alive? (The answer is no, there could not.) Fast forward a few years after Jesse and Hunter's meeting on the train, and one of Hunter's, Avery, is a huge Jesse and the Joyrides fan. I want to keep talking about how they meet up again and become friends etc. etc., but really, just read the book. I'm sitting here trying to write this review and I've got a stupid grin on my face just remembering this book, especially certain Hunter/Jesse scenes that I want to talk about but I don't want to ruin it with spoilers! And not only are the leading characters amazing, the side characters are also a delight, especially Avery and the guys that make up Jesse's band (but especially Billy, LMAO!)

This is the second book in the Famous series, but it can be read as a stand alone. There are some minor spoilers for the first book in the series, Famous , but frankly they're barely passing mentions so you're unlikely to spoil anything for yourself. That being said, Famous is also an amazing read, so if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for?!

Book Review: Famous by Jenny Holiday

Famous

Author: Jenny Holiday
Series: Famous, Book 1
Publisher: Jenny Holiday
Publishing date: July 11, 2017
Kindle, 282 pages
Amazon  Goodreads

Summary: Everyone knows her face. He knows her heart.

Emerson Quinn is famous. Girls want to be her. Boys want to date her. Each record outsells the last. All that remains is to continue transitioning her brand from its teenage fan base to a more mature, diverse audience. So she’s under strict orders to play nice with her army of assigned co-songwriters and to knock off the serial dating that keeps landing her in the tabloids. If she follows instructions, she can look forward to an indefinite run at the top of the celebrity ecosystem. There’s only one problem with this plan: Emerson is miserable.

So she runs away, impulsively fleeing her L.A. life and heading for a small Iowa college town where a guy she once knew lives. He’s the only person in the world she can think of who might be enough of a nerd to not know about Emerson Quinn the brand. Who might be willing to provide a haven where she can lay low and write her new album by herself, on her own terms.

Art history professor Evan Winslow knows a thing or two about leaving your past behind. He’s worked hard to establish himself far from the spotlight of his infamous father. He’s up for tenure soon, which will mean job security for life. All he has to do to lock down his hard-won, blessedly quiet existence is keep his head down.

Too bad the most famous pop star in the world—who also happens to be his long-lost muse—has just shown up on his doorstep.

Rating: 5 stars

Review: I fell in love with this book so hard. Famous is sweet yet sexy, with just enough angst to make your heart flail a bit but still remain fluffy. I want to snuggle with this book while listening to Emerson Quinn's music on repeat.

The set up is so sweet - Emmy and Evan meet at a wedding and have a moment, but as he's 26 and she's only 19 they have their one night of PG-13 rated connection, and then go their separate ways. Emmy is just starting on the path toward her future, and Evan's life has basically crumbled around him and he's off to the opposite side of the country to start over himself. Fast forward 7 years and our story truly begins...

Emmy is so great, though I kept having visions of Taylor Swift appear in my head... I have to say that I LOVE that she's from Minneapolis and played her first show at First Ave. Being a Minnesota girl myself, I feel like Emmy and I could totally have been buds. ;) She's so sweet and earnest, and I adore her relationship with her manager, Tony. Her "incognito" look made me laugh, and I love the personal growth the goes through in this book. It's like she started hitting it hard to reach her dreams so early, she didn't really learn to be a "real girl," so I love that she gets to embrace doing "real girl" things.

Evan is a hot nerd and totally swoon-worthy. He's got some shadows in his past with his criminal father, and needs to learn to come to terms with his past in order to embrace his future. I love a tortured artist and this book has TWO OF THEM! Emmy is struggling to find her voice in her music, and Evan is a painter who doesn't paint. Gah! I can't even with these two.

Besides the main characters being adorable and making me want to have a summer BBQ with them, the side characters in this book are also phenomenal, especially Emmy's manager Tony and Evan's next door neighbor Mrs. Johansen. OH MY GOSH, Mrs. Johansen. I just love feisty old ladies, and her online dating exploits are hilarious.

What are you still reading this review for? GO READ FAMOUS RIGHT NOW.

Book Review: Acting on Impulse (Love on Cue #1) by Mia Sosa

Acting on Impulse

Author: Mia Sosa
Series: Love on Cue, Book 1
Publisher: Avon Impulse
Published: October 31, 2017
Paperback, 400 pages

Goodreads  Amazon

Summary: After a very public breakup with a media-hungry politician, fitness trainer Tori Alvarez escapes to Aruba for rest, relaxation, and copious amounts of sex on the beach—the cocktail, that is. She vows to keep her vacation a man-free zone but when a cute guy is seated next to her on the plane, Tori can’t resist a little harmless flirting.

Hollywood heartthrob Carter Stone underwent a dramatic physical transformation for his latest role and it’s clear his stunning seat mate doesn’t recognize the man beneath the shaggy beard and extra lean frame. Now Carter needs help rebuilding his buff physique and Tori is perfect for the job. It doesn’t hurt that she makes his pulse pound in more ways than one.

Sparks are flying, until a pesky paparazzo reveals Carter’s identity. Tori is hurt and pissed. She wants nothing to do with another man in the limelight, but she’s still got to whip him into shape. Can Carter convince Tori he’s worth the threat to her privacy that comes with dating a famous actor, or will Tori chisel him down to nothing before he even gets the chance?

Grab the popcorn…

Rating: 4 stars



Review: This is a sloooooow burn, but so worth it. It's told in a dual first-person present tense POV. I don't normally love the first person present tense, but Mia Sosa makes it work here. I do like that we get both Carter and Tori's POV as well, so we get to know both of them intimately.

I loved Carter. He's so cute and funny, and the way he falls into insta-love with (and declares to the reader he is going to marry) the woman in 12D made me giggle, and I thought it was funny the way he was referring to her as "my wife" until he found out she had a boyfriend (supposedly). Now that is some #instalove I can get behind! It's so refreshing to read a book where the man falls head over heels for the woman and she takes some time to come around, haha.

I also really liked Tori, and her complicated relationship with her family really touched my heart. Her struggles with her need to eat healthfully and care for the health of her family clashes with the type of food they serve at their restaurant and the role food plays in their culture, and I love the way this is resolved. (I won't say more than that for fear of spoilers - you'll just have to read the book!) Tori is so tough and sassy, and I love the first few sessions of her training regimen with Carter. Again, that's all I'll say, but... Zumba. Pfft, hee hee hee. <3

Acting on Impulse is fun and flirty and hot as hell, but it felt like it dragged on a little longer than it needed to. Towards the end I actually started yelling at the book and giving it a frustrated shake or two, because it seemed like obstacles and misunderstandings kept popping up in really unbelievable ways, and both main characters really seemed to be blowing hot and cold and blowing things all out of proportions for no reason. Some of the sex scenes were a little squidgy for me, too, especially some of Carter's dirty talk. It just ventured into a place I find less hot and more ick, which is likely just a matter of taste. The first two-thirds of this book are a solid 5 star rating, but the final third (or maybe just the final quarter) dropped it to a 4 star rating for me.

This is the first book in the series, Pretending He's Mine, came out last month and you'd better believe I immediately went and bought it upon finishing Acting on Impulse. I always feel like how fast I buy other books in the series is a pretty good indicator of how great a book way. :) There is some great lead up in this first book in the series to very subtly set the stage for the second book, but I'm betting each can be read as a stand alone.

Book Review: Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Book Review: Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Narrated by Eileen Stevens & Tristan Morris

Rating: 3 Stars

Published April 4th 2017 by Quirk Books
Summary: Anything can happen once upon a con…

When geek girl Elle Wittimer sees a cosplay contest sponsored by the producers of Starfield, she has to enter. First prize is an invitation to the ExcelsiCon Cosplay Ball and a meet-and-greet with the actor slated to play Federation Prince Carmindor in the reboot. Elle’s been scraping together tips from her gig at the Magic Pumpkin food truck behind her stepmother’s back, and winning this contest could be her ticket out once and for all—not to mention a fangirl’s dream come true.

Teen actor Darien Freeman is less than thrilled about this year’s ExcelsiCon. He used to live for conventions, but now they’re nothing but jaw-aching photo sessions and awkward meet-and-greets. Playing Federation Prince Carmindor is all he’s ever wanted, but the diehard Starfield fandom has already dismissed him as just another heartthrob. As ExcelsiCon draws near, closet nerd Darien feels more and more like a fake—until he meets a girl who shows him otherwise.
(from Goodreads)

Review: read this book as part of the Audible Romance Package. There are some minor issues with the file itself - a couple spots where lines are randomly repeated. It's not a big deal, but does sort of break the magic.

I didn’t love the Darien chapters narrated by Tristan Morris at first, but he grew on my after a while. He just sounds too old/mature to be Darien, who is supposed to be 18. Eileen Stevens reads Elle's chapters, and she has this weird surfer twang (which is the only way I can think of saying it), where sometimes she sounds like she's a Cali girl, and sometimes she sounds like she's from Texas. I guess she's supposed to be from Charleston? I don't hear it. Though once the book mentions twice in quick succession that they're in Charleston, it sounds a lot more like a Southern accent, though I don't know if that's the author adjusting or just my brain recognizing it. And I guess the annoying Cali-Texan twang of the step-monsters is Southern valley girl? Eh. Maybe it will help someone, apparently she's in Charleston and he's filming in Atlanta. Only took me until Chapter 26 to figure that out… Which is silly because Goodreads lists the setting right on the book info page…
Accents aside, both of them put inflections in strange places, and I wish I'd read this in type rather than listening to the audiobook - I feel like I might have rated it higher. I also didn't love the way the narrator switched between chapters and would have preferred hearing both viewpoints from just a single narrator. I preferred Eileen Stevens' Darien voice. OK, enough about the audiobook.

Elle's relationship to StarWarsTrekFirefly (or whatever her fandom is called) reminds me of a game my nerd friends like to play called "Fake Nerd Boy," where you intentionally ask really obscure trivia about some bit of nerdery or fandom flim-flam, and if the person doesn't answer correctly you jeer "Fake nerd boy, fake nerd boy!" at them (or fake nerd girl, as the case may be). They play it all in fun, but Elle comes off as one of those people who if you don't love her fandom or nerdery in the exact same way she does, and know as much trivia as she does, that means you don't "really" love it. It is by far and away my least favorite nerd-type, ugh. Which, of course, made me kind of dislike our leading lady - even when someone turns around and does the fake nerdboy to her.

I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with this book. Being something of a misfit nerd-girl myself, I wanted to like it a lot, and there were some bits I really appreciated. There were also several parts where I literally said "UGH" out loud. Part of the ugh-ish-ness was due to the less-than-stellar narration, so maybe it would have been more heavily weighted in the "love" category if I'd read this in print. I hit about the 50% mark in the audiobook and wanted to switch to something else - I was just DONE with this book. Thankfully I stuck with it, and after a bit it got better again (swinging me further from "hate" and closer to "love" again).

The beginning was good, and the last several chapters were also pretty good, so I suppose I can forgive the middle. I like the modern spin on the Cinderella theme, especially The Magic Pumpkin food truck, and Sage is awesome (if horribly narrated by Eileen Stevens… OK, right, I said no more complaining about the narration). Instead of friendly mice and birds, Elle has a neglected neighbor's dachshund. There's the epic attempt to get a dress (costume) ready for the ball (masquerade) and last minute crushing of hopes by the evil stepsisters and obligatory intervention of the fairy godmother (or punk-rock friend). The lost slipper. I do like that Ashley Poston went with the trend to make one of the evil step-sisters less evil (ala Marguerite and Jacqueline in Ever After) and love the little hints at Sage's relationship. I actually thought that was coming back when Sage was being sneaky the first time she was in Elle's house… Haha. I also really like the description of the convention, and all the nerd people coming together. OH, it just hit me that she's like Con Royalty. So she's a princess. Dur.