Day: September 5, 2013

Review: Dragonfly by Leigh T. Moore.

Posted September 5, 2013 by Rowena in Reviews | 0 Comments

DragonflyRowena’s review of Dragonfly (Dragonfly #1) by Leigh T. Moore.

Main Character: Anna
Love Interest: Jack, Julian

Dragonfly
“Gossip Girl meets VC Andrews in this contemporary family saga. Love, lies, and betrayal become the new normal when Anna enters the world of Jack and Lucy Kyser.” –Magan Vernon, international bestselling author of The Only Exception

Three bad things I learned this year:
-People you trust lie, even parents.
-That hot guy, the one who’s totally into you, he might not be the one.
-Things are not always how they appear.

Three good things I learned this year:
-Best friends are always there for you, even when they’re far away.
-That other hot guy, the one who remembers your birthday, he just might be the one.
-Oh, and things are not always how they appear.

Anna Sanders expected an anonymous (and uneventful) senior year until she crossed paths with rich-and-sexy Jack Kyser and his twin sister Lucy.

Pulling Anna into their extravagant lifestyle on the Gulf Coast, Lucy pushed Anna outside her comfort zone, and Jack showed her feelings she’d never experienced… Until he mysteriously withdrew.

Anna turned to her internship at the city paper and to her old attraction for Julian, a handsome local artist and rising star, for distraction. But both led to her discovery of a decades-old secret closely guarded by the twins’ distant, single father.

A secret that could permanently change all their lives.

This is the first book in the Dragonfly series by Leigh T. Moore and it was a fast read.  Lots of things happen and the ending was a bit abrupt but there’s another book out already so it’s hard to stay mad about all of that.  I’ve read a few other books by Moore and thought I would enjoy this book as well and well, I did.

This story introduces Anna Sanders who just lost her best friend right before senior year.  She didn’t lose her because she died or anything like that.  She just moved away, leaving Anna behind and while Anna misses her, what can she do?  Anna expects that her senior year is going to be a dud because she’s all alone but much to everyone’s surprise, her senior really takes off.

Anna meets the Kyser twins and is thrown into their rich world when she starts dating Jack and becomes friends with Jack’s twin sister Lucy.  Anna is drawn to Jack through sheer lust and the attraction gets her every single time that she’s around him.  Jack is mysterious and quiet but there are things going on with him that nobody knows about so it’s hard to trust him….but none of that matters to Anna.  She likes him and she’ll take him any way that she can.

But then there’s Julian Lasalle, a guy that she’s known for a while, who she considers a friend is starting to get real flirty with her …and she likes it.  But Julian has always been off limits to Anna because her best friend had a thing for him and called dibs on him.  Now that she’s gone, he’s game and he’s acting like he really wants to be caught by Anna.

A lot of things go down in this book and I thought it’d be hard to keep up but it wasn’t.  Talbert does a great job of sucking you right into the thick of everything that’s going on and keep you there until the end.  Too much happens to make you bored and before I knew what was what, I was wrapped up in Anna and the boys in her life and I was wearing my Team Julian t-shirt proudly.  At the beginning, I thought that I’d be Team Jack but there was too much mystery surrounding Jack and I found that I couldn’t forgive him for all of the low-key crap he had going on.

I really came to love Julian over the course of this book.  I thought that whatever was happening with Julian and Anna was great and it was sweet and it’s not done.  So much has yet to happen and even though I wasn’t a big fan of the ending in this book, I’m looking forward to reading the next book.  I’m itching to find out what’s in those journals that Mr. Kyer gave Anna to read and I’m curious to find out how Anna deals with all of the information that she’s going to get from those journals…and I’m mighty curious to see what happens next with Julian.

Lots of stuff going on but it was a fun to be apart of and I definitely recommend this book to readers of contemporary YA.  This one doesn’t disappoint.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Leigh T. Moore.  You can purchase it here or here in e-format.  This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: To All The Rake I’ve Loved Before by Anne Barton

Posted September 5, 2013 by Tracy in Reviews | 2 Comments

Review: To All The Rake I’ve Loved Before by Anne BartonReviewer: Tracy
To All the Rakes I've Loved Before (Honeycote, #1.5) by Anne Barton
Series: Honeycote #1.5
Publisher: Forever Yours
Publication Date: September 3, 2013
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 100
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

After being jilted by her former beau, Miss Amelia Wimple retreated to her Mayfair town house and her ever-growing collection of gossips rags. Now, almost two years later, not even her beloved cousins, Rose and Olivia Sherbourne, can persuade her to give love another chance. But an unexpected midnight caller may open her heart once more.

Lord Stephen Brookes is the prince of pleasure, the duke of decadence-and it seems his exploits have finally caught up with him. When Stephen comes to Amelia seeking refuge, she can’t deny him . . . or the intense desire he sparks. As he attempts to heal her broken heart, they indulge in a private passion unlike anything either has experienced. Stephen knows sweet, sensual Amelia is meant to be his one and only. Now, he will do whatever it takes to convince her that a rake really can change his ways.

(25,000 words)

Amelia is enjoying having the house to herself. Her mother is taking the waters in Bath and has left her on her own. Amelia loves her mother but she’s a very loud and demanding mother. Amelia has almost made herself a recluse in the last two years. She goes out to walk in the park but only during unfashionable hours. Besides that she stays home. This is due to the fact that she was incredibly humiliated two years prior she was at a ball and expecting a proposal from her beau when he eloped with someone else. If that wasn’t bad enough her mother swooned upon learning the news and knocked Amelia down as well – kind of like bowling pins. Apparently Amelia was quite a bit heavier two years ago so she felt like they were two stuffed sausages rolling around the dance floor.

One night while Amelia was up reading gossip rags there was a knock on the door. No one usually came to call so she was even more surprised when it happened at 2 AM. It’s actually Lord Verrington, the man who was supposed to propose. He’s bringing his friend Stephen Brookes to her house because he’s been beaten and Stephen doesn’t want to go home and shock his mother. Lord Verrington knows no one else to go to in London and he knew Amelia’s mother wasn’t home. Amelia accepts him in and nurses Stephen back to health. She does this as Stephen helped her after the debacle of “The Jilting” and he was very kind.

Stephen is a rake and a gambler who is kind of done with it. He’s grown out of it but until seeing Amelia again hadn’t really known what he wanted to do besides live his dissolute life. As he gets closer to Amelia he realizes that he wants to finally make the change not only for himself but for her as well. He’s determined to win her heart and change his ways. Amelia, who’s determined to stay single, isn’t so sure that Stephen can change his spots but as she starts to fall for him she come to the conclusion that she wants him to try, more than anything.

This was a very sweet novella in the Honeycote series. I really liked Amelia and her sense of humor. She would write in her diary as if she was writing in a gossip rag and I thought some of the things she came up with were just too cute. I felt so sorry for her experience with her previous beau but was so happy that Stephen saw through her “I don’t want to get married” façade and made his move.

Now Stephen was a rake or so we were told. We didn’t actually get to see any of his rakish ways but hey, the man was beaten up because he hadn’t paid back money he owed to a gaming hell owner so that kind of proved he wasn’t necessarily all good. I liked that he was honest with Amelia about his life and his feelings. Sure, she was the one who had asked for honesty but it would have been incredibly easy for him to lie to make himself look better in her eyes.

I did think that the falling in love part of it happened a bit too fast. I know they had known each other before and liked each other, but not in a courting way if that makes sense. I would have liked to have seen them get to know each other a little better before they actually became intimate, as we all know that confuses things. lol. Making the story a bit longer and having the “getting to know you” part a little more in depth would have been perfect for me.

In the end it was, as I said, a very sweet story. Likable characters and a fun little romance – good stuff.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Anne Barton 

four-stars

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Guest Review: Slow Surrender by Cecelia Tan

Posted September 5, 2013 by Judith in Reviews | 1 Comment

Guest Review: Slow Surrender by Cecelia TanReviewer: Judith
Slow Surrender (Struck by Lightning, #1) by Cecilia Tan
Series: Struck by Lightning #1
Publisher: Forever
Publication Date: March 5th 2013
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 240
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

He pushes her sexual boundaries . . .

From the moment waitress Karina meets him in a New York bar, she knows James is different. Daring. Dominating. Though he hides his true identity from her, the mysterious, wealthy businessman anticipates her every desire and fulfills her secret fantasies. Awakened by his touch, Karina discovers a wild side she hadn't known existed and nothing is off limits.

She aches for more . . .

What begins as an erotic game soon escalates to a power play that blurs the line between pleasure and pain. Even as she capitulates to James's sensual demands, Karina craves more. She wants his heart, his soul. She wants his love . . . and she'll break all the rules to get it.

It’s a game, right?  That’s all it is.  It’s fun and it’s a great way to break up the boring nature of her life.  Her roommate is a rock star fan, grieving over the end of the career of her favorite rock singer.  But for Karina, meeting this mysterious stranger, a man who has been kind, who has begun to fascinate her, that is far more fun than going to fan club meetings or spending hours gushing over the end of some rocker’s career.  Yet for Karina this gradually become more than a game, as “James” as he asks her to call him, ups the ante and thus the title, Slow Surrender.  Karina isn’t into the BDSM stuff, or at least she isn’t into what she believes that lifestyle embraces.  But James continues to fascinate her and slowly wraps her in his attention, the little things he does to make her feel safe and cherished, and the fact that he slowly increases his demands upon her as their sexual relationship begins to mature and grow.  This is a fascinating story of one man’s seduction of a young woman who is clearly “out of his league” but who really begins to respond to him and care about him apart from his wealth and influence.  It is also Karina’s story, a woman who is truly hungry for something more in her life, who wants to be loved and cherished and supported so that she can move beyond mere survival.

Ms Tan has always written stories that are really “on the edge” and this novel is no exception.  I really don’t take on serialized stories very often because I get truly frustrated when we have to wait months and months to read the next episode.  When I was growing up we had serials in the movies and on the radio and TV.  But you only had to wait a week for the next bit of the story.  Not so usually in the publishing world.  And while it may make for a hefty bottom line for the publisher and author, it is the pits for us readers.  Yet I am not sorry I have read this story in particular.  I just wish I could have waited to start it when the other parts of the story were available.  That being said, this is a powerful tale that isn’t all that overtly BDSM-related, but it is clearly about a Dominant who knows that Karina is searching and knows that she is a sexual submissive.  It is also about a man whose privacy and the protection thereof has become obsessive and while he demands Karina’s trust, he is not willing to reciprocate in kind.   That’s tacky on his part, but perhaps we readers will understand that better when we know more of his story.  As it is, we are left to draw conclusions about “James” based on very little information, and it is only as this episode draws to a close that the reader is given a few additional tidbits.  One really wonders if James’ obsession with privacy will win out in the end.

This is a wonderful character study that reads like a mystery and romance all mixed together.  For Tan fans it will be great, while others who have not read her work are, I think, in for a treat.  I am anxiously awaiting the continuation of Karina and James’ story.

I give this novel a rating of 4 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book is available from Forever Publishing.  You can buy it here or here in e-format.

four-stars

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