Tag: Jessi Gage

Review: Wishing for a Highlander by Jessi Gage

Posted August 10, 2020 by Holly in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: Wishing for a Highlander by Jessi GageReviewer: Holly
Wishing for a Highlander by Jessi Gage
Narrator: Marian Hussey
Series: Highland Wishes #1
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: January 31, 2014
Format: eBook, Audiobook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Point-of-View: Alternating Third
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Content Warning: View Spoiler »
Genres: Time Travel, Historical Romance
Pages: 344
Length: 10 hours and 35 minutes
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2020 Goodreads Challenge, Holly's 2020 New to Me Challenge
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
two-half-stars
Series Rating: three-stars

Single-and-pregnant museum worker Melanie voices an idle wish while examining a Scottish artifact, that a Highland warrior would sweep her off her feet and help her forget her cheating ex. The last thing she expects is for her wish to be granted. Magically transported to the middle of a clan skirmish in the sixteenth-century Highlands, she comes face to face with her kilted fantasy man.

Tall, handsome, and heir to his uncle’s lairdship, Darcy Keith should be the most eligible bachelor in Ackergill. Instead, thanks to a prank played on him in his teenage years, he is known for being too large under his kilt to ever make a proper husband. “Big Darcy” runs his deceased father’s windmills and lives alone at his family manor, believing he will never marry.

But a strangely-dressed woman he rescues from a clan skirmish makes him long for more. When the woman’s claims of coming to Ackergill by magic reach the laird’s ears, she is accused of witchcraft. Darcy determines to protect her any way he can, even if it means binding her to him forever.

Wishing for a Highlander is the first book in the Highland Wishes series by Jessi Gage. It was my first read from the author. I’ve had the second book in this series, The Wolf and the Highlander, on my wish list for ages. I was looking for a new audiobook, saw The Wolf and the Highlander and realized it was the second book in the series, so I downloaded this one instead. I got it from Kindle Unlimited and it included the audiobook as well. I liked the narrator, but the story wasn’t very good. It wasn’t awful, but I’m kind of sad I didn’t skip it and go right to the second book.

Melanie is a modern day girl who works in a museum. She got knocked up by her boyfriend of a year, only to find out he’d been cheating on her the whole time they were together and he wants nothing to do with the baby since he’s marrying the girl he’s been cheating with. On a whim, she makes a wish for a handsome Highlander of her very own on a new artifact the museum has acquired. To her surprise, her wish comes true and she’s transported to 1517, in the middle of a clan skirmish, where she’s forced to stab a man because he’s about to rape her. She’s rescued by a giant of a Highlander – Big Darcy – who claims responsibility for her. Within moments of arriving at his keep, they end up married to protect her. Still, Darcy vows to help her find a way home, and he plans to keep that vow.

Darcy is a giant of a man, and he’s never been with a woman because of it. One of the clan women refused him because of his size, and he’s been afraid of rejection (and hurting a woman) ever since. Marrying Melanie is the perfect way to get his laird off his back about taking a bride, and since she’s already pregnant he doesn’t have to worry about that, either. Until she makes him promise to get her back home. He’s a man of his word, so he’ll do it, even if he’s not happy about it.

I almost DNF’d this book early on, because the whole “He’s too big for any woman” thing is pretty ridiculous, plus Melanie’s dumb thoughts drove me up a wall. I ended up finishing it, however, and the second half wasn’t as bad as the first (as far as Melanie was concerned). I really liked Darcy. He was sweet and lovable, despite his insecurities. He was very supportive of Melanie and determined to do what he thought was right.

Melanie and all her wishy-washy thoughts drove me crazy. First she was mad because she thought Darcy broke his word, then she was mad because she wanted him to want her. It was ridiculous. That settled down in the second half of the book, however, and I really liked their romance and the way things progressed between them.

View Spoiler »

What really drove me crazy was the “villain”, however. Anya was a mean, petty woman who created havoc just to create it. The reason I’m mad I read this book first, however, is because Anya is the heroine of the second book. I’m not sure she can be redeemed, and even if she is, I’m not sure I care to read about her. I might try the book at a later date, but I need some space from this book before I try.

I did enjoy aspects of this book, and I’m low-key curious about the next book. I guess we’ll see if I decide to continue on.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5

Highland Wishes

two-half-stars


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Guest Review: Reckless by Jessi Gage

Posted May 30, 2014 by Tracy in Reviews | 1 Comment

Guest Review: Reckless by Jessi GageReviewer: Tracy
Reckless by Jessi Gage
Series: Blue Collar Boyfriends #1

Publication Date: March 17th 2014
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-half-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

Divorced construction worker Derek has anger management issues. Acting rashly on the freeway, he causes an accident. His truck escapes unscathed, but he can’t say the same for his conscience. Visions of the wreck haunt his dreams, but they’re always followed by the sweet caresses and soothing words of a beautiful woman who calls to everything male in him.

Cami assumes she is dead. With no memory of her past, all she knows is endless fog and the occasional visit to a darkened bedroom where she comforts a man battling nightmares. When she wakes in a hospital bed and regains her memory, she assumes the ruggedly handsome Derek was no more than a figment of her concussed mind.

As Cami recovers, she learns that Derek is not only real but also the driver charged with causing her accident. She should be furious with him, but their inexplicable nights together showed her a tender side beneath his rough exterior. Will she let one reckless mistake drive them apart, or will forgiveness have the right of way?

 

Tracy’s review of Reckless (Blue Collar Boyfriends #1) by Jessi Gage

Derek is a man with a temper. It’s not like he beat his ex-wife and daughter but he’s been known to fly off the handle or yell at times – even turn over furniture in a fit. He’s on his way to his daughters softball game and he’s already behind schedule. He doesn’t want to miss any of it but unfortunately traffic is heavy. He makes a move that cuts off a car and ends up witnessing the crash that ensues. He heads off to his daughters game but he can’t seem to get the accident out of his head.

Cami is a young woman who works as a driver during the summers, helping shut ins get to their doctors appointments. She is an extremely cautious driver and never goes on the freeway as she sees it as an accident waiting to happen. When she gets a call from her dispatcher and must get someone to an appointment quickly she gets talked into getting on the freeway to save time rather than taking the back roads as she normally does. When she gets cut off she slams on her brakes which then gets her rear ended and then pushed into yet another lane. It’s a pretty severe crash.

That night Derek is in bed and starts having nightmares. He dreams that he’s the driver in the car crash that he witnessed that day. He continues to have these nightmares night after night – along with another one that has him as a woman who was in a crash and is then trying to save her father from death. He knows he’s dreaming as he doesn’t know any of these people but it’s still extremely disturbing.

Enter Cami. She spends her days in a fog and then when it gets dark she ends up in a bedroom. No one can see her or hear her unless she’s on Derek’s bed. Derek thinks that Cami is a dream (although she doesn’t know she’s Cami as she can’t remember anything about who she is or even if she’s alive or not) but yet he can touch her and feel her. He’s thrilled with DG (dream girl) and they are soon falling quickly in love. DG soothes him while he sleeps but she also helps him realize (without her knowing it) that he was the cause of the accident on the freeway – even though he wasn’t in the accident – and that he needs to do the right thing and turn himself in. The minute he figures this out, DG starts to disappear and doesn’t return to his bedroom. Derek finds out that he will have to go to court for the accident but then he finds out the name of the woman who was in the accident and looks her up on Facebook. He’s shocked to see that DG is that woman. He knows he wants her in his life but he’s not sure he can face her or her family knowing that she’s lying in a hospital because of him.

This was definitely a story that I would put into the “not your normal romance” category. The fact that Cami and Derek fall in love not knowing if she’s dead or alive – a ghost or something else – is a bit on the strange side but the author made it work.

I have to say that I liked Cami a lot. She did end up being kind of two different people when it came down to it. In real life she wasn’t confident nor a seductress, like DG was. She was actually hesitant, easily felt guilt and wasn’t confident at all. It was interesting, once she was out of her coma, to see her remember her experience with Derek and to remember how different she was with him. She realized that she could be that person, if she could let all the guilt go from her past – and work out her issues with her mother and brother.

Derek created such a conundrum in my mind. He obviously needed anger management and eventually understood this on many levels – getting help by the end of the book. Throughout the story we see examples of this but besides the accident it only affected people emotionally. That being said he could be such a nice guy! He loved his daughter and was a good dad. When Derek and DG were together he went out of his way to be kind and considerate – even though he thought she wasn’t real. It really showed that if he worked at it he could beat the anger back and make himself a better person. I liked how the author showed us the different sides of the man and didn’t just show us the anger.

I did have a couple of issues with the book. I didn’t particularly care for the fact that the “I love you’s” happened so quickly. It was only over the course of 4 days that DG appeared in Derek’s house. I guess having Derek not know that she was real – and DG not knowing exactly who and what she was – put a bit of a damper on it all for me. After they were reunited in real life it was better but the time issue didn’t necessarily help overall. The other problem I had was with Cami and her family. She’d felt set apart from them for years because of an accident that she was in with her father (the other dream Derek was having was hers from 8 years prior). Her brother had blamed her for the accident and she felt her mother had as well. In the course of the book the real cause of that accident comes to light and it’s kind of skimmed over and not brought up outside of Derek and Cami. This peeved me a bit as I kind of felt like it shouldn’t have been brought up if it wasn’t going to be dealt with. I understand that it was a mechanism to have Cami recognize that she wasn’t at fault but I found the non-action to be frustrating.

Overall it was a good story. Unquestionably it’s “out there” but in a way that worked for the story. I liked this new-to-me author and am interested in reading more of her work in the future.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This title is self published. You can read it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

*This book was previously released under the title Road Rage.

three-half-stars


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Guest Author: Jessi Gage Talks New Release, The Wolf & the Highlander (+Giveaway)

Posted May 1, 2014 by Rowena in Promotions | 1 Comment

JessiGage_TheWolfAndTheHighlander_1400px
Rowena: Please join us in welcoming Jessi Gage to Book Binge today to discuss her new release, THE WOLF & AND THE HIGHLANDER.

Jessi Gage: Thanks for having me, Holly and Rowena! I’m so excited to meet your readers and share my new release, The Wolf and the Highlander! To jump to the giveaway (gift cards and free ebooks!), click here.

Warning: Not your typical Highlander romance.

As the title implies, the second in my Highland Wishes series of magical time-travel romances has a Highlander in it, but the Highlander isn’t the hero this time. The Highlander is the heroine. And she’s not your typical heroine.

In Wishing for a Highlander (book 1), my heroine, Melanie, is a single and pregnant career-focused, modern-day woman who gets tossed 500-years in the past to tangle with a virginal Highland warrior who is insecure about his unusually large size (in more ways than one *snickers like a middle-schooler*). In The Wolf and the Highlander (book 2), the heroine is the antagonist from the first book. Anya. After a bad fall, she is scarred, crippled, and bitter. Not your typical romance heroine. But her heart is repentant. I decided she should get a second chance, but I didn’t make it easy for her.

Enter the wolf-man.

Riggs is a bearded virgin who lives in a secluded cabin and never goes anywhere without his trusty axe. His people (a blend of Fae and mythical wolves) are dying. No females have been born to his race in many years. Anya, who believes she is next to worthless, becomes the most precious thing in existence, a woman young enough to revive the hope of an entire world.

Read on for the blurb, and don’t forget to enter my GIVEAWAY.

Here’s the blurb and buy links:

Anya’s been a bad girl. A vindictive plot against one of her clansmen backfired, resulting in her grave injury. Now scarred and crippled, her selfish ambition has turned into bitter self-loathing. She finds nothing lovely about herself, and doesn’t expect anyone else to either. But when a magical wishing box sends her to another dimension, she becomes the most valuable prize imaginable.

While hunting a rare marbled boar, Riggs, a trapper in Marann’s western forest, hears a strange cry. Distracted from the hunt, he loses the sow but finds instead something more valuable than a whole cart packed with marbled boar skins. A woman. She is delicate, her teeth are small and flat, and her skin is curiously hairless. She is not wolfkind. Maybe she is the miracle his people have been hoping for.

Riggs must bring Anya to King Magnus, because breeding rights belong first and foremost to His Majesty, who needs an heir. But the female calls to a primal part of him. He longs to keep her in secret and take her as his mate. But if he gives in to the temptation, he could single handedly bring about the end of civilization.

Amazon | All Romance Ebooks | Goodreads

(More retailers coming soon!)

zz_Jessi Gage headshot2

Jessi lives with her husband and children in the Seattle area. She’s a passionate reader of all genres of romance, especially anything involving the paranormal. Ghosts, demons, vampires, witches, weres, faeries…you name it, she’ll read it. As for writing, she’s sticking to Highlanders and contemporaries with a paranormal twist (for now). The last time she imagined a world without romance novels, her husband found her crouched in the corner, rocking.

Website | Blog | Facebook Fan Page | Twitter | Goodreads | Newsletter Sign-up


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What I Read Last Week

Posted March 24, 2014 by Tracy in Features | 0 Comments

It was more or less a lazy week in Tracyland. We didn’t have any pressing matters to take care of so I got a lot of reading done during the week. Then the weekend came and my youngest had a promotion test where so totally rocked. 🙂 She was one of 2 that got the highest score. I’m very proud of her to say the least. I’m currently fighting with the app that joins all of the individual videos together to make one vid so when I win the fight and get it posted I’ll let you know. The rest of the weekend I hung with the kids, watched movies and just had fun. I think I read all of 70 pages the whole weekend. 🙂

I have two giveaways going right now. One ends today and the other on the 30th.

Giveaways:
1) A print copy of Marie Force’s All You Need is Love (open US residents only, sorry) – ends today at 11:59pm

2) A digital download (Kindle or Nook) of My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe. Ends at 11”:59pm on 3/30/14.

Anyway, on to what I read…

I started off the week with the week with The Glaring by Andrew J. Peters. This is a short novella that is book 2 in his werecat series. The story continues to follow Jacks while he deals with being a werecat and finding out more about what that means to him. You can read my review here. 3.75 out of 5

Next up was the anthology Love Between Men edited by Shane Allison. A grouping of short stories that ran the gamut from I didn’t particularly care for them to I really liked them. You can read my review of the anthology here. 3.5 out of 5

Hope Ignites by Jaci Burton is book 2 in her Hope series and it was another good one. This one was Logan’s story and had him with an actress who was part of the crew that was filming on his land. He was positive he could stay away from her but she proved irresistible. I’ll post my review of this one tomorrow. 4 out of 5

Olivia’s Choice by Taylor Grace is a more or less contemporary fantasy if that makes sense. It takes place in current times but it’s about a race of people that don’t exist so that’s where the fantasy comes in. Olivia’s goes to Viddion a city for one of the races of Tree People called the annax where she was born to set up an exchange program. She’s been living as a human and wants nothing to do with anyone annex but she didn’t plan on falling in love. You can read my review here. 3.5 out of 5 

Last for the week was Wishing For a Highlander by Jessi Gage. This is a medieval time travel novel about Melanie who makes a wish on an artifact and next thing you know she’s in the 16th century. She winds up falling for the man who originally found her which is a good thing as they’re married right away. Of course then she’s accused of witchcraft so that makes things a bit sticky. The story was actually really good and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. 4 out of 5

 

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
So Right With You by Maggie Kaye
Disarm: The Complete Novel by June Gray

Happy Reading!


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What I Read Last Week

Posted March 10, 2014 by Tracy in Features | 0 Comments

Happy Monday!

I hope you all are doing well and reading up a storm.

Have you read any books lately that you feel like you need to tell everyone about? Or maybe you’ve read one that you feel everyone should avoid? Let me know!

Life is calm and pretty peaceful in Tracyland so I’ll get on to the books (as I know that’s why you’re here!).

First for the week was Dazed by Kim Karr. This is a story in the Connections series. The previous two books have been about Dahlia and River but this novella veers off and gives us Dahlia’s best friends story. Aerie Daniels is a woman who keeps herself organized. She’s a structured type of person and doesn’t break off from things she knows. Enter Jagger Kennedy, River’s cousin, and soon she’s living life in a completely different way and falling in love. This was a cute story that I really enjoyed reading. Aerie takes some getting used to but it worked in the end. 3.5/3.75 out of 5

Next up was Desperately Seeking Suzanna by Elizabeth Michels. This historical showed us Sue who, along with her sister and cousin, snuck into a masked ball. She meets Holden and they hit it off in a big way but when the masks come off Sue, who was referring to herself as Suzanna as she felt like a different beautiful woman, isn’t recognized by Holden at all. Parts of the story are really good and others frustrating. You can read my full review of the book on Book Binge by clicking here. 3.5/3.75 out of 5 

Reckless by Jessi Gage is a contemporary romance with a paranormal twist in it. Derek has a temper and ends up being the cause of an accident on the freeway (one he’s not actually involved in). He then starts thinking he’s having dreams that involved his dream girl and they fall in love. DG helps him change and he realizes he needs to take responsibility for his actions. DG, however, is actually Cami who was in the accident he caused and when she wakes up and he finds out that Cami is DG he’s not sure how she can forgive him causing it all. This was a good story. I liked how Derek grew throughout the book. I did think that the “I love you’s” came to quickly and I had another issue with Cami’s family but overall I liked the story and the writing. 3.75 out of 5 (read for Book Binge)

So Right With You by Maggie Kaye is the story of a woman who finds her fiancé cheating with her best friend and ends up staying with her boss who she then falls in love with. I didn’t care for this book. I thought that it was completely contrived and as the book was supposedly centered around Chloe and her best friends (it’s called The Girlfriend Series) then why did she not feel she could impose on them when she needed somewhere to stay. I found the story bland and nothing really happened. Not my cup of tea. 1 out of 5 (read for Book Binge)

Next was The Devil’s Pearl by Jennifer Haymore. Devlin and Julia were once lovers. He thought she knew he loved her but he treated her like a mistress and even tried to set her up in a house. She eventually leaves and moves to France but when she rejects another man’s advances he heads back to London and spreads rumors that she’s a courtesan. Now Dev is pissed that she cut him and took up with other men. When she heads back to England he kidnaps her and plans on keeping her forever. Ok, talk about anger issues. This guy was creepy and I think he’d actually lost it when he wanted to possess Julia. She needed to be with someone else entirely, imho. This is my first read by Haymore, and I liked the writing just not the character she wrote. I’ll definitely give her another chance but this one I found to just be ok. 2.5 out of 5 

Last was I Found You by Jane Lark. This is a new adult story about Jason who moved from small town Oregon to New York City. It’s not what he thought it would be at all and he’s pretty disillusioned. One night on his nightly run he finds Rachel on the Manhattan bridge about to jump off. He talks her down, takes her home and helps her out despite warnings from his mother, fiancé back home, and co-workers. The pair end up falling in love but the road is not easy and the issues they have to deal with are many. I just finished this one last night and I’m still formulating my thoughts on it. For the most part it was good but I did have some issues with it. 3.5 out of 5

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
For His Eyes Only by Liz Fielding

Happy Reading!


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