Tag: Macmillan Audio

Review: Lick by Kylie Scott

Posted March 3, 2021 by Casee in Reviews | 4 Comments

Review: Lick by Kylie ScottReviewer: Casee
Lick by Kylie Scott
Narrator: Andi Arndt
Series: Stage Dive #1
Also in this series: Lick: Stage Dive 1, Lead: Stage Dive 3, Lick (Stage Dive #1), Play, Deep
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: July 1, 2013
Format: Audiobook
Source: Purchased
Point-of-View: First Person
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Length: 8 hours, 37 minutes
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Casee's 2021 Goodreads Challenge
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-half-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.

Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure as hell never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.

One thing is for certain, being married to rock and roll's favorite son is sure to be a wild ride.

After waking up in Vegas, Evelyn Thomas has no idea why she’s woken up in a strange man’s room. She has little memory of the night before. Evelyn is then informed by the stranger that not only did they meet the night before, but they also got married. Evelyn freaks out and leaves. She wants nothing to do with a marriage to someone she doesn’t even remember. She has an upcoming internship that she does not want to jeopardize. She heads home from Vegas not knowing that her new husband is one of the most famous rockstars in the world. It becomes apparent that nothing will ever be the same in Evelyn’s life after this. Her internship is canceled and she has no job. The only thing she can do is hope that staying with her husband for awhile will quiet the press and they can get an amicable annulment.

It’s obvious that David has never had such a strong connection to someone. It’s also apparent that he is deeply hurt by the fact that Ev doesn’t remember their night together, their elopement, their matching tattoos. I really enjoyed David. A lot. He was such a great hero. Which is why I don’t know why he ended up with Evelyn. She was pretty awful. And she didn’t get better.

After about two days of being together they decide to give their marriage a try. They like each other, the sex is good, etc. I still couldn’t like Evelyn. She just treated David like crap with her wishy-washy attitude. There wasn’t a lot of redemption for how she treated David from the beginning. I honestly don’t know why David wanted to stay married to her. Honestly the reason I even liked this book a little was because of David. I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series. The secondary characters were very interesting and I can’t wait to learn more about them.

I listened to this book on audio. It was really good. I wish we had David’s POV, but Scott did an amazing job of getting his emotions across the page to the reader. Just like in her book Repeat she doesn’t need the hero’s POV because she writes such a good story.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Stage Dive

three-half-stars


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Guest Review: Under Currents by Nora Roberts

Posted January 2, 2020 by Tracy in Reviews | 3 Comments

Guest Review: Under Currents by Nora RobertsReviewer: Tracy
Under Currents by Nora Roberts
Narrator: January LeVoy
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: July 9, 2019
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
Point-of-View: Third
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Content Warning: View Spoiler »
Genres: Romantic Suspense
Pages: 436
Length: 14 hours and 36 minutes
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-stars

Within the walls of a tasteful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, young Zane Bigelow feels like a prisoner of war. Strangers—and even Zane’s own aunt across the lake—see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children’s ballet recitals and baseball games. Zane and his sister know the truth: There is something terribly wrong.

As his father’s violent, controlling rages—and his mother’s complicity—become more and more oppressive, Zane counts the years, months, days until he can escape. He looks out for little Britt, warning her Be smart. Be careful. In fear for his very life, he plays along with the insidious lie that everything is fine, while scribbling his real thoughts in a secret journal he must carefully hide away.

When one brutal, shattering night finally reveals cracks in the façade, Zane begins to understand that some people are willing to face the truth, even when it hurts. As he grows into manhood and builds a new kind of family, he will find that while the darkness of his past may always shadow him, it will also show him what is necessary for good to triumph—and give him strength to draw on when he once again must stand up and defend himself and the ones he loves…

This is a difficult review to write.  Not only because of the subject matter, but because I don’t want to add spoilers into it.

You’d think that the Bigelow family was perfect.  They had a big beautiful house, lots of money, the father is a doctor and the mother doesn’t even have to work!  The children are darned near perfect as well!  But behind closed doors no one knows the abuse that the wife and children suffer at the hands of the Dr. Bigelow – a monster. The mom does nothing to help her children as she’s fine with the abuse as long as he doesn’t hit her face.

WTF?

When the son of the family, Zane, is 14 years old his father goes a bit nuts and hurts every family member.  When the daughter calls the police, their father blames everything on Zane stating that he went crazy.  The police believe the father because he’s a doctor and why would he lie? Ugh.

The story eventually moves on to Zane’s adulthood and him falling for a new woman in town. She also was abused by her husband and is looking for a new life.  Zane is now a lawyer and has just moved back to town after working in a large city for years.  The story is about them falling in love and adjusting to their new lives.  Of course there can’t be a HEA without a villain to try to ruin it all.

This book is told in four parts. The first part was incredible, though very hard to listen to.  The abuse was graphic and hard to hear, but it was written incredibly well and narrated perfectly.  Unfortunately, parts 2-4 fell flat for me.  There were definitely things happening but there was too much every-day life being told.  I get that books need that, but not for 3 parts of the book, imho.  The parts that had to do with the villain were predictable and not that exciting.

The romance (and I use that term loosely) was truly unimaginative. I guess I just expect more from Roberts.  I know this isn’t classified as a romance, but if you’re going to include one in the book then it needs to be done well and I just can’t say that it was.

Overall it was a decent read, but not one I can highly recommend. That said, I adored the narrator, January LeVoy. Strong voice, great characters voices, and just a pleasure to listen to.

Rating: 3 out of 5

three-stars


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