So what do you do when you get a call from the High School your daughter attends telling you that she’s in trouble and oh, yeah, gonna be suspended. Yikes. That’s how my week went – from bad to worse. Apparently some boy called her a bitch but instead of blowing it off my daughter the bruiser took him by the backpack straps, picked him up and when she put him down he fell and hurt himself. She was suspended for use of force. Oy. She knows better than to touch another kid in anger or any other way but apparently the bitch comment sent her over the edge. My daughter was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder when she was younger but in her case it’s usually being incredibly argumentative…about everything. This kid obviously hit her switch and my kid got a day spent in the school office and a day at home. sigh My hubby and I sat and talked with her but it’s “I know, Mom!” If you KNOW why did you DO?  So, any wise words that have worked for you with your kids (if you have them) or worked on you (when you were a kid)??

That was the excitement for my week…on to what I read…

First off was A Dragon’s Seduction by Tamelia Tumlin. This story was about a dragon shifter who is from a, I think, alternate universe, and he’s a gatekeeper. He is after an evil dragon who shouldn’t be on Earth at all. His path leads him to sorceress who is smack dab in the middle of it all but only on the side of good. This was an ok story. Pretty predictable and not to intricate of a world, but cute. 2 out of 5

The Red Hot Holiday anthology by KA Mitchell, Leah Braemel and Anne Calhoun was next. This had Christmas stories that were all very different. I’ll post my review on Wednesday.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton was next. This was a darned cute story about a woman who moves into an apartment and her next door neighbor is having sex almost constantly with 3 different women. She thinks he’s just a sleaze but when they eventually become friends she sees that he’s not at all. The friend and love story was great and it kept me laughing, that’s for sure. Yes, there were some thing that annoyed me – like when the heroine was more worried about her missing “O” than the hero while having sex…and other things but overall I really liked it. 4 out of 5

Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas was next. I had very mixed feelings about this book. I liked the characters very much when they were getting along but they were only getting along because the heroine had amnesia. Normally she hated the hero so much she could barely be in the same room with him. He, of course, has been in love with her since he was 14. The thing is that over the years the hero felt that he’d rather rile the heroine and send out nasty verbal barbs and have her get pissed off rather than have her ignore her completely. I just didn’t see the logic in this. I mean, I did, but what he did only made her hate him more. So while the writing was good as is usual with a Thomas novel, the story had me on the fence. 3 out of 5

My Tracy’s TBR Challenge read for the week was the novella Just One Bite Vol. 1 anthology which includes: The Unlikely Vampire by Scarlet Blackwell, Sacrifice by J.L. Merrow, One Last Wish by Josephine Myles, Mayan Time by Erik Orrantia, Fire Can Make It Rain by Nix Winter, The Hunter & the Hunted by Stevie Woods. These was vampire related short stories with some odd, some ok, some great – they were all pretty much very hot and I liked this volume a lot. 4 out of 5

Another book I’ve had in my TBR pile for a while was The Virgin Proxy by Georgia Fox. This was a medieval erotic romance and it was really good. The story is about a woman who has lived most of her life in a convent during the Norman invasion. She is asked by fellow convent dweller to be her virgin proxy. Deorwynn will take Sybilia’s place on the wedding night, behind a heavy veil, because Sybilia’s not a virgin and she doesn’t want the marriage to go bad because of it. But Guy the groom is quite a bit smarter than the women think AND he’s got the hots for Deorwynn rather than Sybilia. I liked the characters the writing, the setting – almost everything. The cover is a bit misleading as looking at it you would think that the woman ends up with two men but while there are multiple partners at one point it’s just a h/h romance. This is book 2 in the Conquerors series so I’ll definitely have to go back and read book 1 and then on to the others. 4 out of 5

Next up was Courting Carolina by Janet Chapman. This is book 3 in the Spellbound Falls series. The story is about Alec who is out in the wilderness blazing a trail, literally, for his friends resort. He ends up harboring a woman who he found escaping from kidnappers. She, however, is the daughter to Titus and is a mythological princess from Atlantis and her father wants her to marry a warrior of his choosing. She’s run but there’s someone after her. While with Alec they fall in love but Alec plans on never getting married so that puts a kink in things. While I found this book cute and at times fun and funny it didn’t move fast at all. The second half of the book had Alec and Jane (Carolina) apart almost completely until the end and that just didn’t work for me all that well. 3 out of 5

Last was a free short I got from Amazon called Rent-A-Groom by Jennifer Blake. The story was about a woman who was using her honeymoon suite even though her wedding had been called off. A man shows up at her door claiming to be from Rent-A-Gent and is there to escort her so that her fiancé will think she’s over him. We could tell the man, Race, was up to something but we didn’t know what but it was sweet watching Gina and Race get to know each other. It was a short but the couple did fall in love in 2 days. That being said they did state that they would take it slow and get to know each other so that saved the insta-love a bit. 2 out of 5

My Book Binge reviews that have posted since last week:
When the Duke Found Love by Isabella Bradford
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes

Happy Reading!