Greetings and Salutations! How y’all doin? Well I hope.

I had a very quiet week at home. With no kids and no hubby it was freakishly quiet in my house. I tended to stay at work longer than usual and spent time with friends which was nice. Hubby got back on Saturday evening and I’m very, very, very happy to have him home.

My previous (recent) attempt to lose weight was completely half-assed. Honestly…I said I was doing it but my head wasn’t really in the game. After going on vacation and gaining back the very few pounds I’d lost plus 1 I am determined to get the excess weight off. This past Monday I started diligently keeping track of my food and I actually exercised 3 times which I can say sucks the big ten incher. I hate exercing but I admit I really do feel much better when I do it. I even got out my Polar Heart Rate Monitor that I hadn’t used in 3 years but the battery had died so as soon as I get that fixed I’ll be even more accurate about the calories I burn.

So onto what I read this past week:

I started the week out with How To Marry A Marquis by Julia Quinn. I picked this one up on Sarai’s recommendation while I was in KC. It was a very cute book that I very much enjoyed. The story of a companion raising her 3 younger siblings and she’s decided that she must marry since they have virtually no money. She finds a book in her bosses library that’s called How To Marry A Marquis. She decides to try some of the practices from the book on the new estate manager but little does she know that he’s a Marquis! I have to say that as much as I enjoyed the book I thought that the heroines reaction to the Marquis revelation about being a titled gentleman was a little over the top but I did understand. 3.75 out of 5

My Tracy’s TBR Challenge Read for the week was Secret Fantasy by Carly Phillips. A story about a woman who has run from her wedding due to some information she found out about her fiance. Her sister sends her to a private island – kind of like Fantasy Island. She gets her secret fantasy and no one is the wiser. Only a reporter from Chicago is there to get his story. He has no plans to hurt the woman but he wants to get his story about her ex-fiance. I had a hard time with this story at first because I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a book where the hero was the type who would put his story first but I ended up liking it. The romance was pretty good and it showed the hero growing in his emotions which led to growth in his professional life. 3 out of 5

Next up was a Yaoi Manga book called Kissing by Teiko Sasaki. This was the story about 2 20 something men who had grown up together. One had fallen in love with the other over the years and had finally come out and declared his feelings for his best friend. His best friend was freaked out and stayed away from the other man for a while. But then he realized that maybe his feelings for his friend weren’t just platonic and they should explore this new side of their relationship. It was a pretty cute story and the graphics were good as well. 3.5 out of 5

My next read was Utopia X: Looking For Some Touch by K.Z. Snow. This was a recommendation by Kris (yes, she’s my m/m book pimp lately) and it was a good one. This was the story of Pablo who is a male prostitute in a futuristic time. He has a bad experience with john and decides to try to get a job with a coven of three Alterationists. The three men aren’t really who they say they are – but it’s all good. Especially for Pablo and one of the men, Win who have a strange and wonderful attraction to each other. This is mainly the story of Pablo and Win but it does give you some insight into the other coven members, Tole and Zee. 4.25 out of 5

I liked the first Utopia X book so much that I immediately went and got the next 2 books in the series. Utopia X: Seeking Something Wicked by K.Z. Snow is more or less Tole’s story. He’s troubled by the relationship between Win and Pablo and ends up finding solace in the most unlikely place – in a vampire’s arms. Ridley is a vamp who ends up being in the right place at the right time for Tole and they start an affair. When trouble starts and Ridley gets taken Tole is all about finding him and bringing him back. This was another good story in the series and I really liked Ridley a lot. 4 out of 5

Book 3 in the Utopia X series by K.Z. Snow is by far my favorite so far. Utopia X: Exploring Savage Places has Zee, of the Coven of Three, going to Pleasureplex to find out if there are shady dealings going on. Zee has pretty much been dumped by his current lover and is anxious to get the heck out of dodge for a while. Meanwhile Ridley from book 2 (that lucious vamp) has decided to leave town because he feels that his life as a vamp is hurting Tole too much and he can’t bear to hurt the man he loves. This story has so much more going on than what I’ve said but I don’t want to give too much away. This book had my chest aching for the pain the men were feeling and then smiling widely by the end. I certainly hope that there are more of the Utopia X stories in the near future cuz they’re good! 4.5 out of 5

Last up was the anthology Out of the Light, Into the Shadows by Lori Foster, Erin McCarthy and L.L. Foster. This was a book that I read for The Book Binge so will let you know when my review posts.

Happy Reading!!