Review: “Omens” by Kelley Armstrong

October 10, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

omens

Title: Omens

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Genre: Defies all genre but it’s fantasy, horror, suspense and mystery all rolled into one if you’re going to force me to label it.

Summary:

Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions.

But Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens.

Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past.

Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mother swears will prove their innocence. But as she and Gabriel start investigating the case, Olivia finds herself drawing on abilities that have remained hidden since her childhood, gifts that make her both a valuable addition to Cainsville and deeply vulnerable to unknown enemies. Because there are darker secrets behind her new home and powers lurking in the shadows that have their own plans for her.

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Review: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

October 6, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

the princess diarist.jpg

Title: The Princess Diarist

Author: Carrie Fisher

Genre: Autobiography

Summary:

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Warsmovie.

When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager.

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Book List 2017

Review: Cody by Megan Crane

October 5, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

cody

Title: Cody

Author: Megan Crane

Genre: Romance

Skylar Grey lost everything when her fiancé died. But her move back to her hometown, Billings, Montana is not the fresh start she seeks, as too many people know her tragic tale. But then she meets a bull riding cowboy who treats her like she’s made of fire and everything changes.

Cody Galen joined the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour to make money, not friends. He enjoys whiskey, winning, and women and he doesn’t care who he pisses off while he pursues the hell out of all three. He figures he only has a few years left before his body gives out and he might as well go down hard in a blaze of glory. He knows the pretty thing he meets his first night in Billings is no buckle bunny, but if she wants to play that role, who is he to argue?

Neither one of them is looking for anything lasting. But there’s only one thing more dangerous than riding bulls—and that’s love.

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Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: Casey by Kelly Hunter

October 4, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

casey

Title: Casey

Author: Kelly Hunter

Genre: Romance

Summary:

Rowan Harper has traveled the American Extreme Bull Riders tour circuit with her stock-contractor father since she was four years old. She’s seen the best rides and the worst wrecks. And then there’s TJ who impressed her most when he didn’t ride at all.

T.J. Casey walked away from his rightful place in last year’s bull riding finals in order to bury his father. His sponsors are gone, but he’s back to stake his claim. He wants the buckle, sure, but he also wants the woman who treats her bucking bulls like lambs.

Can T.J. really score the championship and the girl? Or will he have to choose between the two..once and for all?

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Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: Chase by Barbara Dunlop

October 3, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

chase

Title: Chase

Author: Barbara Dunlop

Genre: A Hurt/Comfort kind of romance

Summary: Betrayed by his fiancée and his best friend, Chase Garrett heads out on the road with the American Extreme Bull Riders Association, determined to ride hard and keep a wall around his heart. But during a competition, three-year-old Riley Barrett bursts through that barrier when he throws himself into Chase’s arms, insisting Chase is his daddy. And Chase’s walls collapse further when he meets Riley’s mother–beautiful, vulnerable, sexy Maddy.

A widow for only a year, Maddy Barrett is stunned by her son Riley’s outlandish assertion that Chase is his father. She tries desperately to convince Riley that his father has not come home to them. When Chase and Maddy join forces to help her son, she finds herself falling fast for the sexy, hard-working bull rider—wishing he truly could be the man for Riley, and the man for her.

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Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

September 16, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

silence fallen

Title: Silence Fallen

Series: Mercy Thompson

Author: Patricia Briggs

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in the heart of Europe…

Unable to contact Adam and the rest of the pack, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the ancient city of Prague, old ghosts rise…

So it is entirely possible I will never get sick of this series and it might end up being one of those that I read again and again for my own continuous enjoyment while not caring what other people think about the covers while I’m out in public.

Now after that run-on sentence I hope you’ll all forgive me. I have not been in a reading mood. Or a…adulting mood. Or anything.

I am hoping that this is the book that changes that, even though it took me months to finish because I was in a slump.

Ugh. I know. Slumps suck.

But here I am, reading and writing and enjoying life for the moment.

Enjoying this book. So good. I wish I could explain to you my feelings, but I can’t. Maybe that’s why I’m as of yet unpublished. (One of the many, many reasons)

I digress. A lot.

This was written in a much different way than Patricia Briggs’ normal formula but once I got used to it, and the time jumping I wanted more.

I devoured it once I hit the sweet reading spot, curled up on my couch with my dog getting annoyed at me for shifting around.

But Adam, how I love Adam and getting his point of view and the fact that we learn a little more about how vampires work. God it was just so good and if she wants to write every book like this going forward I would be happy.

I never want this series to end. I want it to keep going and the characters to keep growing and the world to be expanded upon because it’s such a great series for taking you out of your head and putting you in a situation so fantastical it seems real and yet isn’t.

All in all this was a hit out of the park for me.

Also Matt Smith *snort*.

Book List 2017

Review: The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen

September 5, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

the absent one

Title: The Absent One

Author: Jussi Adler-Olsen

Rating: Four freakouts out of five.

Warning: Dark, violent.

Summary:

In The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen introduced Detective Carl Mørck, a deeply flawed, brilliant detective newly assigned to run Department Q, the home of Copenhagen’s coldest cases

. The result wasn’t what Mørck—or readers—expected, but by the opening of Adler-Olsen’s shocking, fast-paced follow-up, Mørck is satisfied with the notion of picking up long-cold leads.

So he’s naturally intrigued when a closed case lands on his desk: A brother and sister were brutally murdered two decades earlier, and one of the suspects—part of a group of privileged boarding-school students—confessed and was convicted. B

ut once Mørck reopens the files, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Looking into the supposedly solved case leads him to Kimmie, a woman living on the streets, stealing to survive.

Kimmie has mastered evading the police, but now they aren’t the only ones looking for her. Because Kimmie has secrets that certain influential individuals would kill to keep buried . . . as well as one of her own that could turn everything on its head.

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Book List 2017 · Reviews

Review: As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti

July 20, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LP1 Comment

as you wish.jpg

Title: As You Wish

Author: Chelsea Sedoti

Genre: YA Fantasy

Summary:

What if you could ask for anything- and get it?

In the sandy Mojave Desert, Madison is a small town on the road between nothing and nowhere. But Eldon wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, because in Madison, everyone gets one wish—and that wish always comes true.

Some people wish for money, some people wish for love, but Eldon has seen how wishes have broken the people around him. And with the lives of his family and friends in chaos, he’s left with more questions than answers. Can he make their lives better? How can he be happy if the people around him aren’t? And what hope is there for any of them if happiness isn’t an achievable dream? Doubts build, leading Eldon to a more outlandish and scary thought: maybe you can’t wish for happiness…maybe, just maybe, you have to make it for yourself.

<b>Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review</b>

This book is an intriguing premise. What would you wish for if you could wish for anything and get it? (As long as it doesn’t impact the outside world).

It seems like an easy answer, but unfortunately the language you use matters, and it shows in this novel as Eldon, one of the main characters tries to figure out what his birthday wish will be.

You can wish for a business, but it might not be successful. You can wish for unlimited donuts, but it won’t stop you from gaining weight if you don’t specify (no this is not an example of a wish in the book).

The struggle in this novel is extremely well written, even as Eldon is almost irredeemably arrogant and immature. But then, some teenagers are. However he is not without growth, even as he naivete takes him to some interesting places emotionally.

The characters I liked most were Eldon’s father, who is a warm, put sad character, stuck in Madison like most of them, and Merrill, Eldon’s best friend who is loyal even when he should probably walk away.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes their YA sprinkled with existential crisis’ as I definitely enjoyed this.

Book List 2017 · Reviews

Title: Dark Horse by BJ Daniels

July 19, 2017May 27, 2018 Ashley LPLeave a comment

dark horse

Title: Dark Horse

Author: B.J. Daniels

Genre: Romance and Suspense

Rating: .5

Summary:

Burdened by family secrets, this cowboy rides alone

For twenty-five years, the case of the McGraw twins kidnapping has remained unsolved. As the eldest son, Cull oversees the McGraw horse ranch, wary of prying eyes. So when true-crime writer Nikki St. James comes forward with new information, Cull can’t believe his father invites her onto the compound.

His family has suffered enough–he’s not about to let St. James snoop and ruin them completely. But Nikki finds the eldest McGraw’s protectiveness as endearing as it is aggravating. After all, this case is personal to her, too… And her secrets can set the truth free–if they don’t destroy the McGraws first.

Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This book drew me in at the beginning with a very captivating, intriguing scene which is definitely an attention grabber. I’m a sucker for suspense, so sue me? (Actually don’t, I’m broke as a joke.)

Nikki St. James is a character I can definitely appreciate, as she is tenacious as she is smart, and definitely doesn’t know when to let go, even if it gets her in a touch of danger. She is a good character, with secrets of her own.

Cull McGraw is a tough guy. But not quite as tough as he thinks he is and I, for one, am perfectly okay with that. “Tough guys” appear in abundance. He also has some secrets, only his are far more tragic.

I was so disappointed that this book ended, and that I’d read it so quickly. The pace was quick moving, something I truly appreciate, and it was a nice, quick read. I will be looking for the next one and adding it to my to be read list.

This is recommended for anyone who likes mystery, and romance, with a touch of suspense. Don’t let the Harlequin label scare you off like I almost did.

Book List 2017 · Reviews

Title: Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds

July 18, 2017July 19, 2017 Ashley LPLeave a comment

miles morales.jpg

Title: Miles Morales

Author: Jason Reynolds

Genre: Superhero/YA/Suspense/Awesome

Rating:

Summary:

“Everyone gets mad at hustlers, especially if you’re on the victim side of the hustle. And Miles knew hustling was in his veins.”

Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He’s even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he’s Spider Man.

But lately, Miles’s spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren’t meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad’s advice and focus on saving himself.

As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can’t shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buzz of his spidey-sense every day in history class, amidst his teacher’s lectures on the historical “benefits” of slavery and the importance of the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk.

It’s time for Miles to suit up.

Received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I started reading this book because it was Spider-Man. I kept reading this book because it is awesome.

Miles Morales is a good kid. A good superhero. He’s got a good heart and is written out in a very human way. He isn’t perfect. He’s filled with guilt and teenage angst. He’s not infallible which makes him better, more interesting. He is all the best parts of being a teenager, and some of the worst as well, as he fumbles in talking to girls, sometimes doesn’t communicate the best with his family and bottles everything up inside

A teacher is meant to teach you, and help you become a better person, but some aren’t there to do that. Some people are just not meant to teach and this novel shows you how.

This novel also shows you how to stick to what you think is right, and stand up for what you believe in, in the best possible way.

I would recommend this to not only any fans of Spider-Man, and Marvel, but to anyone who wants to read a YA novel filled with a lot of heart. If you want that then this is the book for you.

Also it introduced me to a new form of poetry and I’m not going to complain about that.