Guest Review: When I'm With You by Beth Kery

I first want to say that this was my first time reading a serial novel. Since I had the entire thing and was able to move right through it like it was an entire novel the experience wasn’t too bad; however, I feel that if I had to go out and purchase each individual part and wait for each to be released I would probably pass up this kind of book altogether. With that being said I wasn’t very impressed with this novel.

It had a very strong resemblance to 50 Shades of Grey but with French characters instead. Lucien Lenault is a self-made billionaire from his many hotels and restaurants. He has a very large inheritance but refuses to touch it as his father is in prison for embezzlement. In the beginning Lucien is walking into his restaurant on a day the place is closed when he hears voices coming from the bar area and immediately he thinks he is being robbed. Upon going further into his restaurant he sees the new chef he hired with a woman and they are drinking. Outraged with his employee he makes himself known and demands to know what is going on when he notices the woman is none other than Elise Martin, a girl from his past.

Elise just moved to Chicago from Paris trying to get away from the heiress lifestyle she led and become a serious chef. To finish her culinary education she has to serve under an accomplished chef sort of like an apprenticeship. Her school set her up with Mario the new chef of Fusion which she later finds out is owned by Lucien, the man she had a crush on her entire life.

Lucien quickly fires Mario and Elise forces her way into Lucien’s life and steps up as the interim chef until he can find a replacement. Once he finds a new chef Elise stays on to complete her training and enters into a sexual arrangement with Lucien. I didn’t find myself connecting to either Elise or Lucien and that in turn didn’t help me connect to the book. Some books can suck you in and make you feel like you are a part of the story as opposed to reading it and I just didn’t feel that.

The ending felt pretty abrupt to me and didn’t really answer the major question of Lucien’s mother. I feel like that part of the story didn’t get closure and felt like it was pointless to even include that if it was going to be seen to the end. Overall I would recommend this to someone who is looking for something similar to 50 Shades of Grey but with not as in-depth of a story and more of a fast moving novel.

**ARC provided by publisher**

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Jenn LeBlanc and Giveaway

Colorado. Canon. Curls. CJs. Chuck Norris.

Born and raised in a household of other people’s children in this beautiful state —very nearly with a camera in hand— she never left. She started her own family, got used to the curls, went to college, built a CJ, started a business, and totally beat the daylights out of Chuck Norris, all with a camera in hand. Spending her days in parenting chat rooms she got highly adept with one-handed typing and she can still type just about as fast with one hand as she can with two. It’s a great talent to have when engrossed in a scene and in need of a hit of caffeine. Once she finished her first novel she quickly realized: She was born a photographer.

From the realization that someone ELSE would be shooting the cover of HER book her control freak took over. What started as an easy cover shoot ballooned into this completely new kind of media, designed specifically for digital book readers.

She lives and thrives off chaos and the constant flow of the creative process. She wears shorts and flip-flops year-round—much to the chagrin of her friends and family— and she is currently working on the illustrations for her second novel. Her first serial novel THE RAKE AND THE RECLUSE is doing its own Chuck Norris impersonation with the time travel charts on Amazon.

Places to find Jenn: 

| Site | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Illustrated Romance | 

ARC Review: Protecting What's His by Tessa Bailey

I won't lie, I wasn't really all that excited to start this book. I am so glad that I did though. I adored this book from beginning to end. It was so good and the chemistry between Derek and Ginger was explosive. So hot. I definitely can't wait to read more from this author.

Ginger has always wanted more for herself and her baby sister. Tired of living in the gutter with her drug addict mother she wants to get as far away from Nashville as she can. When she finds $50,000 stashed in her mothers purse, she knows this is the opportunity she's been looking for and that it's just too good to pass up. With the money and her sister in tow, they head to Chicago to start their lives over.

Derek is tired, hungover and having a bad day. He really isn't in the mood to deal with his noisy new neighbors but a person can take only so much before they snap. And snap he does, though Ginger and her sister aren't phased in the least by Derek's outburst. They just continue to go about their business of moving in to their new apartment.

Derek tries to stay annoyed with the girls but the more time he spends around Ginger, the more he realizes just how much he enjoys ruffling her feathers. There is a lot of back and forth banter between the two and lots of dirty talk. Derek is determined to win over Ginger. As for Ginger, she's attracted to Derek but since she's technically on the run for stealing the money from her mother she knows she should stay away from Derek. After a few weeks of the back and forth the two finally give into their attraction and things really heat up. The chemistry between the two is explosive and Derek is so freaking sexy. He's just such an alpha and his dirty talk really worked for me.

I really liked this story though I did have some issues with the way things went down towards the end of the book. Throughout the whole story Ginger is fierce and independent but all of sudden at the end it she looses some of her spark. She makes some stupid choices that just didn't seem to fit with everything we were shown previously.

All in all, I still found this book highly enjoyable and I can't wait to read more from this author.


**ARC provided by publisher**

Purchase: | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo |

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Manda Collins and Giveaway

Manda Collins spent her teen years wishing she’d been born a couple of centuries earlier, preferably in the English countryside. Time travel being what it is, she resigned herself to life with electricity and indoor plumbing, and read lots of books. An affinity for books led to a graduate degree in English, followed by another in Librarianship. By day, she works as an academic librarian at a small liberal arts college, where she teaches college students how to navigate the tangled world of academic research. A native of coastal Alabama, Manda lives in the house her mother grew up in with three cats, sometimes a dog, sometimes her sister, and more books than strictly necessary.

Places to find Manda:

| Site | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads |

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Sophie Barnes and Giveaway

Born in Denmark, Sophie has spent her youth traveling with her parents to wonderful places all around the world. She’s lived in five different countries, on three different continents, and speaks Danish, English, French, Spanish and Romanian.

She has studied design in Paris and New York and has a bachelor’s degree from Parson’s School of design, but most impressive of all – she’s been married to the same man three times, in three different countries and in three different dresses.

While living in Africa, Sophie turned to her lifelong passion – writing.

When she’s not busy, dreaming up her next romance novel, Sophie enjoys spending time with her family, swimming, cooking, gardening, watching romantic comedies and, of course, reading. She currently lives on the East Coast.

Places to find Sophie:

| Site | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | 

ARC Review: Hero of My Heart by Megan Frampton

Hero of My Heart is the debut romance from Megan Frampton. It is a sweet story of love and redemption in which two damaged people forge an unlikely romance. Most of the action occurs during a road trip in which they experience a wedding, a dead body, stealing, a shooting and more. All the while our hero is fighting an opium addiction as they are both running from troublesome relatives. This sounds like the story is a wild romp, but it is more of a story of two souls moving toward each other.

Our lovers meet when Alasdair Thornham, Marquess of Datchworth, rouses himself from his opium induced stupor long enough to rescue Mary Smith who was being sold to the highest bidder by her drunken brother­ in­-law. Alasdair knows he is no one's hero, but he devises a plan for them to go to Scotland and get married. He would then end his life with opium and leave his property to her. Mary agrees to marry him thinking it will eventually get her to London where she wants to find the mother that abandoned her.

There were a number of things I liked about Hero of My Heart. It was a compelling story which I read quickly because I was anxious to see what would happen next. Frampton has a knack for writing witty dialogue with clever comments and rejoinders. Both characters displayed a surprising sense of humor. The major problem was even though the author did a good job of setting up the various conflicts, she did a very poor job of resolving them. If a writer makes the reader completely believe in the issues confronting the characters (which I did) then there must be an equal amount of effort put into corresponding solutions. Alasdair's addiction was well described at the beginning, but the withdrawal symptoms seemed to stop easily at a certain point. Problems with her brother­in­law and his brother were also resolved with little effort. Even when Mary meets the mother she has never known things just easily move on. Some questions were never explained. Some of the characters' emotional responses were illogical and Mary was a bit too sexually confident for an innocent young woman.


**ARC copy provided by NetGalley**

Purchase: | Amazon | Barnes & Noble |

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Erin Kellison and Giveaway

Erin Kellison is the author of the dark fantasy romance Shadow, Shadow Touch, and Shadow Kissed series. Stories have always been a central part of Erin's life. She attempted her first book in sixth grade, a dark fantasy adventure, and she still has those early hand-written chapters. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English Language and Literature and went on for a masters in Cultural Anthropology, focusing on oral storytelling. When she had children, nothing scared her anymore, so her focus shifted to writing fiction.

Places to find Erin:

| Site | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | 

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Heather Snow and Giveaway

Heather Snow is an award winning historical romance author with a degree in Chemistry who discovered she preferred creating chemistry on the page rather than in the lab. The final book in her Veiled Seduction series, SWEET MADNESS, hits shelves April 2, 2013. RT Book Reviews Magazine gives it 4 ½ stars, saying “In this emotional, compassionate romance...the powerful love story will sweep readers away." RT also gave her hero a K.I.S.S. designation, saying he “makes you weak in the knees as he accepts the healing power of love.” Book Obsessed Chicks gave it 5 stars, saying, “Heather Snow is cutting edge…a master storyteller. Sweet Madness is a magnificent story.” And Night Owl Reviews chose it as a top pick, saying, “Fresh and unique…sweet and heart-wrenching, with characters so complex, flawed, and emotionally scarred that they feel flesh and blood real.”

Places to find Heather:

| Site | Blog | Facebook | Twitter |

Feature and Giveaway: Surrender by Stephanie Tyler

DESPERATE, FEARLESS, AND HUNTED

For former Navy SEAL Dare O’Rourke, Section 8 was legendary. The son of one of its missing members, he grew up in the shadow of its secrets. All he knew was that it was a cabal of operatives discharged from branches of the military and reassigned to extremely dangerous, off- the-books international missions. And that their handler was as shrouded in mystery as the missions themselves.

NOTHING CAN STOP THEM. NOTHING CAN BREAK THEM.

Now the handler of Section 8 has given orders to kill any remaining members, along with their families. Dare must save his long-lost half sister, Avery, whom he was never meant to meet. Determined to fight for their lives and find their missing father, Dare and Avery bring together for one last mission those who are in danger because of their relationship to Section 8—to avenge their families and to survive.

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository |

Feature and Giveaway: Fever by Maya Banks

Jace, Ash, and Gabe: three of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. They’re accustomed to getting anything they want. Anything at all. For Jace, it’s a woman whose allure takes him completely by surprise...

Jace Crestwell, Ash McIntyre, and Gabe Hamilton have been best friends and successful business partners for years. They’re powerful, they’re imposing, they’re irresistibly sexy, and Jace and Ash share everything—including their women.

When they meet Bethany, Jace begins to feel things he’s never experienced before: jealousy, and a powerful obsession that threatens him, overwhelms him—and excites him beyond control.

Jace isn’t sharing Bethany—with anyone. He’s determined to be the only man in her life, and it’s jeopardizing a lifelong friendship with Ash. Bethany will be his and his alone. Even if it means turning his back on his best friend.

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository |

Review: Real by Katy Evans

Wow. I'm not really sure what to say besides the fact that this book was AMAZING. I had my reservations about this book and I wasn't really sure I would like it. Oh my, but I'm am so glad I was wrong. I couldn't put this book down. It's raw and intense and so freaking good!

I loved the chemistry between Remy and Brooke and I actually enjoyed that their relationship rushed. They didn't immediately jump into bed together and honestly I liked that. Their relationship felt real and I got a real sense of the feelings they felt for one another. It's not just lust between them. Don't get me wrong though, there is plenty of lust between them, it's just that their relationship is so much more than that. 

Remington "Remy" is an intense hero and oh my goodness is he swoon worthy. I think the moment he first played 'Iris' for Brooke I was a goner. He's a sexy alpha and all he wants is Brooke. *sigh* He hasn't had an easy life. He's spent his life fighting whether it's in the ring or out and he doesn't really know how to show his affection. He expresses himself through songs and to be honest, some of my favorite moments are when he's sharing songs with Brooke. I found myself on the edge of my seat wondering what song he was going to play for her and just how it was going to express what he was feeling at that moment. 

As for Brooke, I found that I really liked her character. She's not a pushover and I love how fiercely she loves Remy and just wants to protect him. Yes, she does do a few things that were annoying, but all in all I loved her with Remy. 

Honestly I can't wait to read more from this author and I can't wait to get my hands on the next book in this series. I LOVED this book and I can't wait to see what else is in store for Remy and Brooke.

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble |

My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Molly O'Keefe and Giveaway

Molly O'Keefe is a RITA-Award winning author with 25 novels in publication. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her family and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

Places to find Molly:
| Site | Facebook | Twitter |