Kicking off Summer

Well clearly I have taken a leave of absence from my blog. Hopefully now that things have calmed down around here I can start reading again...not to the extremes from before but definitely more than one book a month!

I am kickstarting my Summer reading with the participation in the NOR Summer Web Hunt. One author, definitely new to me, has upped the ante a little. She is not only participating in the Web Hunt, she is also giving a little extra away. So if you are not interested in joining the web hunt fun, you can certainly get into the action just by visiting her blog, reading about her new Demimonde series, the first book is Bleeding Hearts which sounds amazing!

Blurb from Amazon:

Sophie Galen is an advice columnist whose work leaves her neck-deep in other people's problems. Thanks to her compassion, her gut instinct, and her magnetic charm, Sophie really knows how to attract little black clouds.

Marek Thurzo is no little black cloud; he's a maelstrom. Marek is Demivampire, a race with the potential to evolve into vampire. A warrior who's taken his share of spiritual damage, he hovers dangerously close to destruction.

He seeks salvation. She's driven to save him. But what if he can't be saved?

Sympathy for his plight becomes true empathy as Sophie's hidden nature is revealed. Marek suspects she may be one of the Sophia, oracle and redemption of the damned Demivampire. She alone can turn back the evolutionary clock.

All she needs is the courage to face her fears. Can she save him from Falling?

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You can enter her givaway by using this rafflecopter, but I really think you should head over and check out her blog

a'>http://www.rafflecopter.com">a Rafflecopter giveaway


Lethal by Sandra Brown

When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.
But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it -- at any cost. From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society

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My Thoughts:
Honor makes the mistake of believing a man found in her yard is in need of help. It turns out that the man, Colburn, is an accused mass murderer. He is in search of something that he believes Honor possesses that will clear his name and break open a large human, drug, and weapons smuggling ring.

Colburn and Honor set out to find the key that is needed, and in time find more than they were bargaining for.

This was the first book that I have read by Sandra Brown. I have heard many great things about her books and I was not disappointed in my choice of first books. I was immediately drawn into the plot and found it extremely hard to set the book aside to read my school assignments. I am giving Lethal a 4 star rating because I felt the ending needed a little help. I am still questioning if there was indeed a happily ever after. I guess it was implied, but I would rather have seen a final meeting. I do recommend the book to others and I will read this author again!

Whats up with me!!

I certainly am very excited!! I have been a stay at home mom for 9 years. Before I stopped working, I was a workaholic. It was just my daughter and I, and thankfully I had a great support system. Once I met my husband though, my son came along rather quickly. I stopped working when I was 5 months pregnant. I was having issues with my pregnancy and both my husband and I felt like putting our son in daycare would not be a good choice. I wanted the opportunity to stay home and raise my son, not depend on the daycare provider to do it for me. This also allowed me to spend more quality time with my daughter. So that being said I have not worked outside of the home, except for volunteer work at the schools, in 9 years.

Well things are changing. Not only have I enrolled in school to get my bachelors degree, but I have become self employeed. This is no small thing for me. I am OK with school, that doesn't scare me at all. But the idea of entering back into the work force...yeah that scares the hell out of me. I have just signed on to be a ThirtyOne consultant. I first heard of this company when my son was in Kindergarten, when I purchased my first bow purse and a duffle bag personalized for my daughter. I didn't know who the consultant was and I didn't get to go to the party. Recently a friend of mine entered into this same career, and she has me hyped about doing it myself. The best part is that I make my hours, I have complete control over how often I work and how hard I work at it. I get some great products to advertise and show off at parties. I am super excited about the whole idea!! I am scared witless though. In becoming a stay at home mom I basically became a recluse and I am going to have to work extra hard to get out of my habits of sticking my head back in the shell and pull my nose out of that book!

So this is what's up with me!!!

On top of this I have been reading some really great books!! Right now I am on a real paranormal kick, and have been reading the Mercy Thompson series. I am still do the quarterly challenge in a book group at Shelfari.com. I have 5 books to complete before I start school on Aug. 23: Desires Unchained, Unholy Ghosts, Wicked Intentions, Marry Me, and one more that I have not decided on yet. It needs to be by an author that I have not read yet, so I have a list of potential authors ready and waiting...all of which I already own at least one book.

What is new with my blogland friends?!!

Kelly Armstrong Giveaway

OK, so I am not the person holding this giveaway!! I have never read the series! But my friend Christine from Shelfari is holding her first ever giveaway, and it just so happens to be Kelly Armstrong's Spellbound.

Here are the details:

Contest starts today!

Contest ends July 6

Names will be put in Random organizer on the 7th

Open to the US only

you have three chances to win...comment, be a follower, and post about it on your blog. However all three entries must have their own comment (oops I missed that part when I left my comment, guess I have to go make two more comments)

Alright so head on over and throw your name into the hat and help Christina with her first ever giveaway!!

Lorraine Heath Giveaway on Happily Forever After

I have only recently found Lorraine Heath again and I am absolutely in love with her writing! Ok, well I still haven't read many books by her, but I did absolutely love Texas Destiny! And I have found in the past that any book that Barbara at Happily Forever After is pimping is definitely well worth my time and money! So I am more than happy to come out of hiding and have my first post in months be one sharing the news of her Giveaway and pimpage!! And you can bet your buns that I will be throwing my name in to the proverbial hat! Head on over...or not which would definitely give me a better chance ;)

The contest is open until Sunday June 26 and she will announce the winner on Wed. June 29. Open to the United States Only.

Giveaway~~~Desperate Desires by Terri Wolffe

Ms. Wolffe contacted me a couple of days ago to offer a follow up Giveaway to my review of her book Desperate Desires. I am very pleased and excited to give you guys the chance to win a Kindle ebook  of Desperate Desires. I am going to do this a little differently... The first two (2) commenters either here or in my group on Shelfari.com will receive the novella. Please make sure that you leave me your email address so that I can contact you and then forward your information to Ms. Wolffe.

Please remember that the copies of Desperate Desires are ebooks in the Kindle format!

Check out the video for Desperate Desire!

***Giveaway Closed***

Desperate Desires by Terri Wolffe~~~Review

A Sweet and Spicy Novella

The cunningly audacious Lady Lucinda Davenport is by no means a conventional woman. Smart and fiercely determined, she’s more comfortable adding numbers than she’ll ever be socializing with highfalutin members of the ton. When desperate straits force her into action to save her home and lands, she finds herself faced with only one option. Summoning every ounce of her courage, she sets in motion a wild and raunchy scheme that would set the ton on fire if they ever caught wind of her actions.

Lucien Brandford, fourth Duke of Carlsborough, is a dangerous man. Wealthy beyond imagination and handsome to a fault, the Duke is sought after by nearly every woman of the ton. Single, widowed, or married, ladies vie for his attention with cutthroat precision. But the Duke has no tolerance for the machinations of his title and fortune-hungry peers. He seeks his pleasure from women who require no commitment.

That attitude ensnares the Duke in Lady Lucinda’s plan. Caught unawares, Lucien finds himself at the mercy of a bold and luscious woman whom he cannot decide if he wants to strangle or bed.

The sensual dance that follows between captor and captive as they engage in a volatile battle for control, culminates in a seismic eruption—both psychological and sensual. As tempers flare and sparks fly, an intense and erotic interlude of passion ensues.

The temperamental lovers soon discover what all the world knows: that in order to possess the love of a lifetime, they must submit to one another to conquer their own Desperate Desires.

Sensually spiced with a heavy dose of passion, this romantic bestseller comes complete with a memorable cast of characters. You won’t want to put this one down!

My Thoughts:

In my opinion "Sweet and Spicy" is a little misleading. Desperate Desires was definitely a whole lot more than "Spicy" and should have been labeled erotica. A lot of the "sweet" is lost amongst the sexual interactions and "talk dirty to me" going on. Ms. Wolffe, however did a wonderful job portraying the characters and writing an exciting erotic historical romance.  

You know from the blurb that Lucinda is in dire straits and is desperate to save her home and lands, but you are left wondering what the true predicament really is through out the first half of the book. It is made obvious from the beginning that she is not in danger of losing them because of financial losses. There are hints dropped here and there, and it becomes a little frustrating wondering why she would go to the extreme of abducting Lucien, IV Duke of Carlsborough. 

There is an instant pull between Lucinda and Lucien, a desire that Lucien is none too happy about. He would much rather strangle "Madame Dictator" than show any desire for her wayward actions. Once they are sequestered in Lucinda's room, they have a total romp fest, Lucien is obviously experiencing Stockholm syndrome, and fall in love. There are tender moments between the two that you get glimpses of in between their highly explosive love scenes. So as to not give too much of the plot away lets just say that Lucien has overstayed his welcome and is quickly removed back to London. 

I understand that this is a novella and therefore everything is going to happen on a faster scale than a novel, however I was not thrilled with how quickly the story ended. We go from the reuniting to the end in a matter of a turn of the page. I would have liked to have seen just how these two were able to come to an agreement with all parties involved... surely this could have been achieved within a few pages. On a more positive note I am pleased to see that the author gave our hero and heroine a HEA, even if it was done in a single paragraph.

I do recommend Desperate Desires to anyone that enjoys extremely hot books, and I do mean the caliber of books where you will need a fire extinguisher to put out the flames and lots of ice to cool down those burning cheeks!! After careful consideration  and lots of thought I am going to go with my original rating of 4 stars. It is not the book's fault that I was not expecting what I got in terms of heat level, and the story while a little far fetched was extremely enjoyable! 


Gorgeous Cover!!

Semi-Sweet: A Novel of Love and Cupcakes by Roisin Meaney~~Review

 Description (from Amazon):
Amazon buy link

 

Hannah Robinson is just about to open the doors to her new shop Cupcakes on the Corner when out of the blue her boyfriend Patrick announces that he's leaving her for another woman. Faced with starting a business on her own, Hannah begins to wonder if her life-long dream has just turned into a nightmare. So her best friend Adam sets his birthday as a deadline - seven months to make her shop a success, or walk away from it all. And as Hannah immerses herself in her new business, she soon discovers that she's too busy to think about Patrick and his now pregnant girlfriend ...or to notice an increasingly regular customer who has recently developed a sweet tooth for all things cupcake. But while Hannah is slowly piecing her life back together, family friend Alice's is falling apart. Her husband Tom's drinking is getting out of control and things are about to get a whole lot worse. As the seven-month milestone approaches, Hannah must decide her future. And while she's figuring out what's really important, it becomes clear to everyone that happiness in life, and in love, is all in the making.

from the publisher:

"The first edition of SEMI-SWEET was published in Ireland in February 2010 and spent five weeks in the Top 5 on the Irish Bestseller list. Roisin Meaney is the author of six books and is a consistent bestseller in Ireland. The Last Week of May and The People Next Door went to #1 and #2, respectively. Heralded as the new “Maeve Binchy,” Meaney has received high acclaim in the Irish press."

My Thoughts:

Semi Sweet is not a book that I would typically pick up to read, but from the description I thought I would give it a try and broaden my horizons yet again. From the very beginning I was pulled into Hannah's life. On the night that her friends and family were having a dinner to celebrate the upcoming opening of her Hannah's dream cupcake shop, her longtime boyfriend drops the bomb. He has found another, "didn't mean to fall in love, it just happened" and now he is moving in with the other woman. 

Hannah didn't drop into a puddle of tears and hysterics she calmly told him to get dressed or they would be late. Leaving him sitting on the bed she heads out to the dinner and makes excuses for his absence...why ruin everyone else's night.

Over the next few days she does tell her friends and family and even considers not following her dreams and opening the cupcake shop. Childhood friend, Adam, won't hear of it and sets a seven month goal...Hannah absolutely cannot throw in the towel, no matter how hard or how bad it gets with the cupcake shop. Over the course of the seven month period Hannah comes to grips with the loss and betrayal of the boyfriend, meets a couple of new guys, and becomes a success with her cupcake shop. 

You not only see Hannah's life, but we are introduced to a small town and the people living in it. Their lives are entwined with Hannah's in a sort of six degrees of separation  scenario. There is heartache a plenty to go around. At times I did find all of the other subplots a little distracting, but they worked well with the overall story. Because I am a huge romance reader, I would have loved to see more of it in the book.  Overall Semi Sweet was a very enjoyable read, and I do recommend reading it.  

I know that there are a few authors that I read that don't hale from the States, but it was very interesting to know before hand that I was reading a book that was originally published in another country prior to being released here. 

4 stars!

My reading time has been cut

Over Thanksgiving my sister n law took it upon herself to teach me a craft. Who would have thought that I would have actually picked this craft up with gusto and actually enjoy doing it? Not me or my husband I tell you. My husband would like nothing more than to go back to Iowa and ring his sister's neck for giving me yet something else to distract me from the many housekeeping things that always fall to the wayside as I sit here and read and now Crochet.

(The above picture is not mine, I borrowed the picture)

My mother made the attempt several years ago to teach me, but me being me said I am way too cool for that and never let it stick.  OK, I did have a lot on my plate at the time and certainly didn't have time to sit down and crochet a blanket. I had to work, attempt to complete a degree, and spend every spare moment with my precious daughter.

When I fell and broke my ankle, I thought hey I get plenty of time to read. I did have the time, but I couldn't make myself read. I am sure that it had a lot to do with those dreaded pain killers, but I can't put all the blame there. I just didn't want to read. So I picked up the ball of yarn my SNL gave me to practice with and gave it a go. Before I knew it I had finished a scarf. Now this scarf in my opinion is extremely ugly and needs lots of help, but my step mother loved it. So she was the lucky recipient of the finished product. Having another ball of yarn of the same color I thought I would make her a hat to go with the scarf. The hat didn't turn out quite like it was suppose to but it was still extremely cute...for a baby! I gave up on the hat.

Then I got this idea in my head. My best friend is about to be a grandmother. Well now I have a baby that I can practice with... you know make the cute little blankets and anything else that I can figure out. So I made my hubby take me to Hobby Lobby. I was still in a cast to my knee and had to be rolled in, he left me on the yarn isle while he and my son went to look at airplanes. I found the perfect yarn for a little girl, and for a set of teenage parents, "Pink Baby Camo" by Baby Bee (I think that is the company name). So I grabbed my five rolls... thats all they had and perfect for me that is what my pattern said I needed. Only I changed my mind and found another pattern that I liked so much better. Unfortunately for me that in my learning all of these stitches and how to read a pattern all by myself, I didn't realize that not all balls of yarn are the same length. I expected to be able to use the same 5 rolls for this new pattern and be good. I was so wrong. I went through my five rolls and found that I still needed more. And the store was out!! easy fix, I had the store order me 5 more and prayed that that would be enough.  In the end I shortened the length of the blanket and changed the border to something more girlly. I ended up with 3 balls left. I made the same baby hat that I accidentally made for my stepmother. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. At the end of this project I was so fed up with crochet I didn't think I would ever do it again.

Boy was I wrong. My son's teacher is pregnant and his Kindergarten teacher is pregnant. So now I have consigned myself to make two more blankets. This time I am using the only pattern my mother knows... a granny square that keeps on going.  She says that it moves really fast... I am starting to think she is lying!! So I am bored with the blanket that I have started for the current teacher, she is due first, and decide to look through the internet for some simple and quick patterns that I can make cutesy headbands or something. Yesterday I made two!! They took absolutely no time at all.

I find myself reading less and less as I devote myself to these little projects. And unfortunately my blog has completely fallen to the wayside. I do have one review that I will definitely be getting up in the coming weeks for the book Semi Sweet. 

I hope that all of my friends in blogland are doing well and I hope to hop over to see you soon!!

DIK Reading Challenge~~Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran

BEAUTY IS AS BEAUTY DOES...

Silver tongued Viscount Sanburne is London's favorite scapegrace. Alas, Lydia Boyce has no interest in being charmed. When his latest escapade exposes a plot to ruin her family, she vows to handle it herself, as she always has done. Certainly she requires no help from a too-handsome dilettante whose main achievement is being scandalous. But Sanburne's golden charisma masks a sharper mind and darker history than she realizes. He shocks Lydia by breaking past her prim facade to the woman beneath... and the hidden fire no man has ever recognized. But as she follows him into a world of intrigue, she will learn that the greatest danger lies within-- in the shadowy , secret motives of his heart.


My Thoughts:
I have planned on reading Meredith Duran for quite some time. Several of my internet reading buddies have raved on and on first about The Duke of Shadows and then about Bound by Your Touch. I finally found the opportunity to read one of Meredith Duran's books with the DIK reading challenge. Unfortunately for me the day after I picked up the book and actually started reading North GA was hit with an awful ice storm that left a lot of people stranded. Cars were literally left in the middle of interstates unable to move because of multiple accidents and empty gas tanks. I was not stranded on an interstate, thank goodness, but I did encounter much of the same problems a lot of people did in Atlanta, which aired nationally on the news...My mom was watching in West Virginia and was quite worried. I made the decision to park my car safely and walk the two miles home. Long story short, it was the wrong decision for me. I fell and broke my ankle in 7 places.
In the last two and a half weeks I have been trying to read Bound by Your Touch. I have been taking some pretty decent pain killers and suffering the side effects associated with them. I am hoping that being doped up is the reason the book did not hold my attention for more than a few minutes resulting in me almost not finishing the book in time to get this post completed. Unfortunately the rating may suffer all the same. I will definitely have to take Tracy's advice and reread it later on when I am not doped up. I am definitely not going to count Ms. Duran out, I still have two other books by her to read. If I find that those books satisfy my needs I will definitely revisit BBYT and its rating.

Lydia, the not so pretty older sister who finds solace in books and studies has been placed as the head of the family because the father is too busy with his own agenda to really give a darn about his three daughters. in an attempt to get some of her pride back after being rudely interrupted by Sanburne declares his piece of art a fraud in front of everyone, but the real slap in the face was his father was there as well.

Sanburne is so messed up in his head that he blames his father for his sister's situation. He has vowed to destroy his own life in attempts at making his father miserable for doing nothing about the predicament his sister is in. He acts like a spoiled and selfish little boy when all he has to do is face his father and ask the right questions. Now he is out to ruin Lydia and her family, only he finds he is intrigued by the bookish miss. Instead of publicly ruining her father and the rest of her family, he decides to work with her in the attempt to find out what really happened to the piece that he bought.

I felt like the story dragged on and on. Like I said I am hoping that the percocet, which seems to act like a downer in my system, is to blame for my ill feelings about the heroine and hero. I did enjoy the last quarter of the book which helped me keep the rating for Bound by Your Touch at a respectable 3 stars.   I really hope to revisit this review in the future and change my rating and give a more positive review.

rating:3 stars