REVIEW - A Christmas Heat Wave (Heat Wave #3.5) by Alannah Lynne

The Book

Release Date: 21 December 2013

Goodreads Link

Spend the holidays with your friends from the Heat Wave Series, and meet the new additions.

My Opinion  4 STARS

This is a short novella that catches us up with our previous friends around the christmas period, where we get to meet new family members.

Although this can be read as a stand-a-lone book, i would recommend that you read the previous books, just so that you have a better understanding of the characters and where they have come from.

Although the novella is short we get a little angst from Sam and Kevin and a change in the relationship when Sam finally opens up about her fears.

A cute read.

REVIEW - The First Rule of Swimming: A Novel by Courtney Angela Brkic

The Book
Release Date: 28 May 2013
Goodreads Link

"Courtney Brkic gracefully interweaves three generations of family stories and lies...all with authority and wisdom...An intimate portrayal of life in exile." ---O, the Oprah MagazineWhen free spirit Jadranka mysteriously disappears shortly after emigrating to America, her older sister Magdalena must leave their ancestral Croatian island home and follow her to New York City. Magdalena's search begins to unspool the dark history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war.

This haunting and sure-footed first novel explores the legacy of betrayal and loss in a place where beauty is fused with hardship, and where individuals are forced to make wrenching choices as they are swept up in the tides of history.

My Opinion  2 STARS
**My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

This turned out to be a DNF for me.

There was just too much prose for me to handle, and to be honest i think originally it was the cover that drew me in first and i was a little hesitant about the description, hence why it has taken so long for me to get round to reading it.

BUT, that cover is very pretty.

REVIEW - Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) by Lydia Pax

The Book
Release Date: 21 June 2016
Goodreads Link

IF HE CAN’T HAVE HER, HE’LL TAKE HER. 
HELEN
Beretta drives me insane for all the wrong reasons.
It’s not just how his jaw-dropping warrior’s body makes me ache so right.
He’s an apex alpha in a world of testerone-fueled badasses, and he makes me feel safe when I know I’m not.
Safety with a badass outlaw like him is like strapping yourself to a mast in a hurricane, but that doesn’t stop me from holding on for dear life.
We can’t ever be together; there’s too much pain in our history.
Even so, I’ll be damned if my body doesn’t light on fire when he’s near.
Maybe, even if he’s a killer and an outlaw…he’s just who I need.
BERETTA
My outlaw brothers and I were born bad. We fight, we ride, we steal, and we kill.
There’s nothing else I know. Then I met Helen.
Those hips that make my body quake. Those soul-stealing kisses.
I need to have her as much as I need the next beat of my heart.
But, danger surrounds me. The only way I can protect her is to make her my old lady.
She doesn’t understand. I don’t give a damn.
I’ll make her mine whether she likes it or not.

Wild Rider is an action-packed, steam-filled standalone romance with no cliffhangers and its own happily-ever-after. As a special thank you to all her readers, Heart of the Gladiator is included as a FREE bonus book in this file! It is another full-length standalone romance full of thrilling action, lusty alpha males, and forbidden love. 

My Opinion  5 STARS
**My thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

This is the second book in the series, but it can be read as a stand alone book.

The author really gripped me again with this book.  We have Helen, a nurse who likes a bad boy and the feeling of being owned and protected by her alpha make, we also have Beretta, an alpha male who looks after what is his, but both are a little mixed up in the head and have their own issues.

There is a lot happening in this book, the sec up of a new section of the wrecking crew, betrayal, explosives, kidnapping, a psycho ex, shoot outs and two people who battle all the odds and find themselves in a place that is so much better than when things started out.

I'm really loving this series and can't wait to see who gets their story written with their HEA next :)

REVIEW - Dirty Royals (A Sexy Manhattan Fairytale #3) by Michelle A. Valentine

The Book
Release Date: 7 June 2016
Goodreads Link

My evil plan is right on schedule. 
I have her right where I want her, and soon I’ll be ready to lower the boom. 
That is, if I can force myself to screw her over. 
She’s got to me—made me care about her—and now I have two loves—my company and the Feisty Princess. 
I can’t have them both. 
It’s time to choose.

My Opinion  3.5 STARS
**My thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

This felt a little like a rushed ending to this series.  The story started when the last book left off, but it fell just a little flat.

King acts like an idiot and Dime Piece mostly works through the loss of her father and the shake up of her world as she knew it.  But it is Yamada that helps to make the book fun and interesting.  Mind you i see Yamada as Mr Chow from The Hanover movies.

Its still a good read, just not as good as the first two books in the series.

REVIEW - Faded Perfection (Beautifully Flawed #2) by Cassandra Giovanni

The Book
Release Date: 16 June 2016
Goodreads Link

Seconds.

That’s all it takes to have everything ripped away from you.
No one knows this better than Adam Beckerson and River Ahlers.

Each is fighting a losing battle with the death of Bobby and the fallout it causes. Adam loses a brother; River her best friend.

And while Adam finds himself fading into the bottom of a bottle, River finds the only thing she can do is run away from everything-- including Adam.

Sometimes when you lose everything, you lose yourself. The important part is finding your way back again. 

My Opinion  5 STARS
**My thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

It may have taken the author two years to get the second book in the series published, but wow.  It had me ugly crying almost immediately.  

I did not read the first book again in order to remember what had happened, and you do get little reminders and i kind of wish i had, even if it meant that it packed that much more of a punch and i would have had even uglier tears shed at times.

Both characters have had a tragedy destroy their lives and both cope in different ways.

The ending is not what i was expecting at all, but strangely it works and i am very much interested to see what happens next in the lives of Adam and River.

I was also sad to see this book end, i could have read so much more in one sitting of the life of River. 

REVIEW - Bittersweet (True North #1) by Sarina Bowen

The Book
Release Date: 14 June 2016
Goodreads Link

The new series is set in Vermont. True North is populated by the tough, outdoorsy mountain men that populate the Green Mountain State. They raise cows and they grow apples. They chop a lot of wood, especially when they need to blow off steam. (Beards are optional but encouraged.)

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the orchard.

The last person Griffin Shipley expects to find stuck in a ditch on his Vermont country road is his ex-hookup. Five years ago they’d shared a couple of steamy nights together. But that was a lifetime ago.

At twenty-seven, Griff is now the accidental patriarch of his family farm. Even his enormous shoulders feel the strain of supporting his mother, three siblings and a dotty grandfather. He doesn’t have time for the sorority girl who’s shown up expecting to buy his harvest at half price.

Vermont was never in Audrey Kidder’s travel plans. Neither was Griff Shipley. But she needs a second chance with the restaurant conglomerate employing her. Okay—a fifth chance. And no self-righteous lumbersexual farmer will stand in her way.

They’re adversaries. They want entirely different things from life. Too bad their sexual chemistry is as hot as Audrey’s top secret enchilada sauce, and then some. 

BUY LINKS  Amazon US |  B&N  |  iBooks  |   Kobo  |  Google

Also, the first chapter was posted here

My Opinion  5 STARS
**My thanks to the author for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

Each and every book that i have read from Sarina Bowen always seems to be her next best work.  I find very little if at all that i don't like about them, and this one is no different.

Griff is a farmer looking after his family farm and his immediate family after the early and sudden death of his late father.  He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and this tends to make him a little grumpy.

Audrey, although raised by her rich mother, lacked the loved and when she failed at her college went her own way.  Cut off from her mothers purse strings and with her car removed she has forged her way in the kitchen gaining skills that make her happy, but her current employment has given her great difficulties.

The story is complex but has no tricks to make you read the plot, you just want to the story is written that well.  There is so much detail given into Griff and his farm you feel that you are almost learning yourself.

I really, really look forward to the next book in the series and hope there are many more books to come!!

REVIEW - Kidnapped by the Billionaire (Nine Circles #4) by Jackie Ashenden

The Book
Release Date: 1 March 2016
Goodreads Link

He kissed her the way he'd run her down, conquering her, taking her...

A priceless plan. An illicit attraction.
Seven years ago, billionaire-turned-bodyguard Elijah Hunt lost everything he had-his family, his future-and now he wants revenge. But when he decides to kidnap the daughter of the man who ruined his life, Elijah gets a lot more than he bargained for. Violet Fitzgerald is nothing like her corrupt wealthy father. In fact, she's so disarmingly independent-and irresistible-that she just might be dangerous...

And a love that's too good to be true.
Violet never thought she'd feel a connection to her captor. But there's something beneath Elijah's steel-bodied exterior that makes her want to know him more deeply...and surrender to his every demand. But once Elijah's erotic fantasies become a reality-and he and Violet develop a real romantic connection-he finds himself in a quandary: Is he still the one in control? Or has Violet imprisoned him-body and soul?

My Opinion  5 STARS
**My thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press, for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

This is another brilliant book in the series.  Jackie has done it again giving us a brilliant book that starts around the same time as the previous book has finish and all run with the same theme and following a main story line that gives us some answers, but gives us more questions too, just to keep us hooked.

The main theme from Elijah is revenge, however Violet shows us such strength as do all of the female characters so far.  Violet learns and goes through so much, but never does she crumble.  She keeps going and doing what she cam to improve her situation and never gives up.

We get to see some involvement from previous characters, but it is very much a Elijah and Violet book as it should be.  

I am very much excited to see what happens next and who gets to have a HEA next and how the story will eventually end.

REVIEW - Taming the Italian Bad Boy (International Bad Boys #11) by Joanne Walsh

The Book
Release Date: 16 September 2015
Goodreads Link

Wealthy, incredibly sexy Italian entrepreneur Danilo Spinozzi zooms into Lucy Luxton’s life on a motorcycle one quiet afternoon, and she can’t keep her mind or eyes off him. The people of Ravello, a small town on the Amalfi Coast where she is studying jewelry design, warn her that he is the town’s bad boy and a ruthless womanizer, but how can Lucy keep her distance when he is the one man who looks beyond her shy, plump exterior and sees the sensuous and creative woman about to bloom? 

Devastated by the one woman in his life who should have loved and protected him, Danillo Spinozzi has had good reason to avoid long-term commitment. But after he takes one look at Lucy and basks in her kindness and unassuming, voluptuous beauty, he needs to make her his for more than a handful of nights. She’s a girl who deserves to be treated right, a tall order when he’s left a trail of broken female hearts behind. He’s going to have to do something he’s never done before—stay and woo her. 

Even though Lucy knows she’s due to return home to England at the end of August and that Danilo will move on to his next conquest, she can’t resist him… Or has Danilo really changed his ways for good?

My Opinion 3.5 STARS
**My thanks to NetGalley and Tule Publishing, for providing me with a free copy for an honest review**

Although I liked the story on this one, I found it took me ages to finish it, purely as I struggled with the authors style of writing, thereby making me not really want to pick up the book and as it's a novella i should have been finish really quickly.

I did like they way that although, yes they liked the look of each other at first, there was no insta-love, they had to get to know each other for love to happen.

Its a good edition to the series, just sadly did very little for me and left me feeling a little flat as I could not get not it better.