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Kulti
By Mariana Zapata
Week of March 30th, 2020
Releasing March 31st!
Devoted
By Dean Koontz
Woody Bookman hasn’t spoken a word in his eleven years of life. Not when his father died in a freak accident. Not when his mother, Megan, tells him she loves him. For Megan, keeping her boy safe and happy is what matters. But Woody believes a monstrous evil was behind his father’s death and now threatens him and his mother. And he’s not alone in his thoughts. An ally unknown to him is listening...
*Read more....
Week of March 23rd, 2020
New Release & My Next Listen!
The Glass Hotel
By Emily St. John Mandel
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it's the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: "Why don't you swallow broken glass..."
*Read more....
Week of March 16th, 2020
Book Review:
The Sun Down Motel
By Simone St. James
We’ve all seen them on a road trip or family vacation, every town has one right on the pre-Interstate Highway system, the roadside motel. They were a place to stop and get a few winks on your way from point A to point B. In this day and age of chain hotels and frequent flyer plans, the old roadside motel has taken a hit.
*See my full review....
Week of March 9th, 2020
Book Review:
Ilium
By Dan Simmons
Can a science fiction book set in the future, also be an alternate history story at the same time?
Dan Simmons likes to take on some monolithic challenges. Ilium starts off with three separate storylines. I know they are going to come together, they have to come together, what would be the point if they don’t come together. The true beauty of this story is how they come together.
*See my full review....
Week of March 2nd, 2020
Book Review:
The Wives
By Tarryn Fisher
This one came highly recommended to me by someone very close to me, my wife. I had been hearing for quite some time, “You will really love it.” Then as luck would have it, I won a copy through a Goodreads giveaway, winner, winner, chicken dinner!
*See my full review....
Week of February 10th, 2020
Book Review:
Creation
By Gore Vidal
I really don’t like it when I feel like a book is trying to teach me something. Sorry, I should rephrase that, I hate it when an author uses their craft to step up on a soap box and tell me that I am wrong or the way I think is not “correct”. In Creation, Gore Vidal covers some deep topics: from how the world was created, to what is right or wrong, just or unjust, what happens to us when we die and what is the purpose or meaning of life.
*See my full review...
Week of January 27th, 2020
Book Review:
Noir
By Christopher Moore
What I love most about a Christopher Moore book is his complete irreverence, nothing is off the table. He wrote a film noir style book, set in the nineteen-forties and damn it he kept true to the time and place. Sorry snowflakes, this book is filled with “dames” and men who say and think things that would get them strung up today. That’s just the way it was back then!
*See my full review...
Week of January 20, 2020
Book Review:
The Thicket
By Joe R. Lansdale
Over the past few years I’ve heard Joe R. Lansdale’s name come up from time to time. I watched and enjoyed Netflix’s Hap and Leonard, and with a full-length movie in the works, I thought that The Thicket would be a great place to begin my own Joe R. Lansdale reading experience.
*See my full review...
December - 2019
Holiday Edition
At the end of the year I always find it fun to take a look back at the fantastic books that I had a chance to read over the past twelve months. It's never easy putting a list like this together, there are so many great books that I read, some just have to be there, then there are some others that I ask myself, how can that not be on the list? But I suppose that is the challenge, picking the cream of the crop. I hope that you had a great reading year, and here's hoping that 2020 is filled with more amazing reads!
*See my list of favorite books...
Book Review:
When a Child is Born
By Jodi Taylor
When a Child is Born was a free short Audible in Jodi Taylor’s The Chronicles of St. Mary’s series. Taylor really seems to enjoy writing these little Christmas tales, and I’ve enjoyed them as well. Technically speaking, When a Child is Born is book 2.5 in the series. From my own experience, a reader or listener can jump into Taylor’s shorts anywhere along the way.
*Read my full review...
Book Review:
Ninth House
By Leigh Bardugo
I am always intrigued when a popular YA author decides to leave their comfort zone and expand to a new audience. It is a competitive genre, with a very demanding fan base. How is this author going to adapt? Will they connect with me, someone beyond this YA target market?
As for the second question, Bardugo did a fantastic job! She created a couple of characters: Alex and Darlington, that were exceptionally developed.
*Read my full review...
Book Review:
I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story
By Anthony Daniels
I’m really not a non-fiction kind of guy. I like my stories to take me away from the here and now, but when I saw this book set a long time ago in my favorite galaxy far, far away, I knew that this was one to go for.
I went with the Audible version of I Am C-3PO, and what could be better than listening to C-3PO narrate his own story.
*Read my full review...
November - 2019
Book Review:
Chokehold
(The Final War #3)
By David Moody
Authors are able to accomplish some incredible things: they create worlds that captivate people, they imagine characters that complete strangers connect with, they make people forget, temporarily, about the normal lives they live. David Moody has accomplished all of this with his Hater world.
*Read my full review...
What he's reading!
What she's reading!
Greg's Dailyish Blog
Shelley's Daily Blog
This week's list of new
releases is posted below.
New Releases!
- Whiskey (Brewed #2) – By Molly McAdams
I’m the Dixon who left.
Through the good, bad, and worst imaginable, I stayed gone.
When I return home after a decade, I’m not surprised by the cold reception from my family . . . or my brother’s best friend.
Emberly Olsen.
I spent my childhood tormenting her.
Now these days with her feel like the cruelest sort of unintended revenge.
We’ve changed.
She’s changed.
Pure confidence and sensuality, but her pouty lips and heavy-lidded eyes scream contempt. And word around town? She’s untouchable.
But after sharing a few drinks, her snide comments turn teasing.
Sneers become smiles.
Huffs change to laughs.
Laughs to moans, sweeter than any sound.
Years of animosity ignite into carnal need and passion.
We can blame it on the whiskey.
I have a feeling we’ll try.
But we aren’t that drunk.
- Forbidden: A Romance Anthology - Seven authors bring you seven forbidden romance stories with a twist.
- Bourbon on the Rocks – By Shari J. Ryan
- Beloved Liar (The Reed Rivers Trilogy #3) – By Lauren Rowe
- Andino + Haven: The Complete Duet – By Bethany Kris - Mafia romance!
- The Silent Treatment – By Abbie Greaves - Read my review!
A lifetime together.
Six months of silence.
One last chance.
By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Not a sentence, not a single word. Maggie isn’t sure what, exactly, provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas.
Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that has become, for Maggie, deafening.
Then Frank finds Maggie collapsed in the kitchen, unconscious, an empty package of sleeping pills on the table. Rushed to the hospital, she is placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors assess the damage.
If she regains consciousness, Maggie may never be the same. Though he is overwhelmed at the thought of losing his wife, will Frank be able to find his voice once again—and explain his withdrawal—or is it too late?
- You Deserve Each Other – By Sarah Hogle
Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They’re preparing for their lavish wedding that's three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.
Naomi wants out, but there's a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.
But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they're finally being themselves—and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.
- Ashes (Web of Desire #3) – By Aleatha Romig
- What I Like About You – By Marisa Kanter
Is it still a love triangle if there are only two people in it?
There are a million things that Halle Levitt likes about her online best friend, Nash.
He’s an incredibly talented graphic novelist. He loves books almost as much as she does. And she never has to deal with the awkwardness of seeing him in real life. They can talk about anything…
Except who she really is.
Because online, Halle isn’t Halle—she’s Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. Kels has everything Halle doesn’t: friends, a growing platform, tons of confidence, and Nash.
That is, until Halle arrives to spend senior year in Gramps’s small town and finds herself face-to-face with real, human, not-behind-a-screen Nash. Nash, who is somehow everywhere she goes—in her classes, at the bakery, even at synagogue.
Nash who has no idea she’s actually Kels.
If Halle tells him who she is, it will ruin the non-awkward magic of their digital friendship. Not telling him though, means it can never be anything more. Because while she starts to fall for Nash as Halle…he’s in love with Kels.
- Chosen Ones – By Veronica Roth - Dystopian/Sci-Fi!
- Hate to Date You – By Monica Murphy
Stella Ricci is bored.
Her overprotective family barely let her out of their sight, despite the fact she’s a grown woman. Yes, she loves her job at her family’s café and she’s the best barista in the entire Monterey Peninsula, but is that enough? She’s thinking no. But what else can she do?
Enter Carter Abbott. Burnt out after the never-ending grind of selling high end real estate in Los Angeles, he’s returned home, unsure of what to do next. He needs someplace to crash temporarily until he gets back on his feet.
It's easy for Stella to suggest Carter move in. Temporarily of course. It'll give her someone to talk to. The only problem?
That one night stand Stella and Carter had about a year ago. They never talked about it...
- Afterlife – By Julia Alvarez
- The Book of Lost Friends – By Lisa Wingate – Historical! The dramatic story of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post–Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives...
- More of You (A Love You More Rock Star Romance #2) – By Laura Pavlov
- Crave (Crave series #1) – By Tracy Wolfe
My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods…or monsters. I still can’t decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me.
Then there’s Jaxon Vega. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn’t felt anything for a hundred years. But there’s something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in me.
Which could spell death for us all.
Because Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I’m wondering if I was brought here intentionally—as the bait.
- Wicked Ever After (Wicked & Devoted #2) – By Shayla Black
- Need You Now - Includes:
The Dirty Duet by Laurelin Paige
Half Truths by Claire Contreras
Sinner by Sierra Simone
Hostage by Skye Warren and Annika Martin
- April 9 – One Moment Please – By Amy Daws
- April 10 – The Ninth Inning – By J. Sterling
Cole Anders is in his last season at Fullton State. If he doesn't get drafted this year, he'll be forced to hang up his cleats for good. It's not something he's ready to do.
To prove he's serious about his final season, he's given up girls. No more casual hookups, dates or one-night stands. But there's one girl who has always refused to give up on him. One girl who has been there since the start of Freshman year. One girl he stupidly assumed would always be waiting for him when he got off the field, no matter how long it took.
Christina Traver's has had enough of Cole pushing her aside for baseball. She's grown tired of waiting for him to see what she's known since they were freshmen... that they belong together. She's finally moved on.
Cole has other ideas, but she refuses to cave. It's not her problem if he wants her now. Too little too late.
There comes a point in your life when you have to stop the incessant merry-go-round and just get off the ride, right? Try telling that to Cole
- April 10 – The Life We Have – By Kelsey Kingsley – M/M romance!
Happy Reading!
The Glass Hotel
By Emily St. John Mandel
Week of April 6/20
Releasing April 7th!
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Steel Magnolias meets Dracula!
Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club..
Week of April 6/20
2 Book Lovers Reviews
