Taking Time Off

Hello readers I have finally sat down at the computer to write this post.  I will be back posting again starting Dec. 1st. I just really needed a break. From my oldest insurance being messed up (She is a type one diabetic), to just financial issues in general, and attempting to get food into the house. I just really needed to have a break from posting.  

#BookReview: The Last She (The Last She, #1) by @hjnelson

Synopsis: Ara . . . I made a mistake, we all did . . . go back to the beginning . . . it’s not too late.

As the only female to survive the devastating virus, Ara hasn’t seen another human in months―not since her father disappeared. The plague has swept away humanity, and Ara’s world is desolate, haunted by the ghosts of her former life. Her mother. Her sister.

Kaden and his crew live by a code: stay alert, stay alive. When they catch Ara stealing from them, they are furious―and confused. She is the first girl they have seen in three years. And while Kaden knows taking her captive is wrong, he tells himself he’s doing it to protect her.

But with Ara determined to follow through on her father’s mission―Go back to the beginning. End the plague―Kaden becomes mesmerized by Ara’s will and beauty. He knows he will do anything to help her, even if it tears their worlds apart.

#BookReview: A Deal with the Elf King (Married to Magic #1) by @EliseKova

Synopsis: The elves come for two things: war and wives. In both cases, they come for death.

Three-thousand years ago, humans were hunted by powerful races with wild magic until the treaty was formed. Now, for centuries, the elves have taken a young woman from Luella's village to be their Human Queen.

To be chosen is seen as a mark of death by the townsfolk. A mark nineteen-year-old Luella is grateful to have escaped as a girl. Instead, she's dedicated her life to studying herbology and becoming the town's only healer.

That is, until the Elf King unexpectedly arrives... for her.

Everything Luella had thought she'd known about her life, and herself, was a lie. Taken to a land filled with wild magic, Luella is forced to be the new queen to a cold yet blisteringly handsome Elf King. Once there, she learns about a dying world that only she can save.

The magical land of Midscape pulls on one corner of her heart, her home and people tug on another... but what will truly break her is a passion she never wanted.

A Deal with the Elf King is a complete, stand-alone novel, inspired by the tales of Hades and Persephone, as well as Beauty and the Beast, with a "happily ever after" ending. It's perfect for fantasy romance fans looking for just the right amount of steam and their next slow-burn and swoon-worthy couple.

#BookReview: Getting Clean With Stevie Green by @swanhuntley

Synopsis: The author of the “sparkling dark romance” (Redbook) We Could Be Beautiful brings her “wit and verve” (The New York Times Book Review) to this quirky, feel-good novel about one woman’s messy journey from self-delusion to self-acceptance.

At thirty-seven, Stevie Green has had it with binge drinking and sleeping with strange men. She’s confused about her sexuality and her purpose in life. When her mother asks her to return to her hometown of La Jolla to help her move into a new house, she’s desperate enough to say yes. The move goes so well that Stevie decides to start her own decluttering business. She stops drinking. She hires her formerly estranged sister, Bonnie, to be her business partner. She rekindles a romance with her high school sweetheart, Brad. Things are better than ever—except for the complicated past that Stevie can’t seem to outrun.

Who was responsible for the high school scandal that caused her life to take a nosedive twenty years earlier? Why is she so secretive about the circumstances of her father’s death? Why are her feelings for her ex-friend, Chris, so mystifying? If she’s done drinking, then why can’t she seem to declutter the mini wine bottles from her car?

A winsome, fast-paced read, Getting Clean With Stevie Green is about coming to terms with who you are, resolving the pain of your past, and accepting the truth of your life in all its messy glory.

This title will be released on January 25, 2022.

#BookReview: Mermaid Tears by Susan L Read

Synopsis: There's no such thing as normal. 

Sarah has always been a hard-working student, even if she has felt her grades don't reflect her efforts. She is a good friend, a kind daughter, and she loves being creative. But lately she is struggling with school and friendships, and nothing brings her much joy. Her family doesn't seem to understand what's happening, and neither does Sarah. Everyone keeps telling her to do better, and Sarah is trying her hardest, but when her first year of middle school begins, what was supposed to be a fresh start turns into a disaster that quickly spirals out of control. Sarah, who can't understand why she is feeling this way, begins to seriously wonder if the world would be better off if she was no longer alive. Sarah has always felt a connection with mermaids, and she now wishes she was a mermaid herself, so she could just slip under the ocean and swim away, disappearing from everyone's lives forever.

Finally, Sarah reaches her breaking point, and in desperation, seeks help from a trusted teacher. Everyone in Sarah's life reaches in to pull her from her own drowning emotions, and with the help of her family, friends, teachers, and mental health professionals, Sarah learns there is a name for what she is feeling. She develops tools, not only for coping, but for thriving. In learning about her condition and gaining the support she needs for managing it, she begins the long journey back to her life.

Rewarding, memorable, and deeply evocative, this gorgeously written story about a girl who learns to navigate the choppy and scary waters of her mental health, is nothing short of remarkable.

#BookTour: Babe in the Woods by Yvonne Wakefield @rabtbooktours #Giveaway

Biography and Memoir, Adventure

Date Published: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Pepin Enterprises

At age eighteen, Yvonne set out to build a home from trees on 80 acres she bought on an Oregon mountainside. In 1975, log by log she creates a cabin and heals from an orphaned past, finding a new family in the forest, and with people in a valley named John Day.

Babe in the Woods: Self Portrait is the second in a three-book series. It chronicles a span in Yvonne's four decades long relationship with her log cabin and the people she meets in the valley. The book continues Yvonne's story of learning to live in the wilderness within and outside of herself. It is also a story of rogue bears, building a bear-proof log studio, a young artist's development, and the trials and triumph of finding oneself, alone in the backwoods.

#BookReview: The Sorting Room by Michael Rose

Synopsis: In Prohibition-era New York City, Eunice Ritter, an indomitable ten-year-old girl, finds work in a sweat shop—an industrial laundry—after impairing her older brother with a blow to the head in a sibling tussle. When the diminutive girl first enters the sorting room, she encounters a giant, the largest human being she has ever seen. 

Gussie, a powerful, hard-working Black woman, soon becomes her mentor and sole friend. Eunice is entrapped in the laundry’s sorting room by the Great Depression, sentenced to bring her low wages home to her alcoholic parents as penance for her childhood mistake. Then, on her sixteenth birthday, Eunice becomes pregnant and her drunken father demands the culprit marry his daughter, trapping her anew—this time in a loveless marriage, along with a child she never wanted. Within a couple of years, Eunice makes a grave error and settles into a lonely life of drudgery that she views as her own doing. Decades pass in virtual solitude before her secret history is revealed to those from whom she has withheld her love.

An epic family saga, The Sorting Room is a captivating tale of a woman’s struggle and perseverance in faint hopes of reconciliation, if not redemption. 

#BookReview: The Passing Storm by Christine Nolfi

Synopsis: A gripping, openhearted novel about family, reconciliation, and bringing closure to the secrets of the past.

Early into the tempestuous decade of her thirties, Rae Langdon struggles to work through a grief she never anticipated. With her father, Connor, she tends to their Ohio farm, a forty-acre spread that itself has enjoyed better days. As memories sweep through her, some too precious to bear, Rae gives shelter from a brutal winter to a teenager named Quinn Galecki.

Quinn has been thrown out by his parents, a couple too troubled to help steer the misunderstood boy through his own losses. Now Quinn has found a temporary home with the Langdons—and an unexpected kinship, because Rae, Quinn, and Connor share a past and understand one another’s pain. But its depths—and all its revelations and secrets—have yet to come to light. To finally move forward, Rae must confront them and also fight for Quinn, whose parents have other plans in mind for their son.

With forgiveness, love, and the spring thaw, there might be hope for a new season—a second chance Rae believed in her heart was gone forever. 

#BookReview: Empty Threat (The Black Pages #1) by Danny Bell

Synopsis: Book one of The Black Pages

Elana Black has the power to make herself fictional. But when she decides to start saving all the people in books and TV shows who die just for the sake of advancing the plot, she quickly learns that she's not the only one with her powers.

All Elana wants to do is save people. But these others don't want the stories to change, and they'll do everything they can to stop her. 

If you had the power to change fate... to create a happy ending where there wasn't one before... would you do it if it meant risking your own?

#BookReview: OtherLife by Lynette DeVries

Synopsis: When 16-year-old Lucy McGowen goes under sedation for a routine dental procedure, she hopes to come out of it free of pain. Instead, she wakes up in an alternate version of her life―a reality in which her secret hobby is out in the open, her own parents feel like strangers, and her boyfriend doesn’t even know her name. Navigating her new world is hard enough, but then Lucy begins getting cryptic messages from a mysterious sender with unfinished business. She has also acquired a new habit―sleepwalking―and with each episode, she finds herself in increasingly bizarre situations. She doesn’t know if luck has landed her in this revamped version of reality―or if she was somehow chosen―but one thing is clear: she must uncover the truth about how it’s all connected before she loses herself completely. Will Lucy find a way back to her other life . . . or will she create a new world that she can truly call her own?

#BookReview: Blood Crescent (Divine #1) by Stevie McCoy

Synopsis: A missing mother. A magical birthright. Can she uncover the secrets of her family legacy before the bloodline runs dry?  

My name is Chrystal Dylan, and I was born with the worst super power ever, a lightning rod for supernatural energy that attracts vampires like cat nip to feed from. Nothing like being an all you can eat buffet, until one decided to “save” me from that fate by triggering my transition into the very thing killing me.

Considering that was the least of my problems, I have a council looking to eliminate all anomalies threatening to expose them to the human world, it just so happens that I’m one of them, and so is my best friend Victor. I won’t go down without some answers, including what they did with my mom.

Blood Crescent is the first novel in the exhilarating Divine Series of YA paranormal fantasies. If you like hidden magical realms, fresh new takes on vampire lore, and heartfelt journeys of self-discovery, then you’ll love Stevie McCoy’s spellbinding coming-of-age tale.

#BookReview: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Synopsis: Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love. 

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

#BookReview: Pliés, Pranks, & Hocus-Pocus (Lyssa's Holiday Hijinks #1) by C.J. Kavanaugh

Synopsis: Pranks are the best thing about Halloween — until a ghost pulls one on you.

When 11-year-old Lyssa Klarken discovers the legend about her ballet school being haunted is true, she thinks she’s won the candy-filled jackpot.

But treats turn to tricks when Nadia, the ghost of a star ballerina, starts pranking her. Nadia only agrees to leave Lyssa alone if she frees her from her unfinished business. There’s just one problem: Nadia can’t remember what that is.

Lyssa has six days to figure it out and save Nadia from torment. If she fails, the tables will turn: Lyssa will be haunted for the rest of her life. Can she solve the mystery before the curtain rises on October 31st? 

#BookReview: Wilds, Warnings, & Little Wolves (Lyssa's Holiday Hijinks Book 1) by C.J. Kavanaugh

Synopsis: Camping is a real snooze-fest—unless you meet a werewolf.

Eleven-year-old Lyssa Klarken hates camping. Until she learns Candis Campground is home to a wealth of werewolf rumors.

When they arrive at the campsite, a poster for a missing boy catches her eye. Later that night she finds a wolf pup with a suspiciously high IQ who looks oddly familiar. Could the rumors be true after all?

Only one way to find out.

#BookReview: Forbidden Blossom (Skyline Mansion #1) by Nola Li Barr

Synopsis: A decades-old scandal. A mysterious inheritance. Can a young woman survive a family desperate to keep their past buried?

2010. Anne Huang never cared to call anywhere home. But her carefree lifestyle of blogging and travel is interrupted when a stranger with ties to her family bequeaths her a fortune. And with no knowledge of her history, she soon finds herself thrown in with a nest of billionaire vipers determined to lock away their skeletons.

1946. Seventeen-year-old Rose Chen’s quiet life is shattered when she’s dragged from Taiwan and forced to immigrate to the U.S. And her nightmare continues when she arrives in San Francisco, only to be shipped off by her parents to serve in a wealthy American’s household. But her dutiful-daughter status soon comes under threat when her risky friendship with her white employer’s son transforms into something taboo.

Confronted by jealous rivals, Anne battles distrust and hidden agendas as she tries to understand more about her birthright and learns the value of love. And as Rose wrestles with her complicated feelings in a private journal, she unwittingly leaves a stunning legacy to a granddaughter she’ll never know…

Can their lives come full circle to close one door and open another?

Forbidden Blossom is the heartfelt first book in the Skyline Mansion women’s fiction series. If you like soul-searching heroines, paths to self-discovery, and stories of perseverance and inner strength, then you’ll adore Nola Li Barr’s generation-spanning tale.

#BookReview: Electric Idol (Dark Olympus #2) by Katee Robert

Synopsis: He was the most beautiful man alive.
And if I wasn't careful, he was going to be my death.

*A scorchingly hot modern retelling of Psyche and Eros that's as sinful as it is sweet.*

In the ultra-modern city of Olympus, there's always a price to pay. Psyche knew she'd have to face Aphrodite's ire eventually, but she never expected her literal heart to be at stake...or for Aphrodite's gorgeous son to be the one ordered to strike the killing blow.

Eros has no problem shedding blood. But when it comes time to take out his latest target, he can't do it. Confused by his reaction to Psyche, he does the only thing he can think of to keep her safe: he marries her. Psyche vows to make Eros's life a living hell until they find a way out of this mess. But as lines blur and loyalties shift, she realizes he might take her heart after all...and she's not sure she can survive the loss.

This title will be released on January 18, 2022.

#BookReview: Ski Weekend by @rektokross

Synopsis: Six teens, one dog, a ski trip gone wrong . . .

Sam is dreading senior ski weekend and having to watch after her brother and his best friend, Gavin, to make sure they don’t do anything stupid. Again. Gavin may be gorgeous, but he and Sam have never gotten along. Now they’re crammed into an SUV with three other classmates and Gavin’s dog, heading on a road trip that can’t go by fast enough.

Then their SUV crashes into a snowbank, and Sam and her friends find themselves stranded in the mountains with cell phone coverage long gone and temperatures dropping. When the group gets sick of waiting for rescue, they venture outside to find help—only to have a wilderness accident leave Sam’s brother with a smashed leg and, soon, a raging fever. While the hours turn to days, Sam’s brother gets sicker and sicker, and their food and supplies dwindle until there isn’t enough for everyone. As the winter elements begin to claim members of the group one by one, Sam vows to keep her brother alive.

No matter what.

Filled with twists, secrets, and life-changing moments, Ski Weekend is a snow-packed survival thriller featuring a diverse cast of teens that will appeal to fans of One of Us is Lying and I Am Still Alive.

#BookReview: Neon Gods (Dark Olympus #1) by Katee Robert

Synopsis: He was supposed to be a myth. But from the moment I crossed the River Styx and fell under his dark spell... he was, quite simply, mine.

Society darling Persephone Dimitriou plans to flee the ultra-modern city of Olympus and start over far from the backstabbing politics of the Thirteen Houses. But all that’s ripped away when her mother ambushes her with an engagement to Zeus, the dangerous power behind their glittering city’s dark facade.

With no options left, Persephone flees to the forbidden undercity and makes a devil’s bargain with a man she once believed a myth... a man who awakens her to a world she never knew existed.

Hades has spent his life in the shadows, and he has no intention of stepping into the light. But when he finds that Persephone can offer a little slice of the revenge he’s spent years craving, it’s all the excuse he needs to help her—for a price. Yet every breathless night spent tangled together has given Hades a taste for Persephone, and he’ll go to war with Olympus itself to keep her close…

A modern retelling of Hades and Persephone that’s as sinful as it is sweet. 

#BookReview: The Reaper's Call (Bloodcaster Chronicles Book 3) by R.L. Perez

Synopsis: An assassin on the run. An angel through time. A powerful immortal enemy.

Cora Covington, once feared assassin, is on the run with the last remaining survivors of her demon coven. But as she struggles to retaliate against her power-hungry father, she realizes the cost to defeat him is more devastating than she feared.

Vince Delgado walks the line between Reapers and Timekeepers, desperate to get back to Cora. The more he uncovers about the Timekeepers, the more secrets he finds buried within the timeline... until he comes face-to-face with a deadly threat that transcends the laws of time.

Cora and Vince must rely on their skills—and the strength of their love—in order to survive. But when their enemies align, the star-crossed lovers must confront their battles head-on before the world is torn apart.

Even if it destroys them both.

**This book contains strong sexual content**

#GuestPost with Evelyn Rainey: Back of the Book Blurb

  Everyone has a story to share

This is how we survive -- by helping each other in small, creative ways.

#BookReview: The Orphan House by @annbennett71

Synopsis: As she looks at the baby wriggling in her father’s arms, a bolt of recognition goes through her and she takes a step back. And it’s in that moment that she begins to protect her father’s secrets.

1934, Weirfield-on-Thames. Connie Burroughs loves living in the orphanage that her father runs. Exploring its nooks and crannies with her sister, hearing the pounding of a hundred pairs of feet on the wooden stairs, having a father who is doing so much good. But everything changes the day she sees him carrying a newborn baby that he says he found near the broken front gate. A baby she recognises…

Present day. Arriving at her father’s beloved cottage beside the river, Sarah Jennings is hoping for peace and quiet, to escape her difficult divorce. But when she finds her father unwell and hunched over boxes of files on the orphanage where he was abandoned as a child, she decides to investigate it herself.

The only person left alive who lived at Cedar Hall is Connie Burroughs, but Connie sits quietly in her nursing home for a reason. The sewing box under Connie’s bed hides secrets that will change Sarah’s life forever, uncovering a connection between them that has darker consequences than she could ever imagine.

A heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting tale inspired by the lives of the children who lived at the author’s great-grandfather’s orphanage. Fans of Before We Were Yours, The Orphan’s Tale and The Orphan Train will be hooked.

#BookReview: The Angel's Vow (Bloodcaster Chronicles, #2) by R.L. Perez

Synopsis: He's an angel. She's a demon. Their love was never meant to be.

Vince Delgado has become a Reaper—a dark angel. While adjusting to his new life and new powers, he uncovers a shocking mystery: someone is stealing magic from the souls of the dead.

Cora Covington struggles to fill her new role as demon coven leader. As she tries to quell the riots and unrest in the city, she discovers a new threat: another Bloodcaster is among them. Someone as powerful as Cora.

When Vince and Cora finally reunite, the passion between them escalates. Though they want to be together, their enemies draw closer—until Vince and Cora realize their two conflicts are connected. But to defeat their enemies, they must set aside their feelings for each other and make sacrifices for their people.

Even if it tears them apart forever.

#BookReview: The Demon's Kiss (Bloodcaster Chronicles, #1) by R.L. Perez

Synopsis: An assassin with a secret.
An angel with a strange power.
A war that threatens to destroy them both.

Cora is an assassin who never misses her mark. But she has a deadly secret: her blood can create the most powerful magical elixirs in the world.

And she's been hunted for it her whole life.

When a powerful demon blackmails her, threatening to expose her secret, she has to do one last job to buy her freedom: kill a Nephilim named Vince. Cora figures this will be an easy target.

Until Vince time travels, appearing in two places at once.

Thwarted, Cora must get close to Vince so she can learn the secret to his strange ability--and finally kill him once and for all.

But the closer she gets to Vince, the more her icy heart begins to thaw, making way for new emotions she's never felt before.

As she falls for him, her secret is exposed, igniting a powerful war between demons and Nephilim. In the end, Cora must choose between her own survival and preventing a war that will tear the magical world apart.

#BookReview: Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1) by @OliviaWrites

Synopsis: Olivia Dade bursts onto the scene in this delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own. 

Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he's known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster.  Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately.

April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction.

Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide from her.

With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?

#BookTour: Haelend's Ballad by @IanConrey @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

Dark Fantasy/Steampunk

Date Published: November 30, 2021

 

 

“Some call me Murderer, others call me Lord. I've been called Savior and Enslaver. But no one has ever called me Child.”

 

A young man signs his own death warrant when he joins an already failing militia. A teenage girl is haunted by her childhood abuse and begins to crave the very things she hates. A childless mother finds herself on the run as a convicted murderer. Yet they are all unaware that their own fates are tied to a young orphan who has drowned and come back to life in a foreign land where he will be the death of everyone he meets.

Hælend’s Ballad is a tale about what happens when men and women from two colliding cultures realize they may not be on the right side. Heroes are villains. The persecuted are oppressors. And when rumors begin to spread that the world is dying, the darkness of their own hearts betrays them.