Wednesday 15 July 2015

Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis


Disclaimer: I received an ARC of Second Chance Summer from NetGalley. As always all opinions here are my own.

Book Blurb
Cedar Ridge, Colorado, is famous for crisp mountain air, clear blue skies, and pine-scented breezes. And it’s the last place Lily Danville wants to be. But she needs a job, and there’s an opening at the hottest resort in her hometown. What has her concerned is the other hot property in Cedar Ridge: Aidan Kincaid-firefighter, rescue worker, and heartbreaker. She never could resist that devastating smile…
The Kincaid brothers are as rough and rugged as the Rocky Mountains they call home. Aidan has always done things his own way, by his own rules. And never has he regretted anything more than letting Lily walk out of his life ten years ago. If anyone has ever been in need of rescuing, she has. What she needs more than anything are long hikes, slow dances, and sizzling kisses. But that can only happen if he can get her to give Cedar Ridge-and this bad boy-a second chance . . .

Book Review
One of the things Jill Shalvis does incredibly well, is creating characters that are wonderful and unique in their own way, but all feel endearingly familiar...like old friends you've just reconnected with. And that's one of the true joys of reading her Lucky Harbour and Animal Magnetism series, they're filled with friends that you get to catch up with and delicious, sweet, erotic love stories that you feel like you're a part of. But this time, with Second Chance Summer, I felt out of place and the first time I read it I really struggled to get into it. In fact, for the first time ever, I found myself putting the book down repeatedly and watching Warehouse 13 re-runs instead. But then I shook it off, grabbed some cookies and dove in again...and I fell in love.

Second Chance Summer, at times, feels slow and bulky because it's a brand new series and we got to meet almost all of the main characters, a ton of incredible supporting characters, a whole lot of backstory and a whole heap of intrigue. It's a lot to cover in a standard-length novel while also investigating an achingly sweet, teasingly delicious romance. But once you realise that you're getting nifty little tidbits of an intriguing backstory laid out before you, you kind of just roll with it and realise that Second Chance Summer is just the day-to-day life of Lily and Aidan as they fall in love. And while it did feel a little bit disjointed, it also feels incredibly real and I absolutely loved meeting the characters of Cedar Ridge and by the end of the story, I was completely in love with Lily and Aidan.

Aidan is a badass. But he's a teasing, funny and kind of adorable badass. He's sweet and loving and so very protective. His relationship with his mum, brothers and sister were incredibly well written, the dynamic is so realistic and all kinds of hilarious. Also, I'm pretty sure I want to be his mum when I grow up. There's a lot of intrigue and heartbreak surrounding this family and the more you find out, the more you fall in love with them, and the more you'll admire Aidan and want to do very naughty things with the man.

Lily is a hard nut to crack. She's so tough but also so vulnerable. She's suffered such great losses and her pain reaches out and grabs you from the page. She returns to Cedar Ridge
after a betrayal and huge, public embarrassment and watching her struggle as she fell in love with her old town was deeply moving. I adored her determination and her strength but I loved her sass and snarkiness more. Lily is the kind of chick I want to hang out with. She's funny, full of sass, determined, and complicated.

The characters, as always, reach out and grab you. You'll want to spend time in Cedar Creek, you'll want to meet the neighbours, and watch all the craziness, you'll want to hear the gossip and the scandals and you'll want to see all the drama. The sex scenes are a delicious mix of teasingly sweet, deeply erotic and ridiculously hot. The plot is engaging, intriguing and I honestly can't wait to learn more.

Second Chance Summer is not without it's problems. But overall, it's an incredible book and once you take a trip to Cedar Creek, you're not going to want to leave. And I grantee, you're going to fall deeply in love (and lust) with Aidan and Lily.

Second Chance Summer is available now in all formats from wherever you buy books. There are plenty of ways you can keep up with Jill Shalvis and her upcoming works:

Monday 6 July 2015

Upcoming Reviews

There's been a bit of an absence on the blog while I was away conquering evil final exams and recovered from two surgeries. But I'm very excited to say that I spent a lot of that time reading!

I received ARC copies of Second Chance Summer by Jill Shalvis and Ride Steady by Kristen  Ashley and their reviews will be up very soon. The review of the incredible and intense Up In Smoke by Tessa Bailey and Burn by Suzanne Wright will follow.

Until then, if you have any recommendations for books you'd like to review or authors you'd like to higlight, leave a comment or contact me at thebookden@hotmail.com. 

Monday 18 May 2015

Release Blitz: Taste Me by Various Authors



Full Disclosure: I received an ARC of Taste Me from Flirty Subs PR Services and Karla Doyle. As always, all opinions here are my own. 

Book Blurb
122,000-WORDS OF DARK ROMANCE AND DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS!
TASTE ME is a collection of twenty-seven sexy scenes from the hottest releases of 2015, both newly released and coming soon. This all-star lineup of bestselling authors includes... 

Tijan, Alessandra Torre, Lauren Blakely, Skye Warren, CD Reiss, Anna Zaires & Dima Zales, Red Phoenix, Cherise Sinclair, Kendall Ryan, Chelle Bliss, TK Leigh, Toni Aleo, Sam Crescent, Jenika Snow, Julia Sykes, Nina Levine, Cari Quinn & Taryn Elliott, Ainsley Booth, Katy Regnery, Shari Slade & Amber Lin, Shoshanna Evers, Pam Godwin, Carolyn Crane, Molly Joseph, Ella Sheridan, Karla Doyle, and Brooke Cumberland 

Download TASTE ME now for a sneak peek of Hold Me, the highly anticipated third book in the dark romance Twist Me series from Anna Zaires. Push your boundaries with a twisty scene from Tight by Alessandre Torre, one of the blockbuster books of the year. Sink your teeth into an alpha rocker bad boy in the not-yet-released Second Chance with a Rock Star from Shari Slade and Amber Lin.

Note: This compilation is intended as a FREE preview of this year’s hot releases to help readers find their next scorching read.

Book Review
I first heard about Taste Me about a month ago and I completely fell in love with the idea. Sexy excerpts from some of the world’s top romance and erotica authors all in one book…and not just little snippets but full excerpts that you can really sink your teeth into, how amazing is that? And it’s free!!
So, here’s why I think Taste Me is revolutionary and all kinds of amazing: 

I’m a full time student and a research assistant. I’m busy. I love to read and I LOVE romance books, but I don’t always have time to search for new authors and to hunt down excerpts to see if I’ll like their writing style. Especially since many authors post the same excerpt everywhere or they post quite small snippets that don’t really give you a genuine example of their writing. Taste Me saves me all that time of hunting down new authors AND gives me an entire naughty scene, sometimes even a few chapters, of each authors work. I think Taste Me is also a really excellent resource for new-to-romance readers. They can browse through a ton of different authors and genres to find styles that might work for them. 

Secondly, one of the things I see fairly consistently in negative romance/erotica book reviews is a complaint that the sex scenes are inappropriate, uncomfortable and unrealistic. So even if they like the rest of the book, they’re turned off because of something that appears in a sex scene, which ruins the whole book for them. What is so fantastic about Taste Me is that it gives you the opportunity to really see what each book is going to be like. You’ll see the writing style, the sex scenes (and there are a broad range of genres represented here, so you’ll get some BDSM, some sweet romance, some sexy erotica) and you’ll get a decent look at the characters and some hints about the plot, so you’ll know whether you want to spend your time reading the book or not, which saves a whole lot of potential disappointment. 

And in addition to all that, Taste Me has introduced me to some authors I’ve never heard of or have never had the chance to read. And that’s brilliant! 

So, let’s tackle the negatives first (and believe me, there aren’t many, in fact there’s only one). I’m really disappointed that Cherise Sinclair’s contribution was for Master of Freedom. It was released just over a month ago and I read it on release day, so reading the excerpt wasn’t exciting and fresh and I actually felt a little bit cheated. Cherise has a book coming out in a couple of months, which is hotly anticipated, so I was really disappointed that an excerpt from Servicing the Target wasn’t included in the book. Having said that, Master of Freedom is an absolutely terrific book and if you haven’t read it, or any of Cherise’s work, I think you’ll really enjoy the excerpt. 

My favourite excerpt was Stealing Home by Karla Doyle. It’s erotic, it’s intriguing, it’s sassy and a little snarky and it’s unbelievably hot. It’s also surprisingly sweet for being so damn erotic. It gave enough details about the characters to make me completely intrigued to know more about them and it ended on a note that left me dying to find out where the story goes from there. I love Karla’s work and I’m really excited to see what she does with Stealing Home. 

I was really excited to read the rest of the excerpts as I hadn’t read anything by any of other authors before. There were a couple that just didn’t work for me for a variety of reasons. There were a couple that I really enjoyed and I’ll definitely be picking up those books when they’re released. 

Overall, Taste Me is brilliant. I loved having a chance to read excerpts from a bunch of different authors and genres, and I loved that they were all naughty! I have a bunch of new authors I’m going to read more of and a couple to recommend to friends (because even though they didn’t work for me, I know they’ll work for others). It’s free, it’s delightful and it’ll give you the opportunity to check out some of the most wonderful authors in Romance and Erotica writing today. I can’t recommend it enough! 

Taste Me is available today and you can pick it up from Amazon.


Cover Reveal: Stealing Home by Karla Doyle



If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’ll know that Karla Doyle is one of my favourite authors, and an all-round awesome lady. So, I’m super excited to be able to share the absolutely gorgeous, hotly anticipated (because she’s been teasing her readers about it for months!) cover of her upcoming, smokin’ hot book, Stealing Home. Stealing Home releases on the 18th of June. But if that’s too long to wait, you can take a sneak peek at one of Stealing Home’s intensely sexy, delicious erotic scenes in Taste Me. I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of Taste Me (the review will go up later today) and trust me, you’ll want to get your hands on Karla’s excerpt. 

Book Blurb
When Paige’s latest attempt at happily-ever-after with a nice guy tanks, she decides to quit fighting her destiny. She craves bad boys. Men who deliver short-term, panty-melting excitement, not reliability and settling down. If she’s going to embrace her true nature, who better to start with than the dark-haired, tattooed ballplayer whose cocky attitude gives her more thrills than any steady boyfriend ever has…

Alex had major league plans for his life until it threw him an unexpected and unwelcome curve ball. Switching gears to pursue his other passion was a rough road, but things are good—aside from his MIA muse. When a chance meeting with a blonde firecracker stirs his creative juices—and more—Alex is game to see where their chemistry leads. Trouble is, his potential Miss Right thinks she’s only capable of playing the field.

Be sure to sign up to Karla's newsletter and check out all her other pages for more information and links to her other terrific books:  
Karla’s Website:  www.karladoyle.com 
Email:  karla@karladoyle.com