Book Review: Forgivable Sins by Adelaide Forrest

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Forgivable Sins
Bellandi Crime Syndicate #2

Author: Adelaide Forrest
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Mafia Romance | Contemporary Romance
Released: 04/24/2020
Review Source: Provided by author

No one knows me like she does.

She’s the only one who has power over me.

I’ve loved Samara since I was a boy, since the moment I heard her sing and told her she would be my wife. I sacrificed that dream to keep her safe.

Our love is a secret, hanging unspoken between us.

Everything changes the night I find her beaten and broken by the man who should have protected her. What I have longed to do more than anything.

After all this time, the safest place for her is in my arms.

I’ve tried to be patient, to let her come to terms with the shift in our relationship, but soon I will make her mine. Time is running out for my Little Dove.

I won’t stop until she’s my wife.

Forgivable Sins is a friends to lovers story centered around Lino and Samara. It was a cute, easy read, and a nice addition to the series. 

There was a scene where Samara's brother, Yavin, found out about Lino and Samara's relationship (and marriage) and he was not happy that his little sister married his best friend. This is what Samara said back to Yavin, and it's one of my favourite parts of the book.

"Who introduced you to Lino? Who used to sit inside with Lino when he wasn't allowed to go play sports outside?"

"Who hugged him? Who listened to his stories about his father and kissed his boo boos when his father hit him, even if he was ten f*cking years old and too old for that sh*t?"

They have cared about and loved each other for so many years and I love that they finally get their happily ever.

Book Review: The Spring Girls by Anna Todd - #BookGiveaway

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The Spring Girls
Author: Anna Todd
Reading Level: Adult Fiction
Genres: Chick Lit | Coming of Age
Released: January 2nd 2018
Review Source: Gallery Books

Four sisters desperately seeking the blueprints to life—the modern-day retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women like only Anna Todd (After, Imagines) could do.

The Spring Girls—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—are a force of nature on the New Orleans military base where they live. As different as they are, with their father on tour in Iraq and their mother hiding something, their fears are very much the same. Struggling to build lives they can be proud of and that will lift them out of their humble station in life, one year will determine all that their futures can become.

The oldest, Meg, will be an officer’s wife and enter military society like so many of the women she admires. If her passion—and her reputation—don’t derail her.

Beth, the workhorse of the family, is afraid to leave the house, is afraid she’ll never figure out who she really is.

Jo just wants out. Wishing she could skip to graduation, she dreams of a life in New York City and a career in journalism where she can impact the world. Nothing can stop her—not even love.

And Amy, the youngest, is watching all her sisters, learning from how they handle themselves. For better or worse.

With plenty of sass, romance, and drama, The Spring Girls revisits Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, and brings its themes of love, war, class, adolescence, and family into the language of the twenty-first century.

The Spring Girls is said to be a modern retelling of Little Women, which I can't recall if I actually read the original. I know I have seen the movie version of Little Women, but can't say if I read the original story. So with that being said, I just had the knowledge of the movie version to compare to The Spring Girls. Which I could see how they could have similarities. 

The Spring Girls is about Amy, Beth, Jo and Meg. They are military "brats" pretty much. The dad is overseas and they are home with mom only. So you can imagine the craziness. If you have this many sisters, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. The story is modern, so it's all about their life issues in 2017. Each sister is different from the next and as much as they love each other, they hate each other too. I wasn't bored by the sisters, but I also wasn't captured by any one in particular. During the book, I had moments that reminded me of my youth and then others were I caught myself rolling my eyes. What made me stick to the story were the moments that did uplift you. 

The pace is slow and steady throughout the whole book. There are a handful of moments, that make you smile and then it's back to drama lama. The Spring Girls is an easy read. It's definitely different from Anna Todd's other novels. 

 

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Blog Tour: Rewired by S.R. Johannes + Giveaway

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ReWired
Author: S.R. Johannes
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genres: Contemporary
Released: August 27th 2017
Publisher: Coleman & Stott

Sixteen-year-old Ada Lovelace is never more alive and sure of herself than when she's hacking into a "secure" network as her alter ego, the Dark Angel. In the real world, Ada is broken, reeling from her best friend Simone's recent suicide. But online, the reclusive daughter of Senator Lovelace (champion of the new Online Privacy Bill) is a daring white hat hacker and the only female member of the Orwellians, an elite group responsible for a string of high-profile hacks against major corporations, with a mission to protect the little guy. Ada is swiftly proving she's a force to be reckoned with, when a fellow Orwellian betrays her to the FBI. To protect her father's career, Ada is sent to ReBoot, a technology rehab facility for teens...the same rehab Simone attended right before killing herself.

It's bad enough that the ReBoot facility is creepy in an Overlook-Hotel-meets-Winchester-Mansion way, but when Ada realizes Simone's suicide is just one in an increasingly suspicious string of "accidental" deaths and "suicides" occurring just after kids leave ReBoot, Ada knows she can't leave without figuring out what really happened to her best friend. The massive cyber conspiracy she uncovers will threaten everything she cares about--her dad's career, her new relationship with a wry, handsome, reformed hacker who gets under her skin, and most of all--the version of herself Ada likes best--the Dark Angel.

With a deliciously twisty plot, the topical bite of Cory Doctorow's LITTLE BROTHER, ReWired delves into technology addiction, internet privacy, and corporate/government collection of data, as it vividly illuminates the universally human questions about ethics, privacy, and self-definition that both underpin these socio-political issues and dovetail with classic coming-of-age themes. Ultimately, ReWired is about the daily choices we all make about who we want to be, how much of ourselves we choose to share with others, and the terrifying risks and exhilarating rewards of being ourselves, online and off.

I love the whole concept of hacking. It fascinate me how brilliant the mind can be. I also love how one can simply be sneaky enough without anyone else knowing. It's scary, yet it perks my interest. Isn't it fun to study people's behavior and try to encrypt their life? HAHA. I'm sounding like a total creeper. Either way, when the opportunity appeared, I had to give this a try. And although it was fun to read Ada Lovelace's love for hacking, I felt the story dragged. 

 Ada Lovelace knows hacking is not permitted and its unlawful to break people's privacy. She's well aware as her father is a senator. However, online, Ada is knows as Dark Angel or DA for short. She is a hacker and a great one. Ada is trying her best but her best friend's suicide has turned her upside down. It's been impossible for her to move on and the only way to cope is by hacking with her fellow hackers. During a chat she does something very illegal and eventually she gets caught, but for something else. So this is when the not so fun part begins. 

Ada is sent to this rehab for hackers, the same place where her best friend was sent prior to her tragedy. Ada starts to dig in but things are so predictable... Bad things happen to her because she gets closer and closer to the truth. And many bad things happen to her. To the point that you get it... someone is trying to kill her. Anyways, thankfully she is able to uncover the truth without dying and is able to find out the truth about her friend.

Although the story did drag and I did find it predictable, Ada is one heck of a character. I really like her and her mad skills. I really liked how she was so persistence and did not let anyone or all those near death events stop her from getting to the bottom of the truth. I think anyone would easily like her. As for the story, it was good but not my typical "thriller" story. 

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S.R. Johannes is the award-winning author of the Amazon bestselling Nature of Grace thriller series (Untraceable, Uncontrollable, and Unstoppable). She is a winner of the IndieReader Discovery Award in YA, an IPPY a Silver Medalist for YA Fiction, a Finalist in The Kindle Book Review’s Best Young Adult Fiction, and a Finalist in US Book News Best YA Book.
Since leaving Corporate America, she has followed her passion for writing and conservation by working with The Dolphin Project, the Atlanta Zoo, other animal rescue organizations, and by weaving conservation themes into her books.

Currently, she lives in Atlanta, GA with hEnglish-accented husband and the huge imaginations of their prince and princess, which she hopes- someday- will change the world.

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Book Review: Lucky in Love by Kasie West

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Lucky in Love
Author: Kasie West
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: July 25th 2017
Review Source: Scholastic | Edelweiss

Maddie doesn't believe in luck. She's all about hard work and planning ahead. But one night, on a whim, she buys a lottery ticket. And then, to her astonishment --

She wins!

In a flash, Maddie's life is unrecognizable. No more stressing about college scholarships. Suddenly, she's talking about renting a yacht. And being in the spotlight at school is fun... until rumors start flying, and random people ask her for loans. Now, Maddie isn't sure who she can trust.

Except for Seth Nguyen, her funny, charming coworker at the local zoo. Seth doesn't seem aware of Maddie's big news. And, for some reason, she doesn't want to tell him. But what will happen if he learns her secret?

Kasie West is easily one of my favorite YA authors. Everytime I read one her books I get lost and won’t get up for anything until I’m finished. It pains me more than anything to say Lucky in Love wasn’t one of those times. While I did still enjoy it and most definitely had everything I love in a contemporary YA, it just wasn’t my favorite. Which is bound to happen when I fall so deeply for each and every one of her books.

Maddie is gearing up for graduation and waiting for her college acceptance letters to be coming any day now. She has spent her whole life trying to get to this point in her life. She had to get the grades so she could get the scholarships or else she wouldn’t be able to afford to go. Her father lost his job and was having a hard time finding a new one, her brother was even taking time off from school to save up and then return, and she kept her sights on colleges nearby because of issues in her family that she couldn’t help but try to fix. So on one not so great 18th birthday, Maddie goes to the convenience store to indulge in her sweet tooth when the store clerk convinced her to buy a lottery ticket. Maddie knows the odds, she knows a lot of random facts, but she went with it anyways. And low and behold she won! She was now a millionaire, she was able to afford college, help her parents out, and her brother. Her problems were officially solved, or were they?

Maddie was now in the limelight, everyone knew about her winnings, except for her crush Seth, who has been grounded from the internet and phone and would’ve missed all the news about a town local winning. She finds out after winning the lottery it becomes hard to find out who she can trust and since Seth doesn’t know she starts to open up more to now then she had in the past. Which starts to blossom their relationship.

As I stated this wasn’t exactly my favorite Kasie West book and I’m not really sure where it went wrong for me. I don’t think I swooned for Seth as much as I would’ve loved to. Or maybe I’m just jealous I haven’t won the lottery yet, but it was just something and I don’t know where this book fell short with me. Again though, I did enjoy it, I loved seeing how someone would navigate winning the lottery, especially in high school where she flew under the radar until her winnings. There were times I just shook my head and said “girlllll I wouldn’t do that” and times I would’ve splurged just like her. It was cute and though I didn’t swoon for Seth, I did really like him, he had some good quips in there that I loved and wanted more of.

Nonetheless Kasie West is and always will be an autobuy author for me. I’ll never get enough of her writing. She is, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary YA authors out there. She never fails at getting me out of a reading slump and making me fall in love all over again.

Book Review: Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson

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Midnight at the Electric
Author: Jodi Lynn Anderson

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Historical
Released: June 17 2017
Review Source: HarperTeen

Divided by time. Ignited by a spark.

Kansas, 2065. Adri has secured a slot as a Colonist—one of the lucky few handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house over a hundred years ago, and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate. While Adri knows she must focus on the mission ahead, she becomes captivated by a life that’s been lost in time…and how it might be inextricably tied to her own.

Oklahoma, 1934. Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine fantasizes about her family’s farmhand, and longs for the immortality promised by a professor at a traveling show called the Electric. But as her family’s situation becomes more dire—and the suffocating dust threatens her sister’s life—Catherine must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most.

England, 1919. In the recovery following the First World War, Lenore struggles with her grief for her brother, a fallen British soldier, and plans to sail to America in pursuit of a childhood friend. But even if she makes it that far, will her friend be the person she remembers, and the one who can bring her back to herself?

While their stories spans thousands of miles and multiple generations, Lenore, Catherine, and Adri’s fates are entwined.

Midnight at the Electric follows three different girls who are all connected in some way. They each come from a different time period; 1919, 1934 and 2065. Each dealing with their own types of dramatic situations they each learn from one another whether they know it or not.

This book had so much potential for me to love it. It hooked me, that's for sure, but it never gave me that feeling of having completely loved the story. I don't feel like I got my answers - which leaves me frustrated.

It was a little bit difficult to keep up with. The three girls are in different periods and for a chunk of the book you're with each one. So we start in 2065. When you feel like you haven't really connected with the girl there you get thrown into 1934. It was - for some odd reason - very easy for me to connect to this girl. So I had no issues with her story. But then I get thrown into 1919. When things get a bit confusing then we get thrown back to 2065 and don't get answers for a while. I felt like this was too jumbled and wish that it had a more flowing story.

I've heard so much good things about this book that I really don't want to change anyone's mind about reading it. The intrigue that Anderson brings to the story will have you hooked. And maybe there are people out there who are able to follow a story that throws you around a bit. But for me, this was one that was difficult for me to follow.

Book Review: Bad Romance by Heather Demetrios

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Bad Romance
Author: Heather Demetrios 
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: June 13th 2017
Review Source: Henry Holt and Co.

Grace wants out. Out of her house, where her stepfather wields fear like a weapon and her mother makes her scrub imaginary dirt off the floors. Out of her California town, too small to contain her big city dreams. Out of her life, and into the role of Parisian artist, New York director—anything but scared and alone.

Enter Gavin: charming, talented, adored. Controlling. Dangerous. When Grace and Gavin fall in love, Grace is sure it's too good to be true. She has no idea their relationship will become a prison she's unable to escape.

Deeply affecting and unflinchingly honest, this is a story about spiraling into darkness—and emerging into the light again.

(Trigger warnings: Mental and physical abuse.)

I knew going into Bad Romance that this was going to crush me. Many people write about abuse just to use it as a plot device but when someone really takes the time or has experienced abuse then they know that this is a very sensitive matter and should be handled with care.

Bad Romance is about a girl who wants to graduate school and leave her life behind to start her career in theater. She has these awesome plans but when she meets Gavin, everything falls apart.

It's hard to get out of a bad relationship and sometimes you don't even know you're in one. Grace didn't know she was in a toxic relationship until Gavin started showing signs of jealousy and stalking her and telling her to stop talking to guys. It was hard for Grace because not only did she love him but Gavin was like a savior to her when things at home weren't good. So at first Grace would forgive Gavin but when it became too much she stood her ground.

Bad Romance tells the story of a girl falling in love, it shows us the signs of how that love can turn hateful, and how when you're at your lowest you can slowly rise up and be the best you that you can be with the support of friends and mainly with the courage and bravery you have in yourself.

Book Review: Seven Days of You by Cecilia Vinesse

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Seven Days of You
Author: Cecilia Vinesse
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genres: Contemporary Romance | Cultural
Release Date: March 7th 2017
Review Source: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Sophia has seven days left in Tokyo before she moves back to the States. Seven Days to say good-bye to the electric city, her wild best friend, and the boy she's harbored a semi-secret crush on for years. Seven perfect days....Until Jamie Foster-Collins moves back to Japan and ruins everything.

Jamie and Sophia have a history of heartbreak, and the last thing Sophia wants is for him to steal her leaving thunder with his stupid arriving thunder. Yet as the week counts down, the relationships she thought were stable begin to explode around her. And Jamie is the one who helps her pick up the pieces. Sophia is forced to admit she may have misjudged Jamie, but can their seven short days of Tokyo adventures end in anything but good-bye?

Seven Days of You is exactly what this story is about. You follow along Sophia's last 7 days in Tokyo before she has to move back to the states. Sophia of course doesn't want to leave her friends and her life in Tokyo, but this time around she doesn't have a choice. 

What I loved the most about this book, was the detailed description of the places they visited in Tokyo. I felt like I was walking right alongside them as the story progressed. The author describes everything with such vivid details. Now what lacked for me, was the story itself. As vivid as the places were, I felt like the characters and the story, lack that same attention to detail. With that being said, it wasn't a game breaker for me. I still wanted to know what would happen when the 7 days were up. 

Then came the ending and I was bummed, I held on to some hope that maybe, just maybe, the author would WOW us with plot twist at the end. But the story held its principal of 7 days. I actually felt sad at the end for Sophia. 

If you want something cute and fast to read, then grab a copy of Seven Days of You when it comes out in March. I would even say it would have been a great beach read, if this was summertime. 

Book Review: Amber Sky by Amy Braun

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Amber Sky
Dark Sky 0.25

Author: Amy Braun
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Steampunk
Released: October 4th 2016
Review Source: Amy Braun

Press-ganged into servitude by a ruthless band of marauders who survived the devastating Storm, Nash has grown tired of his career– the young, undefeated champion of the Stray Dog fighting pits. All he longs for is a place to live where his family is not his enemy.

When his captain gives him an assignment to embed him deeper into the crew, Nash attempts to refuse, until the life of his friend is threatened. Determined to save her, Nash embarks on the mission to subjugate and control a supplier. But the supplier has other clients, one of which could be the son of the most feared pirate captain in all of Westraven.

And if Nash plays his cards right, the key to his deeply desired freedom, if he can live with the consequences of his choice…

Set two years before the events of CRIMSON SKY, this prequel novella tells the story of how Nash and Sawyer crossed paths– and fists. While best enjoyed before reading CRIMSON SKY, this bonus story can be read at any time or enjoyed as a standalone.

To be totally honest, I haven't read the following series so reading Amber Sky was step one for me. For the most part I was interested, but the fight scenes read like a play-by-play announcer, every punch and move mentioned.

The main character, Nash, read like the complainy emo kid. So strong, yet not liked and detesting everything. Okay, sure, its nice he has morals and is surviving in the only viable option he has, but it was rough at times to read.

The story kept me though, seemed like too easy of a wrap up for Sonya. I am hopeful Crimson Sky is as compelling story wise if not more so. I understand this is simply out there to explain how Nash and Sawyer met up in such a vast and empty world.