[BLOG TOUR + REVIEW] Sweet Filthy Boy by Christina Lauren

Sweet Filthy Boy by Christina Lauren
Published: May 2014
Age Group: New Adult
Series: Wild Series #1

ARC courtesy of Gallery Books, provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you very much!

I've never read any of Christina Lauren's books. (Now before you start raging at me to read the Beautiful series let me tell you that IT IS ON MY TBR LIST! So with that let's continue with the review.

I think the story of Mia and Ansel's story is a dream situation for most people. Find a really hot guy/girl that you're insanely attracted to and instantly connect with. Then accept said persons invitation to spend the summer with them in the city of love, Paris.  The story started up slow but once it took off it was really good. 

The story didn't feel forced and was soon swept into the budding romance of Mia and Ansel.  Then we get to Paris and there is so much hope that their 'true love' situation will last but alas there wouldn't be a very interesting story if it did. The disconnection between the two characters starts the rift in the romance. Ansel is an up and coming lawyer who has to put in endless hours in the office. Mia wanders Paris alone and starts to realize the gaping hole between her and Ansel and how much she really knows about this man - which is really not that much. Add in Ansel's past life and you get a lot of drama and not enough aww moments. 

I'm not a fan of all these role playing situations in the book. I think it takes away from the actual story line and the development of these character's romance. Yes, I know they reveal more to each other through these role playing roles but I personally feel like these situations are only in the book so the characters would reveal information about themselves. I just think it could have been written differently and more embedded in the story. 

I think both characters could be explored more. There just seems to be a lot more to them that the story doesn't reveal. Like what the readers know is only the bare minimum for the story to be read coherently. 

Personally, I feel like this story has much more potential to become a series rather than changing narrators in each book in the series. The story line was rushed with little development in the true romance of the characters and the character itself. 

MEH

Blog Tour Info

Summary

One-night stands are supposed to be with someone convenient, or wickedly persuasive, or regrettable. They aren’t supposed to be with someone like him.

But after a crazy Vegas weekend celebrating her college graduation—and terrified of the future path she knows is a cop-out—Mia Holland makes the wildest decision of her life: follow Ansel Guillaume—her sweet, filthy fling—to France for the summer and just…play.

When feelings begin to develop behind the provocative roles they take on, and their temporary masquerade adventures begin to feel real, Mia will have to decide if she belongs in the life she left because it was all wrong, or in the strange new one that seems worlds away

Bio / Social Media

Site

Lauren Billings (but everyone calls her Lo) has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and before she made writing her full-time job, would spend her days doing nerdy research-type things wearing a lab coat and goggles. She is silly Mommy to two littles, wife to one mountain biking homebrewing scientist, bestie to a shoe-stealer, and an unabashed lover of YA and romance.

Christina Hobbs (but you’ll always hear Lo call her PQ) used to spend her days in a junior high counseling office surrounded by teenagers. Married to the cutest boy in school, she has a thirteen year old daughter, is an unapologetic lover of boy bands and glitter, and also likes to steal Lo’s shoes.

You can follow their shenanigans at:

@lolashoes (Lauren) & @seeCwrite (Christina) on Twitter. On Tumblr! where we post kissing gifs and writerly stuff and Wattpad for short stories and sneak peeks!

For official information about their books, events, interviews, movie news and more, follow @beautifulbastrd.

Buy Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

Sony

Amazon.co.uk

Simon & Schuster

Powell’s Books

The King’s English

Mysterious Galaxy

Indie Bound

Target

[REVIEW] Broken and Screwed by Tijan

Broken and Screwed by Tijan
Published: Feb 2013
Age Group: New Adult
Series: BS #1

I've always enjoyed Tijan's books and I'm glad that Broken and Screwed lived up to my expectations.

The Broken and Screwed follows the main character Alex and Jesse. Two childhood friends who were as close as siblings, who are dealing with Alex's brothers death. Alex was a party girl after her brother's death she becomes withdrawn and depressed. Side note: nothing to do with the story but I always found it peculiar that a typical high school girl is a popular party girl. I don't remember ever being that socially active in high school... Am I the only one who feels that way? Perhaps. I'm strange like that. 

Anyway Alex's depressed and Jesse acts like the complete opposite. At the start Jesse was popular already, being the overly hot guy in school, but after his best friend-basically-brother's death he becomes even more popular and even more socially involved. The basic plot of the story is how Jesse and Alex try to find a way to cope with the death and their feelings for each other. I found it quite interesting how both Alex and Jesse are so opposite and so attracted to each other. As they always say, opposites attract. 

I like how the story starts out, it hooks you in and wants to make you know more about the story while also hitting you hard with action and intense emotions. 

There's not much to say about this story to be honest. In my opinion, it's a story that will either hit you hard psychologically or go over your head. The story deals with some topics that some people will relate to much more than others will. I tried to understand the situation through the character's feelings but it's very hard to do so never really experiencing anything like it. I think Tijan does a good job having the story told consistently by the characters throughout. I feel like it would be really easy to become overwhelmed with the emotions of the situations that could result in making a character act out of their personality but each of the characters always acts appropriately. Alex is a very withdrawn person who closes herself off so much that she finds it very hard to experience any emotion and is often indifferent to events. Whereas Jesse is a person who is quick to explode and react which he does often. Each of the characters has a distinct personality and never do anything to contradict it which I greatly appreciate.

There is a lot of common features from both this series and Tijan's Fallen Crest series. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or just a writing style that Tijan often employs in the books. I'm interested to see how the sequel will turn out.

3.5 - 4 cups of tea

MEH

If you like this check these other tea loving books out:

• Fallen Crest High by Tijan
• Choosing you by Allie Everhart
• Torn by K.A. Robinson
• The Perfect Game by J. Sterling

[REVIEW] The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova

The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova
Published: May 2012
Age Group: YA
Series: The Vicious Deep #1

I found this book a while ago and added it to my TBR list on GR only for it to be buried underneath all the adds I do daily.  So lately, I've been in a reading slump and not really enjoying any book long enough to read the entire thing so I figured I'd dig up one of my old YA-TBR and give it a shot. That's how I re-found The Vicious Deep and I'm glad I did. It's definitely cured my reading slump since I finished reading it with a gusto.

The Vicious Deep follows the story of Tristan and his discovery that he's actually a prince of the merfolk. Then he's told that he has to participate in a championship for the throne and the story starts. The story takes the tale of the God Poseidon and gives a future to the myths and legends where a kingdom is born from the once divine God of the seas. It's a tale of someone finding out what they're destined to become and how far they're willing to go to fulfill their destiny.

Tristan is probably the typical hot guy that flirts with girls and breaks their hearts without any consciousness. He's a typical stock character. Although it is evident that as the story progresses he starts to change. He becomes more caring, compassionate and in a way displaying the characteristics needed in a good ruler.

The main female protagonist is Layla. Tristan's best friend, which if you've read enough romance novels or New Adult novels it is evident that Layla and Tristan are meant to develop some romantic attraction. At first I didn't mind Layla. She was a strong woman who held her own on a swim team full of boys. She also didn't put up with all of Tristan's s**t and isn't afraid to speak her mind and tell him that he's an idiot. Then she figures out his secret and it all goes down hill from there. The woman who isn't afraid of speaking her mind turns from being strong-willed to annoying and stubborn in my eyes. The girl who stands up for herself turns from being brave and courageous to being reckless and foolish. I found myself disliking Layla more and more as the story progressed. I can't relate to her and her personality is absolutely horrible in my opinion. Tristan can do much better.


The story is an intriguing one, and sort of a jump for me. I decided, many many years ago, that I wouldn't read any stories about mermaids, sirens and water creatures like that due to a bad experience I had with a book that had these supernatural creatures as the main attraction. In hindsight, I probably should have known that this book was about merpeople from the blurb, but I didn't. My fault. But luckily, because of my mistake, I found this lovely book. The mermaids and mermen in this book aren't that bad.  They're just like regular humans...with fins and gills. The author does a really good job describing them in clear detail down to the sparkle of the scales and the movements of the gills in water and out that it's very clear to visualize what these creatures would look like even though these are mythical creatures. I always enjoy being able to visualize the characters and the story because I think it adds so much more dimension to the tale when you are able to follow along in your head and see the action unfold while you're reading it. I also enjoy the use of other sea creatures, whether they be real or fiction. Like I said, I haven't read a story with these paranormal creatures in a long time so this is a welcome change for me. Perhaps that's why I got hooked on to this story so fast. That and the good plot and charismatic characters.


The ending is a cliff hanger. In fact the main plot encompasses the entire series. I believe there are sub plots in each book, or main events that the characters deal with, but it is very evident that the story continues in the next installment and that there is a build up towards the end.

Overall an excellent YA novel. Although following the standard storyline of a YA book, the characters and detailed description is enough to overlook the clichés.

MEH

If you like this check these other tea loving books out:

• The Iron King by Julie Kagawa 
•  Wildefire by Karsten Knight

[REVIEW] Black City by Elizabeth Richards

Black City by Elizabeth Richards
Published: November 2012
Age Group: YA
Series: Black City #1

I'll admit completely that the only reason I wanted to read this book was the cover. It's absolutely gorgeous! Definitely cover drool worthy. I'm also sure that I had read the blurb of this way back when I first added it to my TBR shelf but clearly I didn't remember it when I started reading it yesterday and so when I realized what the plot line was about, well, I was taken aback. Guess I didn't see that one coming so kudos to you Elizabeth Richards for catching me by surprise.

Black City is a dystopia-lit story about this world split up in to 9 different districts (thing Hunger Games) and the main setting happens to be Black City, a portion of the mining state of Black River. Why it seems to be a trend to have the main setting be in the "mining" portion of the world is beyond me but clearly it was picked for a reason that I don't understand because I'm not an author, merely a curious reader.  The story follows two completely different protagonists, and I don't mean just in terms of gender. Ash, is one of the only twin-blood Darklings in the city and Natalie is the daughter of the leader of the city. In terms of dramatic romances go I'm sure readers have already predicted that they fall in love (or if you've read the blurb then yes you would have already known that). I will say that Elizabeth Richards spent very little time introducing the romantic relationship between the two and I commend her for that. I don't like things being dragged out and would rather prefer authors get straight into it. I also think Elizabeth Richards did a lovely job introducing it. The idea of a heart starting to beat after finding their true love is endearing and romantic in nature.

To explain the paranormal portion of this story, the Darklings in this story can be seen as vampires. They live off blood and can't be in the sun. Their fangs releases a poison that acts like an opiate to humans. They only thing that sort of threw me off was the idea of a Darkling finding their true mate. There's some werewolf aspect to that but it's interesting concept, and I find it completely new which is good since a lot of stories recycle the same type of characters when it comes to paranormal fiction.

Black City does follow the standard story line for dystopia lit. You have the first book, Black City, introducing the dystopia world and how corrupt it is. You get introduced to the hero/es and a rebellion breaks out at the end with the heroes playing their part saving everyone. So if it follows this we can expect the sequel to be an information dump and last novel to be a great battle.

Although the story was an interesting read, although I think I may be bias since I rarely turn down a dystopia lit book, there were some parts that I found to be very "out of the blue" shall we say. This mate claiming business was sort disconnected from the rest of the story line. Well ok so readers were given lots of foreshadow and hints but I guess the execution of the discovery was off. The dialogue sort of felt like this to me:

"Hey"

"Hey, didn't you have something you wanted to tell me"

"Uh, yea"

"So?"

"Uh, You're my blood mate"

"ok"

"ok"

It was just so awkward and strange. There was no basis for either character to accept it but they did blindly. I guess that's what they mean when they say love makes you blind. "The heart wants what the heart wants" 
The ending was also downplayed in my opinion. This miracle happens, and then when the characters were explaining it so nonchalantly in the epilogue that it made the climactic event seem mundane as opposed to being the most dramatic scene in the book.

 

Overall, I thought this was a very strong dystopia lit. You have classic elements of government oppression. for instance the slogan of the main leader, Purian Rose, "His majesty sees all sinners" sort of puts him in a position like God so that whatever he does shouldn't be questioned. There are many poetic lines in this story too that I felt myself very moved by them.  

 

Some of my favourite lines:

"The snow on the crosses had turned pink as it soaks up the dried blood stained into the wood. It's chilling watching students play beside the crosses, but that's life in Black City. Everywhere you turn you're reminded of death, but you have to block it out, otherwise you couldn't carry on living"

"A strong breeze stirs the ash on the charred buildings surrounding us, scattering black flakes into the air. I feel like I'm inside a giant snow globe. It's really quite beautiful; why had I never noticed it before?"

In fact , I feel like the entire story is done in a very symbolic way, to the title of Black City - a  city covered in ash, to the characters name being Ash and the cover of the rose slowly falling apart.

 

I enjoyed reading this and will definitely be reading the sequel.

MEH

 

If you like this check these other tea loving books out:

• Legend by Marie Lu
• The Selection by Kiera Cass (for the romantics out there)

[REVIEW] Breaking the Storm by Sedona Venez

Breaking the Storm by Sedona Venez
Published: August 2013
Age Group: New Adult
Series: Creedence Curse #1

I read this book during my period of werewolf obsession, so it's no surprise that this story is about werewolves and paranormal creatures. Breaking the Storm is book one of the Creedence Curse series that follows the Creedence women and the curse that has befallen their family so that whomever thy fall in love with will die. Enter main character Stormy (a.k.a. Storm) Creedance who is so paranoid and scared about this curse that she walks away from the relationship between her and rocker Knox Gunner. The story takes place several years after that. Knox is a famous rockstar now and Storm is running the Creedence business, providing escorts to the royal elite of the paranormal world.  Obviously her world turns upside down once she meets Knox again and that's where the story starts again where Knox and Storm start their relationship again and find that they still really love each other.

Breaking the Storm was a good read. I enjoyed the fact that the story was focused on the love aspect and yet had a distinct plot line that was carried throughout the entire story. Storm and Knox are two stubborn people and it's interesting to see those two try to push and pull each other away, while trying to deny the attraction between the two.

It's a fast paced story filled with lots of action and sexy scenes.

If I had anything to say about the story is that I believe the sequel will follow a different character and I'm personally not a fan of sequels that focus on different characters. I just find the story to be incomplete if the series follows the same plotline and yet the protagonists change throughout each installment. I would much rather have one main protagonist that readers continue to discover and understand more than having to rediscover and understand a new character.

3.5 - 4

 

MEH

 

If you like this check these other tea loving books out:

• Feral Sins by Suzanne Wright 

[REVIEW] The Final Act by J.S. Taylor

The Final Act by J.S. Taylor
Published: August 2013
Age Group: (18A - MATURE CONTENT)
Series: Spotlight #4 [end]

The first thing that I thought when I saw this book was released (and existed): WHAT THE FUDGE??? THERE'S ANOTHER ONE???
I honestly thought that the story ended with the last one "The Director's Cut" but then there's book 4. Okay that does make sense with the title and everything but honestly I had figured with that disastrous third volume there wouldn't be another.

Well I don't like leaving a series unfinished and so I gave it a shot. It was good...not great.

The story starts out where the last one ended. And that's the usual case with sequels so no big surprise there. Now part way through reading I started thinking about what the plot of this story could be. What can they continue after everything's already been settled with in the prior books? Well I spoke too soon, because lo and behold, THE LIPSTICK STALKER RETURNS! Now I personally believe that the lipstick stalker arc is probably one of the best twists I've read. So after reading the second book and fully appreciating all the drama in it, I found the third book to be lacking, greatly. And in some way I'm starting to think that perhaps this story line was brought back because it was the ONLY thing interesting about this series. I know I'm being particularly harsh about this but I'm being honest in judging it and saying that I personally don't think there needed to be four instalments. Three would have been enough, but here I am reviewing the fourth book.

So all's good in Issy and James town. Until the end which is always the case. End a book with a bang and all that.  I'm not particularly happy with the twist. Mainly because it seemed like the author only really focused and developed the character in this book. I think if we were introduced to this character and this character was brought up periodically throughout the series the surprise may have been more of, perhaps an obvious choice, but yet again by focusing on this one character in this novel it also made them the obvious choice. Take my rantings with a grain of salt but it seemed slightly obvious who the villain is. When I first read it though, I'll admit that I was confused about who this character was, mainly because after I was introduced this character I quickly disregarded them as anyone important and went on reading about Issy and James' relationship. Now this may be signs of a very good book twist but I found it to be too much of a surprise. I'd rather have something lead up to it and I'm anxiously waiting to figure out the answer and solve the mystery. Whereas this was more of a "BOO Guess who I am" moment.

There's not much else to say about this book. It was happy ending, albeit a little cliché in my opinion and overall an okay series. Not the best and not the worst. Just a fun read.

3.5 - 4

MEH

[REVIEW] Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgens

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgens
Published: May 2012
Age Group: Young Adult
Series: The Sweet Trilogy #1

First I'll admit that I'm currently on the mend and needed to read something to keep me occupied. The cover for this story caught my attention and I decided to read it. I have no qualms with this story...nor do I have any utter love for this story. It's an okay story that I used to past the time, a classic 'meh' read.

The story follows the main character Anna and her, shall we say, rocky road to figuring out who she is and what her destiny is. She discovers she's a Neph, one born from a demon and a women but Anna's special, she's born from a demon and an angel (This should have been hint one already that she's the destined one meant for a bigger meaning and is meant to save the world yada yada).  Along the way she meets other Neph's, particularly one Kaiden Rowe, who is obviously her love interest if their first meeting wasn't a big enough clue. Now I don't want to get to in detail of what the story is about because there's a lot of background information into the hierarchy of these demons and what each Neph is expected to do. I'll just sum it up by saying Anna's lived a different life and it's this different life that allows her to be separate from the rest and put her towards the path of righteousness.

Now on to the story overall. I do love a good angsty romance story so I was really excited when this one seemed to be turning out to be a story like that. I'm not sure if Anna's best friend, Jay, was meant to be seen as a rival love interest or if I was blinded by my crush on Kaiden Rowe to not really pay attention but Jay honestly seemed like just a good friend.  His purpose in the story sort of diminished in my opinion because of his role but hey, every hot female lead needs at least one good guy friend.

The storyline was slightly generic. Introducing the one different character that can save the world, cliché cliché. I did like the inclusion of the Dukes of Hell, or more like the Seven Deadly Sins incarcerate since each one represents a Sin and act upon it, with some added Sins. That was interesting and added a new dynamic to the angel tale. But overall it was pretty bland and lacked much originality in my opinion. The story veered towards Anna's attempt at finding acceptance with some group, which I found to be quite interesting. The readers are taken on this journey of her own acceptance of who she is and who she belongs to. She doesn't fit in with the kids from her school (no duh she's a nephilim but that's probably the least of her worries) and when she finds people like her, she tries to fit in and find answers to all the mysteries in her life.

Some parts of the story seemed forced. I don't want to point any out in hopes of trying to make this review spoiler free (am I doing a good job at that?).They seemed to coincidental and seemed to happen at the most opportune moment. I hate when I read a book and get a feeling like that. To me that means the author didn't do a very good job in transitions if I'm left thinking that a certain event didn't really fit or was too perfect for that situation.

I guess this was just another story that I got sucked into because of the cover and the many reviews of people declaring their undying love to a Mr. Kaidan Rowe. Maybe I'm stuck in this funk because I'm waiting, desperately, for some romance novels to come out that I find myself attracted to any mention of a hot guy. Let that be a lesson, hot guys don't always make the story better, although they do help.

 3.5 - 4 cups of tea.

MEH