27 February 2020

REVIEW: Keep Me Wanting by Angela Addams

Keep Me Wanting by Angela Addams
Publisher: Entangled Publishing 
Release Date: February 10, 2020
Synopsis: All I’ve ever tried to do is keep the people in my life safe. That’s gotten me into hot water more times than I can count. Hell, the last time got me four years behind bars.

So when my favorite barista tells her mom that I’m her boyfriend to stop the woman’s endless criticism, I can’t stop myself from helping her out. But she’s too innocent and I’m too damaged for this to ever be the real deal.

I can’t allow myself to touch her, not when making her mine will drag her into my world and drown her in my messed up life. What I really need to do is stay away.

Except every touch and every accidental kiss breaks my control. I want her.

Then I find out her dad is the detective who put me away...and he’s trying to take down my family.

I don’t blame him. The secrets I’m keeping are big enough to destroy everything.

MY REVIEW:


Keep Me Wanting follows a riveting romance between strangers that couldn’t be more different. He is an ex-con that would do anything to protect his brothers even if it meant doing more time in the slammer. She comes from a family of lawyers and detectives--big wigs if you will--and the last person she should be bringing to her family reunion is the cute ex-con she serves coffee to every morning. The two come together and many interesting, sexy, and heartbreaking things happen throughout the entire long weekend.

Most romance novels are just that, packed with sex scenes that will make your face turn red, and sweat bead on your forehead. The good romances though, are the ones that can accomplish a well put together story along side all the sex. Addams did a fantastic job of that here. Not only did I enjoy the steamy love scenes between our two main characters, I also fell in love with their personalities and the back story that brought them together as well.

Thinking about two people whose only words to each other are over the counter at a coffee shop a few times a week, we wonder how well they are going to hit it off during a long weekend, spent with each other but also one's entire family. Addams makes this look so easy, the characters come together so easily that it is almost like they have known eachother forever. They click beautifully making their story together desirable.

Books that can make the reader wonder where it is going can be bittersweet. In the beginning, this kind of novel leads readers to believe the inevitable is going to happen. The main characters spend a long weekend together, end up madly in love and bam they are happily ever after. But there is so much extra baggage on both characters, he’s an ex-con, and her father is the detective that put him away. Their story has MANY unforeseen twists and turns that make putting this book down for any amount of time impossible.

21 February 2020

Blog Tour: What I Want You To See by Catherine Linka REVIEW


What I Want You To See By Catherine Linka
Release Date: February 4, 2020
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Synopsis: Winning a scholarship to California’s most prestigious art school seems like a fairy tale ending to Sabine Reye’s awful senior year. After losing both her mother and her home, Sabine longs for a place where she belongs.

But the cutthroat world of visual arts is nothing like what Sabine had imagined. Colin Krell, the renowned faculty member whom she had hoped would mentor her, seems to take merciless delight in tearing down her best work—and warns her that she’ll lose the merit-based award if she doesn’t improve.

Desperate and humiliated, Sabine doesn’t know where to turn. Then she meets Adam, a grad student who understands better than anyone the pressures of art school. He even helps Sabine get insight on Krell by showing her the modern master’s work in progress, a portrait that’s sold for a million dollars sight unseen.

Sabine is enthralled by the portrait; within those swirling, colorful layers of paint is the key to winning her inscrutable teacher’s approval. Krell did advise her to improve her craft by copying a painting she connects with . . . but what would he think of Sabine secretly painting her own version of his masterpiece? And what should she do when she accidentally becomes party to a crime so well -plotted that no one knows about it but her?

Complex and utterly original, What I Want You to See is a gripping tale of deception, attraction, and moral ambiguity.
 


Meet Catherine,
Catherine Linka was almost thrown out of boarding school for being “too verbal.” Fortunately, she learned to channel her outspokenness and creative energy into writing. A passionate traveler she loves to visit wild landscapes like Iceland, the Amazon, Patagonia and the Arctic circle. Catherine has seen 6 types of whales in the wild, and lived her lifelong dream when she stood on deck in pajamas and a parka watching orca in Antarctica's Gerlach Straits. Her next trip: Tasmania. She doesn’t believe in fate, but she did fall in love with her husband on their first date when he laced up her boots, because she'd broken her hand.








REVIEW:

What I Want You To See by Catherine Linka is a book that teaches its readers a lesson. It isn’t just a cute story about a girl following her dreams, or trying to anyways. It’s about a girl trying to pick herself up from rock bottom and hitting a lot of walls along the way. It’s important for writers to write through sticky situations, and tough subjects rather than writing around them ultimately sugar coating anything too hard. Sabine Reyes is a tough young woman trying to make her dreams come true, but also dealing with her mistakes of the past since her mother's sudden death.

Writing and art are one in the same, the creators of both are artists in one way or another. Reyes is a painter at heart and it is her mission to be seen by her well known, hard to please art professor, Collin Krell. Her relationship with this particular professor is very bitter sweet. He is pushing her to her potential, but she sees his pushing as harsh and it often brings her down. Although Krells harsh behavior has a depressing effect on Sabine, it brings her close to two people she might not have ever confided in.

The most intriguing aspect of Sabines story is that her story teaches readers a lesson. It wasn’t one of those, something goes wrong and everything is fixed by the end of it, there was a real lesson to learn here. Linka takes her time and puts her main character through some tough situations, and lets her work through them on her own rather than bailing her out. Not only does this make her story more interesting but it gives Sabine so much more character, readers are able to watch her change throughout the book rather than staying the same and never learning anything.

Stories take on the ability to teach their readers something with each page. Not all writers can achieve this though. Some of them aren’t able to pull their readers into a story and teach them a lesson at the same time, but Linka does this perfectly. Once all the pages have been turned, each reader will have learned something significant, and that's real story telling.





20 February 2020

Wrong Bed, Right Man by Rebecca Brooks BOOK SPOTLIGHT


Wrong Bed, Right Man by Rebecca Brooks
Publisher: Entangled, Brazen
Release Date: February 17, 2020
Synopsis: Rose Campbell is determined to get her stuff from her cheating ex-fiancĂ©’s apartment. There’s just one problem. A sexy stranger is sleeping in her bed. Work boots and scruff so aren’t her type––except when they’re on furniture maker Owen Crowley, who is funny, kind, and speaks his mind.

The prim and proper Rose isn't the kind of woman Owen is usually interested in. But the more he gets to know her, the more intrigued he becomes. There’s passion underneath those stiff suits of hers that he can’t wait to explore.

There’s no reason these two opposites can’t have some sexy fun––except that one thing. Rose works for the very people trying to destroy Owen’s business.


Meet Rebecca,
Sign up for Rebecca Brooks's monthly newsletter for her travel updates, hiking updates, news on new releases, and giveaways just for subscribers: http://rebeccabrooksromance.com/newsl....

Rebecca Brooks lives in New York City in an apartment filled with books. She received a PhD in English but decided it was more fun to write books than write about them. She has backpacked alone through India and Brazil, traveled by cargo boat down the Amazon River, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, explored ice caves in Peru, trekked to the source of the Ganges, and sunbathed in Burma, but she always likes coming home to a cold beer and her hot husband in the Bronx.

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12 February 2020

Blog Tour: Keep Me Wanting by Angela Addams




Keep Me Waiting by Angela Addams
Publish Date: February 10, 2020
Publisher: Entangled Embrace
Synopsis: All I’ve ever tried to do is keep the people in my life safe. That’s gotten me into hot water more times than I can count. Hell, the last time got me four years behind bars.

So when my favorite barista tells her mom that I’m her boyfriend to stop the woman’s endless criticism, I can’t stop myself from helping her out. But she’s too innocent and I’m too damaged for this to ever be the real deal.

I can’t allow myself to touch her, not when making her mine will drag her into my world and drown her in my messed up life. What I really need to do is stay away.

Except every touch and every accidental kiss breaks my control. I want her.

Then I find out her dad is the detective who put me away...and he’s trying to take down my family.

I don’t blame him. The secrets I’m keeping are big enough to destroy everything.


Meet Angela,

Angela Addams is an author of many naughty things. She believes that the written word is an amazing tool for crafting the most erotic of scenarios and likes telling stories about normal people getting down and dirty and falling in love. Enthralled by the paranormal at an early age, Angela also spends a lot of her time thinking up new story ideas that involve supernatural creatures in everyday situations.

She is an avid tattoo collector, a total book hoarder, and loves anything covered in chocolate…except for bugs.

She lives in Ontario, Canada in an old, creaky house, with her husband, children and four moody cats.


If you like exclusive contests, excerpts and cover reveals, sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/blFHeL


Excerpt:
“Maggie, can you help the next customer, please? I need to get some more napkins from the back.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. She just leaves.
I look over at Liam. He’s watching her walk away. Her ass sways naturally, like she was born knowing how to pull all eyes in her direction.
Thanks, Stella. She knows I’ve been fantasizing about Liam for months, lusting over his muscles, his face, that chiseled jaw, thinking about running my fingers over that stubble that’s sometimes there. Pressing against those pouty lips he has or licking along the scar on his cheek.
My face gets hotter if that’s possible. I keep my eyes down. “No problem,” I mumble. I wipe my hands on the towel and move to the cash. “Is today a butterscotch day?”
“Excuse me?” His voice is so gruff, like he’s gargled in liquid sex.
I snap my eyes up, suddenly panicked. Maybe he doesn’t get a shot some days. Am I remembering it wrong? “I thought you liked your coffee black with a shot of butterscotch every once in a while.”
“Oh, sure, I do.” He offers a smile. It’s not a big one, just a slight turn of his lips, but it’s there. “That’d be great, thanks.”
I try to smile back nonchalantly, but I can’t control what my mouth is doing. I go all crazy smile on him, like flash my teeth and set my burning red cheeks on full display. My eyes are probably sparklingly with unconfined lust.
His eyes flick to my chest, where I can feel my nipples harden. Wearing a cotton bra might be comfortable, but it does nothing to disguise the twins from jutting at the slightest breeze—or penetrating gaze.


“And your muffins look great today.”



“Um...huh?” I choke on the words, sputtering a little as I do. “My-y-y muff—” 


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