Easy Review

TITLE Easy
AUTHOR Tammara Webber
PUBLICATION November 6th 2012 by Berkley Trade
READ December 06 to 07, 2012
SOURCE Purchased

Rescued by a stranger.
Haunted by a secret
Sometimes, love isn’t easy…

He watched her, but never knew her. Until thanks to a chance encounter, he became her savior…

The attraction between them was undeniable. Yet the past he’d worked so hard to overcome, and the future she’d put so much faith in, threatened to tear them apart.

Only together could they fight the pain and guilt, face the truth—and find the unexpected power of love.

(Mature Young Adult/ New Adult)

I’ve been holding off on writing my review of Easy because I really can’t think about the novel cohesively enough to even know where to start to express how much I loved it. So I took to Goodreads and looked over my status updates for it and found one that I think encompasses my thoughts pretty well, it reads: “This book is exactly what I imagine crack addiction to be like. You know, the insatiable highs & the devastating lows and all that jazz. Oh and the fact that I want more. MORE!”

At the heart of this awesome story is the cast of fantastic characters. I loved Jacqueline, she was sassy, fun and incredibly smart. But that being said, she wasn’t perfect either, she made bad decisions and was constantly learning from her mistakes & growing throughout the novel. She definitely made an immense transformation and watching her path to who she became was so great. Helping her along the way was Lucas. LUCAS, ugh where do I even start with him. I love him so much, he was everything a girl could want in a man. He had his dark and mysterious side and when you got through that he was so understanding and incredibly sweet. There are no words that I could put here to describe him that could ever do him justice, so I want to include a little passage that was the culminating point in my love for him.

     We rolled again and I was under him, his hands tracing and circling, followed by his mouth. Then he unbuttoned my jeans and touched the zipper and everything crashed around me.
     I tore my mouth from his. “Wait.”
     “Stop?” he panted, watching me.
     I bit my lip and nodded.
     “Stop everything, or just go no further?”
     “Just…just no further,” I whispered.
     “Done.” He gathered me into his arms and kissed me, one hand tangled in my hair and the other caressing down my back, our hearts pulsing out a cadence that the musician in me translated into a concert of lust. –Page 141

I think that alone is just so damn sexy, he was such an attentive lover and I found myself hot and bothered whenever they got close.

That leads me to the next part that I loved so much about this story. I love the New Adult genre that it falls into. The characters aren’t in high school, they are in university and they actually have sex! How fun, right? The angst is still there but to me, the characters actually getting into bed and romping around is so satisfying and adds a whole new element to swooning for me.

Not only is there the added element of sex, but this story also deals with some pretty heavy issues. A lot of it focuses on rape and what a woman can do to empower herself. I liked how Tammara tackled the issue, the characters didn’t check out of life because of what happened, they found ways to empower themselves and prepare for any possibility in the future. There is a speech that the president of one of the sororities gives about how women need to stand up and stand together which had me yelling out “Fuck Yeah!” It was such a great speech.

I know I haven’t done this book justice, but I am stopping here because I will never achieve that anyway. All I can say is that you NEED to read this novel. If you don’t have it, get it and if it’s on your TBR, bump it up, you will not regret it!

V is for Virgin Tour Stop

TITLE V is for Virgin
AUTHOR Kelly Oram
PUBLICATION December 11th 2012 by Bluefields
READ December 03 to 04, 2012
SOURCE From publisher for the blog tour

When Val Jensen gets dumped for her decision to stay a virgin until marriage, the nasty breakup goes viral on YouTube, making her the latest internet sensation.

After days of ridicule from her peers, Val starts a school-wide campaign to rally support for her cause. She meant to make a statement, but she never dreamed the entire nation would get caught up in the controversy.

As if becoming nationally recognized as “Virgin Val” isn’t enough, Val’s already hectic life starts to spin wildly out of control when bad boy Kyle Hamilton, lead singer for the hit rock band Tralse, decides to take her abstinence as a personal challenge.

How can a girl stay true to herself when this year’s Sexiest Man Alive is doing everything in his power to win her over?

I had a lot of fun reading V is for Virgin. I had gone into it expecting a light, fluffy read and that’s exactly what I got. We meet Valerie as she is on a date with her boyfriend, as the night goes on things get pretty hot and heavy and of course he wants to head upstairs to his bedroom. At that point Val breaks the news to him that she has no intention of having sex with him and that she is saving herself for marriage. And then he dumps her. This sets off a series of events that includes a viral YouTube video, fights with the Queen Bee at school and even some rock stars make appearances.

Valerie was an awesome character! I loved how she had a voice & opinions and she was not afraid to let them out. She was snarky and sassy, I definitely found myself rooting for her on her mission. She didn’t set out on an easy task, getting high school virgins to admit it and be proud and getting non-virgins to take an abstinence challenge isn’t exactly a popular mission at her age. I loved how she brought her love for designing jewelry into the mix as well. The whole time she was planning her campaign I found myself snickering and thinking that no one would be open to something like that, but the way that their willingness to join into the V is for Virgin campaign was written really well and it didn’t feel fake at all.

Of course, as you see from the blurb, in walks the year’s Sexiest Man Alive and he makes it his mission to get Virgin Val’s v-card. Not only is Kyle, the rock star pining for Val but we also have the schools resident popular boy, Isaac going for her as well. These boys are polar opposites. And that is one part of the story that did feel forced to me. Isaac was just way too perfect with his religious ways and his chivalry (which is not a bad thing of course.) I guess what I mean is that while Isaac, who was the “good boy”, was way too over the top good, Kyle, the “bad boy” was way too over the top bad. I didn’t buy into Val & Isaac’s relationship at all, at any point in the novel, because I didn’t believe Isaac. Nobody is that good all the damn time. On the other hand, I did find Kyle pretty sexy, he had the arrogant guy role down pat but at times his arrogance even pushed my buttons a bit too much.

What really stuck out to me as far as relationships go in this novel is the friendships. I adored the scenes where Val was with her best friend Cara, they had this great relationship based on brutal honestly and sarcasm, it was great! As Val branches out she makes some other pretty great friendships as well, I really liked Robin and Stephanie. I even enjoyed the doofus jocks that were hanging around in the background and the witty banter that came along with it. I think here is also where I would technically classify Val & Isaac’s relationship as well, if I had my way. In no way did it feel romantic to me; it definitely felt like it was a friendship that didn’t manage to cross the line.

My favorite part of this novel has to be the epilogue. I am so content with how it wrapped up and flipped the last page with a silly grin splayed across my face. With it’s funny undertones and strong, determined protagonist, I think V is for Virgin will satisfy a lot of readers looking for a book resembling some classic teen movies we all love so much.

Kelly's Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Kelly Oram wrote her first novel at age fifteen–a fan fiction about her favorite music group, The Backstreet Boys, for which family and friends still tease her. She's obsessed with reading, talks way too much, and loves to eat frosting by the spoonful. She lives outside of Phoenix, Arizona with her husband and four children.

Giveaway 

One lucky reader can win $30 in their choice of Amazon gift cards or Paypal Cash

Giveaway is open internationally

Ends January 6, 2013

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Book Blitz: Snow White Sorrow by Cameron Jace

Today I am so excited to be part of the Xpresso Blitz for Snow White Sorrow by Cameron Jace.  I haven't had the pleasure of reading the prequels for this series but I can say that now that they have been brought to my attention I am dying to read them. The covers are stunning and the stories sound fantastic. Today I will be featuring an excerpt from the first full-length novel in The Grimm Diaries series as well as a great giveaway for all 6 prequels. First, here's a little about Snow White Sorrow:

Snow White Sorrow
(The Grimm Diaries #1)
by Cameron Jace
to be published 2013 by Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl

What if all you knew about fairy tales was wrong?

Sixteen year old Loki Blackstar is no Prince Charming. His mother is a ghost. His only friend is a red Cadillac that talks to him through the radio. He looks like an Angel but acts like jerk. No wonder he has been banned from Heaven, which is the least of his troubles. Loki needs a job to pay for school and support himself.

Still, Loki has a rare gift: He is a Dreamhunter. One of the few in the world who can hunt and kill immortal demons in their dreams so they never wake up again.

When Loki is sent to kill a sixteen-year-old vampire girl the locals call Snow White Sorrow, he is pulled into a magical but dangerous world. The locals believe the monster to be Snow White.

The real Snow White... living in the ruins of an ancient castle in a small town. She is described as horribly beautiful, terrifyingly enchanting, and wickedly lovely.

What he finds instead is a beautiful monster girl filled with rage and hurt, who has an epic untold story to tell of things such like why the Brothers Grimm altered the fairy tale, who the Evil Queen really is, where the mirror came from, and who possessed it.

Snow White has killed every person who has dared come near the castle where she once lived with the queen. Mysteriously, she lets Loki live, and whispers two words in his ears; two words that will change his life forever.

Excerpt From Snow White Sorrow 

Dear Wilhelm Carl Grimm,

     She is not that giddy, naïve, and helpless princess she pretends to be. Please don’t let her fool you with her innocence if you see her sing to the birds in the forest. Resist her charm from bringing joyful tears to your eyes, and shield yourself from her devious beauty before she deceives you into wanting to kiss her awake. It'll be a kiss of death. Your death. That’s how she fooled the Huntsman, Prince Charming, and me, her birth mother.
     I still remember the original script of the fairy tale, the one you wrote in 1812. It clearly stated that she was my own flesh and blood daughter. I don’t have the slightest idea why you altered it fifty years later.
     What was the point of turning me into an evil, narcissistic, and heartless stepmother, blinded by jealousy and envy of the young princess?
     For years, I have been looking forward to telling you the truth about her, but you were impossible to reach.
     I am glad I found your brother, Jacob. He told me that you wanted to tone the stories down so children could sleep better at night, instead of having nightmares about the Queen who sought to eat her daughter’s heart and liver.
     Shame on you, Wilhelm.
     You, of all authors, knew why I wanted to kill her. My actions were justified. I was trying to save my kingdom from her wrath, before everything we loved was destined to an end. The same way you had to rewrite the true fairytales after cursing us, so the War of Sorrows would end forever after.
     Night after night, and year after year, parents fed their children false bedtime stories, until your lies grew into inescapable memories. Your happily ever after lies, Wilhelm, shaped the so called fairy tale world.
     I wondered why you didn’t burn the original scripts, instead of rewriting them. You must have figured out that sooner or later someone would dig up the truth and expose you. Altering it was the smarter solution. You let children believe that the bites were resurrecting kisses, and that torturing glass coffins were made for sleeping beauties, waiting for a prince to come and kiss them awake.
     A wise man once said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was someone else. You did the same with us, Wilhelm. You turned us into pastiches of the immortals that we really are, and made it harder for us if wanted to persuade the world otherwise.
     I know that you did it to save us from her. And I appreciate how you concealed our real names, or we would have ended up like Rumpelstiltskin, tortured by those who knew of his real name.
     But sometimes, I can’t help but wonder why no one ever questioned why I was called the Evil Queen, and why I was never given a real name in the books.
     Was I so superficial to the world, so stereotypical and mundane? Why was I treated as if I were the monster of the week?
     You know what I think? I think that the world never got the time to hate me. It just wanted to hate me long before it met me.
     If I tell those who detest me about the true nature of their little princess, would they ever care about me half as much as they care about her?
     I know that deep inside, they adore me. They like the way I talk, walk, dress, and even the way I kill.
     They are just afraid to admit how much they love me. I am the Snow White Queen, strong enough that I don’t need anyone’s pity or love, because I am loved by the greatest and most majestic heart in the world:
Mine.

Snow White Sorrow is the first full length novel is the Grimm Diaries series but already available are 6 prequels that the author describes as "snap shots of a magical land you're about to visit soon. I like to think of them as poisoned apples. Once you taste them, you will never see fairy tales in the same light again." Find the Grimm Diaries prequels by visiting Goodreads HERE.

Until December 13th you can purchase all 6 prequels from amazon for $0.99!

Buy the prequels here!

Cameron's Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Wonderlander, Neverlander, Unicorn-chaser, enchanter, musician, survived a coma, & totally awesome. Sometimes I tell stories. Always luv the little monsters I write young adult paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and science fiction mostly. The Grimm Diaries series is a seven book saga that deals with retellings of fairy tales from a young adult POV - it connects most of the fairy tales together and claims to be the truth about fairy tales. I live in San Fransisco and seriously think circles are way cooler than triangles.

Giveaway

One lucky reader can win a Kindle Prequel Pack which includes all 6 prequels.

This is only available in Kindle format but can be read through any Kindle app available free (here) for Macs, PCs, iPads, and iPhones.
Giveaway is open internationally.
The last day to enter is December 31, 2012.
Fill out the Rafflecopter to enter:

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Waiting on Wednesday (43)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature that highlights books that I am anxiously awaiting. WoW is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

The Testing
by Joelle Charbonneau
to be published June 4th 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Isn’t that what they say? But how close is too close when they may be one in the same?

The Seven Stages War left much of the planet a charred wasteland. The future belongs to the next generation’s chosen few who must rebuild it. But to enter this elite group, candidates must first pass The Testing—their one chance at a college education and a rewarding career.
Cia Vale is honored to be chosen as a Testing candidate; eager to prove her worthiness as a University student and future leader of the United Commonwealth. But on the eve of her departure, her father’s advice hints at a darker side to her upcoming studies--trust no one.
But surely she can trust Tomas, her handsome childhood friend who offers an alliance? Tomas, who seems to care more about her with the passing of every grueling (and deadly) day of the Testing. To survive, Cia must choose: love without truth or life without trust.

 I like the simplicity of this cover and the message below the title, "your time is almost up" repeated, that definitely pulls me in.  I love a good post apocalyptic story and this one sounds like it could possibly be full of twists!

What are YOU waiting on this week?

Book Blitz: Fang Girl by Helen Keeble

Today I am so excited to be taking part in the Fang Girl Book Blitz brought to you by Xpresso Book Tours.  I read Fang Girl a while ago and absolutely loved it and I have come to be quite chatty with Helen on Twitter and I can say with confidence that she is made of awesome.  Today I'll be featuring a hilarious extract from the novel, a little about Helen herself & an awesome prize pack giveaway.  First, here is a bit about the book:

Fang Girl
by Helen Keeble
published September 11th 2012 by HarperTeen

Things That Are Destroying Jane Greene’s Undead Social Life Before It Can Even Begin:

1) A twelve-year-old brother who’s convinced she’s a zombie.
2) Parents who are begging her to turn them into vampires.
3) The pet goldfish she accidentally turns instead.
4) Weird superpowers that let her rip the heads off of every other vampire she meets.(Sounds cool, but it doesn’t win you many friends.)
5) A pyschotic vampire creator who’s using her to carry out a plan for world domination.

And finally:
6) A seriously ripped vampire hunter who either wants to stake her or make out with her. Not sure which.

Being an undead, eternally pasty fifteen-year-old isn’t quite the sexy, brooding, angst-fest Jane always imagined....

Helen Keeble’s riotous debut novel combines the humor of Vladimir Tod with Ally Carter’s spot-on teen voice. With a one-of-a-kind vampire mythology and an irresistibly relatable undead heroine, this uproarious page-turner will leave readers bloodthirsty for more.

Click here to read my 5 star review of Fang Girl 

Excerpt

Extract from FANG GIRL by Helen Keeble

In which Our Heroine, Xanthe Jane Greene (unexpectedly undead vampire fangirl) wakes up back home…

I woke up in pitch blackness, lying on my back and utterly convinced that I was still six feet underground in my coffin and had hallucinated the entire previous night due to oxygen deprivation.

“Aaaaaaaaaugh!”

I flailed for a moment before my brain kicked in with three simple observations: first, I was wrapped in a fluffy fleece blanket that certainly had not been included in my grave goods; second, I’d just sat up, which I wouldn’t have been able to do in a coffin; and finally, the air reeked of hay.

The first two let me deduce that I was not, in fact, buried alive. The third made my brain stall.

A knock came from the other side of the—door? wall?—to my left. “Janie?” Zack called. “Are you alive again?”

“Yeah.” I struggled out of the clinging blanket, banging my elbows against the walls on each side in the process. Something light and metallic clinked against the top of my head when I tried to stand up, making me duck again. I reached up and found—coat hangers? “You guys put me in a closet?”

“Well, it’s not like we have a convenient crypt, you know. It was the only place we could think of where you would be totally out of the sun.” He paused. “Um, by the way, you haven’t gone insane with bloodlust, have you?”

“Uh . . .” Actually, I was feeling rather light-headed. My stomach was one big, growling void. “Give me a minute here, okay?” I closed my eyes, trying to make the hunger go away. It was only a signal from my body, that’s all. . . . I could tune it out.

Warmth spread outward from my chest and down into my stomach. The cramping ebbed away. I opened my eyes. “I’m fine now.” I pushed at the closet door; it flexed, but didn’t open. “Hey, what’s up with this?”

“Oh, we duct-taped you in,” Zack said cheerfully. “To make sure all the light was blocked out. Hang on.”

Something sneezed on my foot.

“There’ssomethingaliveinhere,” I observed with all possible calm and flung myself forward shoulder-first with full vampiric strength. Plywood burst under the impact, sending me sprawling onto the horrible floral-patterned carpet in my parents’ bedroom.

“Yes,” said Zack. He was wearing pajamas, with a long strip of tape stuck to one leg. “That would be toast.”

“Toast,” I repeated. “Sneezing toast.”

“Not toast, Toast!” He ducked into the closet, and reemerged clutching a large, wire cage. “I named her myself. Isn’t she the greatest?”

I got to my feet, gathering up the shredded remains of my dignity, and peered through the bars. A fuzzy brown-and-white ball of fur looked back at me with round, black eyes. Its pink velvet ears quivered. “It’s a guinea pig,” I concluded in the face of the evidence before me. Well, that explained why the closet had smelled of hay. “Zack, why is it a guinea pig?”

“Dad got her for you.” Zack gazed fondly down at the little fluffball. “I guess if you aren’t going to eat her, I can keep her!”

I rubbed at my forehead. It was way too early in the night for this conversation, and the terrible clashing colors of the room decor were giving me a migraine. “Dad got me a . . . guinea pig?”

“For breakfast,” Zack said. “That’s why I named her Toast. You aren’t going to eat her, are you?”

“No!”

“Woot!” Zack hugged the cage to his chest, carrying it off in the direction of his bedroom. “I hope you don’t want to eat Marmalade or Sugar Puff either!”

How fun is that excerpt, right? You guys this book is so much fun! If you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for?!

Helen's Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of her knowledge, none of the fish are undead.

Her first novel, a YA vampire comedy called FANG GIRL, is out 11th Sept 2012, from HarperTeen.

She also has another YA paranormal comedy novel (provisionally titled NO ANGEL) scheduled for Sept 2013.

Giveaway

As part of the book blitz for Fang Girl there is also a great prize pack giveaway! 

The prize pack includes:

- one signed copy of Fang Girl (can be personalised)

- a voucher for an ARC of Helen's next book NO ANGEL as soon as they are available (likely to be Spring/Summer 2013)

- a cheerful vampire goldfish paperclip

- Fang Girl stickers featuring the cover and quotes from the book

This giveaway is open internationally

The last day to enter is December 25, 2012

Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter

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