Blog Tour & Review - Love Between Enemies by Molly E. Lee

Title: Love Between Enemies
(Grad Night #2)
Author: Molly E. Lee
Category/Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Publication Date: January 8th, 2017
Publisher: Entangled Teen (Crush)

Zoey Handler is ready to put an end to her decade-long rivalry with Gordon Meyers. They’ve traded top spot between valedictorian and salutatorian for years, but all that’s over now. Right? But after a crazy graduation speech prank gets out of hand, suddenly their rivalry turns into all-out war. Time to make peace with a little friendly payback.

Step one? Make him believe they’re now friends.

Step two? Show him the time of his life at an epic graduation party.

Step three? Don’t fall for his tricks.

Step four? Absolutely, positively, do not kiss him again.

So what if he’s cute? (Okay, hot.) So what if he’s charming? (Heaven help her, tempting.) So what if he apologizes? (That has to be fake.) She knows the real Gordon. And no matter how much her heart begs her to stop, there’s no turning back.

Disclaimer: This Entangled Teen Crush book contains one epic party, complete with every high-schoolers-gone-bad shenanigan, and two rivals who discover maybe they could be something much more…if only they’d stop fighting long enough to notice it.

 Goodreads

 Buy Links: Amazon | Amazon Australia | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

“Help me out here,” Gordon whispered, his cheek brushing against mine as he spoke in my ear. “I’m blanking.”

The breath stalled in my lungs with how close he was, and how his soft words sent warm chills across my skin. The notion that he thought I was someone he could ask advice from both thrilled me and made my nerves twist. Or that could be because I could smell him again, which seemed to have a direct line to my crazy-button. Because only an insane girl would be wishing her enemy would keep whispering in her ear like that—he could recite the alphabet for all I cared, as long as he kept talking.

“Um,” I said, stumbling over my own words. New experience. Not exactly fun. My eyes darted over the faces in the room—completely oblivious to the battle raging inside me, the one that screamed to give in to what I was feeling for Gordon, and the other side reminding me how he’d slayed me this morning. I finally spotted the quarter on the table and remembered how to use my brain. “Any time someone says quarter, they have to drink.”

Gordon smiled and I felt it in my bones. “Thanks,” he said. “What she said.” He spoke a little louder as he sat up straight again, and I instantly craved the warmth of his nearness.

I’m in so much trouble.

I focused solely on the game and on the plan, but my body…my heart…wanted what I couldn’t have.

 

3 “Team Gordon FTW” Stars

ARC via NetGalley

Thank you, Entangled Teen!

After reading and loving the first book in this series, I was anxious to get my hands on this!

With one of my favorite romantic tropes, Love Between Enemies shares a parallel timeline with Love in the Friend Zone. Like the first book, the story of Gordon and Zoey start at graduation day and stretches into the grad party, where we get most of the interactions between the two main characters.

I know not everyone is a fan of this format, but I think it works well for this series because these characters have all known each other for a really long time. They’ve seen each other almost every day for years, so I can’t really classify their feelings as “insta”-anything, even when it only takes one night for them to realize those feelings exist. You know what I’m saying?

Here, Zoey and Gordon have been each other’s closest competitors. This competitive dynamic makes them work harder every time to try to win/be the best student/get the prize or whatever is at stake. So though they aren’t exactly enemies, it’s clear they’re nemesis. Until Gordon loses a much-needed prize to Zoey and decides to act stupid because of it.

  

Of course Zoey can’t let it slide, so she comes up with a revenge plan of her own. But her revenge involves distracting Gordon, a.k.a. spending too much time with him, and that’s when things start to turn from hate to something else entirely.

 Here’s the thing, though…. Gordon’s little revenge started the whole thing, but I still rooted for him the entire time, mostly because I could understand why he did what he did, but I couldn’t connect with Zoey’s reason…or how far she took her revenge plan.

The author did an amazing job establishing Gordon’s motivations and building a heartwarming relationship between Gordon and his dad. I was drawn to him instantly, and a few chapters in I was already tearing up reading scenes between those two. The love and respect in that relationship was beautiful and real and warmed my heart.

I also loved how hard Gordon worked to get the things he had and how serious he was about school and the family’s business. They weren’t exactly poor, but they were hard-working people, and that always gets to me.

Zoey, on the other hand, came from a place of privilege. Her family was wealthy and, despite my admiration for how hard she worked to prove herself, she had her future set for her. I’m not saying she should’ve have been upset at how people thought she had everything handed to her and judged her for it. Or that she shouldn’t be proud of herself for working just as hard as Gordon for her academic success. But she still needed to acknowledge her place of privilege. I understood her intentions and motivation, but I was annoyed that she didn’t see there were people who needed that prize a lot more than she did.

And here’s the thing, Gordon was wrong to do what he did, but his actions didn’t have half the consequence as her revenge plan did. She was plotting to ruin a person’s academic future and that was seriously messed up. Her revenge plan could also lead to much bigger problems for Gordon and his father—legal problems. There was simply no way I could get behind her and what she was doing.

I also expected Zoey to come into her own and do something about that terrible revenge plan much earlier, but things didn’t go exactly that way. For me, Zoey went too far into the bad side and took too long to come out of it. And even when she did, she didn’t exactly acknowledge her place of privilege. In the end, she did the right thing, but even that left a bad taste in my mouth, because it ended up making Gordon look like he only got the things he did because she interfered.

So while Zoey didn’t do it for me, Gordon was the real star of this story. I loved everything about him, especially the way he owned up to his mistake and immediately sought a way to apologize for what he did. And even if he didn’t get his happy ending the way I wanted him to, I was still thrilled for him.

 

 

Goodreads

Buy Link: Amazon / Entangled

Review

  

Molly E. Lee is an author best known for her debut novel EDGE OF CHAOS, and as a mentor at Pitch Wars - a program which connects promising writers to established authors in the community. Molly writes New Adult and Young Adult contemporary featuring strong female heroines who are unafraid to challenge their male counterparts, yet still vulnerable enough to have love sneak up on them. In addition to being a military spouse and mother of two + one stubborn English Bulldog, Molly loves watching storms from her back porch at her Midwest home, and digging for treasures in antique stores.

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Release & Review - Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: Before I Let Go

Author: Marieke Nijkamp

Release Date: January 2nd, 2017

Age Category/ Genre: Young Adult Mystery

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Best friends Corey and Kyra were inseparable in their snow-covered town of Lost Creek, Alaska. When Corey moves away, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winter, and wait for her return.

Just days before Corey is to return home to visit, Kyra dies. Corey is devastated―and confused. The entire Lost community speaks in hushed tones about the town's lost daughter, saying her death was meant to be. And they push Corey away like she's a stranger.

Corey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows. Lost is keeping secrets―chilling secrets. But piecing together the truth about what happened to her best friend may prove as difficult as lighting the sky in an Alaskan winter...

Goodreads

Buy Links: Amazon

3 “Intriguing, but confusing” stars

ARC via NetGalley

Thank you, Sourcebooks Fire!

I requested this book on NetGalley because I wanted to give this author another chance, and see if I was the problem since I one-stared her bestselling debut, This is How it Ends. The good news is I liked this a lot more than the author’s previous book. The not-so-good news is that this book could’ve been a lot better.

Before I Let Go is the story of Corey and Kyra, two childhood BFFs who grew up in a tiny town of 200 inhabitants in Alaska. Kyra was bipolar and rejected by the rest of the town, and when Corey’s mom received a job offer somewhere else, she left her town and her best friend behind. Seven months later, she gets a phone call that Kyra is dead. They say is suicide, but she doesn’t believe it. When she flies back to town, it’s obvious there’s more to the story.

First, this book is supposed to be suspense/thriller, right? But with all the supernatural vibe I got from it, it’s hard to put it into a specific genre, which is something that often takes me out of the story. I kept hoping for some explanation to the voices, “predictions” and overall supernatural-y things happening, but I was left disappointed.

Something else that confused and irritated me a lot were the narrative choices. The main story was told in first person present tense, which I don’t mind at all. Then we had flashback chapters, which are always hard for me to connect with (especially when they’re repetitive and add little to the connection they’re trying to establish). But I could deal with them. My biggest problem were the script chapters. Yes. There were some chapters that were written in script format, and WTF was that about? I also kept hoping for an explanation, because that change in narrative made no sense whatsoever, but again nothing came. It was just thrown there. I honestly don’t know what purpose it was trying to serve. Can someone explain it to me, please?

Still on the needs-improvement part, Corey was not an easy character to like. Look, you best friend is struggling with mental illness—I won’t comment on how the portrayal of bipolar because I don’t know enough about it—and you leave her behind with a bunch of people who never liked her and talked about sending her away. I get that Corey had no choice on the matter since she was a teenager and was following her mother, but couldn’t she have at least tried to be a good friend? She promised Kyra she’d come back for her, made the girl promise to wait for her, and she couldn’t even bother to answer Kyra’s letter? *rolls eyes*

Then when Kyra dies, she goes back and starts confronting every single person about how they did not care about Kyra at all. Girl! Girl! The nerve!

I don’t understand what they purpose of having Corey be so careless was. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth the risk of making her unlikable, which was what it did for me. I found myself getting irritated with her every time she confronted Kyra’s parents or the rest of the folks in her hometown. Also, repetition ruled this story. Corey had the same conversation over and over and over again, and it was completely unnecessary because I had already gotten the idea behind the whole mystery.

Since this was supposed to be a thriller, I was expecting something with a little more mystery to it. But there was no build up. When Corey arrives at her hometown, people are already super weird and the hints about what they did to Kyra were already too strong. There was no going from “oh, this town is nice and cozy” to “OMG, this is creepy.” We started with creepy and kept that pace. There was little find out. Little possibilities to explore.

The motivation for what happened was also a little weak. I get that desperation and hope can change people—even 200 people. But to think the ones that loved Kyra the most would behave in the matter they did? And that there’d be no sign of regret? I don’t know if I can buy it. But I blame that on the lack of character development. Aside from Corey and Kyra, everyone else was interchangeable, even Kyra’s parents.

On the other hand, this book was quite addictive. I read it superfast, and the beginning did make me curious about what would happen next. It would’ve benefited from being a littler shorter, but I didn’t consider DNF’ing it at any point, which I can’t say about many books lately. I also loved the setting—a tiny Alaskan town. I thought it helped with the eerie atmosphere the author tried to create. Again, I would’ve liked the town folks to have distinguishing personalities and for the supernatural vibe to have been clarified, but I think the setting in itself was a positive thing. 

Before I Let Go was different than what I normally read, and it was a better experience than the author’s debut. I don’t know if I’m the right reader for this author, but I like her premises, and if she comes up with something else that peaks my interest, I may check it out again.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.

Release & Review - Over Us, Over You by Whitney G.

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: Over Us, Over You
Author: Whitney G.
Release Date: December 7th, 2017

Age Category/ Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance

From New York Times bestselling author Whitney G. comes a falling for my older brother’s best friend romance.

Subject: Delete this message after you read it...

Dear Hayley,

I'm assuming you're still hungover, so I'll make this brief.

Last night, you slipped under my sheets (without my permission), and we almost had sex. I got the hell out of the bed once I realized it was you, and I took you home.

That's the story.

The end.

Period. 

Just in case you've forgotten, you're my best friend's little sister. We will never be anything more. (We can't be anything more.) Our previous friendship is still unresolved--or "over" in your terms, so I'd prefer if we worked on becoming 'just friends' again since you're in town.

Nonetheless, I'm not a man who leaves questions unanswered--even the drunken ones, so to properly close our inappropriate conversation:

1) Yes, I liked the way your lips felt against mine when you were on top of me.
2) Yes, I do "prefer" rough sex, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't rough with you.
3) No, I had no idea you were still a virgin...

This message never happened,
Corey

Goodreads

Buy Links: Amazon

2 “What happened?” Stars

Even though I think I haven’t reviewed them, I’ve read a few novels and novellas by this author, and I’ve enjoyed them. But this book was a complete mess. I can barely believe this was written by the same author as Sincerely, Carter, which I really liked.

I first heard about Over Us, Over You a few weeks ago during the cover reveal tour, and I was so excited to see it was a “falling for my best friend’s little sister” romance. I patiently waited for its release, but it disappointed me beyond words.

First, Hayley is one of the most irritating, unlikable, immature main characters I’ve read about in a while. She’s supposed to be in her mid-twenties (I think), but she sounds like a spoiled fifteen-year-old.

I was initially okay with her despite the fact that she took the money her brother sent to pay college tuition and invested in a small café business that didn’t survive a few months. It was a little silly and immature, but okay, I was willing to overlook that because she made it sound like she’d worked hard to make it work, but had been unlucky. I was wrong. After getting to know Hayley a bit better, I realized she was simply lazy and not all that smart.

Hayley really got on my nerve when, after losing her business and getting thrown out of her apartment, she decided to go back to San Francisco and ask her brother for help. Her big brother, who also happened to be super overprotective and a self-made millionaire. Oh, that’s when Hayley shows her true colors. Her brother doesn’t hesitate to get her on a private plane, get her  freaking huge house and create a position for her at his company. A company he built from nothing. What does Hayley do? Refuse to move into the house until her friend and former business partner comes to town—a friend who’ll also be getting a job at Hayley’s brother’s company simply because Hayley asked for it. There’s some excuse about how Hayley has problems sleeping so she doesn’t want to be alone in the house, but honestly, none of it is explained in a way that makes much sense. Hayley obviously doesn’t care that she’s creating a problem for her brother and instead of trying to fix her situation, she waits for him to do so, which leads him to ask his best friend (the love interest) to take Hayley in.

Does Hayley seem grateful for that? Not really. Does she go on and respect that rules Corey, the best friend who let her stay with him, set for her to live in his house? Not really, either. Were these rules pretty absurd? Sure, but I don’t know about you, but if someone was letting me stay at their place for free, I wouldn’t be wearing their clothes without permission or playing music at night just because I couldn’t sleep. *rolls eyes*

But that wasn’t even my biggest problem with Hayley. Her behavior at work was. Dude! Dude! The woman couldn’t be bothered to get to work on time or do anything useful even when her brother had practically created a position for her so she wouldn’t be sitting home doing nothing. A little appreciation wouldn’t hurt, woman! Just get there on time and do a decent job, at least. Try to show him you’re grateful he’s buying you a house and giving you a car! I can’t understand what the author was thinking when she wrote Hayley the way she did. Between her brother giving her anything she wanted and Corey taking her on private planes for short vacations around the world, she didn’t have to work for anything and she couldn’t even bother to be grateful?! No. I can’t get behind that. A lack of work ethic is something I simply can’t forgive in a protagonist. No one likes leeches.

Corey wasn’t that much better. He had some big jerk moments for no reason, but at least he seemed to have worked hard for his money. And I was honestly too pissed at Hayley to really pay much attention to Corey. On the plus side, I thought the story had a lot of potential judging for their backstory. With the right vision, those two could’ve had a really touching love story.

Another thing that felt extremely off about this story was the dialogue. It was so unrealistic, I can’t even explain how bad it was. There were so many scenes that caused me to roll my eyes and go “I can’t believe this is happening”. I honestly don’t understand what happened here.

I had high hopes for Over Us, Over You, but unfortunately this book didn’t work for me at all.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.

Release & Review - Forest of a Thousand Lanterns (Rise of the Empress #1) by Julie C. Dao

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: Forest of a Thousand Lanterns
(Rise of the Empress #1)
Author: Julie C. Dao
Release Date: October 10th, 2017

Age Category/ Genre: Young Adult Fantasy/Retelling
Publisher: Philomel Books

An East Asian fantasy reimagining of The Evil Queen legend about one peasant girl's quest to become Empress--and the darkness she must unleash to achieve her destiny.

Eighteen-year-old Xifeng is beautiful. The stars say she is destined for greatness, that she is meant to be Empress of Feng Lu. But only if she embraces the darkness within her. Growing up as a peasant in a forgotten village on the edge of the map, Xifeng longs to fulfill the destiny promised to her by her cruel aunt, the witch Guma, who has read the cards and seen glimmers of Xifeng's majestic future. But is the price of the throne too high?

Because in order to achieve greatness, she must spurn the young man who loves her and exploit the callous magic that runs through her veins--sorcery fueled by eating the hearts of the recently killed. For the god who has sent her on this journey will not be satisfied until his power is absolute.

Goodreads

Amazon

3 “East Asian Evil Queen” Stars

I’ve had my eyes on this book for a while, which means I was eager to finally start and ready to love this story. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

I went into this book knowing it was a retelling of The Evil Queen in a East Asian-inspired fantasy world, so I was expecting to have mixed feelings about the main character—wanting to murder her and loving her at the same time. That’s pretty much how I go about villains I love.

The problem is that I never got to fall in love with Xifeng.

Last year I read Heartless by Marissa Meyer, and I absolutely loved how I went from loving Catherine to watching her become the Queen of Hearts. The thing is, I could root for Catherine and I did understand why she turned into the villain we all knew.

I can’t say the same about Xifeng.

First, I felt like I was thrown into the story after it’d already begun. The romance had already started (and that’s normally a big problem for me because I don’t get to fall in love as the characters do… not that I necessarily felt like Xifeng loved Wei, anyway). The darkness inside Xifeng had already developed to a point she seemed sort of comfortable with it, and I never really felt like I watched her as someone with a good heart battling the darkness. She already seemed almost defeated and conformed to the idea that she would become a powerful and evil person at some point. It made it hard to root for her to overcome this destiny, even when I knew she’d get there eventually.

But the whole point of reading about anti-hero/anti-heroine stories for me is exactly that: rooting for something impossible. Getting so involved in the story that I forget the fact that, yeah, no matter how hard the main character fights to stay good, she’ll become evil in the end. Xifeng never felt good to me. She was too vain and selfish, and too willing to manipulate and use everyone around her to get to her goal, which made her too unlikable for me. There was no motivation for me to root for her.

Speaking of motivation, I didn’t even understand why Xifeng wanted to be Empress. Sure, there was that speech about her wanting to be someone and not to be controlled, which, YES, GIRLFRIEND, GO FOR IT. But was being evil the only way she could get there? No. That was clear, since the Queen of the Forest (I’m sure that’s not her title, but that’s how I thought of her) specifically told her there was more than one path and Xifeng didn’t have to believe she was meant for evil. But again, there was never a real struggle.

There was never the true fight between the good and evil inside of Xifeng. She continued to look at other women and call them jealous and afraid of her beauty (the girl hate was pretty obvious in this story). She continued to manipulate and use Wei (I honestly felt like she never really loved him) and the friends she made along the way to further her agenda. And that was just the beginning. It made the rest of the things she did as the book progressed less impactful, because I already didn’t like her from the start, so nothing cruel or evil she did later had a real impact.

Besides, some of Xifeng’s views of the world were truly problematic. The whole “I can’t stand under sunlight without an umbrella because I want to be pale like the Empress and don’t want to look like a lowly farm girl” thing? Oh, man. That was bad. I cringed when I read that part.

Having said all of that, I still liked the world this author created for her debut. The East Asian inspired vibe I got from it was nice and beautiful and different from what’s out there, which is a plus. I loved seeing a diverse fantasy world. The world was also dark, which worked because of the Evil Queen theme.

I also liked the writing. It’s clear the author is talented. I was a little confused at first, because the opening paragraph made it look like this wouldn’t be a close third POV, but it shifted after that and I enjoyed how the author told the story.

Judging from the tons of five-star reviews I’ve seen, my disappointment with Xifeng and her journey isn’t the norm. The majority loved the story, and I can see why. I can see its appeal. It simply didn’t work for me personally, because I need to be able to root for the character even when she’s a clear anti-heroine, and this didn’t happen here. So, my advice is: if the premise interests you, give it a chance. Maybe you’ll love it as much as the majority of readers did.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.

Release & Review - The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: The Ghostwriter
Author: Alessandra Torre

Category/Genre: Adult Contemporary/Suspense
Publication Date: October 2nd, 2017

I have three months to write the last book of my life. Three months to confess the details of that day, and how it changed everything for me. 

My name is Helena Ross. I’ve written fifteen romance novels, ten of which have become international bestsellers. But this one isn't a romance, no Happily Ever After in place. This novel holds only the truth, which I have run away from for four years. The truth, which I have hidden from the police, from my loved ones, from the world. 

This final book?

It's my confession.

This book is not a romance. It is contemporary fiction, but very suspenseful in nature. It is about a famous romance author and a dark secret she keeps.

Goodreads

Buy Link: Amazon

3.5 “Writing Secrets” Stars

ARC via NetGalley.

Thank you!

I think it's never enough to say that this book isn't a romance. At all. So if you know Alessandra Torre because of her steamy romance stories, don't come expecting more of the same. You'll get to meet a completely different side of her with this book.

Writing a review for this book isn't an easy task. I believe readers should go into this knowing just as little as the blurb tells . THis way, they'll get to experience each reveal and each twist. That's how I did it, and it worked for me.

I have to say I was surprised at how different this was from Alessandra Torre's previous books. The writing is still as good, but while in romance stories the author needs to make the main characters likable and relatable, Alessanda Torre didn't pull back from making Helena complex and, yeah, unlikable. Getting behind Helena's actions and reactions was hard--half the time I was just perplexed at how rude she was--but even that didn't make me want to stop reading. Normally, when I can't connect with the main character, I have to fight the urge to just drop the book and go read something else, but this didn't happen here. I wanted to know what had happened in Helena's life to make her that way. I wanted to follow her story.

The whole mystery behind Helena's "confession book" was the main reason I kept reading. I had an idea of what had happened from the beginning, but I didn't know how and why, and when the truth came to light, my heart broke a little for her. It still didn't make me like or understand her 100%, though. And you know what? That's also okay. I don't have to love Helena or any other main character to enjoy their story. When well done, an unlikable narrator can make the book special (see my love for Gone Girl by Gillian Flyyn).

Besides, Helena's literary agent and her writer rival brought enough likability to make up for Helena's grumpiness. I loved how these two characters came into Helena's life and refused to leave even though she initally treated them so badly. They made her less lonely and therefore more human.

I had a few problems with pacing and with Helena's reactions after she learns "the truth", but I can say this book surprised me in a positive way. I wasn't expecting something so raw, but that's what I got, and it fit the premise and the complexity of the characters perfectly.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.