definitely, possibly, maybe

i don't know you guys. princess leia died. so did mr. seaver. and mrs. brady. and prince. and george michael. and bowie. and muhammed ali. and so many others. it's the circle of life right. people are born. people live their lives. and then they die. but this year the deaths cut a little deeper. it's like 2016 took the best cultural memories of my childhood and threw them in a disposal, shredded them to bits, so that i cling to crumbs, remembering what i can. holding on to the best moments. holding on to a piece of a song.  personally, 2016 was fine. nothing particularly horrible happened to me personally. there was the summer of gossip which i quite enjoyed. but then. everything took a turn.  the world has always been a place where light and dark co-exist. but in the fall, as the elections neared i felt that darkness creep in closer. and on november 8th, it felt like midnight.  i will always remember sobbing in the shower that night. when i knew in my heart th...

we first met adam and eliza may in evernight  where they were locked in a battle of wills. soulbound is the next chapter of their story, and picks up not long after they were separated by will thorne and st. john evernight in order to fulfill a deal with mab, the fairy queen. eliza may has been living with mab, and she finds she doesn't quite like it. it's as if she's traded one form of captivity for another. when mab's brother mellan comes calling, and eliza is informed that he is her intended groom, she is especially horrified. she knew mellan in her life in the colonies, she worked for him a while, and she is not interested in renewing that particular acquaintance. when eliza discovers that mab has been holding adam captive and torturing him, she finds that in spite of her feelings for him she can't just leave him behind. adam knows that eliza hates him. which is the ultimate irony because he knows that she is his soulmate, and that without her heart freely gi...

this is a quick little one-parter i wrote, probably in response to an episode. do you guys know that i have a mix tape i created based on my emotions following one of the season finales? ok, well you know now because i just told you how crazy i was about this show. it feels like this was all written a lifetime ago.

i loved the lunar chronicles, marissa meyer's sci-fi based retellings of cinderella , little red riding hood , rapunzel , and snow white . her latest novel, heartless , is at once similar and different. it has the most in common with fairest , levana's origin story. except this is set in a version of victorian england, in neverland, somewhere beyond the looking glass. and we get the story of cath pinkerton, whose destiny is to be the queen of hearts.  how do you make an unsympathetic character, a villian really, someone to root for? in fairest , meyer gave us a deeper understanding of what the lunatic lunar queen's issues were, but didn't really make her someone we ever really wanted to root for. it's different with cath. even knowing how she ends up, you still root for a different outcome. and why she so fully becomes the queen of hearts with a penchant for offing people's heads makes so much sense after you read this story.  the wonderful thing about l...

the characters in the rule maker  have a lot going on. zoey is an up-and-coming interior designer who is looking to advance her career and loves a big job. ryder is a snowboarder who's broken leg has put his career on pause and has left him flailing. especially since his older brother, jason, also recently suffered a severe injury that left him paralyzed. zoey and ryder also have some history, since after spending one night together he basically ghosted her. when jason hires zoey to redesign his latest acquisition and puts ryder in charge of the day-to-day handling of the project, all those things come to a head. zoey is still angry with ryder for how he disappeared after they slept together, and ryder is conflicted? okay, i'll be honest, i still am unclear on ryder's behavior and feelings about the whole thing. did he only intend their one night to be a one night? at certain points it does, but then he admits that he left zoey that night because jason was injured and t...

when joya bennett wakes up next to lincoln fisher the morning after her brother's wedding in properly groomed , she panics and runs away hoping that he'll awaken none the wiser to her absence. she doesn't expect to see him again. but she's wrong about that, and wrong about him forgetting. a few short hours later, they've both temporarily moved into her brother's home, and staying away from the man who she has pined for is going to prove impossible. especially since he's decided that he's done enough pining himself and the time for seeing where things can go between them is now. joya and lincoln both have jobs that force them to keep off hours. she's the producer for the local morning show and he runs a restaurant. at first it seems like their hours will keep them apart, but they start to spend their days together in ways that feel so right. so when joya is offered the opportunity to do the evening news, a promotion that will change up her hours t...

worth the wait  is the fourth, and likely final, installment in the kingston ale house series . even if you haven't read the other books, this story stands entirely on its own. jeremy denning has worked at the ale house for years, he loves his job, and until recently never really aspired for more. when jamie, the owner of the ale house, starts to consider a partner, jeremy finds himself coveting the role. part of him is conflicted about this, and to prove himself, jamie asks him to attend a microbrewer's conference. jeremy finds all the chemistry and lab work beyond boring, but when his back seizes up after sitting in uncomfortable hotel conference chairs for 8 hours he seeks out a massage. grace bailey had a last minute cancellation and didn't expect much from the fill-in client. generally she doesn't spend too much time thinking about her clients. she's only taken this job in madison to hide the fact that she is being blackmailed by her almost fiancé from her ...

the second installment of the brash & brazen series, the sweetheart game , let's us get to know summer o'keefe, private investigator/hacker/former beauty queen. when we first are introduced to summer she is spying on her new neighbor, jason parker. she suspects he might be a serial killer. or possibly an international arms dealer. jason is none of those things. and as an ex-marine, ex-cop, turned famous author he figures out pretty quickly that summer is spying on him. he feeds her suspicions at first because he finds the whole thing funny, but eventually fesses up to what he is doing in his backyard. the weird late night trips were actually an effort to bury old taxidermied animals that formed his grandfather's collection--a longstanding family joke. this is something of a relief to summer, because she was seriously worried that she was attracted to a serial killer. when their neighbor goes missing, somehow summer and jason end up working the case. it's summe...

intense pleasure  is the fifteenth installment in lora leigh's erotic romance series, bound hearts. i've read a couple of the previous installments and this follows a similar pattern to those. if you are familiar with the series, you know that these books are unconventional romances in that there is generally a threesome of the m/f/m variety. i don't mind the threesome idea at all, and actually i prefer the storyline in intense pleasure  where both guys and the woman are fully committed to one another, and of being in this relationship than the ones where it's only a temporary thing. summer, falcon, and raeg have known each other for years. they've wanted each other for years--note that falcon and raeg actually have no interest in each other sexually, they are half-brothers, whose parents have their own unconventional relationship. a lot of the baggage the guys carry is due to their parents, their father in particular. but there are some key plot points that would...

after i finished without color  i felt the urge to peek in on the characters several years down the road. this is a standalone chapter that gives us once last glimpse of the liz and michael from this particular alternate universe.

the second book in the bourbon boys series,  a shot with you , focuses on brandon morgan, the workaholic uptight brother. forced to go on vacation by his family, he ends up on a tour of a tequileria while at a stop in puerto vallarta, mexico, and there he meets a girl. lesa ruiz has been longing to leave her home in nowhere mexico for years, but she promised her mother on her deathbed that she would watch out for her father and their tequila distillery, and so she's been trapped ever since.  meeting brandon feels like a dream come true, especially when he proposes a business partnership between their distilleries. lesa's father wants her to check things out before he commits to anything, and so she gets to go to the blue mountains of kentucky and achieve her dream of traveling the world. she wants this deal to work, because she knows it will finally set her free from the life she's led so far.  the problem is that she really likes brandon. and he is clearly a h...

megan windham belongs to a large complicated family who have something like 10 books between them, and this one happens to be the first i've read. and while it is possible to read it as a standalone, since technically megan belongs to the original duke of moreland's brother's side of the family and this is supposed to be the kick-off to a new spin-off series. it's the kind of thing where having the background knowledge might make this book more satisfying or at least less confusing. i have never read a grace burrowes book before, so i was incredibly at sea when the windham brothers were in a room together. i couldn't keep any one of them straight. and while clearly they were behaving in character, the novel presumed a familiarity with their habits that i did not share, so i was less amused about spending time with these characters and more interested in spending time with megan and hamish, the titular troublesome duke of t he trouble with dukes . granted one cou...

ABOUT THE BOOK Title:  The Trouble with Dukes Author: Grace Burrowes Series: Windham Brides, #1 On Sale: December 20, 2016 Publisher: Forever Mass Market: $7.99 USD eBook: $6.99 USD Add to Goodreads This first novel in a new Regency series from USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes is a spinoff of her highly popular Windham series. THEY CALL HIM THE DUKE OF MURDER... The gossips whisper that the new Duke of Murdoch is a brute, a murderer, and even worse—a Scot. They say he should never be trusted alone with a woman. But Megan Windham sees in Hamish something different, someone different. No one was fiercer at war than Hamish MacHugh, though now the soldier faces a whole new battlefield: a London Season. To make his sisters happy, he'll take on any challenge—even letting their friend Miss Windham teach him to waltz. Megan isn't the least bit intimidated by his dark reputation, but Hamish senses that she's fighting battles of her own. For her, he...

in the bag  is book two of the celeste eagan mystery series. i reviewed her first appearance ( person of interest )  earlier this year. and book two picks up about a month after the events of book one. and somehow celeste finds herself in the thick of another murder mystery! the way this happens actually seems to fit in with celeste's normal, so things never feel contrived. when her best friend, levi is accused of murder and celeste is considered a possible accomplice she falls back on her sleuthing skills--mostly consisting of unrepentant nosiness--and works to clear her name and levi's. her confusing romance with detective shaw muldoon is also in play with some added complications from new suitor, suspect, possible mob guy gabriel grady, and appearances from kellen, the journalist she spent time with in person of interest . what makes these books so entertaining is celeste's unique voice. she's funny but she's also insightful. her innate clumsiness and abili...

fire and ice, light and dark battle for supremacy in frostblood , a young adult fantasy by elly blake. ruby otrera is a young fireblood, who lives with her healer mother and hides in plain sight until she is captured by the malevolent frost king's army. rescued from prison by the mysterious arcus and kindly brother titus, ruby learns to harness her firepowers in a desperate bid to destroy the frost king's throne and stop the evil that is taking over the realm. some might feel like this story is too similar to victoria aveyard's red queen , but i think ruby is a more compelling character than mare barrow. she's a better person than mare and her struggles feel more heartfelt and genuine. there is a bit of a twisted love triangle between ruby, arcus, and rasmus, the frost king, but the truth of where anyone's feelings lies is never really in question, so it didn't drag down the narrative like so many other ya love triangles do. and arcus was just such an inte...

slingshot cops  is the latest motern media film--it's the supernatural, buddy cop movie you never knew you wanted. recognizing its independent, low-budget origins, slingshot cops  is a fun-filled adventure. while it's entirely possible that i found this so funny because i actually know most of the people acting in this movie. my darling husband is the eastern european with the wildly varying accent. but you can see that everyone involved is having a good time, and that makes the absurd plot of a supernatural being who steals people's senses--like actual senses, sight, touch, smell, hearing--an entertaining ride. there's political drama, relationship drama, workplace drama, and at its center is rusty sinclair, the criminal concern officer turned slingshot cop who is prepared to keep the town of woodsville center safe from fireworks and losing their senses. i may be totally biased, but if you want to support some independent filmmakers and all-around good people, chec...

so this is it for this one, you can read the conclusion after the jump. catch up with parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and 7 at the links.

everything his heart desires  is the second book in patricia preston's love heals all series. the books standalone and can be read in any order without feeling like you are missing out on something. brett harris is on the verge of getting everything he's ever wanted, eveything he's worked so hard for, the only thing in his way? natalie layton and her nana. natalie was the bane of his existence in high school. she was a dreamy slacker, a rich girl with no focus or discernible ambitions. brett came from nothing and has the chip on his shoulder to prove it. while natalie annoyed the crap out of him in high school, brett was just as annoying to natalie. the two of them gave as good as they got. fourteen years later and nothing much has changed, they're still at odds. but maybe with so much more at stake, brett's career, natalie's nana's health, they'll actually talk and listen to each other? maybe this time they'll understand where they are both comi...

so i tend to be suspicious of american authors who decide to write in spanish. because a lot of the time they make stupid grammatical errors that pull me out of the story. in off the rails , jill sorenson does a very good job of using spanish language phrases, they are used realistically and she even has slang down. so color me impressed, a lot of authors mess this up and it drives me crazy. and you can just tell she's done a ton of research on mexico and the drug and immigration issues that dominate the u.s.-mexico border. ian foster is a former border patrol agent as well as a former dea agent who is working with ice on a special case. his own actions as a dea agent have linked him to the case and he is sent into mexico to fix the problems he caused. somehow he can't stay away from the one person who made him break his cover in the first place, maría santos. he's been obsessed with her since he saved her life as a border patrol agent. and it doesn't matter how much ...

amanda ashby's falling for the best man  is the nice kick-off to a category romance series. pepper, emmy, and bec are sisters who have allowed their differences to come between them. especially when it comes to their legacy from their great-aunt ivy, wishing bridge farm. homebody emmy is trying so hard to keep their great-aunts legacy in the family. she won't listen to her sisters' arguments that they should sell. and so as a last ditch effort she's started a vintage wedding planning business, using the farm's idyllic setting as a venue. the farm is located in the tiny town of sunshine, connecticut, and emmy's got all the townspeople pulling for her to succeed, since the wedding venue business will help them out collectively. so when it turns out that the best man on the wedding that is launching this business is christopher henderson, emmy's one weekend stand that she stood up at the airport after bailing on a trip to fiji, well things get complicated. ...

in the six weeks since we last saw jack mcbride in stillwater   his life has gone to shit. he's going through the motions of pretending to reconcile with his estranged wife. he's hosting his deliquent brother, eddie, and worried that he'd fallen into the same rough crowd he always does. his surly teenager is surlier than ever, even though he is the entire reason he is pretending to make things work with his soon-to-be ex. and the worst thing is that he can't spend any time around ellie yourke martin without giving away that he is head over heels for her. the fisher king  kicks off with a blazing fire, one that has also consumed two bodies. jack needs to figure out who these victims are, who murdered them, and how this all ties into the unsurpassed crime wave happening on his watch in stillwater. as in stillwater , there are several crimes being investigated at the same time. and the alternating point-of-views slowly expand our understanding of how everything is link...

i read stillwater last year, closer to its original debut.  but since i'm going to review the sequel, t he fisher king , tomorrow i thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory. the best thing about stillwater are its exquisitely well-drawn and engaging characters, from the lead, jack mcbride; his teenage son, ethan; to minor characters, such as diego vasquez, who's mysterious appearance and disappearance remains a question mark even at the end of the novel. the town itself functions as a character too, and like an onion there are many layers to unravel before the whole truth is revealed. this book is clearly only the start of the unraveling.  one of the things that i liked about the novel was that this wasn't just about solving one murder. we start at the scene of a crime, but this crime leads jack to discovering other criminal activity, as well as, stumbling upon a cold case. there are so many things happening and it's only jack's first week on the job....

the darkest london series continues with evernight , which essentially picks up the threads of holly and will's stories woven through shadowdance  and ties them neatly together. that description sounds kind of glib, but the story of holly and will's romance is not glib. in shadowdance  these two characters were deeply, devastatingly tortured and wounded. and evernight faces the consequences of the events in shadowdance  head on. will thorne is slowly turning to platinum. the clockwork heart that holly created is slowly consuming his entire being. so much so that he has nearly gone mad with anger, with the thirst for revenge, with pain. he decides to hunt holly down, and nearly kills her, but before he can touch her, she touches him. and with that one touch she heals him. as an elemental holly can manipulate metal. so she uses her power to assuage will's pain. she helps him return to sanity. he still resents her, but in order to allow himself some succor he makes ...

parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , and 6 are at the links. part 7 follows the jump, we're getting close to the end of this one.

i know it took me awhile, but i finally finished re-reading the matched trilogy. reached is the conclusion that brings cassia, ky, and xander's stories full circle. picking up right where they left off, they narrate the events of the rising and life after the end of the society. and we get to see the problems of a rebellion that only really signifies a change in leadership rather than a fundamental societal change. so much planning goes into the moment of obtaining power and not enough goes into how to keep it and keep the peace. in their own ways, cassia, ky, and xander discover that fundamental change is not something easy to attain. as the poet, the pilot and the physic, they represent and are pivotal parts of the rebellion and society. the journey of self-discovery takes them to unexpected places, beyond the boundaries of the society that they knew. and they suffer loss and still find a way to survive. in reached  we finally get to see xander's point of view. as much...

when allison davies collins decides that she's had enough of being a trophy wife, she totally goes for it. she leaves her older, rich husband behind and only takes the clothes on her back and a few personal items. not even the lure of a big payday set up in their prenup for lasting ten years of marriage is enough to make her stay. alison has dreams that she's shoved aside to be the perfect wife. but being the titular trophy wife   is not all she wants to be. so she moves to fielding, north carolina, the small town where her grandmother had a home that she inherited when her parents passed away. while it's not much, it's a place to stay. and allison means to get back to her feet and learn to stand free without the help of a man. she has big plans, she wants to go to school and get a college degree and she wants to set up a jewelry design business. but first she needs a job that will pay enough to keep her independent. with no actual experience this isn't someth...

worth fighting for  continues the story of ellie and jamie from fighting to be free . it's been three years since the events that closed out the first novel, and ellie has spent all of them hiding in europe. jamie is now out of prison and even more enmeshed in his thug life style. because he has nothing without ellie. there's no need to plan for a future when you destroyed it so utterly before it could even get started. but when ellie's parents are in a serious car accident and she is forced to return to the states, it is inevitable that the two of them will end up in each other's orbits. moseley manages to draw this out, surprisingly. we spend a lot of time catching up with the two characters individually before we see them together again. but ellie and jamie are too explosive to keep away from each other. when they do get back together, conveniently after ellie has broken up with her british fiancé, the sparks fly and they cannot keep their hands off each other....

ABOUT THE BOOK Title: WORTH FIGHTING FOR Author: Kirsty Moseley Series: Fighting To Be Free, #2 On Sale: December 6, 2016 Publisher: Forever Trade Paperback: $14.99 USD eBook: $3.99 USD Add to Goodreads Here's everything you need to know about the sequel to FIGHTING TO BE FREE. My review will be posting shortly. Sometimes in life you have to walk away . . . Leaving Jamie Cole was the hardest thing Ellie Pearce ever had to do. Somehow, she moved on. She made a new life in a new city with a new man. So when a family tragedy calls Ellie back home, she believes all her old feelings for Jamie—the hunger, the heat, the heartbreak—are safely behind her. But the second she lays eyes on him, the intensity of their connection is as strong as ever. Sometimes you stay and fight . . . Jamie knows pain. He's felt it fighting in the streets, and he felt it fighting to survive in prison. Yet nothing he's experienced has been as painful as the day Ellie left—until the m...

in stroke of midnight  we meet the hernandez family, alana the eldest daughter is the responsible, dependable one. she's been picking up the slack for everyone else in the family, especially her older brother, javier, who has fallen to pieces since his acrimonious divorce. on the other hand, her flighty sister, carla, is determined to make sure alana has a little fun. it's new year's eve and it time to let go. to get her sister off her back, alana agrees to go out. when she jokes to her sister that she hopes to pick up a stranger for one night of hot sex, she never imagines that her words would prove prophetic. but when she meets cole roberts the attraction is instantaneous and neither can resist the pull. cole has recently broken up with his long-time love so the last thing he wants is a relationship. a one night stand with a smoking hot chick sounds perfect to him. and then things get complicated, obviously because this is a romance. it turns out that his hot chick ...

i've read some reviews of shadowdance  where people weren't in love with this book because of how awful the hero is to his leading lady. i'm not going to make excuses for him (ok, maybe i am), but i'm acknowledging that jack talent is completely awful to mary for a good three-quarters of the book. but he's been a jerk to her for the previous two books too, so this pattern of behavior isn't surprising. what the book gives us is insight into how messed up jack is. how it actually kills him to be this relentlessly awful to her. that if he didn't feel so unworthy, so broken, so tortured, so guilty, so undeserving of her goodness, he would take her in his arms and never let her go. but it's been ingrained into his psyche that mary is not for him. even when her spirit calls to him. and since she's a gim, you can imagine how strong her spirit is. especially since their souls bonded when she rescued him from torture, and this bond makes it so that they are...