definitely, possibly, maybe

it took me a while to get into infinity , the first book in the infinity division series by jus accardo. it wasn't until cade and noah actually started filling in the back story that it really caught my interest. and part of me wonders if the bonus pov scene included at the end would have maybe worked better as a prologue. because even though we would have been very confused, i feel like it would have upped the stakes for the story in a way that the first couple of chapters needed. but maybe the author tried that and it didn't work. regardless, once this story gets going it's good. noah and cade belong to another world, and in their world kori armstrong is dead. she was the love of cade's life and noah's sister. and she is in danger because dylan, also from the same alternate world as noah and cade, is out to kill her. in the guy's original timeline, dylan's love, ava harris, died in a car accident while cade was driving. and dylan wants her back at any ...

the second colorado ice novel , maybe this time , tells the story of jackson westmore and abigail jansen. she's the girl he's always wanted, his best friend's girl, the girl he's never felt he deserved. she thinks he hates her because for as long as she can remember he's treated her with disdain. these two souls have their communication wires crossed so badly, it's a little bit painful. again this is a second-chance at love story, which aren't my favorite, and i think it's because i do not understand these characters who hold onto grudges and feelings from their pasts as if they happened yesterday. that is so not who i am. and i find it sort of exhausting. so the whole first half of the book abigail is under the impression that jackson hates her and jackson is terrified that she will discover the truth and constantly putting his foot in his mouth. it's not until becky, jackson's sister, spells it out for abigail that any progress is made. a...

i'm a sucker for a holiday novella , as i believe has been established by prior posts . in let it snow  we have the stranded by blizzard holiday trope and the good news is that it's not two people who have never met. sam and holly have been flirting on the job for a while, so when their boss leaves them to close the small bookshop at midnight the night before christmas eve, being trapped in the store by a blizzard gives them an opportunity to explore all that tension simmering between them. holly is a bit of a geek and she's got a lot of baggage that makes her feel unworthy of most things. so she doesn't trust the attraction that sam feels as something real. not until he bares his own insecurities. the amount of sharing, the quick pace of the unburdening might not have worked had the characters actually been strangers, so i'm glad the author avoided that particular trope. because here we get an unexpectedly emotional and deep story. one that works in spite of t...

of time, of words, of energy. life is a whirlwind, y'all. and today i am giving in. i need to stop and veg for a while. just a little while.

so this is an alternate universe fic. michael is an artist and liz is blind and it's the contrast between someone who sees the world in technicolor and someone who is trapped in darkness that fuels the story. i was really proud of this fic at the time. i actually think it held up pretty well.

to the edge  is the second book in the at the brink series. but it is a standalone and there is no requirement that you read the series in order, since i had no trouble following the story without the first book. to the edge  is about clara luz and noah blake. they fell in love as teenagers but were separated by clara's mother before things could get too serious. except it was already too serious. in the intervening years, noah and clara do not forget each other. they also suffer emotional and physical trauma. clara's mother is a state senator, and she has controlled clara's life since the moment she was conceived. clara works for her mother's foundation, but bucks against the restraints kept on her by running a successful sex blog. when a fellow blogger encourages her to try bdsm for an article that could provide greater exposure to clara's blog, clara jumps into the scene without thinking twice. but when her first encounter goes badly, she is rescued by noah. ...

the sixth book of the beneath series takes on bishop--the brooding tattoo artist first introduced in beneath these chains --and eden--a mob princess on the run from something, problem is, she's not entirely sure what that is. [full disclosure: i was not that enamored of the last installment of the series, for some reason i failed to connect with valentina and rix, and i'm still dying to get to hennessey's story, which rumor has is the next one up.] but beneath these shadows might be my new favorite. it's kind of a toss up, beneath these scars is so good too. it's hard for anyone to live up to lucas titan in the alpha hero department, but bishop does a pretty amazing job of it. bishop whose last name i'm not entirely sure of. if it comes up somewhere in the book it's not a memorable moment, and for some reason i keep thinking of him as bishop connors but i also am aware that i totally made that up. for some reason that's the last name my brain keeps g...

a couple of my friends recommended the nest , likening it to a literary arrested development . and to an extent the plumb family is very much like the bluths. except possibly a million times less likeable. they are just as entitled, just as narcissistic, but there is an undercurrent of love and affection in the television show that is not really present in the novel. part of the problem is that so much of the narrative revolves around leo plumb--someone so selfish and self-destructive, so incapable of putting anything but his own self-interest first. we don't ever really see the leo that is kind and charismatic, the one who tricks people into thinking there is more to him than meets the eye. we are first introduced to him the night of his car accident, and that unflattering image sticks to him throughout the novel, even as his siblings try to find something worth believing in him. but leo is leo. he's got nothing to give to anyone, and yet somehow he still fools people into t...

the accidental elopement  feels somewhat inaccurately titled because the elopement happened on purpose. lucia brunelli proposed the marriage of convenience and she proposes running off to vegas to do it. ryan goes along with it because he's trying to get revenge on lucia's friend daniel, because way back when daniel took over his father's business and his family lost everything. and his brother and mother are still bitter and are being assholes about it and ryan wants to get revenge with minimal casualties. actually he doesn't really want to get revenge because a part of him knows that it would be an insane thing to do, because obviously his father is at fault for the failures of his company and the financial ruin of the family. ryan isn't insane. he's actually a really nice guy who goes out of his way to help and protect lucia when he thinks she's a girl who has fallen on hard times and is in the u.s. illegally. and when they do get married and all the ...

so i was researching what our eleven year anniversary would be, and it turns out it is our steel anniversary. and ever since i discovered that i can't get this out of my head: (obviously the blue steel look is the one i'm thinking of, but all of the looks are hilarious and worth taking a gander at.)

falling for the girl next door  is the second book in sloane and tru's story. when i picked this book up i wasn't really aware of that fact. it's also the fifth book in the creative hearts series, which just feels a bit confusing. like maybe the author is trying to build up a high school series like the sweet valley high books? maybe teens are on the look out for things like that? while i hadn't read the first book, it didn't really matter because the first couple of chapters recap a lot of the stuff that happened in the first book. while i found it useful to have the background i also struggled with finding this recap stuff interesting. and if i was new to the series and not interested really, how bad would it be for a returning reader? another thing i wasn't sure of, though i'm sure this is continuing the style of the earlier books, was that sloane's perspective took place in the first person. tru's perspective took place in third person. why d...

so when i started writing this story i was so sure i would just be happy to put liz and michael together, because that's what i always did. but then as i wrote it i became more and more conflicted. i liked the kyle i created and liz did too. so i decided i would write alternate endings. either way liz ended up happy with one of the guys, and since she was my absolute favorite character it worked for me. you can catch up with the earlier parts at the links: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 and 9 . and choose your own adventures for parts 10a and 10b after the jump.

faith gladwell is a good girl. she's driven by her passion for theater and dance, and is not quite happy in her relationship with a handsy football player as the bad boy bargain opens. meanwhile kyle sawyer has done everything in his power to cultivate the image of a bad boy. but he's a bad boy with secrets, his biggest one being that he is in no way, shape or form a bad boy--the rumors about him at school are just that. rumors. when faith's handsy boyfriend cheats on her at a party and publicly dumps her and starts spreading rumors about how she is a cold-hearted bitch, she knows she has to do something to take control of the situation. it just so happens that another of kyle's secrets is that he owns a successful gardening and landscaping business and he has been hired by faith's mother to re-do their yard. when faith proposes faking a relationship to change the narrative, kyle agrees in spite of himself. he and cameron have a history, one that informs who the ...

at last  kicks of a series about three foster brothers who live in the fictional area of brooklyn called park heights. park heights basically functions like a small town within the framework of a larger city, which is weird because in a way this story could have been set anywhere. unlike most new york stories, the city wasn't an actual character in the novel. in at last  local boy, nick kelley, former NFL player and up-and-coming bar owner is looking to expand his business by buying the union brewery. meanwhile, emma vandenburg bradley returns home after a bitter divorce only to find that her father is selling her legacy to her former high school crush. she has all this unresolved drama from her marriage and divorce and miscarriage that it sometimes feels like we never fully get to figure out what makes emma tick. we spend more time getting to the bottom of nick's. as part of a compromise for the brewery nick agrees to apprentice to emma, at the end of three months if he p...

in this new adult romance, bianca easton is a senator's daughter who has always toed the line and never put a step wrong. in all the ways you saved me  she doesn't actually put a step wrong. all she does is stay in new york after graduating law school. but deviating from her parents' plans for her is apparently unforgivable. she chooses to stay after graduation when her friend, renée is killed in a car accident. renée had a bucket list and as a way to honor and remember her, bianca decides to finish crossing off all the items on the list. used to being the good girl, some of the items are a bit of a stretch. so bianca decides to start small. buying coffee for the next person in line at a local coffee shop. she's not sure about the intent behind renée's task, but she fulfills it nonetheless. and this is how she meets ian, she buys him a coffee and gives it to him no strings attached. ian is a bit weird about it. but he feels compelled to seek her out the next time ...

crossed  is the second novel in the matched trilogy . narrated by both ky and cassia we see the world beyond the confines of the society. as both ky and cassia navigate life in the outer provinces, where the society is barely fighting a war that never ends, using the endless bombings to eliminate the aberrations and anomalies present in society. when ky sees a chance to escape into the carving, a canyon where anomalies, who actually go by the term farmers, are said to leave he does. his only goal is making sure he has a chance to see cassia again. cassia has been sent to a work camp, but when she sees the chance to get to the outer provinces, she does. even though she has to pretend to be an aberration to do it. and once there, she learns of ky's escape into the carving, so she follows him there. and even though it takes a while, they do meet up again. and though they still love each other, they are not necessarily on the same page. one thing cassia has learned is that there ...

book 2 of the fallen ladies series, the untouchable earl , takes its title literally. avenell slade, the earl of harte, cannot bear to be touched. he can barely handle the feeling of clothes rubbing against his skin. so he very obviously has intimacy issues. it's only with the help of the renowned madam  pendragon that he is able to desensitize himself enough to handle going out in society. the most unexpected touch can cause him unmentionable pain and he's built up his defenses specifically to avoid situations that could cause him torment. but when he meets lily chadwick, from the first moment he sees her across the room he feels the spark. he knows instinctively that she makes him feel more than he ever thought possible. being with her could be life-altering if only he let himself trust her. because perhaps her touch will give him more pleasure than pain. he resists knowing her from the outset, and it's only when he finds himself forced to save her after she is kidnap...

in bed with the billionaire  is the fifth and final book in the nine circles series by jackie ashenden. i haven't read the other books in the series, but that isn't necessary since this books fills in the blanks as needed. my guess is that both temple and theo/jericho played min or and possibly villainous roles in the previous novels, and it is fitting that they are the couple that ties the whole thing together in the end. temple is a hired assassin, and there's a contract on jericho's life, a contract that she is meant to fill after she does the one thing that has driven her to this point. she wants to know what happened to her sister, thalia. all she knows is that she ended up being sold to jericho, and after that nothing. she wants to find her and atone for the past, and she believes that she can get the information she needs from jericho and that she will derive pleasure from finally besting him. except things don't go according to plan. jericho is more dan...

i''m remembering this story a bit more as i've posted it and as much as i was always a liz and michael fan, i had conflicting feelings about how to end this one. in fact i'm pretty sure that i wrote two endings for it. i can only find one preserved on the internets, but i will probably just rewrite part 10 again to account for both endings. anyway, catch up with parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , and 8 at the links. part 9 follows the jump.

everything belongs to the future  takes place in a future where the elite have eliminated the need to age. but there is a rebel group ready to undermine it all. when they meet up with daisy, the original scientist who discovered the fix. they plan a way to make a generic version of the fix. this proves harder than daisy originally assumes, she needs a recently deceased fixed corpse, and given that the fix is something that stops the aging process, those are a little hard to come by. but she does figure out a way to reverse the effects of the switch. the rebels plot an attack. but they don't realize they have a mole. we know who the mole is. things go haywire and everything falls apart. but they still manage their attack. in the end things are bleak. it's a pretty short read, a novella really. there isn't a ton of room for world-building, but the author does a decent job of it in the time she has. we only really get to know the rebels, and that's okay. they're ...

lessons in gravity  is megan westfield's debut novel, a new adult romance that i picked up and couldn't put down until the last page was read. and then i regretted it because i wanted to spend more time with josh and april. this story is so sweet and emotional. both the leads have a lot of emotional baggage and heartache that they need to work through. april, in particular, is dealing with the aftereffects of her father's death. he had been a stunt pilot and died in front of her when an aerial stunt went badly. after that she's sworn to never get close to another daredevil. but when she meets josh knox, master rock climber, the attraction is instantaneous. even worse they share a deep emotional connection. so in spite of all the reasons april should stay away from him, she doesn't. she can't. the whole book i was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. you know it's going to happen, because the only way josh and april will make it is if april confr...

the colorado ice series about the westmore family kicks off with maybe this kiss . this is a second-chance at love type story, which isn't always my favorite romance trope. neil healy has loved becky westmore since they were kids. he had hoped to marry her before he got his first overseas deployment, but she didn't want to be a military wife. when she ends up as a cop's wife, widowed when a rescue mission goes wrong, her reluctance to be with someone with a risky career seems justified. but when neil comes back to glenwood falls after twelve years away, he finds that he can't keep away from becky. she's been the woman in his heart his whole life, and even though the reasons they broke up are still the same obstacles they face now. neil knows he wants a life with becky, the story is more about becky deciding between a life without love, without neil or a life with neil that is colored by risk. in the end there is no choice right? how could you choose a life wit...

unlike my usual romance reads, baron  doesn't take place in nineteenth century england. even though you might think it did from the title. the only baron in the novel is not the aristocratic kind, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. will sloane is a railroad baron rubbing shoulders with carnegie and astor in new york's gilded age. definitely a different time period for me, but it shares a lot of familiar social mores with regency and victorian society. the late nineteenth century also saw an increased interest in spiritualism and the paranormal, . mediums cropped up all over the place, and most of them were charlatans. this sadly includes our heroine, ava jones, also known as madame zolikoff. she has turned to performance as a way to get her family out of the tenements, and her actual goal is to get her siblings out of the city. she dreams of buying a farm somewhere upstate and having room to breathe. but when her professional relationship with a client gets...

at 500+ pages the unexpected everything is a "big" book. and i think the size intimidated me a bit because i had to borrow it twice from the library before i found the time to sit down and read it. but once i got caught up in the plot and with the characters i found myself breezing through the novel in just two marathon sessions. the plot goes something like this, we meet alexandra "andie" walker on the day her father has to announce that he is taking a leave of absence from his congressional role due to allegations of misconduct. she and her father barely have a relationship, he's too busy avoiding anything that isn't work and she has her life carefully scripted to avoid getting close to people and any messy emotions. she has a group of friends she's known forever, and she's got plans to go to a pre-college program for students intending to major in pre-med. but with the scandal surrounding her father, her admission is revoked and suddenly she ...

"toe pick!" so when i read the synopsis for all laced up  of course i flashed back to the greatest figure skating/hockey movie of all time, the cutting edge . granted the only thing the two things have in common is that the main characters are a figure skater and a hockey player. all laced up  is a unique story, it is just as swoonworthy and romantic as the cutting edge . lia bailey has skating in her blood. her dad was a famous hockey player and she's been on skates since she was a toddler. but since her father died, she's lost focus on the dream of being an olympic champion. somehow not having her dad around to cheer her on made it feel wrong to be out on the ice. especially knowing that he couldn't be on the ice either. when the skating rink she'd trained at forever asks her help in teaching a workshop to young kids in order to help keep the skating rink operational she agrees without second thought. it's when she finds out her co-teacher will b...

i read matched  for the first time on a trip to hawaii. i lugged the huge hardcover books in my carry on and basically devoured the series while at the beach and on the plane and the spare moments we were hanging out in the hotel room. this is dystopian ya at its finest. i needed an audiobook for my drive to work, and i decided to read this series again. the society that rules the world in matched  believes in order and perfect matches. everything is programmed for optimal performance. your life span is predetermined for maximum enjoyment. cassia has never questioned the society before. she has been looking forward to her seventeenth birthday and to her matching banquet, and to her great happiness they take place on the same night. when she is matched to her best friend, xander carrow she is happy but sad too, because she will never have the thrill of getting to know someone new. it's not necessarily fair, because she could have let their pairing let her see xander in a ne...

things get a little crazy in part 8, to see how they got there catch up with parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 at the links. to see what happens follow the jump.

she speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her  breath were as terrible as her terminations, there  were no living near her; she would infect to the  north star --much ado about nothing, act ii, scene 1, lines 248-251 aurora skye, the heroine of how to keep a boy from kissing you , reminded me a lot of georgia nicholson, though clearly less absurd/insane. but you can't tell me that tara eglington wasn't inspired by louise rennison , and with aurora she gives us a lead character worth rooting for. there were so many reasons i enjoyed aurora: she is smart and funny, she loves her friends and genuinely tries helping them succeed in their romantic endeavors, she is idealistic about love but isn't willing to settle. aurora has her ideals, and yes maybe it's a little ridiculous that she's basing her ideals on sleeping beauty . (especially since one of the reasons she hasn't kissed any boy at all is because she has this idea of her first kiss being the ...

viviana rabinovich-lowe is in trouble. everything in her life has fallen apart and it doesn't seem like there will be a way to put it together, at least not the way it was. the only way forward for vivi will be to accept that everything she planned for has been changed, but that those changes don't mean that she has lost control of her life. it just means that she needs to forge a new way forward.  the best possible answer lets us see how vivi finds her way, how she regains her strength and how she comes to terms with her past. she learns that it doesn't need to define her. vivi is dealing with some pretty heavy stuff, her ex betrayed her trust and shared a sext that should have remained private. her parents marriage has been under severe strain and there are secrets her parents have been keeping that alter her sense of self to the most basic level. when the people closest to you have proven themselves untrustworthy how do you let people in again? the only two people i...

i'm a sucker for an epistolary novel, possibly because it just reminds me of a different time, when letters were the easiest way to share your thoughts with friends across long distances. in we are still tornadoes  it is 1982, and catherine osteen and scott agee are childhood friends who are separated when she goes off to college and he stays home working at his dad's clothing store and starting a band. the letters are spaced out over the course of their first year apart, and follows the ups and downs of long distance correspondence. the misunderstandings that arise when you aren't communicating face-to-face. the way words can offer hope, comfort and love, and yet also cut you to the quick. how you can be brave and write things that you might never say otherwise. even though all the action takes place through the letters, the authors do a good job of informing us about what is happening off-screen. both cath and scott are dealing with their share of heavy things as we...

so this first full week of october, i'm going to focus exclusively on young adult fiction, some recently published, some upcoming releases. i don't know if there is a young adult week out there in the blog-o-sphere, but in my little corner that's what we're celebrating. and to kick it off i thought i'd start with kasie west's p.s. i like you . which is a quintessential young adult novel. here's a quick run-through: quirky girl hates popular guy for #reasons. then she sees him in a new light and things begin to change between them. #misunderstandings abound and then everyone kisses and makes up. i mean that is a totally reductive way to look at the plot, because honestly what makes this book great isn't what happens in it, it's the characters. lily abbott has this great, sarcastic sense of humor. she's got this unique sense of style, but she also knows who she is. she might not be the most popular girl in school but she has the self-confidence...

like fresh fallen snow  is the companion short story to when snowflakes fall , it's new year's eve a chance for new beginnings, and that is all that matt grayson needs. he's planning to move to seattle and start over. since his divorce and since being shot on the job nothing has felt right in cheyenne, and even though he has never been far from his identical twin brother, a new start is just what he needs. on his last day on the job as a cop he stops to assist a driver who hit a patch of black ice on the highway and skidded into a snowbank. ellie richards is full of enthusiasm for the new year. her professional life is thriving, she loves her home just outside of denver and the only thing she's looking to get on track is her currently nonexistent love life. but she has a good feeling about that too. meeting along the highway ellie and matt find themselves flirting in spite of the circumstances. it can't possibly go anywhere, they are not likely to see each oth...