definitely, possibly, maybe

it's always so sad to reach the end of a series, and catch and release , the conclusion of the fishing for trouble series by laura drewry is a bittersweet read in part because of this. this series has always been highly charged emotionally, with the o'donnell brothers holding in a world of hurt that has colored their relationships with each other and the women they love. ronan might be the most damaged of them all. out of the three brothers we've spent the least amount of time with him. we know him to be withdrawn and yet also very temperamental, and inside his head there are so many emotions and feelings and pain that he cannot begin to express. and when he meets hope seaver, the new producer on the reality show being filmed at the buoys, there is a surge of fierce attraction that he can't deny. and the more time he spends with her, he starts to let go of all the pain and fear his previous relationship instilled in him. because let's face it, ronan is dealing...

you guys, this book gave me so many feels. welcome to juniper falls, mn, where you live and breathe hockey given that there are few opportunities to enjoy anything else. off the ice , is more than a sports romance though. it's an emotional coming-of-age story set in a small town with many secrets. the story opens at claire o'connors goodbye party. she's leaving juniper falls to pursue her dream of singing on the stage, starting at an advance studies musical theater program at northwestern. she's had a crush on luke pratt since forever and for the first time ever he's paying attention to her and she wants this to go somewhere. except it doesn't go anywhere good. in the meantime, tate tanley, claire's best friend's little brother sees what's happening while dealing with problems of his own. his father is a hockey hero, revered in the town, but behind closed doors his behavior is less than honorable. he's a mean drunk, and while tate is trying t...

i love a good fake marriage story, and xander and sophie really deliver in sweet victory . sophie's uncle holds the key to the trust that owns the commercial development where sophia's bakery and xander's gym are based. until she turns thirty or she gets married she has no say in what happens to the trust, and her uncle is unscrupulous enough to use that to his advantage. when he makes a real estate development deal that will force all the tenants in the development to relocate, xander is furious and when he goes to talk to sophie about the situation he overhears the possible solution straight from mr. caldwell's mouth. so he barges in and pretends that they're engaged to be married. sophie's been intrigued by xander for a long time, and his kiss is so hot and so surprising that she simply follows his lead. and when he proved that he is willing to do anything that is needed to preserve her bakery she decides to take him at his word. she has every intenti...

i haven't had time to squeeze in any talk about shadowhunters , something so badly done of me because i continue to be obsessed. i read all the mortal instruments books last year and binge-watched the first season on a whim after i finished reading the novels. and then i binge-watched season 1 again before starting season 2 because i just wanted to watch jace and clary fall for each other all over again. like i said, i've read the novels. and i'm going to assume that most people watching this show have read the novels. or have read about jace and clary in the novels and know, know that whatever they are to one another, they are not blood relatives. this whole plot point was icky in the novels, but it's even more icky on the screen, especially since jace and clary so clearly want to jump each other's bones whenever they share a scene together. it was like that in the novels too, so the actors are playing this correctly. the thing is, because i loved these books...

parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and 7 at the links. part 8 below.

okay so finally everyone knows about archie and miss grundy. these teacher-student things never end well or in a satisfying manner on these shows. back when pacey had an affair with his teacher on dawson's creek  the resolution of that left a lot to be desired. and this one isn't really all that much better. betty, her mom, and archie's dad confront the two of them and miss grundy agrees to leave town. this is after betty's snooping reveals that her real name is jennifer gibson and that she tutored jason blossom and owns a gun. there's this final scene when miss grundy is leaving town that you think, maybe she is just a sexual predator. will she be back? honestly, i kind of hope not. the character was too poorly developed and the illicit romance wasn't really working. having betty find out about it was good for drama though. and finally we got some scenes with archie that showed some actual depth. we see how deep his friendship with betty goes, and archie...

the cover of this book is so pretty, i could just stare at it forever. i didn't, i read the book, and am more ambivalent about that.  saying goodbye  is a two-part story that i've only read part one of. so my take on this is incomplete, but also an argument against these kinds of duologies. i get the business model, but the reader experience is often frustrating given the stop in action. as far as cliffhangers go, though, this one isn't bad. in some respects, you can say this is a complete story. samantha barnes meets ethan hunter at a frat party. she's already had three relationships that she considers mistakes and isn't looking for #4. she's studying japanese and has a semester abroad planned in january and doesn't need the commitment or drama of a relationship. at first, ethan seems so different from the other college guys she knows. he's more mature, in part because he had to take a year off for reasons that aren't explained until later. thin...

when you accidentally become a meme due to your resting bitch face and fall into stereotypes you've long tried to rise above, it makes life a little difficult. it's not like bernie had an active dating life. she wasn't even wishing she had an active dating life. but colin, the only male on staff at a fashion blog/e-zine, needs a story that will up readership and solidify his place as the features writer. so he approaches bernie with a plan. he'll prove that she isn't undateable, if she'll let the magazine feature her dates as a series, and offer some help in the fashion, makeup, and hair department. the undateable follows bernie and colin as they navigate her horrible dates and he posts dispatches about the highlights and lowlights. it's not all terrible. and some of the dates show some promise. bernie realizes that making an effort for a date doesn't mean becoming someone she is not. it's not an assault on feminism if you dress up or put on a l...

regan malloy has done hard time, three years of it to be exact. and the man who ensured she was locked up, he hasn't stopped thinking of her in all that time. nathan carter knows he's losing his mind when he shows up outside the prison on the day she is released. and following her and her friends that first day out is a bit beyond the pale. and then meeting up with her at the bar is the height of insanity. and he swears it will only happen one time, one night, just to get this insane attraction that has been driving him crazy for three years. that regan feels the same way is incomprehensible. but she does. she felt the pull back when he was working to get her behind bars, even though at the time she wasn't sure that he felt anything for her. and now that she's a free woman, intent on staying on the straight and narrow, feeling the way she does about nate is a complication she doesn't need. her family are known con artists, thieves, tricksters, and not only is na...

the dirty girl duet is a spin-off to march's dirty billionaire trilogy , with greer karas, creighton's younger half-sister as our female lead. a more spineless, pushover of a heroine cannot exist somewhere, right? because greer is a ninny. allegedly, she is an attorney and is a capable human adult good at her job. except we see no evidence of this throughout the 500 pages of this two-part story. the story kicks off when greer posts an improper ad on craigslist after catching her idiot ex cheating on her. she posts using her real name, because her hidden motive is to reconnect with the guy that got away, cavanaugh westman. cav is now a hotshot movie star. except he's also a misogynistic, violent asshole with a super sketchy criminal past and who acts unforgivably on multiple occasions in this story. the fact that greer keeps excusing him, forgiving him, and brushing off his, quite frankly, abusive behavior is beyond me. it's all supposed to be alpha male stuff,...

book three in the delicious desires series, delicious satisfaction , gives us alexa montoya, an up-and-coming l.a. chef and dante perez, her brother's best friend and the one guy who got away. for years alexa has been planning the restaurant of her dreams. when she realizes her jerk of an ex-boyfriend has basically stolen all her ideas and opened the very restaurant she'd always intended to open, she loses it. in a pretty spectacular manner, since impulse control is something that alexa struggles with. the cops get called on her, she turns to dante to get her out of her mess, since he not only is her brother's best friend, but also his attorney. alexa is prepared to do the avoidance thing she does so well when it comes to hanging around dante, but he's had it. he doesn't want to pretend that he didn't feel something all those years ago. he wants to pursue the chemistry and pull he feels from alexa. since the magical time they spent together in puerto rico, h...

click the links to catch up on parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , and 6 . part 7 follows the jump.

meghan march's latest novel, take me back , is releasing on march 20, 2017. i've been lucky enough to have the chance to share the oh so pretty cover with you, as well as a few details to get everyone excited. she's been teasing her secret standalone project for a while now, and i'm super excited now that i know more about it. click into the post to see the cover details and learn more about the novel.

things start to heat up in riverdale and the show starts to settle into itself in this episode. plus we tackle some "after school special" issues. but finally the characters start to behave a little less like total caricatures and more like people. i mean everything is still highly charged and stylized, but it's just been toned down slightly so that you believe it a little more. but like if this sets the tone for a normal episode, you can see how the show can continue. the murder mystery plot still advances, but the relationships between all the characters deepens. one of my favorite moments is one that has all our main cast sitting together in a break room, setting the main plots in motion. this week we have a case of bad boy locker room behavior coupled with some serious slut-shaming. veronica gets caught in the crosshairs, but she's no shrinking violet and refuses to just sit down and take it. and since betty is conveniently reviving the school newspaper alongs...

oh look, it's my stop on the chapter by chapter blog tour for any boy but you . you can refresh your memory of the book at my previous post or at the publisher's page and read below for my review. spoiler alert: i liked this one. the princes and the chestnuts have two things in common. sporting goods stores and a mutual dislike for one another and their entire families. oliver prince and elena chestnut have both been brought up in the family tradition of mutual dislike and would gladly continue it, if it were not for the fact that oliver needs some help bringing up his latin grade and elena is trying to make some extra cash by tutoring since her family's sporting goods store is failing. she'll take the princes' cash, but she'll still gladly blame them for her family's current misfortunes, even if it's not really fair. the chestnut's store had ben suffering for a while. both stores had been actually, since they were facing greater competit...

nic riley and kyle hutchinson hook up at a bar one night before either of them has to report for duty in love runs deep . nic tries to leave it at one night, but it's just her luck that she ends up assigned to the same submarine as kyle, and he ends up as her sponsor on the ship. they have six months of duty to get through, and fraternizing is a definite no-no. and yet the connection between them is impossible to ignore. kyle does his best to keep things platonic while watching out for nic on the ship, but when he catches a junior officer with an inappropriate recording of nic in the shower this get a little intense. the fallout from the incident is the kind of stuff that makes or breaks relationships. and how nic and kyle deal with the problems created by the subsequent military inquiry and trial is the bulk of the story. kyle is unequivocally in nic's corner, but they come from two different worlds. nic is military royalty and kyle was lucky to leave behind his rough be...

  Keep an eye out for my review, coming on February 15th! Check out the rest of the  Tour Schedule ! Title: Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota #1)  Author: Julie Hammerle Publication Date: February 13, 2017 Publisher:  Entangled: Crush Add to  Goodreads     Elena Chestnut has been chatting with an anonymous boy late into the night. It’s a very You’ve Got Mail situation, and she has no idea who he is. He can’t be Oliver Prince, hot-and-bashful son of the family running the rival sporting goods store. Their fancy sales strategies are driving Elena’s family out of business. Elena’s mystery boy has teamed up with her in their latest sales strategy, an augmented reality game, to help her win the grand-prize plane tickets. Money’s so tight Elena’s going to miss senior year spring break with her friends if she can’t win this game. The girl Oliver's fallen head-over-heels for online had better not be Elena Chestnut. She's hi...

this paranormal romance introduces us to the race of supernatural beings known as the albah. they've always walked among us, silver-haired and pointy-eared, passing for human as much as possible. because there are those out there who hunt them. because the albah have some impressive supernatural powers, though it varies by individual, but all of them have the power to become albanex, or, as us regular old humans like to say, vampires. lady of silver  is the first of a series, so by necessity must spend some time world-building, which wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that i think the relationship between detective dale morgan and psychic saba venn gets a little short-changed in the process. dale is investigating a series of murders that smack of vampirism. the cops pretty much know exactly who did it, they just don't have any evidence that would prove it. so dale comes to saba hoping that she can see the victims' last moments, hoping that something in saba...

a good meg cabot novel is like cotton candy, light, airy, sweet and prone to result in untamable laughter.  the boy is back  follows the tradition of her other boy books, where the story is told via emails, text message chains, newspaper articles, and diary entries. cabot is good at navigating the constraints of the semi-epistolary format, and is great at giving each of her characters a unique voice, so it's easy to follow who is narrating at any given moment. as far as the romance goes, this is a second-chance at love story. years ago, reed stewart left town after his father threatened to cut him off if he didn't toe the family line. at the time he'd been seeing becky flowers, and in fact, the event that caused his being cut off was golf cart crash into the pool at the country club. reed left that night and never came back. never wrote or called or texted or emailed to even say "hey becky, let's break up." it was ghosting before ghosting was a thing. a...

in distracting the duke ,   marcus, the duke of ulvercombe, is, as austen might put it, a single man with good fortune in want of a wife. but he wants a marriage that is free of strife, having grown up in the toxic atmosphere that surrounded his parents' loveless union. he figures that to get that, he needs to find a sweet, innocent woman without strong opinions. and he has a great candidate, miss eleanora soper checks off all the boxes, except he keeps getting distracted by her argumentative guardian, lady clara tinniswood. at every turn she challenges him, about their families' past connections, about the weather, there is nothing this woman won't argue with him about. but unlike the horrible dread and persist awfulness that surrounded his parents' arguments, marcus finds himself enthralled by clara. quite literally, he can't stay away from her. he keeps trying to remember that he's supposed to be courting eleanora, but the reality is that if clara is in...

i have a feeling that by the time i'm done posting this fanfic i'll be sick of putting up the links to previous parts. it's actually not the most efficient way to post people through it but the other way means i have a lot of editing to do too. i may do it, it might just take a while. parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 are at the links. part 6 can be read after the jump.

oh man, this show is so uber ridiculous. and i freaking love everything about it. it's not perfect, but man, oh man, there is some good teen drama developing here. the love triangle, actually quadrangle, dominates the story. archie must have some special pheremones because everyone wants to get in his pants. it's not even just betty and veronica, it's the music teacher and cheryl, and even mrs. lodge and him have some sparks. it's crazy. archie and betty actually have the least amount of sparkage out of all the pairings, which if kevin's statement that they are endgame is true, it's kind of unfortunate. in so many ways riverdale  is like dawson's creek  sexed up and dirtied up. and the framing device of jason blossom's murder and jughead's narration really help sell the story. right now everything is still too new, it's still a bit hard to believe these characters and some of the insta-friendships. so the layer of intrigue and the fact tha...

i picked up act like it  a while back, and loved it so much that i periodically would check to see if the author had published anything else. so i was really excited when i saw that pretty face was available for request. set in the same west end world as act like it , we get close-up and personal with the london celebrities that inhabit it. luc savage is in the family business, his mother is a world-renowned opera singer, his father an acclaimed actor, while he is a big-deal director on the london stage scene. he's in the process of opening his own theater and setting up the world premiere of 1553 , a tudor-era period drama. for a host of reasons, lily lamprey is in the running to play elizabeth. except she has one big problem, her speaking voice is not good. in fact, it's especially terrible when you consider that on a stage you need to project and do it for an extended period of time. it's described as being somewhere in the range of film noir and chipmunk, or...