Thrill Week 2 Preview!

I am participating in this great week Marce has put together!  There are going to be some great blogs involved and some awesome authors as well.  If  you go to her blog Tea Time With Marce you can read all about what will be going on at her place for the week. Just click her title!

On the 1st and 2nd there is a hop with a questionnaire that the participants will have answered and it's a great way to meet up with other bloggers who love the same genre as you do.

ON my blog I will have a VERY special guest on Friday September 7th!  I am so so excited you can not even imagine it.  A little hint -

Is it too obvious?  Know who it is?  I can't wait!  Hope to see you for Thrill Week!

Andy Squared

Andy Squared
Jennifer Lavoie
Netgalley review

Amazon Blurb -

Seventeen-year-old twins, Andrew and Andrea Morris, have always been close. They share everything—from their friends to a room—and they both enjoy star positions on their high school’s soccer teams. All’s right with the twins...or is it?

When new student Ryder Coltrane moves from Texas to their small New York town, he spins Andrew’s world upside down. All of Andrew’s past relationship troubles begin to make sense and his true feelings start to click into place after Ryder comes out to him. His friendship with Ryder turns secretively romantic, but secrets, they soon find out, are hard to keep. Once rumors start to fly, so-called friends turn on them, and the boys’ relationship turns into a bomb about to explode. But Andrew never expected it would be his own twin, Andrea, holding a lighter to ignite it.

*****

High school seniors Andrew and Andrea are as close as you can ever get.  Not only are they twins, but for last couple of months they've been sharing a room since Andy's room is being renovated.  The two are quite popular at school, Andy goes through the girl population like water.   They are on the school soccer teams and Andrea is hoping they get a soccer scholarship so they can be together right into college.  

Texas transplant Ryder comes into town and things take a turn in a different direction. Andy is drawn to Ryder like a moth to the flame and he just can't understand his attraction to Ryder...yet.  The girls love him and want to be with him, Andy's best bud Charlie is jealous of Ryder because not only do the girls want to be with him, but so does Andy.  Andrea is upset because now Andy doesn't really want to go to the same college as her, nor does he want to go on a soccer scholarship.  To say she's pissed is an understatement.  Not only does she totally ignore Andy telling her it's not what he wants she does something sneaky behind his back.

Andy finally acknowledges his feelings for Ryder and the two start a secret relationship, but when they are caught, those who were thought to be good and trustworthy may actually be the most viscous of them all.

I liked this book, Jennifer writes in a smooth flowing manner.   The story is so relevant to today's happenings.  I found it touching and sometimes I was angry. I don't know if I would have handled Andrea the same way as a parent knowing how vicious other kids can be.  I also don't know that I liked how it was stressed that Andrew had sex with different girls all the time.  Promiscuity is not something I find good whether you're straight or gay.

3 1/2 cannolis

Lucretia And The Kroons

Lucretia And The Kroons

Victor Lavalle
Netgalley review







Amazon Blurb -

Lucretia’s best friend and upstairs neighbor Sunny—a sweet pitbull of a kid, even as she struggles with a mysterious illness—has gone missing. The only way to get her back is for Lucretia to climb the rickety fire escape of their Queens tenement and crawl through the window of apartment 6D, portal to a vast shadowland of missing kids ruled by a nightmarish family of mutants whose designs on the children are unknown. Her search for Sunny takes Lucretia through a dark fantasyland where she finds lush forests growing from concrete, pigeon-winged rodents, and haunted playgrounds. Her quest ultimately forces her to confront the most frightening specter of all: losing, forever, the thing you love the most.

Lucretia and the Kroons is a dazzlingly imaginative adventure story and a moving exploration of the power of friendship and the terror of loss. This all-new novella serves as the perfect companion piece to The Devil in Silver, a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror that continues the story of Lucretia.

*****

Lucretia's or Loochie as she's known, best friend Sunny is very sick and it has kept her away in the hospital for many weeks.  She misses her friend especially since she wasn't able to come to Loochie's birthday party.  Her mother innocently invited some other girls who really weren't friends to Loochie and it was a disaster.  Months go by and Sunny is finally home, Loochie wants her to come to a party in her apartment just the two of them, while her mom goes to an appointment with her brother Louis.

On the day of her party, Louis comes to the house to pick up their mom and while waiting tells Loochie a terrifying story about the abandoned apartment 6 B.  Loochie doesn't believe him, but while they are gone, a crazy terror filled adventure takes place changing her life forever.

This was a novella, so it was a very quick read.  No doubt it was sad, and I felt bad for Loochie.  It wasn't quite the horror story I would have thought, but the author kept it moving nicely. My favorite part, when Loochie told the girls at her party to "get the hell out you whores!"

3 cannolis

Defending Jacob

  Defending Jacob

  Willian Landay
  August book club choice









Amazon Blurb -

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

*****

This book was just a great suspense novel.  I really liked the premise, the flow, all of it.

Andy Barber is the asst. d.a. in his town for years.  He is very well respected and liked.   His wife Laurie is a loving woman who is considered the "mother" in her group of friends.  Their son Jacob is just a typical teenager, moody and sassy like all of them, or is he?

When local boy Ben Rifkin turns up murdered in a local park of course Andy is on the case.   His boss becomes concerned about a possible conflict of interest since Ben and Jacob attend the same school.  Andy passes it off as fellow prosecutor Neal Longiudice move to push Andy out of the way.  Before he can prove there's no conflict his son is charged with the murder.

Andy has to come clean to his wife and son about a past he thought was buried and forgotten.  His marriage is coming apart at the seams and his son is acting like nothing is wrong.  If they all will be able to survive this through to the end looks slimmer and slimmer with each passing day.  

If you love wondering what will happen next, I highly recommend this book . I liked it so much I told my hubby to read it and he is doing so now :) There was a fantastic twist to the ending that I didn't see coming, enjoy!

4 cannolis

July's Wrap

Well my friends, it may still be summer, but for me and mine it is officially back to school!  I now have a 3rd grader, junior high kiddo and a high school freshie! Three different schools, three different times.  And guess what, they went back right with a major heat wave striking :p it was it's been triple digits for 5 days now and today will be 104, yay what fun, send the kids back but they can't go out for recess.  We go back early due to our district being a modified traditional.  That  means they get the whole Thanksgiving week off, 3 wks at Christmas and 2 wks for spring break, I like having those breaks in the mix of the year so it really isn't so bad, what the problem is our region is in its high heat August into part of September, so if there was a way to end them closer to July and send them back in September or the last week of August it would be helpful.  Someone has said they won't do it due to testing and having to have a certain amount of days devoted to studying for it so they get high scores.  Oh well it is what it is ;)  On to books-

I had quite an reading month!  I read pnr, some chic lit all in all 8 books!  I haven't read that many in ages. five were pnr, the Immortals After Dark by Kresley Cole took a chunk of that.  I read four of them numbers 2 - 5.  I like Kresley.  I also read On The Island by Tracey Garvis Graves.  I didn't like this book I loved it, read my review *HERE*.  Just fantastic haven't read a goodie like this in a very long time.  I also had my book club choice, Falling Star by Diana Dempsy  not bad, decent chic lit, Larissa Ione's Ecstasy Unveiled which I also liked and That Boy by Jillian Dodd.  This was a very sweet book, not something I  normally would've picked out, but the description was so enticing I just had to read it.  My review is *HERE*.  Some might find this on the simple side, but I just enjoyed it, it worked for me.

Here's just an UNBELIEVABLE surprise where I'm concerned, I have read two YA's and just loved them.  I'm not big on them because I feel like there isn't any "icing on the cake"  but the two I read just knocked my socks off, Because of Low by Abbi Glines and Easy by Tamara Webber.  Loved Easy's cover, really nice.  I don't think I'll review, just not in the mood, but if you're a big YA fan, read em!  I got them through booklending.com.  I know some hate to read self published due to editing issues, but to be honest it doesn;t bother me all that much, if a book is good, then I'm happy.  As long as it isn't to the point of rendering it impossible to read, no biggie.

I'm letting the wind take me this month, whatever strikes my fancy.  August's book club choice it Defending Jacob by William Landay, and right now I'm reading Tap Tap by David Martin, a thriller with a paranormal twist.

Hope the rest of your summer is a great one!

Sweet Talk

Sweet Talk
Julie Garwood
Netgalley review

Amazon Blurb -
When FBI agent Grayson Kincaid first encounters Olivia MacKenzie, she makes quite an impression.

The beautiful, tough, young attorney has stumbled into the middle of an FBI sting operation and has reduced it to chaos. Months of surveillance and careful planning down the drain, Kincaid’s partner is furious and lets Olivia know that she’s ticked off the wrong guy. After all, he’s FBI.

Olivia isn’t intimidated by his partner’s bullying because she’s something even scarier . . . she’s IRS.

And working for the IRS isn’t for the faint of heart. She’s on the trail of an elaborate Ponzi scheme, one that threatens to ruin the lives of naive and unsuspecting victims, and one she has personal reasons to be angry about. But after she asks questions of the wrong people, her life is suddenly endangered. She’s accustomed to fighting for the underdog but being vulnerable herself is a very different story. Smart enough to know when to call for reinforcements, she contacts Grayson Kincaid.

Together they make an excellent team to fight corruption but Olivia is also fighting the immediate and intense attraction she feels for Agent Kincaid, and that may be a battle she is bound to lose.

*****

Olivia MacKenzie is an attorney for the IRS.  She loves going after the bad guys, but what happens when one of them also is your father?

Olivia didn't have an easy childhood by any stretch of the word.  She was very sick along with her three "sisters" lovingly called the Pips, they were in the hospital for a long time. Her family never came to visit her so her mother's sister Emma stepped up to the plate for her.  Her father is a wealthy investor her mother just follows his lead regardless and her real sister is a selfish brat.

Jump forward to present time and Olivia is worried budget cuts will get her the boot so she is job hunting.  It puts her in the middle of a sting operation with the FBI quite by accident, but introduces her to hunky agent Grayson Kincaid.  After an attempt against her life the two try to piece together who wants her dead and the list can be many.  As an IRS attorney there is no shortage of people who hate her, coupled with her father, his attorney and his investors who view her as trying to stop their gravy train. 

Her relationship with Grayson blooms and he is very protective of her to say the least, and her Aunt Emma is more a mother to her than her own.  Her family is rabid against poor Olivia and it all is very tiring.  Who wants her dead?  Will her father get away with his Madoffesque scam?  Read to find out.

This was a good book and my first Julie Garwood.  Very light, easy read.  I liked the characters, Olivia was perfect not tedious or whiny.  Grayson was an alpha male to the nth degree.   There wasn't excessive violence or explicit love scenes so if you like it on the easier side this book is perfect.

3 1/2 cannolis