Books from the Backlog is a fun way to feature some of those
neglected books sitting on your bookshelf unread. If you are anything
like me, you might be surprised by some of the unread books hiding in
your stacks.
Joclyn Despain has been marred by a brand on her skin. She doesn’t know why the mark appeared on her neck, but she doesn’t want anyone to see it, including her best friend Ryland, who knows everything else about her. The scar is the reason she hides herself behind baggy clothes, and won’t let the idea of kissing Ryland enter her mind, no matter how much she wants to. The scar is the reason she is being hunted.
If only she knew that she was.
If only she had known that the cursed stone her estranged father sent for her 16th birthday would trigger a change in her. Now, she is being stalked by a tall blonde man, and is miraculously throwing her high school bully ten feet in the air.
Joclyn attempts to find some answers and the courage to follow her heart. When Ryland finds her scar; only he knows what it means, and who will kill her because of it.
I added Kiss of Fire by Rebecca Ethington to my TBR on 1.23.13, but didn’t get the freebie from Amazon until 6.11.18. A lot of books I added because of giveaways. It’s funny, weird, that all too often they pop up free at some time and that is when I actually get the book. With the rating stats I feel this is going to be a good one for me. I love the paranormal/supernatural genre. The top cover doesn’t do much for me, which was published as a paperback in 2012. The one below was published as a Kindle copy in 2013 and is the one shown on Amazon, a definite improvement.
Nothing is easy in Amanda Siegrist’s romance novels. They are filled with angst, miscommunication, doubt….and LOVE. Though the books may be part of a series, they can stand alone.
I have been reading some intense, dark, deadly, and dangerous novels, so a happy ever after story from Amanda Siegrist will be a wonderful change of place. Some recurring characters in the Perfect For You series add a little bit of spice, but The Easy Part is Jezebelle and Brick’s story.
They have known each other for some time, but when Jezebelle’s mother comes to town, determined to take her back home with her, she and Brick come up with The Agreement…he will be a fake fiance for five days. Yeah, sure, they can try and fool themselves, but I know what’s coming…and maybe you do too.
He had the look of a bad boy, a bartender with tattoos. I think we can agree that mommy isn’t going to like that at all. Not when she has a hoity toity rich boy she wants her to marry. People may tend to underestimate Brick because of his looks, but he has a surprise in store for them, specifically for Bradley and Jezebelle’s mom.
Sure, she is hurting for money and her acting career is hit and miss, but she loves New York City. Staying with Brick, to back up their Agreement, gives her some breathing space…and she will need it. Brick is going all out to win her over and make their little game a fact. He wants her…permanently.
We don’t hear guns blazing and find dead bodies everywhere, but we do have a black eye or two. No vampires or werewolves, but we do have a wicked mother…in law. Smiles and tears, love and laughter, and family. That’s what makes the world go round.
I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of The Easy Part by Amanda Siegrist.
3 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
From USA Today
bestselling author Amanda Siegrist comes a series full of humor, angst,
a sassy heroine, and a sexy, sinful hero that will sweep you off your
feet.
The Agreement: Pretend to be her fake fiancé to placate her overbearing, selfish mother. Timeframe: Five days.
Brick
likes things carefree and simple, especially after the falling out with
his brother. The moment Jezebelle walks into his bar looking sad and
troubled, he’s determined to do anything to turn her frown upside down.
Even if that requires posing as her fake fiancé to get her bossy mother
off her back. Pretending to love her will be the easy part—because he
does. Walking away will be futile. But he doesn’t see a way he can keep
Jezebelle for real, not when her mother’s diabolical ways prove she can
make his life more than just complicated, but downright impossible.
Jezebelle
can’t believe her luck when Brick hatches this crazy plan. One, because
she’s always had a secret crush on him, and any reason to get closer to
him makes her heart stutter with anticipation. Two, because it might
actually work to keep her mother at bay. Of course, her mother isn’t a
woman who takes no for an answer. She’ll do everything in her power to
get her way. The last thing she wants is for Brick to get hurt. The best
thing she can do is walk away and forget he ever held her heart. If
only it were that easy.
Warning: This is not a full romcom. While
it has moments of humor, it also has a twist of angst. Okay, now you
can dive in, you’re prepared!
The entire Perfect For You series: (Each book can be read as a standalone.) The Wrong Brother (Book 1): Dane & Gabriella The Right Time (Book 2): Jaxson & Mia The Easy Part (Book 3): Brick & Jezebelle
ABOUT AMANDA SIEGRIST
Love!
Gimme some love and heaps of romance. I have a sappy heart that just
loves two people meeting, going through the cycles of a relationship,
and ultimately, falling in love. Give me a good book like that and I’m a
happy camper:)
I write contemporary and romantic suspense, but I am partial to suspense. I just love a good mystery.
Besides writing, I love baking, crafts, and baseball…oh, and meeting new people. *smiles*
Ghost Cat of Ocean Cove (A Tenth Life Cozy Mystery)
by Mollie Hunt
About Ghost Cat of Ocean Cove
Ghost Cat of Ocean Cove (A Tenth Life Cozy Mystery) Cozy Mystery 1st in Series Publisher : Independently published (August 3, 2021) Paperback : 249 pages ISBN-13 : 979-8519309813 Digital ASIN : B0992WH2CL Publication date : August 17, 2021
A new feline cozy from the author of the award-winning Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries.
Septuagenarian Camelia Collins and her
cat Blaze move to the Oregon Coast to fulfill a lifelong dream, but that
dream becomes a nightmare when Camelia learns she has purchased a
murder house. The former resident, reclusive businessman Jonathan
Chamber, was brutally killed on the stoop, and the killer is still at
large.
What’s more, Camelia discovers an
ancient gravestone at the back of her garden belonging to a cat named
Soji. Dead long ago, this seventh black kitten of a seventh black kitten
now returns incorporeal form. Will Soji’s haunting help Camelia solve
the murder mystery or send her screaming back to Portland?
About Mollie Hunt
Native Oregonian Mollie Hunt has always
had an affinity for cats, so it was a short step for her to become a cat
writer. Mollie Hunt writes the award-winning Crazy Cat Lady cozy
mystery series featuring Lynley Cannon, a sixty-something cat shelter
volunteer who finds more trouble than a cat in catnip, and the Cat
Seasons sci-fantasy tetralogy where cats save the world. She also pens a
bit of cat poetry.
Mollie is a member of the Oregon
Writers’ Colony, Sisters in Crime, the Cat Writers’ Association, and
Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). She lives in Portland,
Oregon with her husband and a varying number of cats. Like Lynley, she
is a grateful shelter volunteer.
Join us for this tour from September 7 to September 27
MY REVIEW
Our Moon Festival is a beautifully illustrated children’s book that shares a glimpse into the moon festival in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese cultures. The oversize book is easy to share while reading with your children. Multicultural families make everyone feel welcome. The little ones (and us older ones) will get a glimpse into other cultures and may even be curious enough to want to know more. Isn’t that what all us book lovers want, more readers?
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Our Moon Festival by Yobe Qiu.
4 Stars
Book Details:
Book Title: Our Moon Festival by Yobe Qiu Category: Children’s Fiction (Ages 3-7), 30 pages Genre: Children’s Picture Book Publisher: Yobe Qiu LLC Release date: January 2020 Content Rating: G
Book Description:
“Our Moon Festival” is a beautifully illustrated children’s book celebrating the unique ways the Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese communities celebrate the Moon Festival. The story highlights different families and their traditions as they observe Zhong Qiu Jie, Tết Trung Thu, and Tsukimi!
Yobe is an educator, entrepreneur and mom who lives in NYC. As an educator, she focused on teaching families to embrace love, diversity and different cultures. Through the years working in the classrooms and closely with other educators, she noticed the lack of multi-cultural resources that represented children of color. That is when Yobe decided to create multicultural children stories that feature Asian children, families and cultures! Yobe loves spending time
with her daughter, reading to children and taking long walks during the day!
Happy Monday everyone and welcome back to Music Monday! Let’s share
some songs we’ve been enjoying lately! If you would like to play,
and I really hope you do, please see the rules and link up below HERE
**images are linked to Amazon (I am an affiliate)**
Hi Everyone. Another week and I did do a ton of reading. I got soooo wrapped up in Jack Killborn’s novels that I couldn’t stop. I read everything I had on my Kindle. WOW…some great stories! Have you read any of his work? I’ve also been reading some A M Hargrove. Have you ever read her work? She writes some steamy romances, but I first learned of her through her Guardians of Vesturon series. We have been having some pretty nice weather since Ida went through. Luckily, for us, it curved around us. We did have some squalls as the bands passed over us, but they were quick and like a normal afternoon summer thunderstorm here in the Florida Panhandle. We are having a bit of a cooling off spell. The pool is more refreshing, though I still prefer the high 80s. I have become a wuss. That means the clock is ticking and summer is going out with a bang. LOL
I got the idea and the motivation to start doing Tackling The TBR from All The Book Blog Names Are Taken.
It has helped me to keep track of my reading shelf as far as current
events and I also started doing a post for Books From The Backlog,
from Carole’s Random Life in Books,
to tidy up my shelves. I feel better about my out of control TBR and
have even knocked off a couple of those old ones that had been
hanging around for years.
This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. C. W. Allen will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
Like most siblings, Tuesday and Zed don’t always get along. Unlike most siblings, their arguments are over things like whether their parents are hiding a life of crime, or are simply the weirdest adults on the planet. When they decide to go on the hunt for some solid evidence, things get weirder than ever: two thugs with shape-shifting swords show up, their dog shows off some tricks she definitely didn’t learn in obedience school, and even their treehouse turns out to be more than meets the eye.
Their escape leaves Zed and Tuesday stranded in a land where robots and holograms live alongside quaint medieval villagers and soldiers on horseback. Soldiers who insist their father is a disgraced fugitive, and their dog a legendary monster.
If they ever want to see their parents again, they’ll have to learn to work together. After all, they’ve got a mysterious code to break, secrets to unlock, bandits and soldiers to outwit, and a rowdy dog whose antics are getting more outrageous by the minute. Even if they manage to evade the eerie secret police and uncover enough clues to figure out what’s really going on, they’re not sure they’re going to like the truth.
Zed and Tuesday will have to decide who to trust and what really matters, or they’ll never get back to normal (whatever that is.) Because when it comes to normal, everything is relative.
Read an Excerpt
Their father was fond of saying the dog had not managed to learn anything in the years that followed, but that was not strictly true. While it was true that she did not come when called or sit on command, the dog had in fact learned many tricks. Nyx had learned quite early on, for example, how to help herself to the contents of the refrigerator. No one was quite sure how an animal without thumbs was capable of opening a refrigerator door, since she had never been caught in the act, but an entire ham doesn’t simply get up and go for a stroll during the night, now does it?
Zed imagined some people would consider it normal to take a dog along to run errands—as long as the dog could fit comfortably inside a purse, that is, or at the very least wait patiently in the car. But Nyx was neither tiny, nor well-behaved and patient. She was, in fact, huge. Her bristly black fur and legs that seemed much too long for the rest of her frame made her look like a gigantic hairy spider. His mother spent nearly every moment in the dog’s company, and whenever she needed to go inside the grocery store, or post office, or other location where dogs are generally unwelcome, she brought Nyx along to wait in the car for her return. Nyx made use of this time by bouncing anxiously from seat to seat, smearing her nose on the windows.
About the Author:
C.W. Allen is a Nebraskan by birth, a Texan by experience, a Hoosier by marriage, and a Utahn by geography. She knew she wanted to be a writer the moment she read The Westing Game at age twelve, but took a few detours along the way as a veterinary nurse, an appliance repair secretary, and a homeschool parent.
She recently settled in the high desert of rural Utah with her husband, their three children, and a noisy flock of orphaned ideas. Someday she will create literary homes for all of them. (The ideas, not her family.)
Relatively Normal Secrets (Cinnabar Moth Publishing, Fall 2021) is her debut novel. She writes fantasy novels for tweens, picture books for children, and short stories and poems for former children. Her work will appear in numerous anthologies in 2021. She is also a frequent guest presenter at writing conferences and club meetings, which helps her procrastinate knuckling down to any actual writing.
Malice in Miami: A Jamie Quinn Mystery by Barbara Venkataraman
About Malice in Miami
Malice in Miami: A Jamie Quinn Mystery Cozy Mystery 6th in Series Independently Published (June 9, 2021) Paperback : 318 pages ISBN-13 : 979-8518046757 Digital ASIN : B08P27FRL6
Reluctant family law attorney Jamie
Quinn is loving life–and why wouldn’t she? Her boyfriend Kip is back
from Australia, her long-lost dad finally has his visa and she’s about
to start her dream job at an art foundation. But it all falls apart when
Jamie is accused of stealing priceless art from a rare book collection.
If she can’t find out who framed her, she can kiss her dream job
good-bye–and her law license too. Meanwhile, Kip has problems of his
own. Now an environmental activist, he uncovers a deadly secret–one that
just might get him killed. Jamie’s in trouble, Kip’s in danger, and
Duke Broussard has gone AWOL. How could Jamie’s favorite P.I. abandon
her at a time like this?
About Barbara Venkataraman
Barbara Venkataraman is an attorney and author of the award-winning Jamie Quinn Cozy Mystery series, as well as Teatime with Mrs. Grammar Person, Quirky Essays for Quirky People, and A Year of Shorts: Flash Fiction.
Her books have won numerous awards including Indie Book of the Day,
First Place in the 2016 Chanticleer Murder & Mayhem Mystery Writing
Competition, Gold Medal in the Readers’ Favorite Contest for Memoir, and
Two-time Finalist in the Kindle Book Awards. She also co-authored Accidental Activist: Justice for the Groveland Four with her son Josh about his four-year quest to obtain posthumous pardons for The Groveland Four.
Books from the Backlog is a fun way to feature some of those
neglected books sitting on your bookshelf unread. If you are anything
like me, you might be surprised by some of the unread books hiding in
your stacks.
2012 Book of the Year Award Finalist-Young Adult Fiction, ForeWord Reviews
“Sure to win over YA readers looking for a dangerous, dystopian adventure story” —Kirkus Reviews
“Gripping young adult dystopian novel; compelling conflicts; high stakes; powerful narrative; surprises keep coming; strong writing; page-turner; engaging characters; Readers will be hungry for the sequels.”—BlueInk Review (starred review)
“Thomason’s description of Thera’s totalitarianism will make fans of Brave New World shiver… SCI, her fantasy corporation, has disturbing parallels to actual companies and regimes that claim to do good while harming people… The author deftly appeals to both romance-loving teens as well as those intrigued by young adults fighting the establishment.”—Foreword Clarion Review, 4 stars
Meet The Second Chance Institute (SCI): Earth’s benevolent non-profit by day, Thera’s totalitarian regime by night. Their motto: Because Everyone Deserves a Second Chance™. Reality: the SCI subjects Second Chancers to strict controls and politically motivated science experiments like Cleaving—forced lifetime union between two people who have sex. Punishment for disobeying SCI edicts? Immediate Exile or death.
Meet Kira Donovan. Fiercely loyal, overly optimistic, and ensnared by the promise of a full-ride college scholarship, Kira signs the SCI Recruit contract to escape memories of a tragedy that left her boyfriend and friends dead.
Meet Blake Sundry. Bitter about being raised in Exile and his mother’s death, Blake’s been trained to infiltrate and destroy the SCI. Current barrier to success? His Recruit partner—Miss Goody Two Shoes Kira Donovan.
Meet Ethan Darcton. Born with a defective heart and resulting inferiority complex, Ethan’s forced to do his SCI elite family’s bidding. Cleave-worthy Kira Donovan catches his eye, but the presiding powers give defect-free Blake Sundry first dibs.
Full of competing agendas, romantic entanglements, humor, twists and turns, daynight is Megan Thomason’s debut young adult dystopian novel and first in the daynight series.
I added Daynight by Megan Thomason to my TBR on 1.21.13. I also picked up the second book in the series, Arbitrate, but unfortunately I don’t have the third one, Generate. These sound like some great apocalyptic/dystopian fiction and I plan on reading them and leaviing the third book until the verdict is in. All too often I don’t finish a series, but I have been doing much betterat it. How about you? Do you always plan on finishing a series, or do you let them slide?
