Book Blitz/ Lifeblood

ABOUT LIFEBLOOD:

My Firstlife is over, but my Everlife is only now beginning.

With her last living breath, Tenley “Ten” Lockwood made her choice and picked her realm in the Everlife. Now, as the war between Troika and Myriad rages, she must face the consequences.

Because Ten possesses a rare supernatural ability to absorb and share light, the Powers That Be have the highest expectations for her future—and the enemy wants her neutralized. Fighting to save her Secondlife, she must learn about her realm from the ground up while launching her first mission: convincing a select group of humans to join her side before they die. No pressure, right?

But Ten’s competition is Killian, the boy she can’t forget—the one who gave up everything for her happiness. He has only one shot at redemption: beating Ten at a game she’s never even played. As their throw-downs heat up, so do their undeniable feelings, and soon, Ten will have to make another choice. Love…or victory. 

LINKS: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

ABOUT GENA SHOWALTER:

Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty books in paranormal and contemporary romances, as well as young adult novels. Her series include White Rabbit Chronicles, Angels of the Dark, Otherworld Assassins, Lords of the Underworld, Alien Huntress and Intertwined.

Her novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Seventeen Magazine, and have been translated all over the world. The critics have called her books “sizzling page-turners” and “utterly spellbinding stories”, while Showalter herself has been called “a star on the rise”.

LINKS: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest

Review/ Off The Ice

Off the Ice (Juniper Falls #1) by Julie Cross

Publication Date: February 27, 2017

Publisher:  Entangled Teen

The NY Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Whatever Life Throws at You kicks off a brand-new series perfect for fans of Miranda Kennealy and Abbi Glines.

All is fair in love and hockey…

Claire O’Connor is back in Juniper Falls, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be. One semester off, that’s what she promised herself. Just long enough to take care of her father and keep the family business—a hockey bar beside the ice rink—afloat. After that, she’s getting the hell out. Again.

Enter Tate Tanley. What happened between them the night before she left town resurfaces the second they lay eyes on each other. But the guy she remembers has been replaced by a total hottie. When Tate is unexpectedly called in to take over for the hockey team’s star goalie, suddenly he’s in the spotlight and on his way to becoming just another egotistical varsity hockey player. And Claire’s sworn off Juniper Falls hockey players for good.

It’s the absolute worst time to fall in love.

For Tate and Claire, hockey isn’t just a game. And they both might not survive a body check to the heart.

 

I have to admit that I have heard of Julie Cross before but I have never read any of her books until now and I have to say that I want to run out to the bookstore and pick them up since reading this.

I think Off The Ice is the perfect start to reading her books. If you follow me on social media you will know that I am a hockey mom/manager to my 13 year old son’s team. We have been in the minor hockey world for 5 years now.

Off The Ice takes place in a little town called Juniper Falls in Minnesota where life is centered around hockey. Everyone in Juniper Falls is obsessed with hockey.

The main characters are Tate and Claire. Claire is Tate’s older sisters best friend. Off The Line is told in alternating points of views from both of them. The book begins with Tate’s and its a year before the story line starts. We find out that Claire is leaving Juniper Falls for to attend college to pursue her music/drama career. Her friends have thrown her a going away party. Its within this chapter you are offered hints that Tate  has always had a crush on Claire but he knows she has never felt that same way and just always looked at him like a little brother.

For Tate he is not your typical teenager. He is a teenager with the weight of the world on his shoulders to say the least.  His life is hard and complicated, it shouldn’t have to be for a boy his age but with family issues, (this is where I have to say that I really disliked the dad), hockey obligations (and I know being in minor hockey that sometimes its too much and this is one of the reason’s my son didn’t want to do hockey in high school because of the demand and pressure), pressure from the town and team because of who is father is. Tate’s dad played hockey and he brought his team to the championships and won it so there is pressure to do the same thing.

For Claire, she is the kind of girl that wants to get out of her small town to pursue her dreams of being on Broadway because she has the talents that will take her far and a scholarship to help pursue that dream. I could relate to her because I was the same way growing up. I needed to get out of my small town where everyone knew each other and knew everyone’s business. Sadly Claire only got to experience a year away before being called home to help take care of her ill father and his business.

I loved reading the interaction between Tate and Claire when they saw each other a year later. You can tell the feelings were genuine and sincere and I loved how that built into something and it seemed real and not rushed. I was getting butterflies from reading it.

Living in a hockey city (Montreal) where everyone lives and breathes hockey I can completely understand the intensity a community can have for the game and sport they love. Reading this you know everyone has secrets good and bad and how would a community feel if the dirty little secrets were revealed? Especially if it involved a beloved hero to the community?

This is the first book in a new series that I have to say I am excited to read. I hope this storyline will be expanded.

Blog Tour/ Off The Ice

Off the Ice (Juniper Falls #1) by Julie Cross

Publication Date: February 27, 2017

Publisher:  Entangled Teen

The NY Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Whatever Life Throws at You kicks off a brand-new series perfect for fans of Miranda Kennealy and Abbi Glines.

All is fair in love and hockey…

Claire O’Connor is back in Juniper Falls, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be. One semester off, that’s what she promised herself. Just long enough to take care of her father and keep the family business—a hockey bar beside the ice rink—afloat. After that, she’s getting the hell out. Again.

Enter Tate Tanley. What happened between them the night before she left town resurfaces the second they lay eyes on each other. But the guy she remembers has been replaced by a total hottie. When Tate is unexpectedly called in to take over for the hockey team’s star goalie, suddenly he’s in the spotlight and on his way to becoming just another egotistical varsity hockey player. And Claire’s sworn off Juniper Falls hockey players for good.

It’s the absolute worst time to fall in love.

For Tate and Claire, hockey isn’t just a game. And they both might not survive a body check to the heart.

Link to Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25538649-off-the-ice  

Purchase Links:
Google Play | BAM | Chapters | Amazon | Indies | B&N| Kobo | TBD | iBooks

Link to Tour Schedule:
http://www.chapter-by-chapter.com/tour-schedule-off-the-ice-juniper-falls-1-by-julie-cross-presented-by-entangled-teen/  

Giveaway Information:  

  • One (1) winner will receive a Kindle Fire

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Julie Cross is a NYT and USA Today bestselling author of New Adult and Young Adult fiction, including the Tempest series, a young adult science fiction trilogy which includes Tempest, Vortex, Timestorm (St. Martin’s Press).

She’s also the author of the Letters to Nowhere series, Whatever Life Throws at You, Third Degree, Halfway Perfect, and many more to come!

Julie lives in Central Illinois with her husband and three children. She’s a former gymnast, longtime gymnastics fan, coach, and former Gymnastics Program Director with the YMCA.

She’s a lover of books, devouring several novels a week, especially in the young adult and new adult genres.

Outside of her reading and writing cred, Julie Cross is a committed–but not talented–long distance runner, creator of imaginary beach vacations, Midwest bipolar weather survivor, expired CPR certification card holder, as well as a ponytail and gym shoe addict.

Website • Twitter • Facebook • Goodreads

February 2017 Book Unhauling

Good Monday morning everyone. For the past two years I have been sharing with you the books that I have unhauled from my collection. I started doing this in 2015 and at that time I  released 211 books and then last year due to life happening I missed months sharing what I unhauled and it went undocumented so the only number I have is 124 from the months I did share.

I am going to make 2017 a better year in sharing what books I am unhauling. As a book blogger and a book reader I don’t tend to keep the books once I read them unless there is a special meaning for them so I always pass them along to friends and family.

So each month I will be posting about what books I am unhauling and then another monthly post will be what books I physically bought in the month.

I told myself  New Year’s Eve that I really needed to do a major clean up and major purge of the items in the house that aren’t being used and that is taking up space. One of the items is books and if you could see my bookcases and tons of boxes in the basement you would see that, that is one of the issues and one of the things taking up most of the space so I am making it my mission in 2017 to get that all cleaned up and purge what I have read and know I won’t reread as well as purging the books that I no longer have a desire to read.

So lets get right into February and take a look at what I unhauled this month:

  1. Late Edition by Fern Michaels
  2. The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

 

Total books released this month: 2

Total books released in 2017: 13

Total books released in 2016: 124

Total books released in 2015: 211

Cover Reveal/ Project Pandora

Title: Project Pandora (The Olympus Experiment, #1)
Author: Aden Polydoros
Release Date: August 1, 2017
Description: 
Olympus is rising…
Tyler hasn’t been feeling like himself lately, his dreams are full of violence and death, and there are days where he can’t remember where he’s been.
Miles away, Shannon finds herself haunted by similar nightmares. She is afraid that she has done something terrible.
As the daughter of a state senator, Elizabeth has everything she could ever hope for. But when an uninvited guest interrupts a fundraising gala and stirs up painful memories, everything goes downhill fast.
Murder is what Hades is good at. So when two of his comrades go AWOL, he is rewarded with the most exhilarating hunt of his lifetime. For him, the game has just begun.
Displaying aden-polydoros.jpg
Author Bio: 
Aden Polydoros grew up in Long Grove, Illinois, the youngest of three children. Aden’s family moved to Arizona when he was in second grade. As a kid, he spent much of his time exploring the desert near his home. When he wasn’t searching for snakes and lizards, he was raiding the bookshelves of the local library.
As a teenager, Aden decided that he wanted to be a writer. He spent his free time writing short stories. He was encourage by his English teacher to try his hand at writing a novel, which inspired him to begin Project Pandora. The YA thriller is set for publication with Entangled Publishing in Summer of 2017. He is represented by Mallory Brown of Triada US.
 
Link to Exclusive Cover Reveal on YA Books Central: http://www.yabookscentral.com/blog/it-s-live-cover-reveal-1-31

Book Spotlight/ Once Upon a Valentine’s Day: Romance Sampler

Find your perfect hero just in time for Valentine’s Day with a sneak peek at nine sizzling romances!

Whether you’re looking for an office romance with gorgeous Mr. Right, to be whisked away on a passionate island escape with a billionaire, or awaiting a full Texan ranch experience (complete with your very own cowboy), these alpha males are sure to make you swoon! So settle in for a wild ride with this free Valentine’s Day sampler featuring excerpts from nine new novels written by today’s hottest authors.

Featuring extended excerpts from:
•     Under Pressure by Lori Foster
•     Her Sweetest Fortunes by Stella Bagwell
•     Wild Horse Springs by Jodi Thomas
•     The Last Di Sione Claims His Prize by Maisey Yates
•     Rough & Tumble by Rhenna Morgan
•     Renegade’s Pride by B.J. Daniel
•     Two-Week Texas Seduction by Cat Schield
•     Dominate Me by Stacey Lynn
•     Red Clover Inn by Carla Neggers

I have to admit that whenever I am on NetGalley and I see sampler books available to read now I instantly download them. I love getting sneak peeks at upcoming books. Its nice to see Harlequin jumping into this as well.

If your a regular reader of my blog you will notice that I don’t tend to read and review a lot of romance and that’s a personal choice for me as I don’t tend to gravitate towards this genre of reading but I have to admit that after reading this sampler a few books have peeked my interest such as:

Book Under Pressure: Built For Love Bonus by Lori Foster

Book Her Sweetest Fortune by Stella Bagwell

Book Red Clover Inn by Carla Neggers

These books are all out and available to purchase online or at your favorite bookstore. I know I will be looking for these books.

Do any of these books interest you? What will you be reading on Valentine’s Day?

Book Spotlight/ February Buzz Books

As you know from reading this blog I am a huge fan of PublishersLunch and their putting together their twice a year (Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter) Buzz Books for the upcoming book season because its a great way to hear and read sneak peeks of upcoming titles that are the buzz for the season that you might not know about. Its a great way to discover some hidden gems in the pile.

Well starting in January they started doing the exact same thing (with the twice a year Buzz Books) but along with that they are adding a monthly sneak peek that will offer six excerpts of books due out that month as well as a preview of the books coming out that month. How great is that?

The monthly buzz books consist of fiction, debut fiction, non fiction and young adult, along with books that are releasing week by week.

I thought that I would share with you some books that are being released this month that have peaked my interest:

Book All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel by Elan Mastai

All Our Wrong Todays is scheduled to be released February 7th.

You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we’d have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren’s 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn’t necessary.
Except Tom just can’t seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that’s before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career and–maybe, just maybe–his soulmate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future–our future–is supposed to be.
All Our Wrong Todays is about the versions of ourselves that we shed and grow into over time. It is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms. Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent.

Book The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff

The Orphan’s Tale is scheduled to be released February 21st and the not sure what the cover will look like.

A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War II, The Orphan’s Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival 

Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.

Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond. But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another—or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything.

Book A Piece Of The World: A Novel by Christina Baker Kline

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s mysterious and iconic painting Christina’s World.

“Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden.”

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.

As she did in her beloved smash bestsellerOrphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

Book The Edge Of Everything by Jeff Giles

For the perfect love, what would you be willing to lose?

It’s been a shattering year for seventeen-year-old Zoe, who’s still reeling from her father’s shocking death in a caving accident and her neighbors’ mysterious disappearance from their own home. Then on a terrifying subzero, blizzardy night in Montana, she and her brother are brutally attacked in the woods–only to be rescued by a mysterious bounty hunter they call X.

X is no ordinary bounty hunter. He is from a hell called the Lowlands, sent to claim the soul of Zoe’s evil attacker and others like him. X is forbidden from revealing himself to anyone other than his prey, but he casts aside the Lowlands’ rules for Zoe. As they learn more about their colliding worlds, they begin to question the past, their fate, and their future. But escaping the Lowlands and the ties that bind X might mean the ultimate sacrifice for them both.

Gripping and full of heart, this epic start to a new series will bring readers right to the edge of everything.

Book On Second Thought by Kristan Higgins

Ainsley O’Leary is so ready to get married—she’s even found the engagement ring her boyfriend has stashed away. What she doesn’t anticipate is for Eric to blindside her with a tactless breakup he chronicles in a blogwhich (of course) goes viral. Devastated and humiliated, Ainsley turns to her half sister, Kate, who’s already struggling after the sudden loss of her new husband.

Kate has always been so poised, so self-assured, but Nathan’s death shatters everything she thought she knew—including her husband—and sometimes the people who step up aren’t the ones you expect. With seven years and a murky blended-family dynamic between them, Ainsley and Kate have never been overly close, but their shared sorrow dovetails their faltering worlds into one.

Despite the lifetime of history between them, the sisters must learn to put their differences aside and open their hearts to the inevitable imperfection of family—and the possibility of one day finding love again.

Do any of these books interest you? I really want to read The Edge of Everything.