Vain by Fisher Amelie

Vain by Fisher Amelie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you’re looking for a story about a good, humble girl, who’s been hurt by someone she thought she could trust, only to find out she’s not as vulnerable as she thought she was and discovers an empowering side of herself that falls in love with the guy who helps her find that self, blah, blah, blah...then you’re gonna’ hate my story.

Because mine is not the story you read every time you bend back the cover of the latest trend novel. It’s not the “I can do anything, now that I’ve found you/I’m misunderstood but one day you’ll find me irresistible because of it” tale. Why? Because, if I was being honest with you, I’m a complete witch. There’s nothing redeeming about me. I’m a friend using, drug abusing, sex addict from Los Angeles. I’m every girlfriend’s worst nightmare and every boy’s fantasy.

I’m Sophie Price...And this is the story about how I went from the world’s most envied girl to the girl no one wanted around and why I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.


Juls review
Well color me surprised! I have to be honest, when I started this book I absofuckinlutely hated it. I hated Sophie so much and the way she treated people was atrocious! I don’t care how rich you are, you don’t treat people the way she did/does. But pretty lil miss gets it like no other. Her daddy’s money cant save her now. She’s been sentenced to 6 months in Uganda. No more flashy parties or people at her beck and call. Sophie is now somebody else bitch.

Now what I felt about Sophie at the beginning of the book soon changed into admiration. What starts out as a punishment changes her life forever. Life in Uganda is hard and brutal and Sophie witnesses it firsthand. The harsh way of life and poverty wakes in her a newfound awareness that its not just about not getting ones love from parents or a boy rejecting you. There’s so much more at stake. Survival!

Sophie really grew on me and I felt her change. She started to bloom into a normal caring human being that we are all capable of and I couldn’t but help but root for her in the end.

Ian has demons in his closet but with the changes he sees in Sophie he no longer fights the attraction for her but embraces her and together they know that if they work together they can make way to help the world one child at a time.

Very moving story.

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Just Remember to Breathe by Charles Sheehan-Miles

Just Remember to Breathe by Charles Sheehan-Miles
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alex Thompson’s life is following the script. A pre-law student at Columbia University, she’s focused on her grades, her life and her future. The last thing she needs is to reconnect with the boy who broke her heart.

Dylan Paris comes home from Afghanistan severely injured and knows that the one thing he cannot do is drag Alex into the mess he’s made of his life.

When Dylan and Alex are assigned to the same work study program and are forced to work side by side, they have to make new ground rules to keep from killing each other.

Only problem is, they keep breaking the rules.

The first rule is to never, ever talk about how they fell in love.

Juls Review
She hadnt heard from the love of her life in years and one day there he was. Alex didnt think Dylan would ever come back to her. He was so upset with her after she told him over skype that she didnt know if could keep up the long distance relationship. She was so lonely and a night a drinking had caused her to say the unthinkable.

Unbeknownst to her Dylan saw something that tore his heart into a million pieces. After the hurt he had gone through as child he wouldnt let someone willingly tear him down. So he disappeared. His lack of judgement cause his platoon to take another night shift and before they all knew it Dylan was laid up.

Months later Dylan is sitting by an office to meet the author he will be working for while he attends college and instead he sees the one person he thought he'd erased from his heart. Boy was he wrong. Those same feelings from long ago come rushing back and he's falling hard, all over again.

Alex and Dylan try to have another go at the romance they once shared but its not enough. Dylan still has doubts and it drives Alex away but not without letting Dylan know that she will love him always and until he can figure out what he wants she wont stick around and wait for him. In the end Dylan finally sees things clearly. Yes he may get hurt, yes things are uncertain but with Alex by his side he can work through anything.

very sweet love lost and found again story.

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The Good Life Cover Reveal

The Good Life by Jodie Beau (cover attached in email)
Release Date: April 9, 2013
Cover Design: Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations (www.okaycreations.net)

Twenty two
year old Roxie Golightly is a fun and carefree spirit...until she marries a wealthy
man and her role as a trophy wife leaves her isolated in a condo with an ironing board and an
obsessive desire to impress people.
When her marriage ends after seven years, Roxie's identity is buried so deep under layers of
furniture polish and piles of designer shoes that she doubts she can ever be the person she once was.
In an attempt to reconnect Roxie with the person she used to be, her friend creates the Good Life List a
list of challenges for her to complete by the end of the summer.
With list in hand, Roxie moves back to her hometown. With the help of a sexy and charismatic
guy from her past, Roxie is only a few check marks away from living the good life again, even
if it means getting thrown out of a bar, wearing a skirt the size of a belt or skinnydipping
in the
neighbor's pool at 3am.

Jodie Beau Author Bio:  Jodie has been writing fiction since she was a child and it was only natural she would pursue it as a career. While studying at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, she took every writing class offered before she received a BA in Media Arts. After graduation she moved to Wilmington, NC, with big dreams of one day writing for movies and TV. Then she met a boy…and there was a wedding. A few years later came another boy, this one even cuter. She gave up her “pipe dream” of being a Hollywood screenwriter and moved back to Detroit to be a wife, mom and career waitress. But babies sleep a lot and she got bored and it was either write or clean the house. So she wrote. She began with a pregnancy/mom blog (http://underthebigmac.blogspot.com/) but she dreamed of doing more with her writing than making people laugh with stories of baby poop. So she decided to take a chance, to see if success wasn’t just a pipe dream. The Good Life is her first novel. Connect with Jodie: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sweetbutsnarky Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodLifeList Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/JodieBeau

What Price Paradise by Katherine Allred

What Price Paradise by Katherine Allred
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All his life Tate McCullom has been taught to be responsible, and he is the very model of what a respectable man should be. Until the night he gets drunk and sleeps with a woman he barely knows.Now, six weeks later, she's pregnant, alone, and broke. Once again, Tate must take responsibility for his actions, and makes plans to marry his child's mother. There's only one problem…he has to tell his fiancée. Abby Grayson hasn't had an easy life. As the daughter of the town whore, people either avoid her or think she's like her mother. For Abby, it's a struggle just to fill her belly and keep a roof over her head. Loneliness and a secret yearning for this man she thought she'd never have led her to spend the night with Tate. But the last thing she needs is a baby when she can barely take care of herself. Desperate, but too proud to ask for help, she finally agrees to accept a job from Tate the job of being his wife. Now she has almost everything she's ever dreamed of.Unfortunately, only one thing will gain her Tate's love — his realization that the night he spent with her was no drunken accident. It was a last-ditch attempt to win the woman he really wanted.

 
Juls Review
Just when Abby thinks her life cant get any worse it does. She’s known as the town whore and now that she is pregnant the town wasn’t far off. But they are. Abby was born with this stigma but was doing her best to not take the road her mother did. In a moment of weakness she allows the man that she’s been in love with to sleep with her. She thought she was doing him a favor but what happens next only cause more turmoil in her life.

Events unfold and clearly it doesn’t make sense to anyone, except maybe to Tate. He may have always had a plan and was following this plan to a T but life throws you curve balls. He did the one thing no one ever expected of him. it’s the one thing that makes him feel like the man only he knows.

Tate may think he knows whats best for everyone but the one person he wants to prove to is the one that will get hurt. Can Abby forgive him enough to come back? Will they find their happily ever after or will their love be shattered by misunderstandings?

This one is full of angst and so much love you’ll sigh when things finally fall into place.

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Conflicting Hearts Book Promo

Conflicting Hearts

Contemporary Romance

Date Published: November 2012

Rachel Hayward hoped to have a quiet thirtieth birthday alone. Instead, fate had different plans.

Caught in traffic and late for work, she can do nothing except wait for the freeway gridlock to ease. A three-car pileup has caused the snarl. Just as cars begin to move at a faster clip, Rachel takes her eyes off the road to gawk at the accident and rear-ends the car in front of her.
Sick over having ruined her day, she lowers her head onto the steering wheel and waits for the driver to begin a tirade over her stupidity. Instead, a kind man taps on her window showing genuine concern about her welfare. The brief colliding encounter suddenly starts a relationship between two strangers that takes off under odd circumstances.
When the couple becomes intimate, their relationship turns into a conflicting set of desires and needs. Rachel is bound by a shameful, dark childhood. After she falls in love with the handsome Ian Richards, she is faced with the decision to leave him or finally confront her demons to obtain the one thing in life she's always needed--healing from the sexual abuse she endured as a little girl.

EXCERPT

Ian slowly turns me around so that I’m facing him. We’re nose to nose. Our bodies are touching front to front. This is not good, or maybe it is good. He doesn’t say a thing, except to look at me with a smoldering gaze. A second later, he lazily moves his eyes toward my lips.

I’m frozen. I look at him with half anticipation and half panic. He’s going to kiss me; I know it. His intentions are clearly expressed in his blue eyes, which have turned a shade darker. I’m losing it. Hurriedly, I remind him of his words to fend off the advance.

“Uh, I thought you wanted to be just friends?”

A look of admiration sweeps across his face. He gently brings his hand up to my forehead and brushes a few strands of hair out of my eyes. Ian is silent, but it’s obvious he is thinking this through. It’s driving me crazy being close to his body.

“You want more?” I whisper, trying to get him to say something.

“Do you?”

He answers with a question. It’s annoying. “I asked you first,” I reply, not cracking a smile or giving away my heart pounding in my chest. I can’t look at him any longer. I close my eyes, and silently ask God, who I’ve ignored for years, to help me.

Then I feel the warmth of his breath approach. He circles my lips with his and gives me a long, tender kiss. Sweet Jesus. He tastes so delicious! I hope the breath mint I popped in my mouth a half hour ago is still working. Eventually, he pulls away, and I open my eyes.

“Does that answer your question?”

Read Chapter 1 Online via a Flip Book:

Here

Author Bio:

J. D. Burrows is a pen named used for contemporary romance written by Vicki Hopkins. She has authored four other historical fiction/romance novels. Her recent historical (Dark Persuasion) won the 2012 USA Best Book Awards Finalist for Fiction Romance.The author lives in the rainy Pacific Northwest with a pesky cat who refuses to let her sleep in. She enjoys traveling to England, researching her English ancestry, finding long-lost relatives from the Holland lineage, and creating stories that touch the hearts of women.For information about her historical romance, visit http://vickihopkins.com

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Purchase Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Messed up by Molly Owens

Messed up by Molly Owens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What starts as a vicious prank one dark summer night leads sixteen year-old Chelsea Mallory plummeting into a MESSED UP world of obsession, a clandestine fraternity, a lost fortune, murder and ultimately a scramble to save her own life.

His eyes are blue like midnight. That is the first thing Chelsea notices about smooth talking, insanely hot Levi Bennett. Then, there is the way her stomach is hijacked by a pack of butterflies doing a full-on hip hop dance every time she sees him. How can anyone, even a sensible girl like Chelsea, be expected to think straight under those circumstances? Chelsea’s infatuation leads her to play the bait in a cruel practical joke on her friend Toby; a prank that leaves Chelsea’s hands bloody and Toby missing. Amid the mysterious disappearance, Chelsea realizes that she has gotten in over her head with Levi; a guy who knows exactly how to keep Chelsea where he wants her. Struggling to navigate her way out of a seemingly hopeless situation, Chelsea discovers that the real threat to her safety is not Levi after all, but an evil man and his army of boy soldiers who will stop at nothing to find a coveted treasure. Chelsea must learn that although she may be young, and she may be small, when she uses her brain she can kick some serious ass.


Juls Review
The best way I can describe this book is by mentioning the movies The Skull and a lil bit of National Treasures. You add those together and it shows a bit of the effedupness that erupts within the pages of this book.

Chelsea just lost her bff to a new country. Hannah’s dad has been transferred to Scotland of all places and the next 2 years of Chelsea’s high school career is down her one and only friend. What to do? Well for starters theres a boy who seems to be completely in love with her, why not kill a bit of time with him, not romantically but to move her summer along faster.

What starts out as something oh so innocent turns into kidnapping, murder, abuse and torture. Along the clusterfuck of a ride Chelsea thought was only blissful happiness has her running for her life. No one is who they seem and she cant trust anyone not even herself. Her obsession makes her turn a blind eye as people around her get hurt. She’s in too deep but she needs to pull the reins in before everything falls apart.

I’ve read a lot of reviews about needing a sequel but I think this young girl thought she could play these evil people but what she doesn’t get is that they are always one step ahead of her. She may have saved herself but its open season on her friends and family.


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Tidal by Emily Snow

Tidal by Emily Snow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*New Adult Romance*

Now that Willow Avery is out of rehab, she's got one chance left to prove herself before she’s officially on every producer’s shit list. At least, that's what her parents and agent are claiming. She doesn't really give a damn if she never makes another movie or not—she just wants to get on with her life, get back to her friends, and find her next escape. But Willow is broke. And whether she likes it or not, acting is the only job she knows how to do.

When she accepts the lead in a beach drama, Willow finds herself in Hawaii. And in Hawaii, she finds Cooper, the gorgeous surfer hired to train her for her new role. With the bluest eyes she’s ever seen and the sexiest Australian accent she’s ever heard, Cooper’s different from the men she’s used to. He doesn’t want to use her. And he refuses to let her fail. But when an old friend re-enters Willow’s life—a friend whose toxicity she’s been drawn to time and time before and whose presence brings about the painful memories she's tried so hard to suppress—Willow will have to choose between the girl she was and the person she’s becoming. The lifestyle that helps her forget the pain and the guy she’s falling hard for.
 

Juls Review
Willow Avery's is a washed up actress. drunkeness, drug usage and sex has lead her into a path of destruction and now after 8 months of rehab she's free to go.
Lucky for her her agent has landed her another role. Its a remake of movie that was done way back when and in order to get into her new role her director has hired Cooper to teach her how to look like a surfer.

Cooper isnt what he seems. He may be Willow's trainer but theres so much more to him. So many secrets that he has yet to reveal.

Willow and Cooper both fight the attraction they have for each other. Both are dedicated to their jobs and they both have something to prove. But the more they fight their pull to each other the more their fight goes out of them.

I really loved this book. Not only does it have a chick with the effed up life but she takes it upon herself to better herself. I was really surprised by the end. I wish other female leads could take some pointers from Willow and know that even though you have a great man by your side you can fix yourself to be better.

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