Tag: Hair Pulling Frustrating

Unstuck Pages > Hair Pulling Frustrating

Messy by Katie Porter

Posted on by Dísir
Messy by Katie PorterMessy by Katie Porter
Published by Lorelie Brown on March 17th 2020
Pages: 216
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one-star

Alec Davies is an aging-out rock star.

He’s twenty years older than me.

He’s also my father’s ex-best friend.

Dad used to be the lead guitarist of The Skies, an icon of the 90s British music scene. His fights with lead singer Alec were legendary, and so was the band’s self-destruction. I’ve hunted down Alec to tell him that Dad is back in England and determined to die at home. Ending our first encounter by riding Alec’s face is not the smart thing. Saying “yes” when he wants to reconcile with my dad and offers his townhouse as hospice – it’s not the smart thing either, but I do that too.

Alec Davies: ageing rock star, decades older than Harlow Tate, who has at some point in time, screwed up the dynamics of the rock band The Skies of which Harlow’s father was an integral part of. But Silas Tate is a dying man…and Harlow seeks out Alec years later with this news with an unexpected outcome.

The age-gap difference is one that I never minded reading; this was in fact the reason I request this ARC. But ‘Messy’ started off awkward for me; rather, it blindsided me with a rather inexplicable hookup between Harlow Tate’s father’s friend when neither have really met properly before in the opening pages.

This was more than a groupie seeking out a rock star, that much Katie Porter made clear, but I wasn’t sure of their attraction (was there even one?) and why Harlow Tate did exactly what she did—the explanation had me scratching my head—and as willing as I was to read further on, I found that I understood less and less Harlow’s own convoluted motives for seeking out Alec Davies in the first place.

With a weak set-up and no build-up (Alec and Harlow didn’t even know each other personally before their dressing-room encounter), acting like they were suddenly in a relationship made absolutely no sense to me. In this case, motives mattered…and I couldn’t quite find any here that made logical sense for Harlow/Alec as a pairing at all—neither protagonist were pining, neither had personal history, no initial attraction…nada!—even if though the writing was decent. I stopped hence, at 14%, frustrated and bewildered, unable to go on.

I do tread into rock star romances from time to time, but unfortunately ‘Messy’ wasn’t one that did it for me at all.

one-star

Audition by Skye Warren and Amelia Wilde

Posted on by Dísir
Audition by Skye Warren and Amelia WildeAudition by Amelia Wilde, Skye Warren
Series: True North #1
Published by Book Beautiful LLC on 9th December 2019
Pages: 215
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three-stars

Blood and sweat. Bethany Lewis danced her way out of poverty. She's a world class athlete... with a debt to pay.

Joshua North always gets what he wants. And the mercenary wants Bethany in his bed. He wants her beautiful little body bent to his will.

She doesn't surrender to his kiss.He doesn't back down from a challenge.It's going to be a sensual fight... to the death.

What draws me as always to Skye Warren’s books is the lyrical writing, so I know that ‘Audition’ will be a well-spun tale, at least when it comes to style. I’d been awaiting for this one with a little bit of trepidation, not because I generally liked Warren’s North Security series (I did) but because I hadn’t quite a good enough impression of Liam’s equally cynical younger brother to think he needed his own HEA.

Like the previous books in the establishing series, ‘Audition’ stayed on the edge of the morally questionable and never quite bloomed to become a fully fledged love story that I’d hoped would be grander and more convincing.

But what I found difficult wasn’t the forbidden tinge itself, but rather, the plot that always seemed shrouded in an attractive veil of mystery that I can’t seem to pierce—there was a back story that unfolded in bits and pieces—but put together so loosely spanning past and present that it felt like a fragmented shard of a complete narrative that I couldn’t seem to get. And that was Bethany’s and Joshua North’s relationship in a nutshell: a little danger, shady company, a mutual obsession since they met five years ago under equally shady circumstances, a repeating litany of doubting themselves and each other and Joshua’s personal self-recrimination of wanting Bethany while feeling filthy about it.

We’ve been given the bare bones and the points of conflict that surrounded them, but I couldn’t get past that their connection was road-blocked past dark desire. Joshua’s weirdly unhinged (and somewhat stalkerish) behaviour around Bethany while the thoughts he had about her stayed just that: lengthy inner monologues that didn’t change anything as he stayed an arse for most of it, mired too deep in his own inability and unwillingness to be invulnerable up until the end. Ironically, the most Joshua continued the repetitive notes of there being nothing good in him, the more and more I started to agree…because there weren’t any signs despite the struggles he had, that this was going to shift.

‘Audition’ had in essence, a (deliberate?) disjointedness storytelling here that threw me off, as much as I enjoyed the atmosphere, metaphor-laden writing. Still, I struggled to see past this nebulous relationship between Joshua/Bethany and it was this very lack of clarity that eventually hindered my whole enjoyment of this.

three-stars

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Posted on by Dísir
Tweet Cute by Emma LordTweet Cute by Emma Lord
Published by Wednesday Books on 21st January 2020
Pages: 368
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three-half-stars

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

What happens when teens take over a Twitter war, for the sake of protecting their own families’ legacies? ‘Tweet Cute’ is the hypothetical answer, it seems, in a very, very updated version of ‘You’ve Got Mail’ where ‘enemies’ in real life are actually forging a deeper and meaningful connection over an anonymous school app.

There’s a bit more complexity than that of course, even as Jack and Pepper duke it all out over their family food business, while balancing their own issues and insecurities that do in fact, capture these angsty years on the cusp of adulthood pretty well. The Twitter food war takes up a lot of the story as do the secret identity bits—it did admittedly get a little too much at times and made me cringe at the never-ending oneupmanship—and it’s so picture-perfect of the internet’s fickleness and its viral power that you can’t help but smile and get swept up with the ride, milking it for as long as it lasts. That this is also about food made me wonder if Emma Lord should have also included all the recipes in her appendix.

There’s enough of a YA romance if you squint—romantic feelings are talked about in an oblique way, as discomfort, as awareness, but never as the overt type of sexiness you’d find in a typical adult romance—but ‘Tweet Cute’ stays on safe-ish ground, very above the belt and very focused on friendship that might turn into more. Emma Lord juggles this with the impending train wreck that you can see coming a mile away with admirable ease, as Jack and Pepper move from adversaries to friends to something a little more. Though this doesn’t happen without a lot of reflection and realisation along the way about themselves, their relationships and their own families.

However, it’s also peppered with enough self-awareness in the character voices that sometimes surpass the maturity of a teen which gave me a bit of pause. Lord does write Pepper/Jack adopting a certain wry distance of stepping away from the action and then commenting on their own behaviour, giving a slight bit of meta that sometimes translate into longer than necessary inner monologues that sometimes keeps the momentum from going forward. I did take a few days with ‘Tweet Cute’ as a result, putting it down then taking it up again when I had the time; it wasn’t as ‘unputdownable’ as I’d hoped it would be, though each time I did continue however, its entertainment value never failed.

three-half-stars

The Intended Victim by Alexandra Ivy

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The Intended Victim by Alexandra IvyThe Intended Victim by Alexandra Ivy
Series: The Agency #4
Published by Zebra on 31st December 2019
Pages: 352
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two-stars

ONCE, SHE GOT AWAY

The body lying on a cold steel slab bears all the hallmarks of the Chicago Butcher. There's a cruel slash across her throat, deep enough to sever the carotid artery, and a small crescent carved into her right breast. Her delicate features are painfully familiar to Ash Marcel, once a rising star in the Chicago PD. But though the victim resembles his former fiancée, Remi Walsh, he knows it's not her.

BUT THIS TIME

Though Remi escaped a serial killer five years ago, her father died trying to save her. Grief and guilt caused her to pull away from the man she loved. Now Ash is back in her life, insisting that Remi is still in danger.

IT'S A DEAD END . . .

Someone is targeting women who look just like Remi. With or without a badge, Ash intends to unmask the Butcher. But the killer isn't playing games any longer. He's moving in, ready to finish what he started, and prove there's nothing more terrifying than a killer's obsession . . .

I’ve not read the rest of the books that preceded ‘The Intended Victim’ by Alexandra Ivy, but this is easy enough to get into as a standalone. The premise is undoubtedly quite an intriguing one: a serial murderer—a.k.a. The Butcher—who’s apparently back after five years and is now strangely obsessed with altering his victims’ faces to resemble Remi Walsh before killing them.

The suspense plot itself is sort of unique, with a twist that I sort of saw coming but was left skeptical in the end. It did lack a bit of forward momentum even as the process of getting to know more about the strange spate of murders was ongoing, getting even disconcerting at times with different POVs belonging to secondary characters popping up from time to time.

There’s a second chance romance in here as well, but this was probably the weakest part of the story for me. Ash/Remi’s history was sort of glossed over; we weren’t told much, only that Remi had pushed Ash away after tragedy touched their lives and that he was only back because she seemed to be in the sights of the same killer again.

I was obviously hoping for harder soul-searching on Remi’s part, but most of it dealt with her determination to try to just look at the future and not the past—and that she only looked at Ash with regret. In this way, Ash/Remi’s second chance romance didn’t quite feel like a justified or a convincing one at all: a pairing brought back together incidentally and not because both wanted it enough to look for each other. Five years on, all we really had of Remi was her weak excuse of wanting to ‘protect’ others by pushing them away and internalising her own mental mess that she’d never bothered to sort out. Through it all, I never quite got the idea that she wanted them as much as Ash pursued her, merely caving to Ash’s insistent pressure and going along with it.

The uptick in the narrative happened at the last quarter, after which, it got engrossing, though everything was wrapped up quite neatly—too neatly perhaps—in the last chapter. Would I recommend this? Maybe. It’s a decent read if you like the usual red-herrings and the clues that come with solving a murder mystery, though romance-wise, it’s not quite a satisfying one.

two-stars

Yours in Scandal by Lauren Layne

Posted on by Dísir
Yours In Scandal by Lauren Layne
Series: Man of the Year #1
Published by Montlake Romance on 10th March 2020
Pages: 278
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two-stars

Fresh off being named Citizen magazine’s Man of the Year, New York City’s youngest mayor, Robert Davenport, decides it’s time to strategize. Next move: a bid for the governor’s seat. In his way: an incumbent with a flawless reputation. He also has an Achilles’ heel: an estranged wild-child daughter with a past so scandalous it could be Robert’s ticket to victory. And a charm so irresistible it could be Robert’s downfall.

Rebellion is a thing of the past for Adeline Blake. As New York’s premier event planner, she’s all about reform and respectability. Then she’s approached by Robert to organize the party of the season. Curious, considering he’s her father’s most formidable opponent. And alarming, too. Because Addie can’t help but fall for the righteously popular candidate with the movie-star smile.

Now it’s Robert’s choice. Does he pursue a future that holds his legacy? Or the woman who holds his heart?

In an age of political cynicism, ‘Yours in Scandal’ is a more lighthearted take on politics and an incidental romance that develops out of it, never steering too close to the deep divisiveness that dominates the headlines these days.

That said, I am familiar with Layne’s style which does have a certain smartness and intelligence to the modern-day rom-com. But in recent times, they’ve sort of faded for me and I’d hoped that ‘Yours in Sandal’ would be a perk-me-up. As a result, I’m mixed with this one, even though this has a delicious premise of fraternising with the enemy, a slow burn and a hard juggle between professional facades and personal feelings.

Subterfuge underlaid Robert’s and Adeline’s relationship both ways and I struggled with this majorly when it became obvious this was going to be the part where the lack of communication would blow up in their faces. Clearly not all was as it seemed—and both Robert and Adeline carried on that way for yonks—and if there was some hint of attraction in their interactions, nothing was too hot and heavy such that I was squinting by the halfway mark to feel a chemistry that wasn’t quite there. I didn’t get the anticipatory sense of sexual tension or build-up; instead I got a pursue-and-dodge pattern which got tiresome after a while.

I generally liked Robert’s principled nature as mayor of New York, his determination to be a clean politician—though he was dragged by some forces to not quite do some right things. At the start, there was also such an appeal of wanting to know how Layne would reconcile the wild girl rattling against the cages demanding to be let out and the prim and proper event planner that was intriguing both Addie and Adeline.

Sadly, she merely ended up as a frustratingly opaque character, constantly pushing Robert away with excuses about his chosen career not being for her. In fact, she was a player of games because she wanted to hide behind her past, coupled her inability to put herself out there and be emotionally brave was off-putting. I found her, in essence, a huge flight risk (and was proven correct) with a foot ready to step out of the relationship when she could.

‘Yours in Scandal’ was a personal disappointment, but I’ll be first to say that it’s classic Lauren Layne in many ways as well…and will probably guarantee stalwart fans a better time than I had with this.

two-stars

Concerto by Hannah Fielding

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Concerto by Hannah FieldingConcerto by Hannah Fielding
Published by London Wall Publishing on 1st August 2019
Pages: 528
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one-star

When Catriona Drouot, a young music therapist, honours an opera diva's dying request to help her son, Umberto Monteverdi, recover his musical gift, she knows it will be a difficult assignment. She had shared a night of passion with the once-celebrated composer ten years before, with unexpected consequences.

The extent of her challenge becomes apparent when she arrives at her client's estate on the glittering shores of Lake Como, Italy. Robbed of his sight by a nearfatal car accident, the man is arrogant, embittered and resistant to her every effort to help him. Still, Catriona sings a siren's call within him that he cannot ignore.

Caught up in the tempestuous intrigues at Umberto's Palladian mansion, Catriona discovers that her attraction to the blind musician is as powerful as ever. How can she share what she has hidden from him for the past decade? Soon she realises that hers is not the only secret that is rippling uneasily below the surface. Dark forces haunt the sightless composer, threatening his life - for the second time.

Concerto is a sensual and romantic story of lost love and forgiveness, destiny and difficult choices, and of a heroine determined to put things right at last.

Hannah Fielding’s ‘Concerto’ is a different kind of read from what I’m used to.

There’s something about the style of storytelling of ‘Concerto’ that feels very old school: long and languid descriptive sentences, with the determination to paint every picture of an exotic locale to exhaustion, and the inclusion of every emotion, no matter how minute. In fact, ‘Concerto’ is very reminiscent of an older style of historical romance that I used to read but have since moved past; as a result, I did find myself skipping through all the pages.

For those who love all things European, or rather, anything that remotely has a French or Italian connection, along with music, ‘Concerto’ is the read for you. There are beautiful parts written about Italy and the exploration of emotions of a wide-eyed girl—a romanticised version, so to speak, of the Old World wonders, the splendour of music and the first, heart-racing flushes of infatuation.

But there are tropes in here that probably pushed all my wrong buttons and as someone who’s more used to a faster pace and rather stereotypical characters (with dated attitudes) who behave like they’re in a soap opera, it wasn’t long before I realised ‘Concerto’ isn’t quite my kind of read—and this is clearly a matter of personal preference than the storytelling itself.

In fact, I found Umberto a detestable and unrepentant lothario, or rather, manwhore who went through countless women with romantic, poetic language and would would have probably carried on that way had it not been an accident that blinded him, while Catriona was too much of a wallflower who fell at his feet too easily for my liking. Throw some of my jaded cynicism in about them falling in love (?) after a one night stand 10 years ago and the suspension of disbelief had to work overtime.

I wished ‘Concerto’ could have been less of a disappointment, seeing how much I love the subject matter of the story, but there were simply too many stumbling blocks in here to even complete this.

one-star

Meant For You by Sherilee Gray – Release Day

Posted on by Dísir
Meant For You by Sherilee Gray – Release DayMeant For You by Sherilee Gray
Series: Rocktown Ink #3
Published by Sherilee Gray on 30th October 2019
Pages: 172
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two-half-stars

At twelve years old, I was torn from my family.

At fourteen I met her: my reason to draw breath.

One look into Everly Williams's big brown eyes and I knew I’d do anything to protect her. And for eight years I did. She was my world. My best friend.

But afraid I'd lose her, I held on too tight. Became a dark cloud blocking her sun. So I did what I needed to, and walked away. I hurt us both.

Now I’m home, and need Everly back in my life. Only everything is different. We’re different. My body burns for her when she’s near. And after one explosive kiss, I know she feels it too. I’ll do whatever it takes to earn her trust again.

Because I don’t want what we had before. I want it all...for a lifetime.

🔥🔥 HOT NEW RELEASE 🔥🔥

Meant for You by Sherilee Gray is LIVE! #OneClick today!!

Add to your Goodreads TBR: http://bit.ly/2LR7JiX

PURCHASE LINKS

Amazon: https://amzn.to/33d3tjT

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/322v07z

Amazon CA: https://amzn.to/2ALNddd

Amazon AU: https://amzn.to/2LPEn4A

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2IqRV4E

Apple books: https://apple.co/31Vbo4U

B&N: http://bit.ly/30Pzn4f

GIVEAWAY

To celebrate the release of Meant for You, Sherilee Gray is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card. Head to her Facebook page to enter: https://www.facebook.com/SherileeGrayAuthor/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sherilee Gray is a kiwi girl and lives in beautiful New Zealand with her husband and their two children. When she isn’t writing sexy, edgy contemporary and paranormal romance, searching for her next alpha hero on Pinterest, or fueling her voracious book addiction, she can be found dreaming of far off places with a mug of tea in one hand and a bar of Cadburys Rocky Road chocolate in the other.

AUTHOR LINKS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherileeGrayAuthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherileegrayauthor/

Pinterest: https://pin.it/mkgldpbpsnlvkc

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sherilee_Gray

Website: https://www.sherileegray.com

Sherilee Gray’s ‘Meant for You’ was a read that I’d assumed would take up the star-crossed lovers sort of trope, given what went down between them in the previous book. But the direction this took—that made this more a friends-to-lovers romance was something that surprised and well, sort of disappointed me, only because it didn’t seem to have the impact of a reunion that could have been more heartrending.

As a result, I’m a little mixed about this book (despite its steamy sexy times).

Still, ‘Meant For You’ is an exercise in grovelling and it’s here that Gray highlights what happened previously (so no prior knowledge is needed) when Dane finally returned to town after forcibly cutting himself off from everyone, including his best friend Everly. With his return however, came the complications of breaking the friendship protocol and an unexpected attraction that sprang up seemingly out of nowhere.

Gray is adamant that both Dane and Everly weren’t supposed to be anything more to each other than best friends up until a certain point in the book—which gave leeway to both characters to be with others during their separation. But this switch from best friends and protector to a romantic interest however, was less than convincing for me, like a switch that flipped suddenly only because Dane’s remorse and his sudden inability to see past Everly’s revealing clothes as he tried to repair their broken friendship.

The protagonists of this series tended to merge together at times and Dane wasn’t too different in this respect: the protectiveness, the obsession and the general transformation to caveman when he finally decided that Everly meant the world to him. Yet his impulsiveness, his tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation and his self-absorption didn’t exactly make him that much of a likeable protagonist, while I also thought Everly caved a little too easily to what Dane wanted.

I wish I could have liked this more, but the caveat is that I had certain expectations and hopes after reading the last book in the series in seeing how Dane/Everly’s story would go down…all of which were not quite met. The long and short of it is, Gray simply took a different route to their HEA and it wasn’t quite done in the way I’d hoped.

two-half-stars