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The Intended Victim by Alexandra Ivy

Posted on 26th November 20193rd November 2019 by Dísir

The 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.

Yours in Scandal by Lauren Layne

Posted on 22nd November 201931st October 2019 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.

Concerto by Hannah Fielding

Posted on 8th November 201924th October 2019 by Dísir

Concerto by Hannah Fielding
Published by London Wall Publishing on 1st August 2019
Pages: 528
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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.

Meant For You by Sherilee Gray – Release Day

Posted on 3rd November 201928th October 2019 by Dísir

Meant 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.

Make Your Move by Laura Heffernan

Posted on 26th October 201916th October 2019 by Dísir

Make Your Move by Laura Heffernan
Series: Gamer Girls, #3
Published by Lyrical Press on 17th December 2019
Pages: 304
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LOVE’S ALL ABOUT TIMING . . .

At twenty-eight, Shannon has yet to fall in love. Which is fine, since she’d rather spend her evenings creating games than swiping right or going on awkward blind dates. Right now though, she has two little problems. First, she’s stuck for a new game idea. Second, the only candidate in her roommate search is Tyler, the gaming buddy who’s long had an unrequited crush on her.

It should be awkward. But when Tyler moves in, the situation doesn’t go at all the way Shannon expected. Between helping her deal with coworkers and fixing the bugs in her latest game, Tyler’s proving to be damn near perfect. Except for the fact that he’s falling for someone else. . .

Maybe Shannon has already forfeited her turn. Maybe she’s playing for nothing but heartache. But the best games have endings you can never predict . . .

This was unfortunately, a total disconnect for me.

Not only was I plunged into a world with a bewildering array of characters at the very start which made it difficult to navigate the whole setup, there was also the certain issue I took with Shannon who kept insisting that she didn’t want to encourage Tyler’s crush on her. Only after they become roommates does she suddenly, with the speed of a lightning strike, discover that she actually is crushing on him.

The long explanations of her demi-sexuality and the lack of focus and build-up added to the source of frustration, more so since for the most of the book, Tyler spends his time with a new girlfriend, who also happens to be a bitchy rival of the heroine.

Personally, it was hard to get invested in them at all, given the circumstances surrounding Shannon’s work and the focus on gaming, when I wanted to see an equal amount of time spent developing a pairing that barely did much together, thanks to poor timing. But when I started skimming throughout most of the story, it became clear this wasn’t for me at all.

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle

Posted on 22nd October 201915th October 2019 by Dísir

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on 7th April 2020
Pages: 368
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three-half-stars

Naomi Westfield has an Instagram-perfect life, including the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family every bride dreams of being a part of. They never fight, complain, or disagree. They're preparing for their lavish wedding that's three months away. And they are miserably and utterly sick of each other.

Tired of contorting herself to fit the ridiculous standards demanded by Nicholas's family, Naomi wants out of the relationship. But there's a catch: Whoever calls off the engagement will have to foot the enormous bill for the wedding. When Naomi finds out that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of wills to see who can annoy the other into surrendering through pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.

But now that they have nothing to lose, they're finally being themselves. They're having so much fun getting on each other's nerves that it starts to feel like something else entirely. As Naomi discovers hidden feelings for Nicholas buried under three years of simmering resentment, she wonders if he feels the same way.

Suddenly, the countdown to the wedding that may or may not come to pass feels more like a race to mutual destruction--and Naomi doesn't want to be left alone at the finish line.

What happens when the first flush of lust and attraction peters out in the months following the heady romantic dating period…and worse yet, when the wedding is approaching and someone’s getting more than just cold feet?

Where most books go in the direction of explaining that couples break up because of this, this is really, where the story starts in ‘You Deserve Each Other’—that alone made me pick up the book, for its realism that we typically don’t want to read about in the bid to escape the dreary duties of real life. For that alone, I’d commend Sarah Hogle for making the dating bit forming the prologue and starting the story only when Nicholas’s and Naomi’s claws come out to play.

Hogle deals with the the stifling feeling of being trapped with some poignancy, panache and sad realism all too well—the lull, this daily grind, the toughness of maintaining relationships coming to a head—with Naomi’s first person neurotic ramblings taking the forefront of the narrative. It’s an odd lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers trope here, and we’re stuck in the middle of a war, seen at least only from Naomi’s perspective—with her building resentment, her unhappiness and the increasing number of walls she puts up in the hopes she’ll antagonise her fiancé past the point of no return.

‘You Deserve Each Other’ starts off with increasingly juvenile pranks and it gets worse with the weird one-upping, second-guessing and the snide things both Nicholas and Naomi say to each other. But thankfully, before it starts getting really pointless however, the change of heart comes, in the form of small and nice gestures, in learning the small bits that drew them to each other at the beginning.

It’s probably a book that’s possibly relatable to some more than others. Well-written, in the first-person, with precious flashes of insight and some poetic writing, it’s not a hard one to get through but Naomi’s antics can get exhausting and to what end, you ask? Why bother with the merry-go-round of vindictive games, the wilful misunderstanding and distrust when all is seemingly lost?

I’ll admit that I enjoyed the last quarter the best and that was when the book really took off for me, not just because you could literally read about their gradual climb back into their HEA but because it was also a great relief to get past the antagonism. In short, not a bad read, but some parts were frustrating—possibly even felt redundant—and those were hurdles to get through before the good bits come.

The One For You by Roni Loren

Posted on 10th October 20191st October 2019 by Dísir

The One for You by Roni Loren
Series: The Ones Who Got Away, #4
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on 31st December 2019
Pages: 448
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three-stars

Sassy Kincaid Breslin finally gets her happy ending...

She got a second chance at life.
Will she take a second chance at love?

Kincaid Breslin wasn't supposed to survive that fateful night at Long Acre when so many died, including her boyfriend—but survive she did. She doesn't know why she got that chance, but now she takes life by the horns and doesn't let anybody stand in her way

Ashton Isaacs was her best friend when disaster struck all those years ago, but he chose to run as far away as he could. Now fate has brought him back to town, and Ash doesn't know how to cope with his feelings for Kincaid and his grief over their lost friendship. For Ash has been carrying secrets, and he knows that once Kincaid learns the truth, he'll lose any chance he might have had with the only woman he's ever loved.

Following the characters of a fictional town that still bears the scars of a school shooting over a decade ago has put Roni Loren on my radar. 4 books into the series, Loren still tells powerful stories of what it means to grieve, to nurture memories that are both good and bad, and even to tell oneself certain reconstructed tales laced with rum so that life gets easier to deal with as the years go by.

‘The One For You’ seems like Roni Loren’s final book of a difficult and poignant series, closing with Kincaid Breslin’s book and honestly, this was a harder, angstier one to take in than the rest. A series of events brings old school best-friends back together again, forcing them to face some unfinished business between them as they wade through the unpleasant memories that time and space can’t erase. The rest is predictable—Ash and Kincaid rediscover their own friendship, only with a dose of attraction and lust, with a big reveal towards the end of what really went down all those years ago that would again, make or break this fragile thread linking them once more.

Impulsive, flighty and so self-absorbed, I found Kincaid a different kettle of fish to even warm up to, let alone with her thoughtless hookups and actions that made others pay for the consequences. Constantly moving, surrounding herself with people, it felt as though she couldn’t even, for one moment centre herself and figure out what she really needed, having already sold herself the delusion of losing her one and only soulmate to the school shooting, then later back-pedalling when she realised it was supposedly her best friend for her after all. Not fighting for Ash, pettily looking at faults she could find with him even after all he’d done for her, so hell-bent on independence that she shaped up as someone who put herself first only.

Instead, I felt for Ash’s pining and his prolonged pain, especially as he kept on being second-best but never the first choice. That was rough, the way he’d held out for Kincaid and watched out for her time and again with her flaunting her dates in his face, and then later being so thick (and possibly in constant denial) in the way she kept seeing through him. In essence, he deserved better.

It did feel like a cop-out after all, at the end of the book when the love declarations came flowing in fast and furious, where Loren tried to sell the idea of Kincaid and Ash as the OTP. And that ironically, was hard to buy into since the whole book was already spent detailing how Kincaid didn’t quite seem to have a heart for Ash at all the way he did for her.

It isn’t to say that this isn’t a decent book considering the overarching narrative – my own issue with characterisation aside. Loren handles the aftermath of violence, the process of rebuilding and the coming to terms with stuff with a lot of grace and class, with a watertight HEA for all. The fairy-tale ending is given to her bunch of characters who vowed to live their lives to the fullest after the tragedy, and it’s with that upbeat note that the series anyway—with the message that there is hope and a happiness that even tragedy can’t take away.