Sunday 10 May 2015

End Of Week Book Reads, Reviews, Thoughts and Bargains...


Being rather hungover, I've done nothing but lie on my settee and read for the last few days, only getting up to refuel on bacon sandwiches, cups of coffee and shortbread biscuits haha... I've had a three day week at work because of our English Bank Holiday Monday and I took a days Annual Leave on Friday so two long weekends in a row are making me a happy bunny... apart from the hangover *giggle!
 
So this week I managed to read the following books... as there are only three and the reviews are shorter than usual (due to the shortness of the actual books!) I think I'll put the reviews on here too... you'll find, as usual, the main links are to Amazon for all you 1-Clickers, with links to Goodreads as well... also, if you're a regular Goodreader I always accept friend requests, I love seeing what everyone thinks of my reviews and I always take special notice of my friend's reviews for books I'm about to read... anyway, I digress... here are those books I mentioned...


Sisters in Love by Melissa Foster - I've given 4 stars to the first instalment of The Snow Sisters Trilogy... this little book packs quite a lot into it...
Danika is part of the 'Big Sister Programme' and the situation with the girl she's assigned to is quite a good side to the story, Danika also has parental issues where she feels she needs to be the 'responsible and professional' daughter who always does what's expected, and one of those things was becoming a therapist... also, I have to admit that her biological sister Kaylie really rubbed me up the wrong way and that's one of the reasons I haven't started the next book yet...
Blake... jeez where do I start... he's a self proclaimed man-whore with anger issues who wants to change his ways but doesn't seem to be able to, then his best friend and business partner Dave has a tragic accident, Dave's wife then looks to Blake and having to help her and her son with the aftermath spurs Blake on to receive professional help...
Danica and Blake 'literally' bump into each other and they definitely don't 'Hit it off' in the positive sense of the word... Blake comes across as the player he is which irks Danika straight away and when Blake seeks the help of a Therapist, walking through the doors of his first session, he and Danika are both surprised when they recognise each other...
This was a nice, interesting, Cotemporary Romance with issues that were explored in an entertaining way... I liked the main characters a lot and will definitely be reading the rest of the series... the only thing I didn't really like was that I wasn't swooning at the end of it, I wanted more, and maybe I'm just being greedy, but I wanted to hear the L word come from their lips... also, there were a few issues that didn't really get resolved but I'm assuming they will in the following books, however, there's no real cliffhanger so it could possibly be read as a standalone... This review is also on Goodreads!
Sexual situations and language rate it as suitable for 18+  

Books 1 and 2 in the Foreign Affairs Series by Mari Carr and Lexxie Couper...
After a run of bad luck dating the no-good guys of New York, Annie's best friend Monet, drunkenly signs her up to an online dating website where she finds Dylan Sullivan, an Australian Cowboy, or Stockman as it were, who runs a cattle station with his twin brother Hunter... Annie decides the morning after that she should fess up to the Aussie and tell him she wasn't really serious about doing the whole online dating thing, but as it turns out our Dylan is a pretty easy going, charming guy and they end up becoming fast friends...
After a particularly bad day at work, Dylan messages Annie and they make a deal that neither would last long in the other's territory... betting that he wouldn't last long on the mean streets of New York, and she would run back home at the first sight of a snake or crocodile... and this is where their stories begin... they get their wires crossed along the way and Annie ends up in Sydney Airport and Dylan lands at JFK wondering where the hell Annie is!
Book 1 - Princess - 5 stars... Annie Prince is stranded in Sydney Airport all alone with not even a working cell phone, then here comes Hunter to the rescue, a sudden and strong attraction between them makes for an interesting if not guilt ridden rodeo because, she's here for Dylan right?... I thoroughly enjoyed this hot little Erotic Romance... I have to admit that I got more than I bargained for with this one, I love a bit of a cliché and I think I would use the phrase 'it's quality not quantity that counts' in this case... although this is a short story (roughly about 3 hours reading time) I really connected with the lead characters and got a sense of who they were... I loved Hunter, and not just 'cause he was hot with an Aussie accent, I liked his sarcasm, honesty, loyalty and passion! I liked Annie too, and together they smouldered... here's your Goodreads link.
Book 2 - Cowboy - 4 stars... Dylan's story is much like the first, he hops in a cab and ends up at Annie's apartment building where he bumps into her best friend Monet... again like the first book, it was written very well but, it was just a bit too 'samey' for me, it was sort of a repeat of the first book in a different country... don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it - the sex scenes were hot, I liked Monet, and Dylan was funny and charming and I even managed to conjure up an Aussie accent in my head for his dialogue... and believe me, I'd love an Australian Cowboy of my own after reading these books (fans face, checks flights for Sydney)... but I'm gonna have a break from the rest of the series right now, I will pick up the rest at some point though... Here's your Goodreads link.
I would still recommend these first two books to lovers of short, steamy fun... enjoy! ;)

And now for something completely different... well, I say completely different, it's still about books with this, ya know, being a book blog and all that haha... but anyway...

Insurgent - The Movie...
I eventually got to watch Insurgent last night and, although I still really liked it as a movie in and of itself, I have to say it's not a patch on the book!... Without the narration you don't get explanations, and without the inner dialogue of Tris you don't really know what's going on in that pretty little head of hers... it's all a tad confusing with bits taken out and cut short, and others added to the plot like the addition of the box... which was cool but not part of the Veronica Roth's original story...
Also I found it a little odd that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort have been cast together in two high profile movies in such a short space of time... In John Green's The Fault In Our Stars, Ansel (who plays Gus) is Shailene's (Hazel's) love interest, and in the Divergent series they are actually brother and sister...
Now as for the Allegiant film(s)... I'm really not sure whether I'm looking forward to that or not... it was my least favourite of the books for obvious reasons, although when speaking to one of my bookie friends, she said that it was pretty obvious to her what was going to happen with Tris being so damaged... maybe I was just being an optimist, hopeful that they were going to have a happy ending, but then again... these dystopian novels aren't the stuff of romantic gestures and Happily Ever Afters I suppose, but it still completely broke my heart!... and, with all of these changes that the screenplay writers and Director (Robert Schwentke) are making to the story I'm going to hope that they change it for the better, give us the Hollywood HEA people! You know you want to!

To Read Or Not To Read...
So... I've been humming and hawing over Cassandra Clare's City of Bones... I'm always a bit apprehensive when starting a long series of books that have a lot of hype... so I've read the Blurb and it all sounds good but, I've also read a lot of controversy about this series and I thought it was quite interesting... upon looking into it, it seems that Cassie once went by the name of Cassandra Claire and was a VERY popular Fan Fiction writer in the Harry Potter and LOTR circles... her Draco Trilogy consisted of three Novel length stories written in instalments over 6 years between 2000 to 2006...
Evidence was found of plagiarism and other 'borrowings', it seems there were extensive sequences of action, description and dialogue taken from many different sci-fi novels and popular television shows including Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to name but a few... now, FanFiction.net have rules on plagiarism, I know myself that when you sign up you have to agree to their terms and conditions, you also have to submit it again every few months and maybe this is one of the reasons why!...
Cassandra and her works were removed from the site and a lot of her readers protested, hence, the trilogy was then moved to FictionAlly which is a Harry Potter FF archive... in 2006 after uploading the last instalment, she announced that after a short time, she was going to remove her works from all of the fanfic sites and archives...
I assume, because FanFic is free and you can claim no moneys or benefits from the production of stories based on characters who are not your creation, I have found no evidence of any legal proceedings against her... although it seems she has suffered some consequences of this as there are a lot of readers who obviously don't like her acts of plagiarism...
So, what, may you ask, does all of this have to do with her City of Bones novel?... well, it seems that there are quite a few readers and fans of her fiction writing who have identified the characters in her Draco Trilogy to be eerily similar to the ones in The Mortal Instruments series... so I must ask myself if I'm really all that bothered about this whole controversy... I, in no way support plagiarism but, on the other hand it was fanfic work, not a published series of books. I never read any of her Draco works and I'm assuming that the Mortal Instruments books have all been gone through with a fine toothed comb for any discrepancies whatsoever...
If it wasn't such a hyped up series would I really have bothered to do all of this investigating? Probably not! And do I like the sound of the synopsis? The answer is yes, and I probably would have read it anyway... BUT! now I'm going to read it with a sceptical view, which in turn makes me think that I might not enjoy it as much, and, is it really fair to Miss Clare to be judged on her past mistakes?... hmmmm any of your thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated lol!...


Now for the usual Bargain Corner... here's some 1-Click's I found for all you bargain hunters out there:
 
Links to Amazon.co.uk - Price of download - ASR = Average Star Rating - #tags = Genres...

Well, that's all from me folks... I hope you all have some fabulous books to read this week... feel free to share them with me via the usual links to the right of the page... I'll be back with more next week... much love
Claire xxx
 
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)