2015 Book #2 – Darling Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Historical Romance, Maiden Lane series, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

Title: Darling Beast
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt
Date finished: 1/7/15
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: October 14, 2014
Pages in book: 321
Stand alone or series: Series – Maiden Lane #7

Blurb from the cover:

A MAN CONDEMNED . . .
Falsely accused of murder and mute from a near-fatal beating, Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne has escaped from Bedlam. With the Crown’s soldiers at his heels, he finds refuge in the ruins of a pleasure garden, toiling as a simple gardener. But when a vivacious young woman moves in, he’s quickly driven to distraction . . .
A DESPERATE WOMAN . . .
London’s premier actress, Lily Stump, is down on her luck when she’s forced to move into a scorched theatre with her maid and small son. But she and her tiny family aren’t the only inhabitants-a silent, hulking beast of a man also calls the charred ruins home. Yet when she catches him reading her plays, Lily realizes there’s more to this man than meets the eye.
OUT OF ASH, DESIRE FLARES
Though scorching passion draws them together, Apollo knows that Lily is keeping secrets. When his past catches up with him, he’s forced to make a choice: his love for Lily . . . or the explosive truth that will set him free.

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “book with antonyms in the title” check box (darling and beast). I have read the other books in the Maiden Lane series, though none are yet discussed on this blog (hopefully that will be fixed in the future). I think that this is an excellent series, though I have trouble keeping the previous characters straight sometimes. Luckily, Hoyt has included a series of family trees to demonstrate the connections in the novels of the series.
I very much enjoyed this novel, there were a good amount of interesting plot twists and I was interested in the story throughout the novel. One piece of this novel specifically that I found very interesting was that at one point Lily is writing a farce (play) that her brother intends to sell to pay off his debts. I couldn’t find the exact words again but she describes a farce as a bunch of a bunch of plot twists each happening one after the other so much so that the whole idea of the play feels exaggerated and improbably. At the point in the novel when many of the characters were gathered together at the house party, I couldn’t help but notice that the events were happening much as Lily described a farce to be. I just found that interesting.

The bottom line: I would definitely recommend this book both as part of the series and also based on the merits of the book itself.

Author website: http://www.elizabethhoyt.com/
Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Darling-Beast-Maiden-Lane-Elizabeth/dp/1455586307/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1420719107&sr=8-1

2Jan2015

2014 Recap and 2015 Goals

Posted in For the love of books, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, TBR Pile Reading Challenge (Roof Beam Reader) by rebeccabook17

Looking back on 2014, I feel I’ve accomplished and grown a lot in my book travels. I started out this year blog-less and having no idea how much I would love blogging and how much I would become involved in it. Blogging, and even specifically book blogging, is this whole other world that you can become immersed in. There is such an audience out there for book bloggers, it is just astounding. And while there are many things I’d like to improve about my blog in the coming year, I think that this past year has been very successful. I held my first reading challenge on my blog, and though I was the only one who participated, it was still very fun.

With regards to my 2014 reading goals, I accomplished many of them but not all. One of my goals had been to read Pride and Prejudice, it is one of my absolute favorite movies and I started it years ago and just never finished it. Unfortunately, I did not read it again this year so I will most likely be rolling that goal over to next year. I also had a goal to read at least 2 books that were made into movies that I like. I read one (Beautiful Creatures) but did not read a second. I actually ended up reading the whole series and it was very interesting. My goal for 2014 was to read sixty books and I far surpassed that during the year. I slowed down in my reading towards the end of the year due to having to work a lot of overtime and therefore not having a lot of extra time for reading but I read over 100 books for the year so I am still quite pleased with my accomplishment.

It’s very hard to decide what my favorite book of 2014 was. Fortunately, I was able to narrow it down to 4 favorites out of the 100+ I read this year. I loved Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger because it was very interesting and different. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was a fan-favorite this year and became a fantastic movie. Glass Kitchen by Linda Lee Francis was beautiful and touching and magical. And finally, In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins was just as wonderful as I expected it to be. Higgins never lets me down, I devour her books as soon as they’re released.

My 2015 goals will not include a specific number goal for the year. I don’t think I will be able to hit the 100 book mark again between having a house now and acquiring 3 pets at the end of 2014 and also dealing with my job, I’m lucky if I can find 20 minutes to read each day. Nor do I want to read books just to get the numbers in and to get up to my number goal. This year I want to focus more on expanding my horizons and reading different types of books that maybe I’ve never read before. I’m also creating goals this year that are more blog-related than reading-related. The following will be my goals for 2015:

1. Read at least 20 different types of the books on the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist
2. Post at least 2 non-book review related posts per month
3. Participate in one book reading challenge (on an external site) per quarter
4. Post at least two posts per month concerning various book memes
5. Read at least 5 books from Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
6. Participate in Roof Beam Reader’s 2015 TBR Pile Reading Challenge

My books for this reading challenge are all books that I currently have on my TBR shelf and that either I own or someone has loaned to me and I few thrown in that I will get from the library. My goals will be:
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Girls of a Tender Age by Mary-Ann Throne Smith
3. Lightning by Dean Koontz
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
6. Lethal by Sandra Brown
7. Running for Women by Kara Goucher
8. I Adored a Lord by Katharine Ashe
9. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
10. The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott
11. The Cage by Meghan Shepherd
12. Cemetery Girl by David Bell

I am looking forward to what 2015 will bring! Happy Reading everyone!

4Nov2014

Spooky Series Reading Challenge – Wrap-up

Posted in Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge by rebeccabook17

So! As you guys can see, I wasn’t able to read all of the books in the Undead series like I had planned. I did get through a good chunk though, I read 8 in the series and 2 connected novellas. I just finished the ninth yesterday and I plan to finish the rest of the series this month even though my spooky series reading challenge has ended. So if you were just dying to see what happens, stay tuned! We will get to the end. And even though I’m pretty sure no one else participated in my Spooky Series Reading Challenge (besides my mom :-)) I still had fun doing it! And maybe someday I’ll have reading challenges with lots of other people involved! Thanks everyone for reading! Hope you all enjoyed Halloween!

27Oct2014

2014 – Book #97

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

**SPOILER ALERT**

As this book is a continuation in a series, some items are discussed in this blog post that reveal plot twists in previous books. Read at your own risk.

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the ninty-seventh book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unwelcome by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the eighth book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/26/14. I rated this book 4.75 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up about one week after where the seventh book left off. Antonia died in order to save Betsy’s life, and now Betsy is having trouble dealing with her grief over the matter. Not only that, but when she calls Michael Wyndham to inform him (Michael is the leader of Antonia’s wolf-pack) he requests that Betsy come to Cape Cod with Antonia’s body and also to discuss exactly how this has come about.

Basically the werewolves are all pissed. Apparently everyone is blaming Betsy for Antonia’s death even though the werewolves’ lack of acceptance with Antonia (she was a little “different”) is what drove her to leave for Minnesota in the first place so the blame should honestly be a little shared. And as if Betsy weren’t beating herself up about it enough already, she loved Antonia and is fairly devastated by her death. Anyways, so Betsy, Sinclair, Jess, and BabyJon stomp off to Cape Cod to answer a few rude werewolf questions.

While they are in Cape Cod, Betsy and Sinclair start noticing that everyone is acting a little weird around BabyJon. Derik gets really freaked out every time he sees the baby, and Michael is ignoring the baby as if it doesn’t even exist. Betsy starts to think there is some wrong, and when a teen changes into a werewolf for the first time and takes a bite out of BabyJon, her suspicions are confirmed. Meanwhile back at the homestead, Laura is losing her gosh-darned mind and has trapped Tina somewhere. Marc is trying to reason with her while sending garbled acronym-filled messages to Betsy that she can’t interpret.

I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, overall obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I very much liked this book, it was well-paced and I was interested throughout the story. I thought it was interesting that this book was almost like a tv cross-over special between the Undead book series and the Wyndham book series. Loved this one, would definitely recommend!!

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unwelcome-Queen-Betsy-Book/dp/B005X4AQDE/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

23Oct2014

2014 – Book #94

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the ninty-fourth book I read in 2014 was Undead and Uneasy by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the sixth book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/22/14. I rated this book 4.5 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up about 3 months after where the fifth book left off. Betsy’s wedding is fast approaching and about four weeks before the wedding everyone disappears. And then Betsy’s father and stepmother die in an awful car crash and she is left to face their funeral for the most part on her own.

Betsy’s best friend Jessica is dying of cancer, and Jessica’s boyfriend Nick (who Betsy had previously had a little blood-crazy episode with when she first turned into a vampire but then they erased his memory of the incident, or so they thought) confronts Betsy and tells her to turn Jessica into a vampire and save her or he’d unload a bunch of bullet’s into Betsy’s head. Once Betsy gets over the shock that Nick has remembered what happened, she lets Nick know that she’s already tried that route and Jessica turned her down.

Sinclair has been missing for two weeks and Betsy thinks that he’s just in a snit because he doesn’t want to go through with the wedding ceremony. Sinclair seems to think that they’re already married since that’s what the Book of the Dead says, but Betsy wants the ceremony she’s been planning since she was a little girl. Kind of hard to do when the groom just up and disappears though. Once Tina finds out that Sinclair is missing, Betsy realizes that maybe she should be a little worried. As much as Sinclair doesn’t want to go through with the ceremony, its really not like him to just disappear for a couple weeks. He’d fight about the ceremony, not passively just not show up. Turns out Betsy probably should’ve been worried a little sooner.

I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, overall obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I think this book might be one of my favorite in the series so far. I love how Betsy overcomes the evil in the end of the book and what she does right after that, it was unexpected and a bit thrilling. Stay tuned for more adventures though as I try to read through the rest of the series this month. Going to take a Herculean effort since there are eight more books to go (7 and a collection of novellas). Great series though and I love reading it so it’s fun! I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who’s looking for a good laugh.

20Oct2014

2014 – Book #93

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the ninty-third book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unpopular by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the fifth book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/18/14. I rated this book 4 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up about 4 months after where the fourth book left off (not sure of the exact timing of the short story stuck in between the two books).

This book opens with Betsy planning the guest list for her unwanted surprise party. Even though she has told her friends repeatedly not to throw her a party, she expects that they will not be listening to her anytime soon and therefore decides she might as well help them plan correctly. During the course of the planning, she finds out her best friend Jessica is sick. Jess has myeloma, blood cancer. This news is devastating to Betsy, and she thinks about possibly turning Jess into a vampire so that she won’t lose her forever.

This book was all about vamp politics. Some big-wig vampires from Europe arrive to pay homage to the new King and Queen (a little late, but whatevs) and madness ensues when one of Betsy’s vampire friends (Sophie) turns out to be the murder victim of one of the big-wig European vampires (Alonzo). Sophie goes a little crazy and demands that Betsy kill Alonzo. And while Betsy agrees that what Alonzo did is pretty awful, she can’t exactly kill an important vampire for something that happened over a hundred years ago, can she?

I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, overall obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I always end up laughing out loud. I would definitely recommend this series to other readers! This book wasn’t the most exciting in the series but it was interesting and touching in its own way. I like Betsy’s point that the friendships in this series make her stronger rather than weaken her, even though she knows she will outlive her friends by hundreds of years. I think that was an interesting point, definitely different than other vampires in the series but I guess that’s what makes her the queen.

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unpopular-Queen-Betsy-Book/dp/0425210294/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1413805719&sr=8-1

9Oct2014

2014 – Book #91

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the ninty-first book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unreturnable by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the fourth book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/9/14. I rated this book 3.75 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up less than 2 months where the last book left off, Betsy and her household are preparing for Christmas.

There are a number of different things all going on at once in this book, it was a little all over the place for me. Betsy is getting to know her half-sister Laura, who also happens to be the daughter of the devil. While spending time with Laura, Betsy becomes slowly aware of the fact that Laura has an anger problem. I think it really hit home when Laura stabbed Betsy with her hellfire sword. Laura also help Betsy babysit for Baby Jon (son of Betsy’s dad and the Ant, full brother to Laura minus the devil-ish parts) and we find out that the Ant recognized her all along. While Betsy is getting to know Laura she is also planning her wedding to Eric Sinclair. Betsy accidentally lets it slip that she can read Eric’s thoughts when they’re doing it. Eric decides this means he’s not the king (since he can’t hear her thoughts) and they almost call of the wedding. Jon from the Blade Warriors (I think from the last book? Book 3) asks Betsy if he can write her biography, and a hard copy of the 300 page manuscript goes missing. A scary empty vampire librarian starts a newsletter and asks Betsy to write a column for it. Oh! And Jessica goes on a date with Detective Nick Berry (the guy Betsy fed on in the first book who she turned into a puddle of crying mess and Sinclair had to wipe his memory). Now that I think of it we didn’t see Marc much in this book. Oh! And I almost forgot there is a serial killer called the Driveway Killer and Betsy meets one of the ghosts of his victims and the ghost helps her find the killer and stop him from killing again. I think that’s everything. Like a said, kind of all over.

Overall I liked this book but it is not my favorite in the series. Even still, I was laughing out loud throughout the book.I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, obviously I love this book and series or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I always end up laughing out loud. I would definitely recommend this series to other readers!

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unreturnable-Queen-Besty-Book/dp/0425208168/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1412861438&sr=1-1

6Oct2014

2014 – Book #90

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the nintieth book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unappreciated by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the third book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/5/14. I rated this book 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up 3 months after where the last book left off, starting about two weeks before Halloween. Betsy’s Dad stops by one morning to let her know that even though she received an invitation, no one expects her to come to her stepmother’s baby shower. During this unpleasant visit with Dad he lets it slip (oops!) that the Ant had a baby almost 20 years ago and gave it away.

After interviewing the Ant, Betsy finds out that Eric knew she had a sister all along. Apparently its written in the Book of the Dead that “the Queen’s sister shalt be Belov’d of the Morning , and shalt take the Worlde.” Betsy is just so sick of finding out about all this stuff from the Book of the Dead whenever Eric or Tina deign to let her know about her own life, so she decides to just sit down and read the whole thing. Bad idea. After going crazy from reading the book for too long, she physically attacks Jessica, emotionally attacks Marc, boinks Eric, and tries to kill Tina. Busy afternoon. Once they all figure out that Betsy went a little cukoo, they lock her in a room until they decide what to do with her.

Once Betsy wakes up though she is back to her old self. Unfortunately she remembers everything though and has to work hard to make it up to the people she hurt that she loves. While all this is happening she also has to deal with finding and meeting her sister, rebellious and eventually murderous employees at Scratch (the nightclub she inherited after she staked another vampire in the last novel), and trying to decide if she really loves Sinclair or if she’s just hurt that he has stopped chasing her. All very compilcated.

I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, overall obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I always end up laughing out loud. I would definitely recommend this series to other readers! The thirteenth book in the series is coming out tomorrow so if you’re looking for a light, fun, easy-read this whole series is perfect!

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unappreciated-Queen-Berkley-Sensation/dp/0425207226/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1412612573&sr=8-1

5Oct2014

2014 – Book #89

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the eighty-ninth book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unemployed by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the second book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/5/14. I rated this book 4.5 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up three months after where the first book left off. Betsy is still mad at Sinclair for his trickery and refusing to speak to him. She also decides that she can’t mooch off her friend Jessica forever and it is high past time she got herself a job.

Through some dumb luck she lands her dream job, working in the shoe department at Macy’s in the Mall of America. Sinclair can’t seem to leave her alone though and he corners her at work to try and convince her that their stalemate has gone on long enough. Around this time Betsy also has to solve the mystery of why a bunch of vampires are being killed. And when the group confronts Betsy herself and tries to kill her, there isn’t any avoiding the issue anymore (Betsy can be very good at that.) And so she enlists the help of Sinclair and Tina to help solve the mystery of who the bad guys are.

Along the way Betsy has to deal with a number of other issues, including her stepmother becoming pregnant, her boss firing her, a gang of vampire killers and their anonymous benefactor, and a power-driven, Sinclair-lusting, crazed vampire. She deals with all of the above with the utmost class (*cough*) and aplomb. Ha! She actually deals with everything with her sarcastic wit and issue avoidance.

I’ll say pretty much the same thing I said for the first book here, overall obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I always end up laughing out loud. I would definitely recommend this series to other readers! I am looking forward to re-reading the rest of the series this month as well as the new release coming out on October 7th!!

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unemployed-Queen-Betsy-Book/dp/0425197484/ref=tmm_mmp_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1412548291

5Oct2014

2014 – Book #88

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Reading Challenges, Spooky series reading challenge by rebeccabook17

As part of my October spooky series reading challenge, the eighty-eighth book I read in 2014 was Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson. This is the first book in her Undead series about vampire queen Betsy Taylor. This is the series I will be focusing on this month for my Spooky Series reading challenge for the month of October. I finished this book on 10/4/14. I rated this book 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5. This series is about Betsy Taylor, who wakes up one day to find herself naked on a slab in the morgue. She had been hit by a car and when she wakes up she is, surprise!, a vampire.

Since she doesn’t recall being bitten by a vampire, though she does recall being hit by a Pontiac, why she is waking up as a vampire is a mystery to her. She decides not to think about it too much at first though and lets her friends and family know that she is alive (well, sort of). She is met with mixed reactions, from relief and elation to denial and fear. After letting her family know she is ok, she meets up with a bunch of other vampires, and the leader guy tells her that she must pledge her allegiance to him. Betsy finds this amusing, she just wants to continue her life as she knows it, she definitely does not want to get involved in vamp politics.

Unfortunately this is something she can’t seem to avoid, since yummy Sinclair seems to think she’s some foretold Queen from the Book of the Dead. Sinclair and the current leader Nostro don’t get along. Betsy agrees that Nostro seems like a complete jerk, though she doesn’t find the arrogant Sinclair to be much of an improvement, but she doesn’t understand why we can’t all just get along.

Overall, obviously I love this book or else I wouldn’t be re-reading the whole series. I can’t say enough good things about this book and this series. I always end up laughing out loud. Betsy is such an unlikely heroine. She is vain, sarcastic, and childish but she somehow seems to figure thing out as she goes and blunders her way through. And despite all her screw-ups she still maintains her circle of close friends and family, who all love her even though she is completely self-absorbed. Awesome books, fun and interesting plots, and I love re-reading the earlier books and picking up on different nuances that stand out based on my knowledge from the later books.

Link to author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unwed-MaryJanice-Davidson-ebook/dp/B002YKOXGG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412546723&sr=8-1&keywords=undead+and+unwed