The Sunday Post/It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Hey, ladies!

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. It's Monday, What Are You Reading is a fun weekly meme hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date where we share what we've read and reviewed over the past week and what we plan to read next. 


I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! Mine was surprisingly pleasant, since the usual extended family gathering was called off, and that was something to be thankful for. ;) It was just the immediate family and the dogs, and was 100 times better.

Not the best step week. I've been strangely exhausted lately, and have been falling asleep before my usual nighttime dog walk more often than not. Hoping to quit that!

Sunday - 12,100

Monday - 8,966

Tuesday - 7,444

Wednesday - 10,580

Thursday - 8,301

Friday - 12,558

Saturday - 11,658

Total - 71,607

This Week's Recap

Little Book Haul

Top Ten Tuesday: Thanksgiving Edition

Waiting on Wednesday

Coming Up

Mini Reviews Monday

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Books to Buy for Your Reading Slump Friend

Waiting on Wednesday

TBR Thursday

{Book Review} Rising Phoenix by Alice Floyd

Read This Week

4 stars!
I was very pleasantly surprised by this one, especially considering I didn't really care for it initially!

2 stars!
This sucked. Sucked spectrally. 

5 stars!
This book...THIS BOOK! <3
Best of 2016 shelf.

Currently Reading

Yeah, I'm rereading. I know a lot of people don't care for this one, but I just...love it so much. #cantstopwontstop

Working my way through this audio! I'm really enjoying it, and the narration is fantastic. 

What Will I Read Next?

{Book Review} Dearest Neighbor by Penelope Ward

A STANDALONE NOVEL that does *not* need to be read in conjunction with any other book.

From New York Times bestselling author, Penelope Ward, comes a friends to lovers story with sexy new characters.

After getting dumped, the last thing I needed was to move next door to someone who reminded me of my ex-boyfriend, Elec.

Damien was a hotter version of my ex.

The neighbor I’d dubbed “Angry Artist” also had two massive dogs that kept me up with their barking.

He wanted nothing to do with me. Or so I thought until one night I heard laughter coming through an apparent hole in my bedroom wall. 

Damien had been listening to all of my phone sessions with my therapist. 

The sexy artist next door now knew all of my deepest secrets and insecurities.

We got to talking. 

He set me straight with tips to get over my breakup. 

He became a good friend, but Damien made it clear that he couldn’t be anything more. 

Problem was, I was falling hard for him anyway. And as much as he pushed me away, I knew he felt the same…because his heartbeat didn’t lie.

I thought my heart had been broken by Elec, but it was alive and beating harder than ever for Damien. 

I just hoped he wouldn’t shatter it for good. 

Author's note – Neighbor Dearest is a full-length standalone novel. Due to strong language and sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.

2 "Why Must I Always Be The Black Sheep" Stars

I was very excited to try this recent release, since I'd been eager to try the author out and there are a staggering amount of positive reviews for it. Not to mention it ticked so many of my guilty pleasure boxes, including:

Artistic hero (artists and rockstars are my weaknesses)

Dog loving hero

Woman scorned

Friends to lovers

I was expecting to be like other readers, and to fall in love with Damien and Chelsea's story. 

I did not. In fact, I nearly shelved this as a DNF!

My biggest problem with the story was the heroine, Chelsea. She was completely destroyed after breaking up with her then-boyfriend, and her only real joy comes from working at a youth center, at least until her new neighbor arrives. 

Once Damien was on the scene, all that angst over the previous relationship went out the window. While I was glad she was no longer moaning over the other guy, it was jarring to see her go from being totally listless to wanting any and all of Damien's attention. Ex-boyfriend who?

I can handle negative attributes in a protagonist; it gives them a more well rounded and believable feel. However, you have to balance that out! Aside from whining, moping, acting like a dramatic 14 year old, questioning herself and being horny (that one's not a flaw!), Chelsea had no other characteristics. She had no backstory beyond the ex-boyfriend, no likes or dislikes beyond Damien, and no real hopes or dreams. She mentions her enjoyment of her job at the youth center, but we never get to see or hear why she enjoys it.

Then there's Damien. He was a very typical contemporary romance love interest: a bad boy with a soft side, who happens to be hiding something that he feels the heroine cannot handle. He was pretty forgettable, to be honest.

My favorite characters were Damien's two Rottweilers. They were the most original part of the book.

One thing I had a massive problem with were the sex scenes! There was absolutely no foreplay, none at all. They'd be having a conversation, make eye contact and then boom, penetration. It was like really bad porn.

The pacing was choppy, with some things rushed and some things that dragged on. It kept me from really falling into the story.

On the plus side, it was as addictive as reality TV, and I finished it in less than a day. 

Overall, I was not a fan of this one. Clearly, haha. However, don't take my word for it - I'm the only one to rate it lower than 3.5 stars!

SaveSave

Book Review: The Paper Swan by Leylah Atter

Add to Goodreads

From Goodreads

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit.
They lie.
For 21 days she held on.
But on Day 22, she would have given anything for the sweet slumber of death.
Because on Day 22, she realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.

A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense. Please note: This is NOT a love triangle.

A full-length, standalone novel, intended for mature audiences due to violence, sex and language. Subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.

My Review

2 "The Stupidity...It Hurts" Stars

There are no good guys or bad guys. Everyone has a reason.

Well....that was something else. About a month or so ago I couldn't open Facebook or Goodreads without people raving about this book. The mysterious synopsis, the gorgeous and ethereal cover, plus the glowing reviews made me snatch this up as soon as it released. Just got around to reading it, and while the first few chapters had me practically biting my nails with nerves, it fell flat after that. Seriously flat. 

I was dead already. The truth doesn't always set you free. The truth can kill you, slice open your innards and turn everything inside out. Everything I believed, everything I thought was real, had been turned upside down.

I won't be giving a synopsis on this one, since the intrigue of it is one of the only pros to it and I don't want to take that from someone if they wish to try it. I'll try and keep this as indirect as possible.That said, it's impossible to be completely vague with this one, so stop reading now if you want to be completely surprised. 

I wanted to weep because someone I loved had died in that face, and I didn't know when or how, and I never got to bourn him. And now they were going to take him away, the boy inside the man. 

First, the few things that did work for me. And yes, I'm breaking out the bullets for this one. ;)

• That cover! Is it not the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen?

• This books heavily features life as a lackey for a Mexican drug cartel. I've been fascinated by cartels ever since reading Karina Halle's Dirty Angels earlier this year, and I really enjoyed that part of the book. It was intense, gory, and heart wrenching.

• The Paper Swan did a fantastic job of making you see things in shades of grey instead of stark black and white. The things that the Damien (the love interest) is forced to go through - and at such a young age - are staggering, sickening, and make you empathize with him in ways you don't want to, but can't help.

• There's a few lines in the story that are beautiful and show some nice potential for the author.

Vengeance only begets more vengeance, more chaos, more darkness. Vengeance abducts us and imprisons us and mutilates us, and we suffer and suffer until we unravel its probing parasitic suckers around us. 

And the not so enjoyable.....

• This heroine...oh my god. If there ever was an idiotic, obnoxious, self-centered, ridiculous, shallow, stupid  fuckwit, it was Skye. I wanted to shake her throughout the entire novel. Her acceptance and immediate forgiveness of the horrors inflicted upon her were flabbergasting. Who does that?! The man cut off your finger while you were wide awake, and you just want to shag him???? I don't care what he might mean to you, that is the exact opposite of what any normal, sane person would be doing. 

• Predictable. So, so predictable. The story banks hard on the "big surprises", and if you're like me and saw things coming from a mile away, it just made the books flaws all the more obvious. Several of the plot twists are overused, too. 

• Weak side characters that are completely flat, giving the story a self centered and drab feel. 

• I didn't like Damien, and even more than that I couldn't connect with him. Despite what you're shown about him and the empathy you can't help but feel, he wasn't someone I could enjoy and want the best for. 

• The stupidity of both Skye and Damien. Ties into the predictability aspect, but some things I'd just shake my head at. Honestly, what else were they expecting?

• Skye and Damien had no chemistry whatsoever, not even in the sex scenes. 

• Unrealistic. I'm all for fiction, but when you're writing in the contemporary genre it doesn't do well to just be like "well, that's so freakin' unlikely I can't even say". The basic storyline could've easily been used in a likely manner and made it a much more enjoyable road. 

• The pacing was odd. It was fast paced and engrossing for the first half or so, with an enjoyable and engrossing flow. At around the halfway point it stalled, lost all its momentum and just dragged. I came *this close* to not finishing this.

Overall, The Paper Swan was a story of stupid people doing stupid things with obvious twists and turns, and I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't take my word for it though, as everyone loved it but me!

STATS

Rating: 2 stars

Genre: New adult, contemporary dark romance

POV: 1st and 3rd, alternating sections

Series: Standalone

Steam/sexual content: Intended steam, somewhat explicit sex

Warnings: Violence, sex

HEA: Yes

Length: 390 pages

My own copy

Goodreads

- The Bibliophile Babe 

Book Review: How To Love by Katie Contungo

From Goodreads

Before: 
Reena Montero has loved Sawyer LeGrande for as long as she can remember: as natural as breathing, as endless as time. But he's never seemed to notice that Reena even exists until one day, impossibly, he does. Reena and Sawyer fall in messy, complicated love. But then Sawyer disappears from their humid Florida town without a word, leaving a devastated—and pregnant—Reena behind.

After: 
Almost three years have passed, and there's a new love in Reena's life: her daughter, Hannah. Reena's gotten used to being without Sawyer, and she's finally getting the hang of this strange, unexpected life. But just as swiftly and suddenly as he disappeared, Sawyer turns up again. Reena doesn't want anything to do with him, though she'd be lying if she said Sawyer's being back wasn't stirring something in her. After everything that's happened, can Reena really let herself love Sawyer LeGrande again?

In this breathtaking debut, Katie Cotugno weaves together the story of one couple falling in love—twice. 

My Review

2 "The Cover Got Me" Stars

I'm going to bother doing my usual superfluous summary thing, because the Goodreads synopsis sums it up the entire story. I saw this on Book Outlet a few weeks ago, and bought it just for the color. It's so visually appealing to me, and it even feels nice in your hands! It was cheap, pretty, and the synopsis sounded like something different from the usual YA contemporary.

Alas, it sucked.

Sawyer. My god, I hated him. 

He comes back into town and Reena unexpectedly meets him in a gas station. Sawyer had no idea she was pregnant, and only knows from the town gossip that she's now a mom. Once Sawyer finds out that the baby is actually his, he has next to no reaction. Okay, so you could write that off as temporary shock, right? Wrong. He's like that through the entire book. 

His attitude towards his daughter made me want to smack him on so many levels. He doesn't care that he's missed nearly two years of his child's life, is indifferent about seeing her, doesn't try and work out a visiting schedule with Reena, nothing. He was completely apathetic about everything.

I wanted to smack him throughout the entire book, to be perfectly honest. I suppose some might find him charming, but the way he spoke to Reena and acted around her was downright disrespectful to me. He's immature, selfish, and an all around ass. 

He's also an ex-addict, and while I'm not saying that people don't deserve a second chance...Reena is fine with immediately handing her daughter off to Sawyer, with no discussion or worry that the last time she saw him he was higher than a kite. I won't let my bird around a person like that without being certain they were clean first, never mind my dogs (I don't have kids, so I'm coming up with the closet thing :p).

Reena. This girl is the queen of whining! Not a page went by where she wasn't moaning about something or other. I get it, I do: life as a mom is hard, especially as a teenaged mother. However, Reena has so much more than most teen parents do, and every limit she has are self inflicted. She annoyed me beyond belief, complaining about anything and everything while enjoying:

• Being a high school graduate
• Going to college
• Having unlimited (FREE!!!) child care
• Having a steady job
• Having a boyfriend that genuinely likes her kid and is fine with her status as a mother
• Hanging out with a great best friend 
• Not struggling for money
• Living at home 

She has so much, and she's still not satisfied. I didn't care about her so called "issues" whatsoever.

She also only tended to care or think about her child when it was convenient for her. There were no thoughts about putting her daughter first in any situation, or being worried about Sawyer being back. 

I didn't buy the connection between Sawyer or Reena. At all. Not in the "before" or the "after". At most, Reena had a small crush on him. In the here and now, they had no chemistry and I just didn't feel it. It's not a love story, it's a convenience story. 

The before and the after didn't mesh up well. I felt like the before was way too prevalent in the story, and I was getting mostly useless information. I'll fully admit to skimming those sections. It interrupted the flow of the now, and didn't make for any character development. The ending was incredibly rushed; the last few pages left the impression of an absolute scramble for the author to wrap it up.

Some of the writing is incredibly odd, in what I think is an attempt to sound poetic. Things like:

"He smells the same, is the first thing I notice, like bar soap and things that grow in the ground." 

What does that even mean? Flowers? Onions? Worms? BODIES???

and

"He smiled, and I could feel it in my teeth."

What?

Needless to say, this was not the book for me, and I wouldn't recommend it. The storyline had so much potential, but the book had no redeeming qualities. This was my overall experience:

STATS:

Rating: 2 stars

Genre: Young adult (does not read like new adult), contemporary romance

POV: 1st person

Steam/sexual content: Non-exsistent 

Series: Standalone

Cliffhanger: No

HEA: Yes

Length: 389 pages

My own copy

Goodreads

- The Bibliophile Babe

Reading Slump No More!

Hey, guys!



Since early June or so, I've been in the worst reading slump. Nothing was holding my attention, it took me days to finish a single book, and I hadn't read a 5 star worthy read since I didn't know when. I'm so happy to report that that is gone! The book that kicked it was The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent. It seems like an author I like, a fast paced setting, an anticipated release and an unusual take on paranormal is just what I needed to get back into reading.

Last Sunday I finished Bad Romeo instead of shelving it as a DNF, and I suddenly wanted to do nothing but read. I'm back to being able to get lost in a book, reading lightning fast, and I had both a 4  star and a 5 star read. Yay!

I finished 8 books last week. Six physical books, two eBooks, six full length novels, one short little story and a fairly short, smutty anthology. I'd been trying to finish Bad Romeo for weeks, but the rest were completed within a day or so. This was with a very full work schedule, too! Pretty happy with myself, in case you couldn't tell. :D


Here's what I finished. Reviews will be coming for all of these over the next week or two, and one has already been posted and is linked below.

Add to Goodreads

I was not bested! 2 stars.

Add to Goodreads

2 stars. My review is here.

Add to Goodreads

3 stars

Add to Goodreads

This just might have been the dirtiest, smuttiest book I've read all year, and that's saying something because I read a lot  of book porn.
3-3.5 stars, still deciding.

Add to Goodreads

Part one, very short. An okay 2.5 stars.

Add to Goodreads

5 stars! Beautifully done novel. 

Add to Goodreads

A fair smut collection. I liked the second book best, though the third was admittedly hot. 3 stars.

Add to Goodreads

Not Cosway's strongest novel or my favorite in the series, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it! 4 stars.

Have you read anything good lately?

- The Bibliophile Babe

Book Review - Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGurie

From Goodreads:

The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University's Walking One-Night Stand. 

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match

My Review:

Well. That was a train wreck of epic proportions. I'm usually not one to bitch about unhealthy relationships in books, because come on, it's fiction and I have better things to scrutinize in a book than the romance. However, this book should've been titled: The Idiot's Guide to An Unhealthy Relationship.

For the most part, my issues were entirely with the plot and characters and not the author herself.  The writing was absorbing, and very easy to read. That's my extent of positives for Beautiful Disaster, though. 

Meet Abby Abernathy. She's a good girl with a "dark past" that isn't really that dark, spends all of her time chasing after the latest hottie but is of course a virgin, has a bi-polar best friend (not really, but that bitch gave me whiplash with her mood swings), the most important thing to her is what other people think, and somehow has no job, shitty parents, and can still afford to blow all her money on manicures and clothes. Whatever happened to the broke college student?

Abby might just be the most wishy-washy, idiot protagonist I've ever read. And I read Twilight! She was stupid, shallow, selfish, and had no self respect. She constantly bounced around on her feelings for Travis, and couldn't stay true to her only smart choice of dumping his ass.
She had all this angst and inner turmoil and all that jazz, and when we finally figure out just what her deal is, the only thing I could think was "That's what you're flipping out over? Seriously, is that all?".
I couldn't stand her, although she had a compelling voice for me to be able to suffer through her thoughts for so many pages.


Travis. Wow. Well, he doesn't claim to be anything besides royally fucked up, and at least that's an honest assessment.
Is it crass if I say I don't buy his excuse for being so messed up? Yes, it's an awful situation, but the level of control he allowed it to have over him was excessive.

Speaking of control....Travis is the worst kind of control freak: physically strong, mentally weak, and seriously insecure.
He throws temper tantrums worse than a 5 year old's, so much so that he's throwing things, smashing stereos, and kicking down doors. He absolutely cannot handle when something doesn't go his way, and if Abby steps out of his perceived lines, all hell breaks loose.
He physically removed her from dancing with someone (when they weren't even together!), ignored her struggles and protests, and humiliated her in front of their peers. On more than one occasion he physically restrains her from leaving, and he's constantly manipulating her to stay with him. It was appalling. That's not love. It's not romance. It's co-dependency, disrespect, and obsession.

I was so dubious with the amount of violence Travis inflicts on anyone and everyone. How is this kid not in jail for the kind of assaults he regularly commits? Must be okay though, because everyone he beat up "deserved it".


I was most annoyed when Travis bought Abby a dog, while she's living in the dorms and without consulting her first. I'm sorry, but as an avid dog lover, that kind of irresponsibility grates on my nerves. They didn't research the breed at all, didn't discus it, had nothing prepared, ect. Oy vey, it gave me an eye twitch.


I didn't like anyone but the gay friend and the snarky roommate in this story. I guess Shep was tolerable sometimes, too, but everyone else? Nope. Just nope.


The pacing was weird for me. It felt like the book could've either started wrapping up or ended at more than one spot, and the last quarter of the book was a bit choppy.

I will say that McGurie's writing style reminds me a lot of Colleen Hoover, one of my favorite authors. It's so absorbing and easy to read, and the books go by lightning fast. I finished this in less than a day, and it didn't feel like the 350 or so pages it is. I'll read more of her work to get a feel for her stories, but right now my expectations aren't high.


Overall, Beautiful Disaster is just that: an obsessive, controlling, irrational disaster. However, I devoured it. If you want to read it, I'll pass you my popcorn so you have something to munch one while the train wreck unfolds.

Stats:

Rating: 2 stars

Genre: New adult, contemporary romance

POV: 1st person, single perspective 

Steam/sexual content: Moderate steam, mild sex scenes

Warning: Violence

Series: Beautiful, #1

HEA: Yes

Cliffhanger: No

My own copy

- The Bibliophile Babe