Ms Ali Cat: Ali Crean – Page 86 – Have Coffee Need Books

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Any Day That Ends in YA – The Spirit Keeper by K.B. Laugheed

I had a case of reader’s peckishness over the later part of last week and I tried to read Tijan’s Carter Reed and I wasn’t feeling it. Opened up and got to chapter eight on Flight, the First book of the Crescent Chronicles. I got to 40% of Love in the Time of Global Warming. Barely made it into Endless by Amanda Gray, which is one I’m supposed to review for NetGalley–not sure what I’m going to do there. And I bought but didn’t even tap into the Bayou Heat books by Alexandra Ivy & Laura Wright. I was sort of having my own version of my baby sister’s attention span on book boyfriends.

Finally yesterday, with the blood vessels in my head trying to evict either my brain matter or protesting the housing of my skull… somehow I managed to get two books read. I don’t know what it says about me that I can do more reading with a migraine than I can without one.

The Spirit Keeper by K.B. Laugheed was really an incredibly great book. I hate making statements like that because I can hear my Photography Instructor from college saying in the back of my mind that that is not the correct way to give valuable criticism. But this book really is a great book. (Nancy, I am going to qualify it now! I swear.)

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Tongue Wagger – The Last Alive by H.L. Wampler

This is my first Empowering Lemon Bundt Wednesday and the reference will probably be lost on most but it is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer quote from when Willow goes to join the Wicca circle at UC Sunnydale. Inspite of the tongue and cheek meaning to the comment it is meant to infer that the members have a mean amount of girl power. My Wednesday blog posts will be for books with heroines who kick serious boot-ay!

The first urban warrior to be featured is Emma Taylor, the zombie slaying survivor of an apocalypse started when her sister becomes patient zero after a mysterious bite on a family camping trip. The Last Alive is a very fast paced novel. From the first page it takes off and there are no lulls or pauses. Tension is created by an alternating look between the fortified Pittsburgh she lives in present time with flashbacks to the initial outbreak and it leaves the reader caught precariously between the panic of then and desperation of now.

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Morning Tea with the Author – H.L. Wampler

Today is an auspicious day because it is the beginning of a new addition to my blog, Morning Tea with the Author, which is a Q&A with authors about books, writing, reading and everything in the kitchen sink.

My first author is H.L. Wampler, creator of the novel The Last Alive, a horror story about a zombipocalypse that begins when her twin sister is bitten in the woods while camping and then things get really hairy.

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Makin’ the Love Monday – Found by Evangeline Anderson

I have spent the last week under a ton of blankets trying to shake the chills and sleeping off some sneaky poorlies. I wanted to get a good deal of reading and other assorted “life necessities” taken care of before the beginning of October. But alas, the cold hand of illness brought me to my knees and I only read about four books this past week.

My Makin’ the Love Monday selection of this week is one of the Brides of the Kindred novels by Evangeline Anderson, book four, Found. I started reading this series after finding one of the titles on a Listopia lists, Mars Needs Women Trope, which just made me giggle to no end. When I read the first book, Claimed, I was about 70% on board but I had this really horrible problem… I truly HATED the heroine and her sister made me want to eat glass. I really liked the males though, Sylvan who is a main character in the first and the hero of the second–Hunted, is one of my favorites. BUT I hate his HEA too. Then there was Sought… Deep is so yummy–all broken and tortured and his light half and eager to please brother, Lock. But Kat was freaking irritating as all hell. There was this ray of hope… In Sought Lauren is introduced and she is Xairn’s mate for the fourth book, Found, and she is wonderful. How could this possibly go wrong?

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Any Day that Ends in YA – Runes by Ednah Walters

I didn’t think there was any real estate left in my heart for another book boyfriend but I was wrong. It is getting a bit crowded in there but Runes by Ednah Walters has pretty much smacked me upside the noggin’ and left palpitations in my chest upon introduction with Torin St. James. Man, arrogant jackasses. There just aren’t enough of them in YA to appease my hunger.

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Makin the Love Monday – Whose Bed is it Anyway? by Natalie Anderson

What happened to my weekend? It’s one of those blinked and missed it deals. I had a little sleep issue on Thursday night and I was up all night and then I had one of those uber sleeps Friday night and Saturday morning I felt like a superhero. But now I feel like I went through a time fold and the entire two days just disappeared. I had books to read and things to do and I am behind! I’m sort of like one of those horses behind kind of behinds at this point. I need to read like 9 million books by Wednesday. No more StumbleUpon for me!

So this is my first NetGalley book and I received it courtesy of Harlequin via in exchange for an honest review. Not that I would have given a dishonest one anyway.

Whose Bed is it Anyway? is the newest release by New Zealand author Natalie Anderson. I really enjoy Harlequin Kiss books because they have those flirtatious and sassy characters and the situations are always fun and quirky. They have a sort of charisma that so many other of the Harlequin branches lack and that is why I really love these books and I chose this title. Natalie Anderson’s style and hero were perfect for the Kiss story.

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Any Day that Ends in YA – Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub

I was so into reading Still Star-Crossed yesterday that I sort of fell asleep reading it and never got my Tuesday YA up. This book is not in anyway a snorer though. It it beautiful and funny–an incredible tribute to Shakespeare and love stories throughout time.

I found this book recommendation in a YA book chat room on a website, I can’t even remember which one, while on a book crawl over the weekend. Part of my bipolar curse is this fried negative feedback loop where I go on these lost hour book hunts looking for more and more and more until I have lists and Goodread TBRs despite all likelyhood of ever being able to read even a small percentage of them. Still Star-Crossed was love at first sight thing and I swore it would be read straight away.

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Makin’ the Love Monday – Night of the Tiger by N.J. Walters

Augh! Monday. It’s like Sunday night’s bastard sister. I am exhausted and it’s the beginning of the week, my list of things to do is just being made and I already want a break. Cry! Cry! How tough is life!

The book I chose for my Makin’ the Love Monday is something that I actually read a few weeks ago but I loved it and it is deservin’ of the kudos–so here is it’s red ribbon reward and all.

I found this book in my Amazon recommendations and I usually get the weirdest recommendations from Amazon so when I read the synopsis and it sounded good I sort of figured that Amazon must have screwed up and sent me someone else’s book suggestion. Night of the Tiger (This book is free for Kindle at this time) by N.J. Walters is the first book I have read by this author, despite finding she has written more books than the phone book has Smiths, and it was A-mazing. If I had to condense a description of what the beginning of this book is like I would say–imagine Dante’s Inferno, a hodgepodge of Bosch art, the TV show Carnivale, and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter Series–put them all together, stir them up, shake that upside down, now add a little kitten tail and some mythologically screwed up comics and you get the world as it’s known to Aimee and Roric.

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Weekend Pick Me Up – Playing Games by Jessica Clare

The weekend is nigh and it is time to shake it like it’s a polaroid picture. I have to tell you that I have a game plan that includes finding my underwear, which are in one of 7 boxes called “clothes” still packed in my bedroom and taking part in the Kidney Walk in LA.

If you aren’t planning to have a crazy weekend like mine I am here to recommend a good pick me up for you, a sure pleaser to get you through. Playing Games is actually the second book in the Games series by Jessica Clare (a pseudonym for Jill Myles) and as much as I liked Wicked Games, Playing Games really kicked it’s butt. The characters, Dean and Abby do end up in The World Race but the two books don’t rely so heavily on a continuous story that you need to read them in order or create a reason as to why you wouldn’t be able to read this book as a stand alone. That said, I did really adore Abby in Wicked Games and Jill Myles ability to create the tension and skullduggery of a reality show is so impressive that the book really is a very good read. Just not as good as Playing Games.

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Any Day that Ends in YA – Origins by Jennifer L. Armentrout

I am exhausted. I have spent the last few weeks packing and moving and my wagon is dragin’ and my caboose is loose. Boy does that sound as if my butt is in a rather saggy and in an unbecoming state. I have lost almost 30 lbs since the end of June, my bottom is not in as bad a state as it was three months ago–it’s just tired. Now that I have spent a paragraph talking about my tuckus let’s get back on track.

In the last few days of August two of my favorite authors released books I had been waiting forever for. Tijan’s Broken and Screwed 2 came out on August 30 and on the 27th of August Jennifer L. Armentrout released Origins from her Lux series. Thank God and the way things work for me having a seven hour plane ride so I could really dig in on my way home, before all hell broke loose and I was waist deep in boxes and the internet was gone while I was in moving limbo, so that I could finish one of them.