Book Reviews – Page 6 – Have Coffee Need Books

Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Contemporary Romance, Romantic Comedy

Book Review: Stand-In Saturday by Kirsty Moseley

Stand In Saturday by Kirsty Moseley

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 30,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Stand-In Saturday (Love For Days #2)
Author: Kirsty Moseley
Genre: Romantic Comedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kirsty Moseley has another laugh-fest with Stand-in Saturday, the sequel to Man Crush Monday. Theo Stone has finagled a date for Jared and Amy’s wedding, and in Moseley-fashion, you will be giggling your way throughout chapters.

Lucie Gordio needs a little magic in her life. Months ago, she ended a long-term relationship after her partner cheated on her, and she’s been more or less mooching off the kindness of her bestie since, so she doesn’t have to move home with her parents. Insanity strikes when a chance encounter with a super sexy man in an elevator has her agreeing to a quid-pro-quo sitch where she accompanies him to a wedding, and he goes to her family party, fake dates, stand-ins for the real thing. In no time does the chemistry begin to get in the way.

Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Paranormal Fiction, Uncategorized, Urban Fantasy

Book Review: Death Wish by Harper A. Brooks

Death Wish by Harper A Brooks

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 29,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Death Wish (Reaper Reborn #1)
Author: Harper A. Brooks
Genre: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jade Blackwell is a reaper with an attitude and a problem with the job description. She knows what she is supposed to do, but has so much empathy for her reap-ees that she finds it hard to take their lives and escort them to the afterlife. Upper management isn’t too happy with her.

Death Wish is Charlene Harris meets Dannika Dark. I kept thinking of Dannika Dark’s Raven Black from Cross Breeds series in a Charlene Harris-type world. It works because this marriage creates two worlds in one where some humans luck out and know the horrible truth while most of the back story happens in a supernatural world that is begging for policing by a strong soul. Jade is just a hapless reaper, but she’s the only applicant at the moment.

The cast of characters is excellent. I love Kay. She’s my favorite. Cole, Sean, and Wyatt are okay, but you know men always get in the way of good storytelling =P.

Book Reviews, Paranormal Fiction, Reverse Harem

Book Review: Freak by Elizabeth Dunlap

Freak by Elizabeth Dunlap

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 24,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Freak (Highborn Asylum #0.5)
Author: Elizabeth Dunlap
Genre: Paranormal Romance
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Freak is a short little wind-up Prequel for the Highborn Asylum Series. Usually, I feel like there isn’t enough of a bite to chomp on with these novelettes, but this was a brilliant nosh.

Violet, known as Letty, is a patient at Highborn Asylum, where she can hear the walls hum and fellow patient Olivander follows her like an eerie shadow. I kept picturing Olivander as a Gerard Way-esque character, and then Guy is introduced, and I’m further sunk because I envisioned an Andy Black-like sort–you can see I have a type.

Highborn Asylum isn’t just any psychiatric facility; there is something very shady of the paranormal bent here, especially since they try to hold and control a witch with a harem. After all, they have to keep wiping Letty’s memory and telling her that the walls don’t make noises.

I can’t wait for this series. I’m hoping it lives up to this nosh.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary advance copy of this book.

Book Reviews, College Romance, NA Romance, Romantic Comedy

Book Review: My Best Friend’s Ex by Hazel Kelly

My Best Friend's Ex by Hazel Kelly

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 20,20 | 0 Comment

Title: My Best Friend’s Ex (Beta Brothers #1)
Author: Hazel Kelly
Genre: College Romance, New Adult, Romantic Comedy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Has an off-limits (not precisely off-limits) brother (not exactly brother) ever been hotter than Hazel Kelly’s Beta Brother, Logan Jones? I’m positive you will give Zoey Petersen a pass for lusting over her adopted brother when you hear the things this naughty dirty talker says to her.

Hazel Kelly’s muse must have been working overtime because this novel is spicy. Logan and Zoey have been stewing over each other since first sight. A broken boy with a lot of baggage has little hope for a Happily Ever After, but the Petersens offer him a place in the family of foster and adopted misfits. He can’t stop self-destructing long enough to think he will ever be worthy of the girl who shines with an innocence that is utterly foreign to him, his foster sister. He makes the worst out of his new situation by going for the option of her best friend, Piper. And two kids desperate to tune out their reality make hell for each other while Zoey watches to her heartbreak.

A plot like this can go two ways: taboo relationships within a family story like these are either spicy and compelling or awkward enough to make you squick.

I know the reason stepbrother romances have taken off despite the forbidden fruit angle is that broken stepbrothers for fixer sisters warm the hearts of many pervy readers. (Hello! It’s not an insult, I’m a pervy reader, and this is a shout out to my people).

Book It, Book Reviews

Book Review: Sold to the Enemy by Sara Fields

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 19,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Sold to the Enemy
Author: Sara Fields
Genre: Sci-fi Romance
Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sold to the Enemy is a quick little alien/human insta-love romance with a side of really dominant/submissive, naughty, yes, sir–no, sir erotica.

Aubrie Kent is a Commander in the Earthen Military sent to attack the Venessathi to protect humanity. Little did she know she and her brethren were on a fool’s errand and never meant to return. Now she and all the females are slaves, and the males are dead.

Worse yet, she has just been purchased at auction by Commander Edagon of the Venassathi Military. Her future doesn’t look bright.

Book Blitz, Book It, Book Reviews, Cultural Heritage Fiction, New Release

Book Review: All Visible Things by Brian McPhee

All Visible Things by Brian McPhee

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 17,20 | 3 Comments

Title: All Visible Things
Author: Brian McPhee
Genre: Cultural Heritage Fiction
Rating: 5 of 5 stars

All Visible Things is an excellent book to get lost in.

When doctorate candidate Lauren Patterson uncovers pages from the journal of Paolo del Rosso, she couldn’t guess that her find would reveal secrets of the great artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci. Nor would she have known it would kick up a thirst for the mystery of what lay within its sheets.

Brain McPhee artfully creates our hero, Paolo del Rosso, through pages and pages of diary entries. And although we are only experiencing him ‘second hand’ through-out our story, he always feels very much at the forefront of our attention. His crafting, so well done, he’s often the arbiter of our views and our most trusted narrator, despite him being long dead and merely a study subject.

Book Reviews, Dystopian, Supernatural Prison, YA Romance, YA Sci-fi

Book Review: Lock Down by Aella Black

Lock Down by Aella Black

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 16,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Lock Down (Supernatural Prison #1)
Author: Aella Black
Genre: Paranormal, YA Fiction
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disturbing.

A couple of years ago, I read the series Into the Shadows by Karly Kirkpatrick, and Lock Down kept reminding me of those books. If you like those books, this is for you!

Phoebe is doing her best to remain low-profile because any attention will mean that someone could see she’s fending for herself. While she’s a competent sixteen, Phoebe’s still sixteen, and no one is letting her be her own guardian if they find out she’s alone. But the last of her problems is foster care when she dies and resurrects from the dead, ending up in a Supernatural Prison for juveniles. Suddenly, foster care sounds much better–especially when she’s told supernaturals aren’t considered humans.

The Phoenix can’t begin to imagine the awful that happens outside her cell in prison, and the days get dismally worse, even when unimaginably promising things come to her in Leavenworth. Nothing is worth the price she pays there.

Lock Down is a terrifying look at the violation of dehumanized people. Aella Black does a fantastic job of dragging you further and further down a dismaying rabbit hole. The fact that she is giving you a view from a child/young adult’s eyes is more devastating. I couldn’t turn away from the story; Lock Down is a page-turner.

Book It, Book Reviews, College Romance, Enemies to Lovers Romance, NA Bully Romance, NA Romance, New Release, Reverse Harem

Book Review: A Loser’s Revenge by Tammi Lynn

A Loser's Revenge by Tammi LynnA Loser's Revenge by Tammi Lynn

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 14,20 | 0 Comment

Title: A Loser’s Revenge
Author: Tammi Lynn
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Reverse Harem
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

What is the worst betrayal? Some would say its betraying yourself, but for Barretta, it was having the three people she loved most at age thirteen hold her down, in front of the entire school, and humiliate her after telling her they loved her. That betrayal changed her whole life, and she was never the same after that. She left a week later and started over, started planning revenge.

Nine years later, it’s time to pay-up, and she’s loosey-goosey got plans to make them hurt so she can have closure and indeed start a new chapter. She’s enrolled in their college, knows their classes, has a key to their house, and knows where they will be.

Sounds creepy, and it is, but Barry/Bibi rationalizes a lot, and you start cheering for her success. Stockholm syndrome in book-form. By the time she starts falling for her bullies, and they for her, you are so confused about who you want to be mad at–and angry for–the story gets a little bogged down.

Axel is always a wiener; you won’t be rooting for him ever.

Book It, Book Reviews, Dystopian, Futuristic, YA Sci-fi

Book Review: Athena’s Choice by Adam Boostrom

Athena's Choice by Adam Boostrom

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 13,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Athena’s Choice
Author: Adam Boostrom
Genre: YA Sci-fi, Dystopian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You have those reads where they are great–BUT! This book has a BUT in it, and I think it’s what doesn’t work for me.

Athena Vosh is an average nineteen-year-old girl struggling with things like her relationship with her girlfriend Nomi and getting her art displayed in a gallery. She treats her mother well, and she’s an exemplary citizen.

She hides the fact that she is fascinated with the idea of bringing back men; since most seem to believe that the Y-Fever was a good thing, and society is better for it now, as a sisterhood. Athena keeps her drawings of the male form from the eyes of everyone, including Nomi. That is until her dreams become enigmatic and prophetic and lead her to the Core, their world’s great processor of information and database–who leaves her with more questions than answers.

Academy Romance, Book It, Book Reviews, Fae Romance, New Release, Reverse Harem

Book Review: Ruin by Lacey Carter Andersen

Ruin by Lacey Carter Andersen

ByMs Ali Cat: Ali Crean | On September 12,20 | 0 Comment

Title: Ruin (Royal Fae Academy #2)
Author: Lacey Carter Andersen
Genre: Reverse Harem, Academy Romance
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now, this is what I wanted from Ravage. Lacey Carter Andersen shines with her newest Royal Fae Academy novel, Ruin!

Ruin advances Rayne’s murder mystery, explores further the super-secret-search, and expands upon the evergrowing threat. Now Esmeray and ALL her men are in danger. It’s too late to go back, and stopping is out of the question.