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Makin’ the Love Monday – Toxic by Belinda McBride

November means it is NaNoWriMo time of year again and I have made my account and I have begun writing and I have nearly 12K words written on my story. It would be more but I haven’t had a chance to work on it since past Wednesday but I consider that a good start. I had a cray cray weekend with a kpop concert with one of my favorite idol bands, Infinite. (Dongwoo is a sexy beast and my heart beats a very pop song like throb for Sungyeol) Then visiting with friends who came to SoCal from points yonder. Even though I am a socially inept and broken spend-time-outside-of-the-house-type-person, I enjoyed every awkward moment. So as I am writing this, and this is Sunday evening, I am tired, sick and sore.

My bangin’ the boots book for this week is Truckee Wolves: Toxic by Belinda McBride, plug in the yadda, yadda about NetGalley letting me review this book for my kickin’ awesome opinion and rockin’ flair for words. Belinda McBride impressed me with this book. I had never read any of her titles before and I really enjoyed the way she took the step out of the box and let you know immediately that she wasn’t going to play the safe game and color within all the lines. I like authors who push the envelope and take that risk to give you a taste of the alternative lifestyles that not many other writers out there have had or would think to entertain at a buffet. I like tasting exotic dishes. It makes dishy things more dishy and what makes dirty dishes more dishy than making meals out of things that aren’t on the same menu your momma would get?

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Book Boyfriend Report – Propositioning Mr. Raine by Laurann Dohner

The first Laurann Dohner book I read was Mate Set and I did not like it. I actually thought it was flat out bad. Mika was pretty much a box of rocks kind of smartness in my opinion and Grady I just plan did not like.

But I had heard so many really good things that when I picked up Fury and I didn’t really have any of that darkness coloring my opinion and thankfully my disappointment for Mate Set was put aside while I dug in and devoured her New Species, Cyborg Seduction and Zorn Warrior books. Oddly, I had a weird hang up about her Riding the Raines series and there was no good reason for it. On a whim the other night I was on a .99 Amazon book crawl and I wanted to see if the pre-order on True was available yet and I just decided to buy and read Propositioning Mr. Raine. Laurann, honey… Brass who? I want me a Raine man.

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Any Day that Ends in YA – Streaks of Blue by Jack Chaucer

I read a good part of Streaks of Blue but I was having such a hard time reading it and I felt horrible because Mr. Chaucer had contacted me to give me a code to use to get the book at a later time if I missed getting it from NetGalley. I wanted very badly to read the whole thing just out of respect for him. But I just found myself putting the book down and not picking it up again and finding myself looking for other things to read.

Why?

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Any Day that Ends in YA – Change For Me by Lynn Red

I’ve been really struggling through reading YA lately. I’m actually in the middle of reading about 5 or 6 books at the moment and I read a little of them and then put them aside to read something else. I don’t know what it’s about. I’ve just been really having a hard time with it. The only author whose books I’ve been finishing are Ella James’s. I love her Stained series and Here trilogy books and I’ve been knocking them back like they are candy. But everything else is been like trying to eat green beans and celery. Blech.

But this week I have Change for Me by Lynn Red as my Any Day that Ends in YA. This book was a little different than what I had expected. I really loved J.A. Redmerski’s Darkwoods Trilogy and I think that as far as shifter books that might be my ideal teen shifter book. This book is NOTHING like that. As a matter of fact, it’s not like any shifter book I have read before. I found it refreshing–yet troubling.

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Makin’ the Love Monday – 3AM Kisses by Addison Moore

This Makin’ the Love Monday comes to you by the number 0 and the letter POOP. I have had the world’s worst week. My car broke down. I had a migraine. I had some sort of stomach somethin’ somethin’. I had oral surgery. I got an ear infection from that oral surgery. I did something bad and karma is kicking my butt. The only mercy God is giving me is he is making the kitties curl up with me and letting me use Ree Ree as a 6lb blanket. She basically covers my knee-cap. But during this craptastic week I’ve managed to get some reading done. Thank the heavens something good came out of smelly pirate lighted cars and pulled teeth.

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Morning Tea with the Author – Cecilia Robert

Cecilia Robert has already had success with her young adult paranormal Soul Collector series debut, Reaper’s Novice in 2011 and then a contemporary romance, Truly, Madly, Deeply, You this past year and is getting ready to find her home in yet one more genre with Homecoming, a steampunk cum paranormal adult romance. I had an incredible opportunity to ask her a couple questions, which she then indulged me to ask a lot more. This was a great chat and I think I picked her brain to the point where I could probably write parts of her first Cloaked Devices book now. =)

Thanks so much, Cecilia!

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Tongue Wagger – Homecoming by Cecilia Robert

Have you ever seen a book cover and thought? Oooo this book is sex on wheels? Well probably not quite sex on wheels because I mean it’s a book so clearly it’s not “on wheels”. But I mean if you aren’t taking me by letter of that statement I think you get my meaning when you see the most beautiful cover of Cecilia Robert’s cover for Homecoming. This is one of the books I got from NetGalley and I saw the cover of this title and I hit the request button before I even read the synopsis for the story. It was love at first sight and thankfully the book didn’t disappoint.

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Makin’ the Love Monday (Tuesday) – The Ultimatum by Susan Kearney

Even after all my blathering on about not wanting to make love on Tuesday from last week, I find myself doing it this week. Funny how things turn out. I think it is probably like that thing where you fight tooth and nail not to turn out like your mother and then you are thirty and you wake up one day and you are like, “Crap in a bucket! Most of the things I do I do the way my mom taught me to do.” My mom is a complete hoarder and I visit her twice a year and I flip so far to the other side when I come home that I frantically search my home for things I can cull from my home. So I have learned to be just like my mother, in the opposite direction.

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Weekend Pick Me Up – Scoundrel by Zoe Archer

The weekend is here and it is officially autumn is SoCal. ~Well, my husband failed to close the sliding glass door last night and it is a nippy 61F degrees in the apartment currently. Despite my fleece and my blanket and my tea and my hawt guy Kpop videos, I’m still pretty cold. Ree-Ree, one of my kitties is not fazed in the least though and she is curled up in the sun baking as if it were any other day and sun cures all. And hell, it might in kitty world.

This weekend’s date with my husband is an arts and crafts fair in Del Mar. I know I just emasculated him, but he will live through it. He really comes to carry the credit card and bags. I’m going to get a jump on Christmas gifts. I’d really like to be done Christmas shopping this year no later than Thanksgiving. The best laid plans and all.

My Weekend Pick Me Up is an older book that I must re-read about once every two months. I really just adore the hero from it because he is a completely charming and unrepentant rake. Scoundrel by Zoe Archer is the second of her steampunk series the Blades of the Rose series and in my opinion it is also the best of the series, with Rebel being a very close second.

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Any Day That Ends in YA – Undertow by K.R. Conway

Wow… Life is sometimes just a crazy bugger. I must say that I am a little overwhelmed today and it’s not really a pinpoint-able thing–it’s sort of all the little things. I’m fully okay with the fact that my husband never renewed my car registration in July, yet still I drive my unregistered car. But wow am I sucker punched by the fact that I can’t find the last edge piece in the puzzle we are trying to do. And thrown completely by the fact that the cushion on the couch won’t fluff back into something less smushed. And after having started using my Twitter account after years of letting it’s fields go fallow, I realized today that I didn’t know that the little @ button showed you comments addressed to you. People have been chatting my way and they must think I’m the rudest SOB out there. Life is just a crazy bugger.

My YA book choice for this week is K.R. Conway’s Undertow. This is another title I received from NetGalley. When I first opened my account I went a little crackpot crazy so I have about 19 novels to read from them and I feel awful because these nice authors, publicists and publishers loaned me these ARC’s in good faith that I would read and review them in a timely manner and due to my kid-in-a-candyland-excitement I really over-extended myself. On top of that, there are books that I would really like to read and review outside of my NetGalley obligation. So, all this being facts and brass tacks–I need to read more and read faster or I need to hope that those who granted me their kindness will extend it to excuse my weak nature. All books will be reviewed, in due time. This week K.R. Conway’s time has come.