I was obviously a very naughty elf this last year. I spent the week of Christmas with a crippling migraine which landed me in the ER doped up on a ton of killer drugs and on an IV. About twenty-four hours later I developed the flu from hell, within a few days I was in the ER doped up on a crapload of drugs and getting a couple IV’s. Whose book did I review that I gave such a bad review that Santa pooped in my stocking? I’m telling you… if I find out one of you is preggers and this awful nausea and evacuation of all bodily fluids is sympathy draining, you had best name the little one after me–I don’t care if it is girl, boy or bowling ball, that little beast had best be named Ali. I haven’t eaten anything but toast in five days and I had to water down gatorade. Cry. Cry. Cry. I know I’ve whinged enough now because my keyboard is wet with my e-tears. I hope you all made your wish and got a happy kitten for the start of the year. D cut me off at four kittens but he let me have all the wishes I wanted, so I wished for a whole herd of ponies.
Browse Tag by NetGalley
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.