Carries Book Reviews

One S’more Summer
Beth Merlin
(The Campfire Series, #1)
Published by: Ink Monster LLC
Publication date: May 30th 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary

Since that first bus ride to Camp Chinooka twenty long years ago, Gigi Goldstein has been pining for her best friend’s guy. She knows her crush is wrong and has to stop, but her heart won’t listen to reason. To escape the agony of their impending wedding, Gigi accepts a summer job at the only place she’s ever been happy.

But working at Chinooka isn’t all campfire songs and toasting marshmallows. Gigi’s girls are determined to make her look bad in front of the boys’ Head Counselor—the sexy but infuriating Perry—and every inch of the campground is laced with memories.

When Gigi realizes she can’t fix the present by hiding in the past, she’s forced to reexamine her choices. Maybe everything she thought she wanted wasn’t what she actually needed… But if she can get her act together, Gigi might have one last shot at the summer love of her dreams.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Author Bio:

Beth Merlin has a BA from The George Washington University where she minored in Creative Writing and a JD from New York Law School. She’s a native New Yorker who loves anything Broadway, rom-coms, her daughter Hadley, and a good maxi dress. She was introduced to her husband through a friend she met at sleepaway camp and

considers the eight summers she spent there to be some of the most formative of her life. One S’more Summer is Beth’s debut novel.

Website / Facebook / Twitter

Redux by A.L. Davroe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Redux is the second book in the Tricksters series by A.L. Davroe. In the first book of the series, Nexis, we met Ella Drexel who lived in the domed city of Evanescence with her father who was the creator of a virtual reality game. When Ella and her father are in an accident Ella’s father was killed and Ella herself lost her legs. This left her in the care of a woman that kept Ella trapped with everyone thinking she had died too so Ella turned to her father’s virtual reality game for escape.

Redux picks up exactly where the end of Nexis left readers with Ella and a small band of survivors fleeing to the Undertunnel below their city. The group is tested with the malfunctioning androids and angry rebels on their journey trying to find safety. Ella also finds that the boy she thought she found love with in the virtual reality world of Nexis isn’t who she thought he was and now she questions just what had happened between them.

The Tricksters series is really turning into an amazing read with twists and turns at every corner that has again left me with no idea as to what to expect when this story continues. The author has created a wonderful post-apocalyptic society with just enough unrest along with interesting characters and situations within.

The setting in this series reminded me a lot of The Hunger Games when reading the first book in the series. The residents of the city of Evanescence are the elite in the world that spend their time in different indulgences and do strange things to themselves in the name of beauty. While outside of the city you have what are known as the disfavored who seem to be the lower class citizens that aren’t allowed into the dome with the clean air so they are dying off due to the pollution.

As with the first book of the series there is a bit of virtual reality in this one but not quite as much. Ella is learning just what the game Nexis meant to her father and what it will mean to her now. Even after reading the two books in the series I have no idea what the author will have in store in the next installment since there always seems to be twists I don’t see coming. Will definitely look forward to seeing just where this series end up next though.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

The Supernatural Pet Sitter
Diane Moat
(The Magic Thief, #1)
Publication date: March 5th 2017
Genres: Fantasy, Middle-Grade

Every animal can talk to you. You just have to know how to listen.

Pepper Neely is better at this than most, especially because she is in charge of pet sitting all the familiars in her neighborhood. A familiar is a pet magically linked to a witch or warlock. As a gnome, Pepper is no stranger to spells and sorcery. She also knows that, despite their special name, familiars aren’t all that different from regular animals. They get anxious when separated from their people, so Pepper uses her special gnome powers to calm them down. She watches Cranky the high-strung ferret, Frank the laid-back parrot, King Arthur the elderly tortoise, and many others.

Then, something terrible begins happening to the familiars. Someone is stealing their magic! It not only prevents Pepper from communicating with them but breaks their magical connection with their people. When King Arthur’s magic is stolen, his owner’s powers stop working too. Pepper can sense that the tortoise is very scared.

In order to protect the animal’s magic, Pepper decides to track down the culprit. With the help of her best friend, Luna, and her brother, Jax, Pepper fights to protect all of the special pets.

Goodreads / Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

Familiars don’t do well when they are separated from their witches. That was how Pepper got into the business of pet sitting. Gnomes have a low-level connection with all supernatural animals. Gnomes are kind of like the Dog Whisperer, except that they communicate well with Familiars, basilisks (a magical lizard), unicorns and so on, rather than the more usual “pets”.

Pepper’s business of helping witches by taking care of their Familiars had boomed over the past year. Thank goodness she wasn’t sitting for the McCrorys last month when “it” happened.

Mr. McCrory was an accountant and Mrs. McCrory worked part-time at the downtown Dewitt Mall. Their two kids lived away at college. Mrs. M’s Familiar was a huge, bright-green-and-blue parrot named Frank. Pepper had only checked on the parrot once when the McCrorys drove their kids to their out-of-state campus several months earlier. Frank didn’t cause any trouble, so the job was easy money.

Supposedly, Mrs. M was at work one day last month when she had a “bad feeling” that prompted her to go home to check on Frank. The house seemed undisturbed, and everything looked fine at first. But when Mrs. M went to Frank’s cage, she found him looking away from her. He wouldn’t even turn around when she called his name. When she walked around the cage to greet Frank face-to-face, he had only ducked and bobbed his head the way a normal parrot would. But Frank wasn’t normal.

Next, Mrs. M had reached out to the Familiar with her magic, but got no response from him. Not only that, but she said she had trouble focusing, and even her own magic had felt weak. With hands trembling, she had picked up Frank to try again. Nothing. Since that day, Frank’s magic was gone, and Mrs. M’s magic was broken.

Author Bio:

Diane is a Tennessee transplant, animal rescuer, and nurse. Dog Gone is her debut novel, born from years of hearing animal rescuers say about animal abusers, “If only I could get my hands on that person…” Diane is assisted by her many rescue dogs.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stiff Drink
Blair Babylon
(Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1)
Publication date: March 28th 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Genevieve is a lawyer, not a babysitter, and certainly not a dog trainer. She is just about to become a full barrister, a British litigating attorney, when her law mentor dies unexpectedly. She is shuffled off to another barrister, one who’s nothing at all like her kind and decent former mentor, and then she is assigned the office’s worst case: Arthur Finch-Hatten, six-feet and four-inches of ripped, loaded, hot English nobleman who is wasting his life and his inherited estate so audaciously that his younger brother is suing him for control of their family’s earldom. There is a darn good chance that Arthur will lose everything, even his crazed, badly behaved puppy.

Unless he shapes up.

Her new boss hasn’t been able to convince Arthur to mend his ways. His uncle’s lectures haven’t had any effect on his depraved debauchery and lavish lifestyle.

The only way for Genevieve to make partner is to win Arthur’s case, and the only way to win his case and save his earldom is to keep him from spending his days hungover in bed and his nights pouring Cristal on naked, drunk women before flying off in his private jumbo jet to the next party.

Arthur was enough to make any woman need a stiff drink.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / iBooks / Google Play

Author Bio:

Blair Babylon often releases ebooks at a special release-day price of 99c.

To never miss a sale, CLICK HERE: http://smarturl.it/Babylon-Email

Blair Babylon is the nom de plume of an award-winning, USA Today-bestselling author who used to publish literary fiction. Because professional reviews of her other

fiction usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex and too much interesting plot, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy, erotic romance, plus wild, suspenseful thrillers, science fiction, and urban fantasy using the super-secret pen name Blair C. Babylon.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter