Carries Book Reviews

Mr. Mysterious
J.A. Huss
(The Mister Series, #4)
Publication date: October 12th 2016
Genres: Contemporary Romance

Paxton Vance isn’t as cryptic as he thinks. That broody nature and tough-guy exterior aren’t fooling me one bit.

I know everything about him. I listen in on his most personal phone calls. I read his mail before he does. I even know what his mother got him for Christmas last year.

You’re the man of my dreams, Paxton Vance. You just don’t know it yet.

But don’t worry, I’ll remind you. I’m here to give you everything you need, before you know you need it.

So don’t get defensive because I take a challenge seriously. You have to open up to someone, and that someone is me.

Besides, you can’t stay Mr. Mysterious forever. Why play the game if you never want to win?

The Mister Series

Mr. Perfect

Mr. Romantic

Mr. Corporate

Mr. Mysterious

Mr. Match (Final Book Releases 12-7-16)

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—

EXCERPT:

“You want to go to bed?”

“With you?” I ask, a tingle running up my body at the thought. He’s so fucking handsome in this gray suit. His tie is loose around his neck, probably from the frustration of my drink demands, because it was tight before he left for the store. I bite my lip as he stares at me, that tingle turning into something more urgent as I stare back.

“Why not? We could make it fun. Turn this day around. End it on a high note.”

I have dreamed about sex with Mr. Mysterious for years. Since I was a kid, actually. And I know we’ve fucked three times already, but that was different. That was the other me. This is the real me. And now that my plans are all falling into place, it feels… fake. Like I forced this.

“I wouldn’t want to force you,” I say, that word stuck in my mind.

He laughs. Maybe a real one. “You’re the most striking girl I’ve ever dated. You’re not forcing me to do anything.”

He has no idea how well-planned this relationship was. “Are we dating?” I ask, suddenly sad.

I know he’s looking at me. And I know I’m being weird. I also know that I should make a decision right now and then never look back. Either stay here, sleep with him, and tell him the truth tomorrow—since we’ve decided not to talk about it tonight—or walk out and never look back.

I’m on the verge of option two when I feel his hand slip around my waist. “Whatever it is that’s bothering you, can it wait until tomorrow? Or is it urgent?”

I like the feel of his hand over the thin fabric of my dress. It’s large, and warm, and when he pulls me closer, I feel weak with want.

“That was a lot of information to take in. From your mother. Don’t you think?” I chance a look up at him and regret it immediately. He’s somber. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him somber.

“Are we talking about it?” he whispers. “I don’t mind talking about it. If that’s what you want.”

I lean up and kiss him. Softly. Right on the mouth. He doesn’t kiss me back and when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me. He takes the drink from my hand, sets both glasses down on a nearby table and then wraps his arms around me and holds me close. His lips are on my neck, and that urgent feeling I had turns into unquenchable desire.

He holds my face, turning me towards him, and then his lips find mine and we are kissing again, only this time it’s him leading the way. It starts slow, his hands dropping back to my waist. My hands reaching up for his shoulders. His kiss remains soft. Such a contradiction between the man on the outside I’ve come to know and the one I stalked all these years.

But I don’t know him, do I? Not one bit.

He frightens me a little. His perfectly planned childhood, his unplanned past, and his unorthodox present. Like he’s drifting through life, just waiting for something to happen as he takes bad opportunity after bad opportunity and tries to make something good out of them.

“Let’s go to bed,” Pax says again.

I don’t challenge him in any way this time. I don’t care what the meaning is behind his words.

He takes my hand, leading me back into the house and towards the stairs, taking those two at a time so my much shorter legs have to struggle to keep up. A shoe falls off my foot halfway up, the other follows a second later. The floor is cool and feels good as I follow him across a long catwalk that overlooks the living room and into a dark bedroom.

He doesn’t turn on the lights and he wastes no time touching me. His fingertips are lifting up my dress, feather-light touches across the bare skin of my outer thigh. Kissing me, fisting my hair, finding the wetness between my legs as the tingle becomes urge, becomes starvation and hunger for more.

“Take off my clothes,” he says. “Start with the tie.”

—

COMING UP NEXT – MR. MATCH!

Author Bio:

JA Huss is the USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty romances. She likes stories about family, loyalty, and extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. JA loves writing heroes who make you swoon, heroines who makes you jealous, and the perfect Happily Ever After ending.

You can chat with her on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AuthorJAHuss), Twitter (@jahuss), and her blog, New Adult Addiction (www.jahuss.com).

If you’re interested in getting your hands on an advanced release copy of her upcoming books, sneak peek teasers, or information on her upcoming personal appearances, you can join her newsletter list (http://eepurl.com/JVhAr) and get those details delivered right to your inbox.

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Hello Readers! Welcome to the Release Week Blitz for

All Laced Up by Erin Fletcher

presented by Entangled Teen Crush!

Swoon worthy hockey players? Sign. Me. Up.

Happy Book Birthday, Erin!!

Everyone loves hockey superstar Pierce Miller. Everyone except Lia Bailey.

When the two are forced to teach a skating class to save the rink, Lia’s not sure she’ll survive the pressure of Nationals and Pierce’s ego. Not only can’t he remember her name, he signed her bottle of water like she was one of his groupies. Ugh.

But if there’s one thing Lia knows better than figure skating, it’s hockey. Hoping to take his ego down a notch—or seven—she logs into his team website under an anonymous name to give him pointers on his less-than-stellar playing.

Turns out, Pierce isn’t arrogant at all. And they have a lot in common. Too bad he’s falling for the anonymous girl online. No matter how much fun they’re starting to have in real life, she’s afraid he’s going to choose fake-Lia over the real one…

Disclaimer: This book contains a swoony hockey player (and his equally swoony friends!), one-too-many social media accounts, kisses that’ll melt ice, and a secret identity that might not be so secret after all…

All Laced Up by Erin Fletcher

Publication Date: October 10, 2016

Publisher: Entangled Teen Crush

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Erin is a young adult author from North Carolina. She is a morning person who does most of her writing before sunrise, while drinking excessive quantities of coffee. She believes flip-flops qualify as year-round footwear, and would spend every day at the beach if she could. She has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, which is almost never useful when writing books.

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The Boyfriend Whisperer
Linda Budzinski
Published by: Swoon Romance
Publication date: November 15th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

As President and CEO of Boyfriend Whisperer Enterprises, Lexi Malloy is Grand View High School’s undercover Cupid. One problem: She’s stuck in the friend zone when it comes to her own crush, Chris Broder. She and Chris have been best friends since the third grade, and he doesn’t even seem to realize she’s is a member of the opposite sex.

When pretty and popular cheerleader Lindsay LaRouche hires Lexi to whisper Chris, she has to decide whether to place her commitment to her company—and Chris’s happiness—before herself.

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Author Bio:

My young adult novels, EM & EM (2015) and THE FUNERAL SINGER (2013), were both published by Swoon Romance YA. My upcoming novel, THE BOYFRIEND WHISPERER, scheduled for publication in fall of 2016 by Swoon, received the Romance Writers of America Young Adult Chapter’s 2015 Rosemary Award and the Virginia Chapter’s 2015 Fool for Love Award.

I live in Northern Virginia with my husband, Joe, and our feisty chihuahua, Demitria (also known as Dee Dee, The Puppy, and Killer). I’m a sucker for romance and reality TV and have been known to turn off my phone’s ringer when watching “The Bachelor.”

My favorite flower is the daisy, my favorite food is chocolate, and my favorite song is “Amazing Grace.”

When I’m not writing, I work in nonprofit management. I’m represented by the amazing Andrea Somberg of Harvey Klinger Inc.

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Almost Wrong
Aubrey Parker
Publication date: October 11th 2016
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

I’ve always hated Hunter Altman.

I hated him at first sight, in my teens, when my mother met his worthless father.

I hated when Bill moved in with us, dragging Hunter like bad baggage.

I hated when Mom and Bill made it official, turning the delinquent a-hole in the next room into my brand-new stepbrother.

I hated when I fell for Hunter, and Hunter fell for me.

It killed me when he left us behind, shed like dead skin on his way to the top. And now that Hunter is a hotshot music producer on every magazine cover, I hate him even more.

I hate his money. I hate his fancy toys. I hate that he thinks he owns me … or worse, that he OWES me.

I hate that he’s back. That he’s soiled our ghetto with his pristine suit, his fancy black limousine.

My heart hurts, I hate him so much. And it scares me that my heart might keep loving him in the end, beneath it all.

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EXCERPT:

“I guess we should talk,” Angela says.

I’m still wearing my tux shirt and pants, because going into the other room to change when she has nothing to swap seems rude. But at least I’ve ditched the jacket and tie. My sleeves are rolled up. She touches my forearm and gives me a chill I haven’t felt in forever.

“About what?” I ask.

“About us.”

I run a multibillion-dollar empire. I could buy and sell countries. People practically bow when I walk down the street. Still, those two words flutter my stomach.

“Okay. In what way?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. Her hand makes firmer contact with my arm, her fingers soft and splayed. She’s already turned toward me, and as juvenile as it seems, I keep wanting to look at her cleavage.

This is so messed up. She’s my stepsister. Has been forever. And we’ve been through all this before, a thousand years ago.

“You know what way,” she says.

I swallow.

“What happened,” she says, “I won’t lie. I wanted it.”

I nod. I wanted it, too. But right now I can’t breathe a word and risk breaking the spell between us.

“But Hunter … it was wrong. We grew up together.”

I think that’s stretching it. We spent two years in adjacent rooms, and I was gone most of the time. I never wanted to be there at all.

I say none of that.

“At the time,” she says, “I was just a kid.”

“Me too.” I don’t like how I say it—almost like begging, as if I’m waiting for Angela to feel sorry for me.

“I didn’t know what was going on back then. You remember how I was, kind of in my shell. I guess you’d say I was a late bloomer. We happened to become … closer … right around the time I finally started to bloom.”

I don’t like this talk of blooming. I remember how she’d bloomed. I remember how she felt to the touch.

I’ve seen countless tits since leaving home. I’ve licked whipped cream and snorted coke off an endless parade of nipples. Breasts are two blobs of fat capped with tiny hats, and yet one of my most vivid, most sepia-tinged memories is of that day under the pier. There was something about the first time I saw her like that. She looked vulnerable — but at the same time, I could see her as a sexual being in a way I’d never been able to before. At first, she’d seemed childish, and later she’d seemed full of herself, prudish, naive.

But that day she’d been … Angela. Someone new. Someone who’d bloomed open from a closed bud, and I was there when it happened, tempted by forbidden fruit.

“But it was just hormones,” she says. “We’re older now. Wiser.”

I try to smile. It probably comes off sideways, maybe obnoxious—the jaded grin I’m afraid will convince her that I’m the asshole she’s always imagined I was. But it’s meant to soften the blow as I say, “Stop it. I already feel old at thirty, and you’re making me feel older.”

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” Her hand is still on my arm. If she’s trying to make a platonic point, her touch is driving me in the wrong direction.

“I guess.”

“Have you thought about me while you’ve been gone? You know … in that way?”

Which answer should I give her?

Yes.

Constantly.

Unceasingly.

Nobody could ever quite compare, and I may have gone through an entire modeling agency, like yanking tissues from a box, searching for something that felt the same.

Instead, I keep my face neutral. “I guess. Sometimes.”

Angela looks like she’s blunting her reply. “Me, too. Sometimes.”

Author Bio:

I love to write stories with characters that feel real enough to friend on Facebook, or slap across the face. I write to make you feel, think, and burn with the thrill that can only come from getting lost in the pages. I love to write unforgettable characters who wrestle with life’s largest problems. My books may always end with a Happily Ever After, but there will always be drama on the way there.

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Deadly Dog Days by Jamie M. Blair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While enjoying her lunch along the canal in the small town of Metamora, Indiana, the last thing Cameron Cripps-Hayman expected to find was a body under the edge of the water. Calling in local law enforcement Cam finds that the woman in question happens to be one that her estranged husband had been seen around the small town dating.

Cam finds herself quickly put at the top of the suspect list when it’s determined that what she stumbled upon was definitely a murder. Trying to clear her name and get those in the small town to stop looking at her as a criminal Cam volunteers to take in the victim’s now homeless dogs and rounds up a group of volunteers to help her look into the crime.

I have to admit it would have been really really hard to make me not like Deadly Dog Days since it is set in a small town in my state. Reading about places that I’ve actually been to in a fictional story is always fun and I think the author did a great job bringing to life small town Indiana.

Along with the setting though this was actually a cute cozy mystery read with likable characters and a bunch of unruly canines and other critters that would steal the show. There’s a lot of really funny moments along the read that had me laughing out loud along with a decent mystery to be solved by a rather unique group investigating.

Overall, a fun cozy mystery set in a lovely small town setting.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.