Carries Book Reviews

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Competing with the Star
Krysten Lindsay Hager
(The Star Series, #2)
Published by: Limitless Publishing
Publication date: March 22nd 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Hadley Daniels’s life seems perfect…

Before the beginning of sophomore year of high school, Hadley and her family move to a beautiful beach town, where she makes amazing new friends and lands the boyfriend of her dreams-Nick Jenkins. He’s the kind of guy every girl swoons over, and it isn’t long until Hadley discovers some are still swooning.

A famous ex-girlfriend makes matters more complicated…

After some time dating, Hadley and Nick form a deep bond. But insecurity sets in when Hadley discovers her boyfriend once had a huge crush on her friend-who just happens to be the beautiful former teen TV star, Simone Hendrickson.

The past is the past-or so they say…

Hadley confronts Nick, who confesses about his history with Simone. Though he claims to only have eyes for Hadley now, it’s hard to believe-especially when she’s blindsided with the news that Nick and Simone kissed after school.

Now Hadley must determine who is telling the truth. Love, betrayal, friendship…who needs soap opera drama when you’re busy competing with a star?

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EXCERPT:

Then the most beautiful sound in the world came along—the final bell. I grabbed my bag and rushed out the door to my locker, where I ran into Reagan O’Hara, Nick’s gorgeous ex-girlfriend. “Watch where you’re going, spaz,” she said, glaring at me. “Exactly where are you in such a hurry to get to anyway? I can’t imagine that you’d have plans.”

I could have said, “Off to meet my boyfriend, you know, the guy you used to badmouth me to,” but no, I took the high road and said, “Excuse me,” and kept going.

“Whatever, loser,” she said. My shoulders tensed. As I tried to ignore her and tell myself it was just jealousy, I couldn’t pretend that her words didn’t hurt. I had been considered kind of a loser at my old school in Goodacre. I had had one super close best friend who I did everything with, Lexi Irvin, and when she moved to Dallas, it was as if I had been abandoned. So yeah, I had felt like a complete loser in Goodacre, but now I was here in Grand Haven, with new friends and a new positive outlook on life. I had a new best friend, Charlotte Lidstrom, and had become friends with former teen TV star Simone Hendrickson and her best friend, Asia Milanowski.

It could be intimidating hanging out with Simone since she was popular, pretty, and famous. Sometimes I felt invisible next to her, and unfortunately, hanging with Simone sometimes meant spending time with people like Reagan or Simone’s other friends, Pilar Ito and Morgan Kemp. Morgan was the ultimate mean girl. I swear, even if she told me she loved my outfit and was hooked up to a lie detector test saying she was telling the truth, I still wouldn’t want to risk it and I’d go home and change. But today I was not going to worry about Morgan, Reagan, or any of that. I was just going to focus on my first date with Nick.

Until I rounded the corner and ran into Simone, who was waiting for me at my locker with Morgan and Pilar.

“Hey, Hadley,” Simone said. “Wanted to return your lucky bracelet. Let’s hope it helped me pass my math test.”

She handed me my heart and natural stone charm bracelet and I slid it on my wrist. Morgan looked down at my hands and made a face.

“Why are you wearing such dark nail polish?” she asked me.

My face got warm. “I thought the color was pretty when I saw it in the store. I’ve never seen this shade of purple with so much blue in it.”

“Guys aren’t into weird nail polish colors,” Morgan said as she fluffed her long curly blonde hair with her red polished fingers.

Great, so even my nail polish was wrong. Could I do anything right?

“Here comes Nick,” Pilar said, and the girls all got quiet.

“Hey, guys,” he said, coming up and nodding at them. I started to curl my fingers under so he wouldn’t notice my dark polish—the color that up until a few minutes ago I thought was unique and beautiful was now making me feel like a little oddball.

“Cool color,” Nick said.

“Huh?”

“I like the blue. It’s very you,” he said, and then he reached over and intertwined his fingers with mine. Take that, you dark nail polish haters.

“So are we all heading over to Scoops together?” he asked.

Simone played with a strand of her long blonde hair, but didn’t say a thing.

“Yup, we thought we’d go over with you guys,” Morgan said, smiling up at him with her gleaming white teeth.

Wait, what? No, not cool. This was our first date and I knew I’d feel awkward talking to him around a group—a group judging me on what I said, did, and apparently even the colors I wore.

Author Bio:

Krysten Lindsay Hager is a book addict who has worked as a journalist and humor essayist. She is the author of the LANDRY’s TRUE COLORS SERIES and the STAR SERIES. TRUE COLORS was her debut novel and the first book in the LANDRY’S TRUE COLORS series. BEST FRIENDS…FOREVER? (Book 2) was #1 in Amazon’s hot new releases in teen & young adult values and virtues fiction and #1 in Amazon’s hot new release in children’s books on values. Landry in Like (Book 3) was #3 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases for Girls & Women. Her work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Bellbrook Times, and on the talk show Living Dayton. Check out her YA novel, NEXT DOOR TO A STAR (book 1 in the STAR SERIES) and COMPETING WITH THE STAR: Book 2 in the STAR SERIES. You can follow her at: http://www.krystenlindsay.com.

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Bring Me to Ruin by Tess Rider
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thea Maloney has just lost her lifelong best friend Gerard Wyatt after he was executed for a crime he didn’t commit. Drinking at the local bar trying to forget her pain she ends up in a bar fight only to have the owner stop time and freeze everyone in the bar but the two of them. Cole has always been like a father to her but now she finds that he actually controls time and on top of that Thea is needed to help repair the timelines and save the world from a savage ghost war.

Traveling to another timeline Thea meets The General, another version of Gerard that has been the hero of the ghost war and saved all the lives in the camp there that have come from all different timelines. Finding that everyone has doppelgangers of themselves existing in other timelines Thea finds that her mission is to help The General regain his humanity and learn to love again after only knowing war as Thea and The General are soulmates in all timelines.

Bring Me to Ruin was an extremely complex story line bringing all kinds of interesting elements into the mix. A somewhat mix of sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, dystopian, and a bit of romance it certainly had a lot of great moments and a great mix of intensity and action.

One thing though with so much going on I felt it was a bit slow paced for me trying to make sure I understood everything being brought into the story. We have all the elements of time traveling, separate dimensions, time travel, doppelgangers, fae, ghosts, witches, gods, oracles, advance robotic technology and I almost think the way the virus/resurrection process was described that the “ghosts” sounded more like a version of zombies. Definitely not a dull moment involved in this read and I’ve probably forgotten to even mention a few things.

Starting off I had a bit of a disconnect with the characters too as I think I was just a bit overwhelmed with the activity going on. The General seemed almost robotic somewhat reminding me of the Terminator when described as having this red computer eye so it took me a while to associate him as even being human but that’s actually somewhat how he’s supposed to come across so I’m not sure that was actually too bad of a thing because he’s in danger of losing his humanity to the war.

Overall, I enjoyed this extensive and complex world the author has built, it certainly kept me on my toes having so much action going on in one read. I would warn though there are some erotic sexual moments also involved in case that’s something that a reader wouldn’t like.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lady Elizabeth Witmore the Countess of Rothford had lost her parents at a young age and lived with her grandmother who had been trying to arrange a marriage for her. When it’s set up for her to marry a distant cousin that Lady Witmore doesn’t find appealing at all she only wishes for her freedom of being able to fall in love and choose for herself.

When Cedric Thorn comes to recruit one of the servants that is being let go Lady Witmore finds herself fascinated with The Glittering Court that Cedric works for, low income girls are taught the ways of high society for a year and then sent to the new world to find a husband since there haven’t been many women that have gone to the new world yet.

With her ladies maid being upset at the whole idea of the Glittering Court Lady Witmore gets the idea to send Adelaide off to her family and to take her place among the court using Adelaide’s identity. Fortunately Cedric agrees to keep her secret and goes along with her plan to escape to the new world so her training begins.

I’d really been looking forward to The Glittering Court for quite some time now since I’ve really enjoyed most of Richelle Mead’s work that I’ve read. I wasn’t a big fan of Soundless so I had my fingers crossed that this one would be better. Well, it was slightly better but still not really up to my expectations.

One of the things I liked about The Glittering Court was the historical aspect of the story. Overall it reminds me of the time when America was the “new world” and the beginning of travel to America but the names have changed to these fictional countries. Certainly the idea of titles being important and religious persecution all fit that time period in England though even if this was a imaginary fantasy world.

I also enjoyed Adelaide/Lady Witmore and Cedric as the main characters in the story along with the secondary characters and their roles in the story line. The budding romance between Adelaide and Cedric was nice and not rushed. Mira and Tamsin each had intriguing secrets that will be interesting to see if I guessed right if those are revealed in later books. The not so nice characters in the story also played their parts well.

Now, what I didn’t like was the pacing of this book. There’s a good half going by without much happening other than her leaving to run off to join the court. There’s also not too much depth to a lot of the story either, often the one thing that gets elaborated on is what kind of dress Adelaide is wearing in any given situation instead of giving details to the actual situation. It would get very boring after a while learning about materials and ruffles.

Once more starts happening in the second half of the story I still found myself just wishing there was just more to what was happening and less clothing details. It’s a decent story line that really didn’t need to be labeled “fantasy” and could have simply taken place in England and America. But the fact that it goes so elaborate with clothing and not with the details of the plot made this somewhat of a disappointment again.

Overall, 3 stars for this one as I did enjoy the plot even at it’s slower pace but found the story too shallow to rate any higher.

Confessions in the Dark
Inger Iversen
(Running in the Dark #3)
Publication date: April 30th 2016
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult

After narrowly escaping from Vasily’s compound, Ophelia is on the run and fighting for her life. Her first goal is to get some help; too bad she’s stuck on an island owned by Vasily. Her second and third goals consist of going back and freeing her people, and killing Vasily—not necessarily in that order.

When Celtic warrior and vamp badass, Irish, senses something is amiss, he goes in search of the woman who has been on his mind since their first meeting. While his old friends adjust to their new lives, Irish heads off to the dangerous North Sentinel Island, in search of his woman. What he finds there will change everything in the battle against Vasily and his men.

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Author Bio:

Inger Iversen was born in 1982 to Anne and Kaii Iversen. She lives in Virginia Beach with her overweight lap cat, Max and her tree hugging boyfriend Joshua. She

spends 90 percent of her time in Barnes and Noble and the other ten pretending not to want to be in Barnes and Noble.

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