Nicole Reads A Lot

so many books, so little time

Tell Me When by Stina Lindenblatt

Title:Tell Me When
Author:Stina Lindenblatt
PublisherCarina Press
Publication Date:January 20, 2013
Publisher's DescriptionAmber Scott should be enjoying life as a college freshman. She should be pursuing her dream of becoming a veterinarian. She should be working hard to make sense of her precalculus math class.

She shouldn’t be waking up her college roommate with screaming nightmares. She shouldn’t be flashing back, reliving the three weeks of hell she barely survived last year. And she definitely shouldn’t be spending time with sexy player Marcus Reid.

But engineering student Marcus is the only one keeping Amber from failing her math course, so she grudgingly lets him into her life. She never expects the king of hookups will share his painful past. Or that she’ll tell him her secrets in return, opening up and trusting him in a way she thought she’d never be able to again.

When their fragile future together is threatened by a stalker Amber thought was locked away for good, Marcus is determined to protect her. And Amber is determined to protect Marcus…even if that means pushing him away.
My rating:***.5

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I really enjoyed this book. Amber and Marcus come with the traumatic back stories that are almost de rigeur in this genre, but they were both more than the things they’d suffered. Ms. Lindenblatt did a great job creating convincing characters who were more than the sum of their tragedies. The way that they interacted made me believe that each was integral to the other’s healing process, and even Marcus’ wounded manwhore thing worked for me.

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Lie Lay Lain by Bryn Greenwood

Title:Lie Lay Lain
Author:Bryn Greenwood
PublisherStairway Press
Publication Date:April 3, 2014
Publisher's DescriptionJennifer has a great job and a go-getter fiancé. She’s on track for success, until she witnesses a fatal hit-and-run. Mistaking Jennifer for someone else, the dying victim extracts an impossible promise. Jennifer’s fiancé wants her to forget the whole incident, but when she closes her eyes, she can still see the bloody face of the woman who asked for her help.

Olivia is in a rut. Burdened with caring for her brain-damaged brother and already feeling like a spinster at 27, she’s desperate to escape. In a moment of weakness, she tells a lie that draws an unsuspecting paramedic into her life. As she struggles to expiate the lie, a horrible act of violence will test her resolve to be honest.

Where Jennifer’s promise and Olivia’s lie intersect, their lives begin to unravel.
My rating:****

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Lie Lay Lain is the story of Jennifer and Olivia, and of the  people in their separate and shared orbits. The two know each other at the outset of the book, as they attend the same church, but their lives are completely different. Jennifer is engaged, part of an extended social circle, and has a good job. Olivia is single and lives at home with her parent and older brother, who suffered a brain injury in a motorcycle accident and cannot live independently. She works in the church that her family has always attended and has no life outside of home and church.

I think that people generally expect to be prepared in life for the big decisions that change everything (choosing a career path, who to date, where to live, etc), but neither Jennifer nor Olivia could have imagined the changes that they would experience as a result of the lies that they tell. In doing a kindness for a dying woman, Jennifer feels a sense of responsibility to see that promise through, although only Olivia seems to understand why Jennifer wants to check up on Shani, daughter of the dead woman. Jennifer becomes invested in Shani’s welfare, at times paying less attention to her job and her relationship with her fiancé. Olivia’s sense of guilt over lying makes her turn a small untruth, that she is dating a paramedic, into reality. Asking Rindell out on a date is her first step toward becoming an Olivia she never suspects could even exist. Her new romantic relationship confuses and excites her, but helps her find the courage to be less passive with others in her life.

This book is engaging and gripping, and I skipped working on an this awesome hat that I’m knitting to keep reading it. Respect. Even if the story had been only so-so, I would say that this book is worth reading just for the perspective on truth, lies, and honesty. Who could fault Jennifer for helping to ease a dying woman’s mind, or Olivia for trying to keep people out of her business? While there are some pretty blatant bad lies in this book, most instances of dishonesty are less clear-cut in their right or wrongness. Amazingly, as if encouraging heavy rumination on the nature of truth isn’t enough of an accomplishment, Ms. Greenwood also manages to squeeze in a nuanced perspective on race and identity in the midst of all of the other things happening in this book. Although this book is relegated on Netgalley to the Women’s Fiction ghetto, I would recommend this book to any lover of well-written fiction.

 

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Before You Break by Christina Lee

Title:Before You Break
Author:Christina Lee
PublisherIntermix
Publication Date:February 18, 2014
Publisher's DescriptionA sexy, emotional New Adult romance about a bad boy on the edge and a good girl about to lose control…

The star catcher of the college baseball team isn't supposed to have skeletons in his closet. But Daniel Quinn is hiding a guilty past so dark he refuses to let anyone get close. Except there’s something about gorgeous, studious Ella Abrams that goes beyond the electric attraction between them—something that makes him want to open up.

Ella has suffered enough heartache and guilt to fill one of her psychology textbooks, but she keeps that part of herself hidden behind a bubbly exterior. Until she receives an anonymous call while working the suicide helpline and the voice on the other end touches something inside of her that she can’t ignore.

Soon Ella and Quinn’s physical connection heats up, even as their deep and revealing hotline talks intensify. But by the time Ella realizes that her seductive jock and her sensitive caller are the same guy, it might be too late to save him—or to stop herself from falling too far.

*A companion novel to ALL OF YOU
My rating:***.5

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I liked the dynamic between Ella and Quinn. I felt really bad for Quinn with regard to his relationship with his family, and liked that Ella had a stable and loving family; sometimes it feels like a real drag to read a book where everybody’s home life is awful. While I did feel that Quinn’s self-loathing was at times really hard to read without rolling my eyes, I had to remember that 1) the character is pretty young and 2) without a good support network, it’s understandable that he could feel that he had to bear such a huge burden by himself.

I liked that Ella had such a good head on her shoulders. She wasn’t rash, and I applauded how fair she tried to be in every situation. I was worried that the identity thing was going to be a major to-do in this book, but I liked how Ms. Lee handled it. It didn’t feel that things were unnecessarily melodramatic in this book, and my eyes didn’t get the “that’s ridiculous” workout. This is definitely a cut above the $.99 new adult novels that populate online booksellers these days, and I recommend it to fans of the genre. I didn’t read the other book in this series prior to reading Before You Break, but I’m definitely going to buy it at some point in the future.

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David: Lord of Honor by Grace Burrowes

Title:David: Lord of Honor
Author:Grace Burrowes
PublisherSourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date:March 4, 2014
Publisher's DescriptionDavid Worthington, Viscount Fairly, has inherited a brothel he does not want, but hesitates to sell for fear his employees will not be treated well by the establishment’s next owner. He hits upon the idea of hiring Letty Banks, a courtesan currently without protector, to serve as madam, but soon finds himself attracted to her on more than just a physical level.

When serious harm befalls Letty as a function of her role at David’s brothel, he realizes he cannot continue to exploit a woman he cares for. He arranges a way for Letty to return to obscure respectability, and prepares to walk out of her life, only to find he cannot leave her undefended against the trouble bearing down from her past.
My rating:***

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I enjoy Grace Burrowes’ writing, and I’ve read most of the previous books in this series, so I was excited to read David. I don’t understand why exactly, but this book left me a bit cold; somehow even the greatest emotional upheavals in this novel didn’t move me the way I felt they ought to have done.

I didn’t get the sense that I understood Letty very well. I think that although the clues about her past are spread throughout the book and are there for anyone to see, the behind the curtain revelation happened too late. Also, wanting to believe the best of others is one thing, but it felt that a good deal of willful ignorance (not to mention a baffling refusal to converse) was necessary for the situation that Letty found herself in to have come about. Some of the conversations that did take place rang false, as people without reason to do so left out extremely relevant information. It felt as though too much manipulation had to take place for events to unfold as they did.

If you’ve read the previous books in this series, I can see how you would want to know what happens here, but I can’t imagine that reading this book would convince too many of the uninitiated to check out past titles.

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Plain Jayne by Laura Drewry

Title:Plain Jayne
Author:Laura Drewry
PublisherLoveswept
Publication Date:April 8, 2014
Publisher's DescriptionWorn out from the long drive back home, Jayne Morgan can only smirk at the irony: Of course the first person she sees from her old life is Nick Scott. Once best friends, they lost touch when Jayne left town at eighteen, but nothing could keep them apart forever. Jayne has returned to take over her grandmother’s bookstore, determined to put all her bittersweet memories and secret disappointments strictly in the past—until, that is, Nick insists she bunk at his place.

Nick never did care what people thought about having a girl for a best friend—or the “scandal” she caused by showing up to his wife’s funeral four years earlier—so he’s got no problem with the gossips now. Jayne was always the one person he could count on in his life. Now Nick is starting to realize that he never wants her to leave again . . . and that being “just friends” isn’t going to be enough anymore.
My rating:****

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This book is, hands down, the best friends-to-lovers book that I’ve read in ages. I started off not feeling too warmly toward Nick, given the details of his and Jayne’s last face-to-face encounter, but his obvious regret, plus their warm relationship, made me realize that it was more of an awful moment in his life than any sort of indicator of his normal behavior. Everybody makes mistakes. Also, this book is set in Canada. It’s possible that my fond feelings toward our northern neighbor translates into an extra half star when figuring out my ratings, but I can’t say for sure; maybe Canadian books are just better.

A lot of romance novels feel to me like those plays that take place in a single setting: claustrophobic and limited in scope. What really worked for me in this book is that the characters do stuff. A lot of non-angsty, not specifically romantic things happen! There isn’t an endless amount of internal dialog, although Ms. Drewry provided a good amount of insight into what each of the main characters was thinking. This title would probably make a good audiobook. A large part of the time you got to see Jayne and Nick working toward something; he has his business, and she is in the process of getting her bookstore up and running.

Jayne is a courageous character and I admired her a lot. At the beginning of the book, she comes back to a town that she’d basically been run out of, first by her cold grandmother, and then by the devastating behavior of her best friend. The fact that she comes back at all and doesn’t hold a grudge is nothing short of remarkable (to me, at least, as I am a champion grudge-holder). She goes out of her way to let Nick know that she was hurt, but there are no lingering hard feelings. Nick is a really dependable guy who tries to do right by everybody. He plays the peacemaker between Jayne and the various people in this book who give her crap, but in a way that is neither off-putting nor overly aggressive.

I found the secondary characters in this book uniformly interesting, even the ones who I didn’t like a ton. It wasn’t difficult to put myself in Lisa’s shoes and see why she would have a problem with Nick and Jayne’s closeness. Nick and Carter’s relationship is a thing of beauty. It’s nice to see male cousins who so shamelessly enjoy each other’s company, and who can communicate using more than grunts and insults. I liked how Jayne’s new female friends help her feel more integrated into the community, even though there were a few rough moments within her new group that I didn’t feel were satisfactorily resolved.

I think that anybody with longstanding friendships would agree that Ms. Drewry did a good job of capturing the routines and nuances of a 25 year friendship. Nick and Jayne have their own shorthand, and know each other so well as friends that they’re the last two to catch on to their changing/revealed feelings for one another.

In addition to all of this, this book is sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious. I really enjoyed Plain Jayne and would certainly read another book by Ms. Drewry.

I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and Bruce Springsteen’s phone number.

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