5 Smooches!

Synopsis

Ex-Army Ranger, Brand Killien, has always been good.

A good friend, a good soldier, a good everything. .
The problem is, good hasn’t gotten him anything but a crushed heart.

So after licking his wounds, he decides to move on. And moving on doesn’t include being good anymore.

Bad sounds so much better.

Jaded and detached, Brand is determined to never open himself up to anyone again. It’s not worth the pain. Instead, he becomes closed, hardened, aloof.

But then he’s called back home for a family emergency… a family that he is estranged from. A family that he put out of his mind a long time ago for very good reasons…reasons that involve secrets and pain. Reasons he tried hard to forget.

But home is where the heart is, and it just might be where Brand finds his again.

Why? Because home is where Nora Greene is. A fiery, red-headed spitfire, Nora is a thing from his past. A beautiful, feisty thing. When Brand left, she was away at boarding school.

But she’s back now.

And she wants Brand, scars and all.

Review

This book follows Nora and Brand as they try and navigate a way to get through the demons on their past. Nora is a 23 year old girl who on the outside seems to have it all, the perfect life….but on the inside she is a scared girl with a shocking secret. Brand is the ex-army boy who returns to a place he doesn’t want to be out of duty to his mother, he is harbouring some serious insecurities and carrying a world of guilt that isn’t needed.

The day Brand returns home he becomes a local hero, he helps save people after an accident, he helps save Nora. Even when he is injured himself, he puts others first. “Get her first. She’s under that s8t. Get her first. It’s crushing her.” This is what starts the ball on the friendship/relationship of these two. Brand can’t do much of anything after the accident and Nora offers to help. She is doing this for a few reasons, one to pay him back for saving her life, two because she has always liked Brand and three is because it gives her the escape that she needs to avoid the things that hurt her

Nora soon decides that she wants Brand and offers him a proposition of just the summer, he doesn’t want this and turns her down flat. This starts a quite funny game for Nora where she goes after what she wants, this involves skinny dipping, and dropping towels etc. they are quite funny to read about. Being a man that finds her attractive its clear things wouldn’t take too long to become more. But once feelings start to get involved it seems to go downhill

Brand and Nora are fighting the demons they have and Nora is helping Brand with his past and his demons. “You’re strong. And brave and honourable and good. I’ve never met anyone like you. And I doubt I ever will again.” But Nora won’t let Brand in when it comes to hers. Nora’s issues run deeper and they are also a current problem for her. What she has endured and by the people she has is hard to grasp. She is tough whether she knows it or not. Brand wants to be there for her and has a feeling in his gut about what has happened to her, but wants her to confirm. He does however at a gathering her family are having, make things worse for Nora.

When things come to a head, Brand is still standing beside her and her beside him. I loved the story of Nora and Brand and I am pleased that things ended the way that they did. They worked so hard with each other to get where they are, even with all the obstacles they had to endure. Well done Courtney Cole on a fantastic read.

“The best things in life are worth the greatest risk. Sometimes, before we fall, we fly.”

Stacey

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Synopsis

In Riveted you were introduced to spunky Bleu Drawn, her brother Axel and her father Aaron; as well as everyone else in their crazy “family”. But how did it all start? 

1983. A bad boy biker named Aaron Drawn, who makes ridiculously reckless choices, meets up with the nicest, sweetest girl next door Angel Lonero, when she is his nurse after he gets shot. 
He thinks she wants the picket fence, 2.5 kids and Sunday dinners. What she really wants is a bad boy with a heart of gold who can make her heart race and her toes curl. Can he get past his demons and trust her with his heart? Can she get over his past, including a very mentally unhinged ex girlfriend who has a fetish for sharp knives?

Review

The story of Angel and Aaron isn’t a pretty one. Being surrounded by ugly can sometimes cloud your vision of the life you want. Angel has a unique way of pushing that all aside and looking at the best in what life has to offer. Her best friend, Almeida, has a big brother, Aaron. Even though she has known Almeida for quite some time, she never met Aaron. When they do finally meet, in the hospital of all places, sparks fly. She is the light to his dark. In his mind, he is messed up and unable to provide the “happily ever after” that he thinks most girls want. What he doesn’t realize, is that Angel is his happily ever after. His redemption, his salvation, his heart. There are some crazy scenes in this book involving seriously psychotic characters. Poor Aaron and Almeida. Their life began with some seriously messed up circumstances, but Aaron did his absolute best to shield his baby sister from their father, and the knowledge surrounding his courtship with their mother. Aaron is a good man, even if he doesn’t believe it.

Angel is sweet and endearing. She is a nurse and spends her time trying to do the best she can for her patients. She takes extra care with the pediatric department at her hospital and even enlists Aaron and his buddy Tangler to join in. These big, muscle-bound, tattooed men playing with paints and markers with the little kids is so sweet. These aren’t your typical biker dudes. They have found their loves, Angel and Almeida, respectively, and are just trying to live a good life.

One of the funniest characters in the this book is Angel’s Gran. She seriously says the craziest stuff! She is the one that ended up raising Angel after her parents passed away and they are very close. Angel takes Aaron, Tangler, and Almeida up to meet her. Needless to say, Gran and her crazy run rampant with the couples and everyone has a good laugh.

This is a wonderful edition to the Drawn Series. It was nice to get background information on the parents of Bleu and Axel. Bottom line with these characters, they have a lot of love to give, be it in their own personal crazy way. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

4 SMOOCHIES

~Nicole

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5 SMOOCHES

Synopsis

Boring Beth Lynn has always lived up to her nickname… until she wakes up in a hotel bed next to a sexy as sin state senator she re-connected with at a wedding the previous night.

The biggest problem? She can’t seem to remember anything about the night before except for crying into a box of cookies, and she’s pretty sure Grandma Nadine slipped something in her drink. And what should have been a one night stand turns into a six day adventure when Grandma whisks them off to Hawaii to save them from the ensuing media firestorm.

Jace isn’t looking for commitment — he believes he made that clear when he left the wedding with Beth. Then again, he can’t remember much of anything other than the way her skin felt beneath his hands. Now he’s stuck with her at some lame couple’s retreat and trying his hardest to fight the attraction only a woman like Beth could invoke.

He doesn’t think it can get any worse.

But one spider attack… A donkey ride from hell… And an unfortunate episode with Viagra tea — and there’s one thing Jace knows for sure: He should never have agreed to Grandma Nadine’s suggestion in the first place.
Because if this isn’t paradise, and it isn’t a vacation — that only leaves one option.

Survival.

But to make it through alive… they might lose their hearts in the process.

Review

The Dare by Rachel Van Dyken is book 3 in The Bet Series. While each book revolves around a separate couple and could be read as a standalone I very much recommend reading these in order. Not only are they some of the funniest books I have read but the stories do interconnect. I absolutely LOVED The Dare, this book was sweet, funny and just sexy enough. I was not surprised to find that I could not put it down because that has been the whole series for me.

Beth and Jace wake up after the wedding of her sister and his friend together in a hotel room and nothing but crazy Granma Nadine antics happen from there. In the middle of all the insanity that Grandma always seems to cause is a very sweet and endearing love story. Beth is a scientist and very rational she knows what she wants and what she doesn’t want. And what is it that Beth doesn’t want, a politician. Enter Jace, you guessed it, a politician!  But, when Grandma is around what you want or better yet what you think you want does not matter. Things get complicated quickly with the press getting involved and sweet innocent Beth even getting called a Prostitute.

One would think with as many crazy antics that take place in the book, donkey ride from HELL as well as contestant interruption and interference from Grandma and so much more, that this would come off as cheesy but that is where the beauty of Rachel’s writing comes in play. She has a way of making you laugh and fall in love all at the same time. One of Rachel’s skill that not many have is the ability to write a very sexy novel without a lot of actual sex or even graphic sex. Between the very clear attraction Jace and Beth have and the hilarity that Grandma brings I honesty cannot recommend this book enough. The Bet series as a whole is one I find myself reading again and again and I can’t wait for you all to discover and enjoy it!

Now all I can hope for right now is that Rachel isn’t done and that there will indeed be more Grandma Nadine in my life!

~miranda

5 Smooches!

Synopsis

What happens when you uncover years of secrets and find out everything you thought to be true was a lie?

Drew Stevens finds her world turned upside down when her parents are brutally murdered. Soon after, she learns she inherited a property in Bar Harbor, Maine, from recently deceased grandparents that she believed had died when she was a baby.

Drew travels north to settle her grandparents’ estate, but finds more questions than answers as the truth starts unraveling. What she didn’t expect to find was Saint, whose reputation is as tumultuous as his past. But the very thing that brings them together is the same thing that keeps them emotionally caged.

With Saint’s scars so deep and Drew’s so fresh, can the pair heal from their painful wounds or will they be pulled beneath the darkness of their pasts?

Review

Wow..just wow.  This book is a first in a series.  I read where the second book will be out in Summer of 2014.
I really enjoyed this book.  It was about a girl named Drew from Florida who’s parents were murdered and she finds out the grandparents she thought who died when she was a child, which lived in Maine, had just died recently.  So she decided to go to Maine and see if she could find out answers about her life from the home her grandparents had left her.  She goes on this quest to get her grandparents house sold, get her questions answered about her parents from their home town before she decides to go back to Florida.  In the meantime she meets a man by the name of Saint. He is nothing like the guys she usually is attracted to, he is the HAWT bad tattooed boy, sleeps with all the girls that are passing through but he seems to have a troubled past too and Drew is very attracted to him.  Will she move back home to Florida after she gets her answers or will she stay with the HAWT bad boy in Maine?  You have to read and find out..this is for mature readers. This is the first time I have read any of Marni Mann’s books..It was a very easy read and I felt like I was sitting in the room or running around town with Drew..the descriptions were so awesome.
I gave Pulled Beneath 5 Smooches!

Tricia

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