Book Review: Savor Me

I came across this book after signing up for Aly Martinez's email list on her website, by signing up you receive two free novellas from her. I'm all about a free book, so as soon as I got this I decided to read it. I'll review the other one maybe next week for you.

Savor Me - Aly Martinez

I lost my virginity at age thirteen. I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. I wasn't raped or molested. Nothing horrible happened to me. I don't have a daddy complex, or a shit life that I need to be rescued from. I just happen to like boys...a lot. I like them all. Tall, short, skinny, buff, light hair, or dark, I don't discriminate.

I realized early on that one man wasn't enough for me. It's a simple mathematical fact. Why have one man when you can have two? Any more than two gets complicated. Hell, half the time even two gets complicated. But it’s worth it. Sometimes every woman has to make an exception though, two crappy losers or one smoking hot man.

The night I laid eyes on Hunter Coy, I made my choice. At least until he introduced me to Mason Wynn.

By know you should know that romance is my favorite genre but I'm kind of picky with what I like. I'm not particularly a fan of LGBTQ+ romance only because it isn't something I'm into. M/M romance doesn't do it for me, it's not what I'm attracted to. When I started this book I didn't totally love Lacey and the idea that this could go the way of a threesome with M/M wasn't totally my thing and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I'd even stick with it. I think the fact it was only 92 pages is what kept me there because I knew this was only an hour of reading or so.

Thankfully, despite there only being 92 pages there was some story to this aside from sex. Sure, there are sex scenes in this and that's the primary purpose of this book, but the relationship between Mason and Lacey is kind of great. In fact, I really liked Hunter in the beginning and by the end.... meh. Mason is definitely where it's at.

Overall? I kind of loved this. It's a little cheesy, it's a little over the top with Lacey's hyper sexuality, but Mason and his story line sells the entire book for me and for him alone I'm giving this one 4 stars. If this was only Hunter and Lacey, I don't think I'd even bother with it but that Mason.... he's a good one.

This post contains affiliate links. 

Book Review: Release

It's a new year with new reading goals, and I completely smashed my goal of 110 books last year! I ended up reading 125, so I set my 2020 Goodreads goal to 125 for this year so cross your fingers. Of course, if I find books as good as this one, I will have no problem flying through them!

Release - Aly Martinez

Growing up, Ramsey Stewart branded my soul in ways time could never heal.

At twelve, he asked me to be his girlfriend.

At thirteen, he gave me my first kiss.

By sixteen, we’d fallen in love, planned a future together, and had our eyes set on the horizon.

Love never fails, right?

But for Ramsey, it did.

Love failed him.

I failed him.

The entire world failed him.

At seventeen, Ramsey was convicted of killing the boy who assaulted me.

Move on, he wrote in his first and only letter from prison.

Start a new life, he urged.

I don’t love you anymore, he lied.

There was no such thing as giving up on Ramsey. Love may have been our curse, but he was mine—then, now, and forever.

So here I am, twelve long years later, waiting for a man I don't even know to emerge from between the chain link gates. 

Alright, so it's been awhile since I've read something from Aly Martinez was The Fall Up and that feels like forever ago. I really liked that one and sadly, nobody got me any of any Christmas since then even though they've been on my list, but that's a whole other post.

Today though, let's talk about her newest book Release. As soon as I saw this come up for review I immediately jumped at the opportunity because the premise is everything I want: a good girl trying to fix a (presumably) bad boy. I mean, that's my FAVORITE trope so I can't pass it up!

I love how the chapters switch between Thea and Ramsey, but also the past and the present, which sounds confusing but I promise you it isn't. We meet Thea the day her mom dies of cancer, which is when she meets Ramsey when he accidentally breaks her leg. He begins a friendship with her and she isn't having it (which is why I love her even more because she's the girl who isn't particularly nice to him but I love him because he's persistent even when she's at her worst). Over the years they become best friends, then they become first loves, and when things get hot and heavy, their lives are turned up and down.

Twelve years later, Ramsey is leaving prison and Thea is there to greet him. Not getting the greeting she hoped for, things look pretty damn bleak for them and I felt terrible for Ramsey. The majority of the book is his readjustment into civilian life and struggling with wanting Thea but also believing the best thing is for her to get over him and get on with her life. She can't do that because she loves him, for better or for worse, and she's determined to play his own game to win him back.

OK. A lot happens in this book and if I had to tell you something I wish were better.... I wish there was more to the ending. We have a kind of "almost bad news" run in for Ramsey kind of towards the end and I really wanted, and expected, there to be another one that was more serious, so it felt like the ultimate "dun, dun, dun" moment. I mean, Ramsey going to jail, that's big. The other piece of the puzzle from that fateful night, that's big, too. I just wanted something bigger. Ultimate justice, I guess. Without that it almost felt like a rushed ending and that's a bummer, but I loved the epilogue.

Things I loved? Thea and Ramsey. It's almost unheard of that I love both main characters but I really did in this book. Maybe it's their screwed up childhoods, their bond that helped them get through it. Sure, it almost became a co-dependency thing but Thea pulls it through and proves that's not what this relationship is for her, and I totally love it. I even liked Nora (Ramsey's sister) and if there isn't a sequel for Nora, I'm going to be so disappointed. Hell, let's just do a series for all of the victims, can we? I just really feel this needs actual justice and some karma to come back at the crappy villain's family. Something.

Anyways. Loved it. If you're in the mood for a romance with a solid relationship at the bottom of it? You should really check this one out. Its a fast read and I think you're going to really enjoy it. I'm giving this a 4.5 rounded up to a 5. I feel hesitant on doing that because sometimes I feel like I'm too easy but then also too hard and I can't win with ratings, but truly.... this is one I'm going to remember and hope to see sequels to later on.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A huge thank you to Aly Martinez and Social Butterfly PR for having me on this tour and for providing an ARC for review. As always, all opinions are my own and this post may contain affiliate links.

Book Stack Sunday

I'm going to try a new thing and show you some bookish goodies each week that I got in the mail since I don't always get to it on Instagram.

I forgot to put my December Bookworm Box on hold so it came and I was really excited about it!

The book this month was Irresistible by Melanie Harlow, but even better is that it's the first book in a series! So often I get book two or beyond and I'm stuck ordering everything before it because I hate jumping into a series like that. So this one looks promising. We also got a free e-book, which I can now read because I got an iPad for Christmas! I've already read a couple of books on it and it is SO much better than reading them on my phone. Ha! I also got a book light! I've been meaning to buy one of these for years and I always forget until I'm trying to read at night, so it's pretty cool and I'll have to try it out soon.

We are on a hard core budget now so I think I will be suspending my Bookworm Box subscription for awhile, and that bums me out.

Let's see, what else?

Oh! The week between Christmas and New Years Eve was pretty exciting for mail, I received five books that I'm reviewing. I already finished Seven Days, but the other ones are coming soon. It's an interesting mix. Maybe next week I'll show you my review shelf so you can see what's coming up.

Book Review: Twisted Course

I'm still frustrated with this. I have literally no intro.

Twisted Course - Aly Martinez

This is the alternate version of the other two books, Changing Course and Stolen Course, both of which you should read BEFORE you read this one. Which I did not do. I would have done that had I known this piece of information and I maybe wouldn't have disliked this one so much. The only reason I read this is it was a freebie for signing up for Aly Martinez's newsletter and it's a short novella and those are fun.

In this book we have Caleb who immediately finds himself at the scene of the accident that kills Sarah. His fiance, Manda, was a passenger who is seemingly (physically) OK. Of course the death of her best friend sends her spiraling into depression and their relationship really struggles. Caleb doesn't know how to help her and he finds Manda turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms, so he suggests group therapy for grief. That ends up being the nail in the coffin for them which you're almost grateful for because you could have seen that coming from the first few pages.

I didn't realize this was a "what happens if Sarah died instead of Manda" book so when I get to the end and I'm left with a cliffhanger?! To say I was pissed is an under statement. Now I understand I'm supposed to be able to pick up Stolen Course and kind of go from there but to be honest with you, I'm really torn on whether I want to even do that. I'm generally not a fan of alternative story lines and steer clear of them, I'm not even a fan of a story told in another character's point of view, so had I known that's what this was, I wouldn't have read it. Unlike most novellas where it's a complete story arc in less pages, this isn't that at all. Not only do we have the ending cliffhanger, we have the weird "what actually happened during this accident" just left out there with no more discussion, and there is all of this weird angst between characters for which there is no explanation and I'm assuming you would have that if you had read Changing Course but of course I don't know.

Overall it was really promising until that ending and the realization of what this was. I don't know if I want to read the duet now because honestly this would just confuse me at this point. I'm giving this 2 stars because the story was OK, it's the ending that ruined it for me.

Book Review: The Birthday List

Several months ago in my Bookworm Box I got the second book in this series, Letters to Molly, and you know I have a thing for a series, so I took a chance and ordered this one to read first. I am SO grateful that I did because this book features a lot of Molly and a small intro to what happened to her and her husband, so I'm going to go into that book excited to know how that all shakes out. So without further ado....

The Birthday List - Devney Perry

Happily married to her college sweetheart, Poppy lived a blessed life with the husband of her dreams. Then everything changed. She is no longer a wife. She is no longer the envy of her single friends. Now, people look at her with pity as they whisper a single word behind her back.

Widow.

Years after her husband's tragic death, years of pain and sorrow and wishing for the life she'll never get back, Poppy decides to finish Jamie's birthday list. She'll do the things he wanted to most. Because maybe, just maybe, if she can complete his list, she can start to live again.

Poppy expects going through the birthday list will be hard. She expects it to hurt. But what she doesn't expect is Cole. Could the man who delivered the news of her husband's death and shattered her heart be the one to help her put it back together again? 

I hate that this book took me so long to read once I started it but it definitely isn't because it wasn't captivating, it really was. This one falls into my "fun reads" category and I had so many review books that I only had small snippets of time to read this one but finally, FINALLY I finished it and I loved it.

In this one we have Poppy, who is starting up a new restaurant as part of her late husband's birthday list. He was a victim of violent crime and Poppy has spent several years mourning but decides one day to work on Jamie's birthday list, a list of things he wanted to do before certain birthdays. The book is her getting through those in an effort to heal but also her falling in love with Cole. Cole happens to be the officer who came to tell her that Jamie died and when he sees Poppy come into the station to see if there is any progress on  Jamie's case, he decides to take a chance. What starts as a friendship quickly becomes clear there is more there and we get to see that blossom.

Things I liked about this book: first off, I loved the birthday list itself, it's fun and something we should all do, actually. I loved Poppy's idea of completing the birthday list as a way to give Jamie's life closure but also heal herself to move on. I loved Cole a LOT and I though he was such a great guy and I really loved how he was supportive of her throughout and it pays off for them, even though it got a little dicey towards the end.

Things I didn't love.... I'm not sure? Well, I didn't love Jamie's parents and thought they were absolute assholes to Poppy. It's one thing to grieve your child but quite another to drop someone completely who meant so much to you at one time, too. I felt terrible for her and I can understand that hurt she felt.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It didn't have intense "romance" scenes in it, but the story itself was just really sweet and the upward arc of coming out of a well of grief. Truly a good story, I can't wait to read the next book featuring her friend/ex-sister-in-law Molly. I'm going to give this one a 4.5 star.... rounded up to 5 because this is one I'll read again. And keep.

   

I do have the second book in this series, Letters to Molly, so stayed tuned for that review. As always, this post contains affiliate links. 

December 2019 Wrap up.... 2020 Goals

I knew going into December it was going to fly by because I had a lot going on and the sheer amount of work that goes into Christmas makes days go by. It's only dawned on me in the last day that this is the end of a decade and that's weird but I also no longer have concept of time so I guess maybe it isn't so weird after all.

December Highlights:

• We had Snowmaggedon at the very end of November but it carried over in December and it was ridiculous. It was the first time (that I can remember) that I was legitimately snowed in and unable to leave my house. 
• The big three went to Grandma's for the weekend, so Matt and I only had Lucy and it was a DREAM. When the big three came back we made a last minute decision to go to Bentleyville to see all of the Christmas lights and freeze our asses off waiting for Santa in the name of tradition. 
• I really struggled with depression this month, I saw the weight loss doctor and learned I was fatter than I thought I was and started a diet in which I think I'm failing and I can't wait to go back in January. Ha!
• I gave you a recap of my Best Books of 2019 and I hope you found your next read on there. 
• Olivia had her first 8th grade band concert, they did SO well!! A far cry from the squeaky and rough 6th grade band!
• Olivia, Penelope, and Lucy had a dance recital (pictures coming soon). 
• Penelope had her first grade school winter concert. She did pretty well but was totally nervous and it was adorable. 
• Lucy had a family fun day at school so I can and we made crafts and sang songs. She was totally excited to show me all the things. 
• We had Christmas and it was great. 

Books I read:

• The Cost of Honor ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• A Lady's Past  ⭐⭐⭐
• I Heart Hawaii ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Our Totally Ridiculous, Made Up Christmas Relationship ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Christmas in Newfoundland ⭐⭐
• The Playground ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Landon & Shay (part two) ⭐⭐⭐
• Hoops Holiday (novella) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Cowboy Christmas Redemption ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

2020 Goals: 

I'm going to put my yearly goals for 2020 here because I feel like January is all about setting yourself up for the rest of the year, so we are doing that all month and coming up with a plan. 

• Our current debt (not including our home or vehicle) is hovering at $41,000. We would like to get that down to $28,000. To get there it means really buckling down on things. Sorry friends, we likely won't be sending fun things to you randomly during the year. We probably won't be doing a lot of fun stuff that isn't free. We're going to do a budget friendly vacation this year. We need to figure out how to free up $1100 per month or so to do this. 
• Budget friendly vacation! We do plan on doing a road trip but we're looking at the possibilities to cross a bunch of states off our list but also won't break the bank. Option A: Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Option : Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky. Please weigh in. Our requirement to cross it off is to do a touristy thing in each state, maybe more than one. 
• Continue with therapy and get through the year. I know that seems kind of dumb, but I know 2020 is going to be a difficult year for me because the support system I've relied on is going to be gone, so I will have to do a lot all on my own. I know, millions of people do this every day, but I struggle. I can no longer "go with the flow" or multi-task and I struggle with every day things. I look "normal", I sound "normal", I am not "normal". I have been struggling with a lot of things and the realization that I'm at my peak recovery and I'm not back to my normal.... it's upsetting to say the least. 
• Olivia and I are going to Washington D.C./New York City in March and I'm so excited for her. Her friends who are going are excited that I am going to because I think having a mom you know is comforting. I am scared shitless and I am so worried I'm going to get sick, get disoriented/confused, or that something will happen to me. This is my first time going somewhere without some I know/trust helping me. I am terrified. 
• I would like to finish our Missouri vacation and my Vegas vacation scrapbooks this year. I really want to get back into scrapbooking. 
• Organize my office/library/craft room. Matt says he will help and build me a table/desk to make my room seem larger and maybe help me with storage and I am so excited and really hope it happens. I just need to find some ideas now! 
• Lose 15 pounds. I know my goal for 2019 was to lose 5 pounds, and I did that (barely) but my goal for 2020 is to lose 15. I can do this, I have to buckle down. 

That's it, those are my goals for 2020. What are some of your goals? 

Best of the Best: Top Books for 2019

According to Goodreads I have read a total of 125 books this year, smashing my goal of 110 for 2019. Impressive, considering around June I was so far behind and absolutely certain I wasn't going to hit the goal or anywhere near it.

I wanted to share with you some of my 5 star reviews from this year because these were all really good that I think you will scoop these up and enjoy them. Some of my 5 star books aren't listed here either because they were a non-fiction, a children's book, or maybe it was a 5 star book after I read it but now that its months later and I'm not thinking about it anymore. All of these here are ones I recommend, have purchased for others, still think about, or have read a second (or third) time since. That's how good they are. (If you want more information on any of these, click on the image of the book and it will take you to Amazon.) (This post contains affiliate links. 💜)

Envy: An Eagle Elite Novella

Who knew I'd like a mob crime family novella with some pretty serious violence in it? Apparently I do! Enough so that I've considered buying the others in this series from the author but I'm not sure if I can handle a full length book with that much violence. But..... I kind of want to read more about these guys so.... 

Our Totally Ridiculous, Made Up Christmas Relationship

You're going to see  lot from this author on here and I can't help it, they were all really good! I loved the cheese but the sweetness of this guy and the quirk of this girl. 

Disgrace

You guys. I loved this one. A lot. 

Loving Mr. Daniels

I told you, I was addicted to this author all year. The fragility of this heroine and their relationship really made this book for me. 

The Fire Between High & Lo

OK, this book made me an emotional wreck and I had to take a breather maybe half way through and I wasn't sure if this was going to have the ending I wanted. 

In An Instant

Now technically, this book doesn't come out for awhile but you need to pre-order it because it is THAT GOOD. As a mother it gutted me to know I would have no idea what I would do in this situation and thank god I haven't had to do it. 

Fix Her Up

OK, another author I fell in love with this year! This was fun and maybe laugh out loud a few times and convinced me to buy more from her immediately after I finished it. 

The Air He Breathes

The first one I ever read from this author and dammit if it didn't get me. 

The Echo Park Castaways

I was on a YA kick this year and this one, while short and sweet, really stuck with me. 

The Unhoneymooners

Alright, I had forgotten how much I loved these authors and this one reminded me and I laughed so many times during this one! 

Dear Bridget, I Want You

The premise of this was solid, and I hadn't read anything by these authors and I loved it! 

You, Me, and the Sea

A retelling (kind of) of Wuthering Heights that was amazing. I was mesmerized by this book and I've read it three times now. 

The House of Salt & Sorrows

I know some people thought it was weird, but it was GREAT. Its a play on Twelve Dancing Princesses and this author did it justice!! I couldn't put it down and obviously this will win Cover of the Year for me because I loved it so much! 

Cowboy Christmas Redemption

This one is squeaking in barely because I just finished it but I had been waiting for this story for a long time and it was as good as I had hoped it would be!

Getaway Girl

I loved this. It was fun and I really enjoyed these characters. 

If Only I Could Tell You

I wasn't sure if I was even going to finish this book because I really didn't like either sister, I thought they were just the worst, I didn't understand "the drama" between them and then.... it all started slowly unraveling and I could NOT put it down. I finished this one while parked on the street at Olivia's dance class, completely sobbing tears of total sadness but complete happiness at the same time. SO GOOD. 

No Judgements

A review book that was SO good with the best cast of characters that I am crossing my fingers so hard hoping I can be on the tour for the next book. I can't wait to read it! 

The Speed of Falling Objects

If I had to tell you what book really got to me, I'd tell you it was this one. Something about a teenage girl feeling disconnected from both parents, desperately wanting approval and to know she is loved, really did me in. Not to mention the crazy adventure, this one was a ride from start to finish. It's a YA book and I guarantee you will get something different from it than your teenager will and it's interesting to compare notes. Olivia read this one too and would text me from school things like, "MOM!!!! You should have told me *insert name* dies! I can't handle this!" and she'd run home from the bus to tell me which part she was at. Really fantastic book. 

If you read a FANTASTIC book this year, tell me what it was and I will check it out! Have you read any off this list??