Review: Sentinel by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Posted in 4 hearts, Reviews by Lacey

Sentinel by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Series: Covenant #5 (full reading order below)
Publication Date: November 2nd 2013
Links: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads

It’s a beautiful day for a war.

As the mortal world slowly slips into chaos of the godly kind, Alexandria Andros must overcome a stunning defeat that has left her shaken and in doubt of their ability to end this war once and for all.

And with all the obstacles between Alex and her happily-ever-after with the swoonworthy Aiden St. Delphi, they must now trust a deadly foe as they travel deep into the Underworld to release one of the most dangerous gods of all time.

In the stunning, action-packed climax to the bestselling Covenant series, Alex must face a terrible choice: the destruction of everything and everyone she holds dear… or the end of herself.

I’ve finally, FINALLY finished the Covenant series!!! I honestly don’t know why it took me this long to get to this final book – I read Apollyon over two years ago and I guess I just never kept going even with that awful cliffhanger. But I guess one good thing about waiting is that I have Seth’s series ready for me to read! Anyway, now that I have finished the Covenant series, I’m feeling so bittersweet. Jennifer L. Armentrout did an amazing job ending this brilliant series, but I’m still so sad to say goodbye to Alex and Aiden, who make up one of my favorite couples ever. Sentinel is fast-paced, action-packed, and never has a dull moment, but the highlight of the book is definitely Alex and Aiden’s relationship. They’ve been through so much, so it’s amazing to see how everything wraps up between them.

Our love had never been easy.
… He was my strength when I needed him to be, my friend when I needed someone to talk me down, my equal in a world where by law I would always be less than him, and honest to gods, he was the love of my life.
And he would wait forever for me, just as I would wait forever and a day for him.

I skimmed through the first four books before starting Sentinel, because I knew if I picked this final book up, I’d be just a teensy bit lost. Luckily, JLA is a fantastic writer, able to suck me into her Covenant world even after leaving it for over two years. Sentinel picks up right where Apollyon left off, after Alex’s terrible fight with Ares, which left her completely broken and near death’s door. But once she’s healed thanks to Apollo, she’s still not quite up to par, which isn’t good since the world is being torn apart by Ares, Lucian, and… Seth. It’s a race to the finish to see who will reach whom first – whether Ares will find a way to enslave mankind, or if Alex and the gang can manage to stop him and pretty much save the world.

What I love about this series (besides the amazing romance) is how humorous it is. No matter how dire things are, Alex and her friends manage to find a levity that lightens everyone up. As serious as the whole end-of-the-world thing going on is, Alex and the gang always make quips and jokes that have me laughing so hard. I love this balance in emotions that JLA handles so effortlessly.

Of course, now I get to talk about the romance! Alex and Aiden are just… perfect. They complement each other so well, even after the both of them have grown so much throughout the series. Alex has matured greatly, no longer that impulsive girl who seems to always get herself in trouble. Aiden is as swoon-worthy as ever, always believing in Alex and never being too overly alpha-male. These two just GET each other, support each other, love each other, and my heart easily fell for these two all over again in Sentinel.

“I love you.”
“Agapi mou, you are my everything.”

And oh gods, SETH!! I have to admit, I was Team Seth once upon a time back in Pure, so he’ll always have a piece of my heart, even though he’s turned a little power-hungry and is on the bad guys’ side. But if you’re a Seth fan (or even if you’re not), he’ll surprise you in this book. He’s made bad decisions, but he’s inherently a good guy, and I’m definitely excited to see how his story continues in his series!

The ending was something I… didn’t expect. I’m honestly still not quite sure how to feel about it, but the book overall was an epic ending to a series I adore. Sentinel isn’t my favorite of the series (I think it still might be Deity), but I’m so glad to have finally read it. I know I’d feel a lot worse leaving the Covenant world if there wasn’t the spinoff series, so I’m thanking the gods that JLA is giving us that!

Reading Order: Covenant series

#0.5 ~ Daimon: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#1 ~ Half-Blood: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#2 ~ Pure: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#3 ~ Deity: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#3.5 ~ Elixir: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#4 ~ Apollyon: My Review • Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#5 ~ Sentinel: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads

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7Jan2016

Blog Tour + Review & Giveaway: Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer

Posted in 4 hearts, Blog Tours, Giveaways, Reviews by Lacey

Click the banner to follow the tour.

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer!

Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer
Series: Standalone
Publication Date: December 29th 2015

On his own

Thomas Bellweather hasn’t been in town long. Just long enough for his newlywed mother to be murdered, and for his new stepdad’s cop colleagues to decide Thomas is the primary suspect.

Not that there’s any evidence. But before Thomas got to Garretts Mill there had just been one other murder in twenty years.

The only person who believes him is Charlotte Rooker, little sister to three cops and, with her soft hands and sweet curves, straight-up dangerous to Thomas. Her best friend was the other murder vic. And she’d like a couple answers.

Answers that could get them both killed, and reveal a truth Thomas would die to keep hidden…

Buy Links:
Amazon • Barnes and Noble • Google Play

I’m a huge fan of Brigid Kemmerer’s Elemental series, so I was excited at the thought of reading a new book of hers! Thicker Than Water is a little different than the Elemental series, since it reads like a contemporary book right until near the end. It’s a fantastic, well-written story with relatable characters and a suspenseful mystery surrounding them. I really enjoyed this new book of Brigid Kemmerer’s and I’m hoping there will be more!

Thomas Bellweather and his newlywed mother have only moved to a new town for a short while before Thomas’s mother ends up murdered… and everyone thinks Thomas did it. Even at his mother’s funeral, there are glares and accusing looks at Thomas, especially from the police. It seems like everyone’s out against him, all but Charlotte Rooker, who he meets at the funeral. She doesn’t seem to suspect him like everyone else, but with her three cop brothers, Thomas needs to stay away from her, no matter how pretty and relatable she seems to be.

I felt so bad for Thomas – my heart went out to him from the very first page. Not only is he devastated over his mother’s death, the only family member he had, but he’s also accused of her murder. He just can’t catch a break, and the only time he feels calm is with Charlotte, but even she brings trouble with her overprotective cop family. I really liked Thomas’s character (Brigid Kemmerer writes the male POV SO well) but Charlotte took me a while to warm up to. I didn’t like how her family kind of walked all over her and she didn’t really do anything about it. She does grow to have a spine, so I eventually grew to like her more.

The mystery in this book was so well-written! I had no idea what to expect, and the plot was unpredictable. You can really feel the suspense in this novel as Thomas and Charlotte find clues and information regarding the murder. There was also a little romance in the book, but the main focus was definitely the mystery.

Thicker Than Water is written in both Thomas and Charlotte’s POV, and I have to say again, the author’s writing is fantastic. It’s compelling and the way she writes her characters makes them feel authentic and understandable to the reader. I would definitely recommend this for the writing, and if you’re a fan of Brigid Kemmerer, you don’t want to miss this new release. Now I’m very much hoping for a sequel, because the ending left me curious for more!

Brigid Kemmerer was born in Omaha, Nebraska, though her parents quickly moved her all over the United States, from the desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, and several stops in between, eventually settling near Annapolis, Maryland. Brigid started writing in high school, and her first real “novel” was about four vampire brothers causing a ruckus in the suburbs. Those four brothers are the same boys living in the pages of The Elemental Series, so Brigid likes to say she’s had four teenage boys taking up space in her head for the last seventeen years. (Though sometimes that just makes her sound nuts.)

Brigid writes anywhere she can find a place to sit down (and she’s embarrassed to say a great many pages of The Elemental Series were written while sitting on the floor in the basement of a hotel while she was attending a writers’ conference). Most writers enjoy peace and quiet while writing, but Brigid prefers pandemonium. A good thing, considering she has three boys in the house, ranging in age from an infant to a teenager.

While writing STORM, it’s ironic to note that Brigid’s personal life was plagued by water problems: her basement flooded three times, her roof leaked, her kitchen faucet broke, causing the cabinet underneath to be destroyed by water, the wall in her son’s room had to be torn down because water had crept into the wall, and her bedroom wall recently developed a minor leak. Considering SPARK, book 2 in the series, is about the brother who controls fire, Brigid is currently making sure all the smoke detectors in her house have batteries.

Brigid loves hearing from people, and she probably won’t refer to herself in the third person like this if you actually correspond with her. She has a smartphone surgically attached to her person nearby at all times, and email is the best way to reach her. Her email address is brigidmary@gmail.com.

Website • Goodreads • Twitter • Facebook

2 – copies of Thicker Than Water (US/CAN)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Tour Organized by:
YA Bound Book Tours

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2Nov2015

Audiobook Review: Dragonfly by Leigh T. Moore

Posted in 3 hearts, Reviews by Lacey

Dragonfly by Leigh T. Moore
Series: Dragonfly #1 (full reading order below)
Audiobook Publication Date: October 20th 2015
Length: 6 hours and 33 minutes
Narrated by: Christy Romano
Links: Audible • Ebook • Paperback • Goodreads
Source: I received an audiobook in exchange for an honest review

Falling in love changes everything.

Three bad things I learned this year:

People you trust lie, even parents.
That hot guy, the one who’s totally into you, might not be the one.
Things are not always how they appear.

Three good things I learned this year:

Best friends are always there for you, even when they’re far away.
That other hot guy, the one who remembers your birthday, just might be the one.
Oh, and things are not always how they appear.

Anna Sanders expected an anonymous (and uneventful) senior year until she crossed paths with rich and sexy Jack Kyser and his twin sister, Lucy. Pulling Anna into their extravagant lifestyle on the Gulf Coast, Lucy pushed Anna outside her comfort zone, and Jack showed her feelings she’d never experienced – until he mysteriously withdrew.

Anna turned to her internship at the city paper and to her old attraction to Julian, a handsome local artist and rising star, for distraction. But both led to her discovery of a decades-old secret closely guarded by the twins’ distant, single father.

A secret that could permanently change all their lives.

The audiobook of Dragonfly is a quick, fun listen. I really enjoyed Christy Romano’s narration – she did a great job with portraying the teenage main character’s voice. While I didn’t love the story, I still appreciated the way the author was able to make her high school characters realistic and relatable. I’d definitely recommend this audiobook if you’re a fan of romance with realistic teenage characters and high school angst/drama.

Anna Sanders is that very typical high school senior girl who, in between dealing with school and college, has one mess of a romantic life. She has a fling with the hot and rich Jack Kyser, whose father practically owns the town they live in, and her feelings for Jack eventually grow into something deeper. But when Jack withdraws from her, her best guy friend Julian is always there for her. It’s obvious that both boys care deeply for Anna, and vice versa, but I felt like only one of them was really meant to be with her.

As many times as Anna annoyed me with her wishy-washy attitude, I really enjoyed the way she took the time to think over her feelings for both boys before making any rash decisions. I’m not a fan of love triangles but the author handled it better than I expected in this book.

There’s also a mystery involving Jack’s father and Julian’s mother, and Anna slowly unravels that secondary story throughout the novel. This mystery definitely made listening to Dragonfly much more interesting, especially when I sometimes grew tired of the romance.

The best part of listening to Dragonfly is definitely the narration. Christy Romano is fantastic! I love her voice. Dragonfly is a good start to Leigh T. Moore’s series, and while I didn’t quite love it, I’m still curious enough after finishing this to continue with the series. Anna and Julian were by far the most interesting characters, and I’m looking forward to more of them in the rest of the series!

Reading Order: Dragonfly series

#1 ~ Dragonfly: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#2 ~ Undertow: My Review • Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#3 ~ Watercolor: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#4 ~ Mosaic: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads

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24Aug2015

Early Review: Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines

Posted in 2 hearts, Reviews by Lacey

Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines
Series: The Field Party #1 (full reading order below)
Publication Date: August 25th 2015
Links: Ebook • Hardcover • Audible • Goodreads
Source: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The first novel in a brand-new series—from New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Abbi Glines—about a small Southern town filled with cute boys in pickup trucks, Friday night football games, and crazy parties that stir up some major drama.

To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.

Two years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away.

As West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else.

West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…

I was really hoping Until Friday Night would have a The Vincent Boys series feel to it, since to-date it’s my favorite of Abbi Glines’, but I struggled with this book. The ridiculous amount sexism from both the boys and girls had me cringing so much. The mediocre writing and characters weren’t very impressive – I was annoyed with them more than anything. I wanted to like this book, but there were too many issues I couldn’t get over.

West Ashby is the popular football-playing jock at Lawton high, but with his father dying of cancer, he’s going through the worst time of his life. His way of grieving is with alcohol and girls, until he meets Maggie Carleton, who understands him in a way no one else can. Maggie has just moved to Lawton to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousin. The thing about Maggie is that she doesn’t speak, not since she witnessed her father murder her mother. So she keeps quiet, observing the world, but meeting West has her opening up more and connecting with someone who feels the grief she keeps inside her.

She had become my lifeline. I wanted to be hers. I wanted her to feel this way about me, too.

Right off the bat, I didn’t like West. Or his jock friends. Why? Because they are all unbelievably, disgustingly sexist. They treat girls like dirt, or like walking vaginas. Seriously, the boys think of themselves as gods, and it doesn’t help that the girls go along with that and treat them like they’re gods too. I’ve talked a lot with a friend who’s read Abbi Glines’ other recent books, and she told me that sexism in her books isn’t uncommon, which is just… sad. Until Friday Night is a young adult book, the first in a brand new series, and it would be awful if young girls read this book and think that the boys’ behavior in it is acceptable. Because it’s not.

Maggie and West start off as friends first – this is probably the one thing I actually liked this about their relationship. I liked that they supported one another, relied on each other, but then… sometimes it felt like West was only using Maggie to cope with his pain. She gave so much to him, and all he did was take, take, take. As bad as I felt for him and his father, he came across as a selfish brat sometimes. He thinks that no one else besides Maggie can imagine the pain of losing a loved one, so he doesn’t even tell his friends that his father is dying, believing that they’re shallow and don’t have any problems to deal with themselves… um? No.

Eventually, Maggie and West fall for each other. The whole book takes place over the course of a month, so they actually fall for each other pretty quickly. Everything in this book is pretty much trope after overused trope. Popular jock falls for the gorgeous new girl who’s so ‘different’ from other girls and so ‘special’. Sigh. It was tedious trying to get through this book, since it’s just so boring and predictable. The only thing I liked was Maggie’s character, but her storyline felt so… unfinished and unresolved. She doesn’t really even deal with her grief, only helps West, so in the end, she almost felt like a secondary character.

With all that said, with all the problems I had with Until Friday Night… I didn’t hate this book. I’ve read worse, and I’ve certainly read better, but long-time fans of the author, who are used to her stories, might enjoy this more than I did.

Quotes are taken from the arc and are subject to change in the final version.

Reading Order: The Field Party series

#1 ~ Until Friday Night: Ebook • Hardcover • Audible • Goodreads
#2 ~ Under the Lights: Ebook • Hardcover • Goodreads (Aug. 23, 2016)

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20Aug2015

Audiobook Review: Never Never: Part 2 by Colleen Hoover & Tarryn Fisher

Posted in 3.5 hearts, Reviews by Lacey

Never Never: Part 2 by Colleen Hoover & Tarryn Fisher
Series: Never Never #2 (full reading order below)
Audiobook Publication Date: August 11th 2015
Length: 2 hours and 39 minutes
Narrated by: Kevin Free & Elizabeth Evans
Links: Audible • Ebook • Paperback • Goodreads
Source: I received an audiobook in exchange for an honest review

“Never forget that I was your first real kiss. Never forget that you’ll be my last.
And never stop loving me between all of them.
Never stop, Charlie.
Never forget.”

Silas races against time as more truths unravel, while others twist tighter together. And now, the stakes are higher as Silas’ control slips and others begin to point fingers. Charlie is in trouble and he must be the one to bridge the chasm between their past and their present. Because somewhere between I love yous and Never Nevers and Never Agains, a truth they can’t imagine, beckons to be found.

“Where are you, Charlie?”

I was seriously addicted to the first part in Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher’s Never Never series, so I of course I’d be incredibly excited for the second! I was hoping to get some answers in this second part, since the first left me with so many questions. Although I wasn’t quite satisfied with the story in this book, I once again enjoyed Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher’s fantastic writing and storytelling. The two of them write in such a compelling way that I didn’t want to stop listening to this audiobook.

Never Never: Part Two picks up right where Part One left off: Silas has once again forgotten all his memories. This time around, he has the help of quickly getting access to the letters he wrote to warn himself and Charlie about losing their memories. Charlie is missing, and even though Silas has never really met her, since he has no memories, he still has a desperate need to find her and help her.

This novella is super quick and super short. I adore Silas, who seems like such a good, sweet guy. I love that he cares for Charlie, even though he doesn’t know who she is, because deep down he knows he’s always loved her. And I really liked that Silas’ brother Landon gets involved, because I absolutely love him!

The story, though, is just TOO short. The writing is fantastic, of course, but I was hoping for something more. The audiobook is only 2.5 hours, almost half as long as the first part. As much as I like the narrators, I just wasn’t as satisfied with the book as much as I wanted to be because I wish it was longer. We only get tiny scraps of clues that still don’t lead us to how or why Charlie and Silas keep losing their memories every 48 hours.

Still, if you were a fan of Part One, you most likely won’t want to miss Part Two. Just a warning though, that this ends in a cliffhanger again! If you don’t mind the cliffie, then I recommend you keep reading this series to see where it goes!

Reading Order: Never Never series

#1 ~ Never Never: My Review • Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#2 ~ Never Never: Part 2: Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads
#3 ~ Never Never: Part 3: My Review • Ebook • Paperback • Audible • Goodreads

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