Review: The Hotter You Burn by Gena Showalter

Title: The Hotter You Burn (The Original Heartbreakers #2)
Author: Gena Showalter
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: July 28th 2015
Page Number: 416
Rating: 4.5/5

Summary:

Beck O'ckley is ruthless in the boardroom...and the bedroom. He's never been with the same woman twice, and vows he never will. With a past as twisted as his, meaningless sex keeps the demons at bay. His motto: One and done. No harm, no foul.

Harlow Glass is the most hated girl in town. The beautiful artist is penniless, jobless and homeless. When she sneaks into Beck's home—her ancestral estate—for food, she's shocked by his early return...and her immediate, sizzling and intense attraction to him.

For the first time in Beck's life, he can't get a woman out of his mind. All too soon, friendship blooms into obsession and he'll have to break her heart...or surrender his own.

REVIEW

 

I really enjoyed the first book in this series and with Beck being one of my favourite male characters, I was excited to see his backstory into what made him who he is today. And Gena did not once disappoint. I got everything I wanted and more. Cute scenes that made me have butterflies, sexual tension that could have burned the pages in my hand and a former bully who had me rooting for her from page 1.

 

In the second book of the Original Heartbreakers series we follow our Hero, Beck who's a known playboy never being seen with the same woman twice. Our Heroine is Harlow Glass a former bully in school and now known for being a layabout after getting kicked out of her home by the bank because she supposedly wouldn't pay the rent. One of the thing Gena did so right about Harlow was that she created a character that everyone would either love to hate. It's human genetics. We all love to hate someone and vice versa.

 

However, Harlow is actually misunderstood a lot. She didn't have the best home life and like they say: You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. And that goes heavily for Harlow. When her and Beck first officially meet it's because Harlow has stolen a pie from his fridge (Harlow's house is now owned by Jase, Beck and West). He chases her down and demands she pays him back otherwise he'll go to the authorities. To me this is the essential scene for the whole book.

 

The romance between these two was a little like child's play. But it keeps you on your toes, anticipating the moment they finally say those 3 precious words. I love you. And with Beck's past you can honestly understand why. His upbringing wasn't an easy one and he's lived with the guilt of lying to the police so his friend can take the shit for him. And we all know guilt can eat a person alive.

 

Was this book better than the first one? Absolutely. I actually loved Harlow's naivety because the person she was as a teenager was actually a character to hide the person she truly was. And her relationship with Beck is special because he's her first. I just honestly love anything Gena Showalter writes.

 

 

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Books That Deal With Mental Illness

Back when I originally started to write this I was feeling very down. I was feeling more and more depressed over a sort period of time and I was having suicidal thoughts. I was struggling with life. My parents were noticing a change but I would just ignore it all and hope it'd go away with time. I was speaking to a friend online who made me see sense and  instead I raised the issues and decided to work on them. I'm feeling a lot better now. I'm happy as I could be, working hard to earn money to save for possibly going to University next year in 2017.

So with the feelings I had at the time, I wanted to visit some of the books that gave me a more positive view on mental health. So that's why I want to recommend some books to you guys. And in case any of you guys are having any negative thoughts, please tell someone. A friend, a family member or you can even speak to online forums: a place where I made so many amazing friends.

Now all of these books are amazing and I highly recommend them but I'm going to put these in order of how they affected me. Both personally and emotionally....



WHERE SHE WENT BY GAYLE FORMAN (IF I STAY #2)

A lot of people who's seen the 'If I Stay' movie don't know that there's actually a sequel in book form. 'If I Stay' is a good book and the movie is just as book, but 'Where She Went' really did something to be. I never connected to Adam in 'If I Stay' but him having grown up by 3 years and sadly dealing with depression in 'Where She Went' made me connect to him so much. I felt his emotions and I understood him completely, it's one of those novels that stay with you for a long time. And to this date I'm still very much in love with it. So much so that I have a necklace with a quote from the novel inside.

"You were trying so hard to be my saviour that you left me all alone."

 

 

I WAS HERE BY GAYLE FORMAN

 

Another Gayle Forman book that absolutely left me a sobbing wreck. This book is a YA Standalone that doesn't just deal with depression but also suicide and while the main character has nothing to do with those mental illness the importance of those factors isn't taken away from the novel. Gayle Forman did her research and wrote a book that everyone could connect to. The last page of 'I Was Here' isn't just a memorial but it's also a celebration of those who have lost their lives to suicide. We don't always get to have out voices but it doesn't mean that it's the end of us. Beautifully written with so much emotion and drama.

 

"I was here."

 

 

 

THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER BY MICHELLE HODKIN

 

It's unusual to have a YA Paranormal Romance series on this list but this is one of my favourite series because of how well Michelle Hodkin splits them both up but makes them the same. The series follows an incredibly insane narrator, she's someone you

can't trust. While the book has supernatural things going on, it also stays realistic in the mental health side. It's beautifully romantic but a complete and utter mind fuck. That's what keeps you going with this series.

 

"Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real."

 

 

 

PUSHING THE LIMITS BY KATIE MCGARRY

 

'Pushing the Limits' deals with a lot of different mental illnesses but the main one it deals with is grief. Our main character, Echo is still trying to get over her older brother's death. The one person who she knew she could trust on. However, it also dealt with other issues that were very well written and researched. Its one of the things I love about Katie McGarry, she does physical research into her stories. She goes that extra mile. 'Pushing the Limits' is emotional and brave. It's beautiful and realistic. It's a book that everyone can relate to.

 

“I've already lost a piece of my mind. I can't trust you with what's left.” 

 

 

 

AM I NORMAL YET? BY HOLLY BOURNE

 

I, myself didn't rate this book highly but it wasn't due to it being badly written or the parts dealing with mental illness were not realistic. I had other reasons. But Am I Normal Yet? is possibly one of the best book to read about Anxiety. The way Holly depicts the feelings is so realistic. You feel exactly what the character is feeling and it was nice being able to find a story that I related to so well. The book follows a college student called Evie who's just trying to live a normal life, making friends and dating boys. But the issue is, Evie has anxiety and also suffers with OCD.

 

“Everyone's on the cliff edge of normal. Everyone finds life an utter nightmare sometimes, and there's no 'normal' way of dealing with it... There is no normal, Evelyn.”  

 

 

 

 

What books would you recommend that deal with mental illness?

Let me know in the comments!

Review: Walk The Edge by Katie McGarry

Title: Walk The Edge (Thunder Road #2)
Author: Katie McGarry
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publisher: Mira Ink
Published: March 10th 2016
Page Number: 442
Rating: 3.5/5

Summary:
One moment of recklessness will change their worlds

Smart. Responsible. That's seventeen-year-old Breanna's role in her large family, and heaven forbid she put a toe out of line. Until one night of shockingly un-Breanna-like behavior puts her into a vicious cyber-bully's line of fire—and brings fellow senior Thomas "Razor" Turner into her life.

Razor lives for the Reign of Terror motorcycle club, and good girls like Breanna just don't belong. But when he learns she's being blackmailed over a compromising picture of the two of them—a picture that turns one unexpected and beautiful moment into ugliness—he knows it's time to step outside the rules.

And so they make a pact: he'll help her track down her blackmailer, and in return she'll help him seek answers to the mystery that's haunted him—one that not even his club brothers have been willing to discuss. But the more time they spend together, the more their feelings grow. And suddenly they're both walking the edge of discovering who they really are, what they want, and where they're going from here.

REVIEW

After reading and loving the first book in this series, Nowhere But Here I was really excited to read Razor's story. Mainly because he was a very mysterious character that seemed to hide a lot of his personality behind being snarky and I really wanted to know more about him and why he acted that way.

I'll be starting this off by saying that this wasn't my favourite Katie McGarry novel, however, it's still a great, entertaining read that kept me glued to the pages. I felt sad for Breanna because she's intelligent and way mature for her age and being told she couldn't go for her dreams because no one would be there to look out for her younger siblings. Especially when her siblings treated her so horribly and her parents barely took the time to get to know the Breanna she was now. Her relationship with Razor is looked against in a bad way due to the reputation of the Motorcycle club but if anything I think Breanna's parents should have been thankful for Razor. He brought her out of her shell and she was finally being true to herself. And that reminded me of Rachel when she met Isaiah in Crash Into You.

Which leads me onto another thing I massively love about Katie McGarry's stories: her characters are always stripped back, raw and honest with inner turmoil going on. Some of the scenes in this book left me shocked, mouth wide open. Especially, when Razor was seeking out answers to his mother's death, and everything seemed to point to the Reign of Terror. I just didn't know who was telling the truth. Why people were keeping their mouths shut?

I really liked the chapters where Oz and Emily appeared. I loved them so much and they're also one of my favourite book couples. The ending in Nowhere But Here was a little rushed for my liking, however, I really appreciated the ending for Razor in this story. It was beautiful and showed a lot of significance for both Razor and Olivia. It had a lot of meaning.

Overall this is another good book in this series, I'm excited to see what will happen in the third - and possibly final book - of the series, Long Way Home. I love Chevy and Violet so I'm excited to be able to see a little into their past.

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Review: The Closer You Come by Gena Showalter

Title: The Closer You Come ( The Original Heartbreakers #1)
Author: Gena Showalter
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: March 31st 2015
Page Number: 434
Rating: 4/5

Summary:

Just released from prison, Jase Hollister has a dark and twisted past. And now, he has only one goal: stay out of trouble. Strawberry Valley, Oklahoma, sounds like the perfect place for him and his two brothers-by-circumstance to settle down and live a nice, simple life. But model citizen isn’t exactly this rugged bachelor’s default setting—especially when it comes to a certain hot-blooded Southern beauty…

Brook Lynn Dillon has always been responsible. Not that it’s done her much good. The down-on-her-luck waitress is broke, single and fun-deprived. Until Jase comes along. He is dangerous, stunningly protective, breathtakingly sexy and as tempting as sin, and the passion sizzling between them is undeniable. But can it melt her resistance? After all, the right kind of trouble might be just what they both need.  

REVIEW

 

The Original Heartbreakers series was one of those series that I had my eye on for a while. Because they're all adult contemporary romance they were all published within a short time span of each other. So being able to marathon the series was one of the things that attracted me to it. And major factor that made me want to read this series is that Gena Showalter is one of my favourite authors. Her White Rabbit Chronicles series is an all time favourite.

 

The story follows our Heroine, Brook Lynn Dillon and our Hero, Jase Hollister who try the path of love while overcoming all their difficult obstacles. Brook Lynn has been fired from her job, she's basically babysitting her older sister and she's fighting her feelings for Jase and all the while Jase is just trying to overcome his past by hoping Strawberry Valley will give not only him, but his foster brothers a fresh chance at life.

 

Brook Lynn was definitely a fun, fresh and fierce character. She had an obsession with Zombies and believed a Zombie apocalypse was definitely going to happen. She also had a hearing impairment, which meant that she sometimes had to read lips. Jase has a bad past with prison but really he's judge a big lovable guy under all his hard exterior. And one of the things he does best is love fiercely. I loved him and Brook Lynn together. They had the banter that bounced off each other and that made me fall so much more in love with them.

 

There were a few things I didn't appreciate but the one thing that stood out for me against the rest was the use of the word Whoremones. Like being sexually attracted to a guy made Brook Lynn a slut. We can't help who we fall for and who we have chemistry with. Sexual attraction happens and it's just a part of our human mechanisms. It's not something that needed to be a guilty thing.

 

Overall, I enjoyed this one immensely. It was super cute and gave me the butterflies.

 

 

 

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Review: If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Title: If I Was Your Girl
Author: Meredith Russo
Genre: YA Contemporary / LGBT
Publisher: Usbourne Publishing
Published: June 1st 2016
Page Number: 304
Rating: 2/5

Summary:

Amanda Hardy is the new girl at school. Like everyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is holding back. Even from Grant, the guy she's falling in love with.

Amanda has a secret.

At her old school, she used to be called Andrew. And secrets always have a way of getting out.

 

REVIEW

 

If I Was Your Girl was on the list for one of my most anticipated releases of this year because it was a book about a Transgender girl who's making her way through school and finding love. And since I've not read much LGBT fiction, I was really looking forward to this. Especially since the US edition has a Transgender model on the cover.

 

However. My expectations were way to high for the book and I ended up disliking mostly everything about If I Was Your Girl. I can say honestly that it is an important novel. Meredith Russo is a transgender woman so all the important facts about being transgender (Hormones, etc) were all factually correct. But sadly, Meredith Russo doesn't have the storytelling skills to have show cased the story in the way it needed to be done.

 

Amanda has only recently come out as Transgender and yet she's already passing as a normal teenage girl. Is this realistic? No. According to the author's note in the back of the book the reason this was done is so that people could just see Amanda as a girl. But that kinds of subtracts from the book when the only interesting thing about Amanda is that bold fact she's Transgender. Amanda has no personality, she's very two dimensional. We see snippets into her past but we only just got a little taste and nothing else. It felt forced and almost as if Meredith was lazy and didn't want to add any depth into the story.

 

And that's not the only thing that was so far fetched. Grant - who's Amanda's love interest - seems to accept her for who she is so quickly after her secret is exposed. And I'm not saying that there won't be people who accept Transgender people, there's tons of them, however. The trust between them was broken and trust takes ages to rebuild but it almost seemed like nothing had been affected between them.

 

I understand that acceptance. We all sort of crave it in a way that makes us seem pathetic, but I just wish that Meredith Russo wrote a book about a Transgender girl who's life was realistic and not fictionalised. I wanted the truth - stripped back, raw honesty that showcases the life of a transgender girl.

 

 

 

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5 Books To Read If You Love 'Stranger Things'.

Stranger Things is a Netflix Original series that blew up instantaneously. The day it released I started watching it and didn't finish until I watched every episode. I'm obsessed. It's honestly one of the best shows on TV at the moment leaving you in constant suspense. Now for those that aren't sure what Stranger Things is about it follows the story of a young boy who goes missing in 1980's Indiana and his friends and family have to tackle terrifying forces to get him back. The series is 8 episodes long and a second season has been confirmed.

So today's post is going to be in celebration not only of one of my new favourite TV shows but also in celebration that we will be getting a 2nd series. So just in case you are having withdrawal symptoms from the series, here are 5 books that I'd recommend if you loved Stranger Things.



1. THE TAKING BY KIMBERLEY DERTING

Just like in Stranger Things our main character, Kyra goes mysteriously missing after she runs off from an argument with her father. A flash of white light is seen and *poof* she's gone. She then wakes up in the dumpster of her local gas station and goes home, however, it turns out she's been missing for 5 years and hasn't seemed to age a day. Her father believes it was Aliens that took his daughter but no one will believe him, including Kyra. Until evidence shows otherwise. This book will have you hooked, I read it in under 24 hours and couldn't wait to find out what happened.




2. MONSTER BY C J SKUSE

Six girls trying to survive spending Christmas locked up inside their boarding school all the while something -  The Beast of Bathory - seems to be stalking the school grounds and is intent on killing off the girls one by one. The only way they can get out alive is if they stick together, but nothing is as easy as it seems. Now there's no Sci Fi in this novel but C J Skuse really has you on the edge of your seat in suspense.





3. REPLICA BY LAUREN OLIVER

So Stranger Things is circulated around government conspiracy theories, which was one of my favourite aspects. Just like Stranger Things, Replica tells the story of two teenage girls who are both connected via a dark past, however. Lyra, also known as #24 is a human model who was raised in a research facility. Once she escapes she meets Gemma and the entire world around them crashes and burns. And what's really cool about this book is that it's essentially two books in one. You can either read Gemma and Lyra's story separately or you can read them both together as one continuous novel.




4. DON'T LOOK BACK BY JENNIFER. L ARMENTROUT

Mystery is one of the biggest elements in Stanger Things and when I thought about that mystery concept my mind and soul went straight to Don't Look Back. Samantha and Cassie are best "frenemy's" who seemingly have it all. They're rich, popular and everyone wanted to be them. That is until the night they both go missing and Samantha resurfaces without a recollection of anything that has happened. She's a stranger in her own life. Samantha starts receiving mysterious letters telling her bit by bit on what happened on that night, but finding out the truth could very well be sinister.





5. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS BY M. R CAREY

Melanie's a little girl trapped in a facility with doctors who call her special. And every morning she's strapped to a wheelchair with a gun pointed at her head while she's making jokes that she won't bite. But in this world, Melanie has no idea what or who she's going to be when she grows up. Because Melanie is special. Melanie is unique. Melanie also happens to be dangerous. The Girl With All The Gifts is an incredible read that captures the readers attention with it's incredible action and pace. Oh, and it's also soon to be coming out in cinemas. *Trailer here*






What's your favourite thing about Stranger Things?
Also what other books would you recommend for us Stranger Things fans?
Let me know in the comments!

Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany

Title: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Author: J.K Rowling, Jack Thorne & John Tiffany
Genre: YA Fantasy / Play Script 
Publisher: Little Brown Books UK
Published: July 31st 2016
Page Number: 343
Rating: 4/5

Summary:
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

 

REVIEW

 

This review is going to be short and sweet, mainly because it's difficult judging and reviewing a play script when you're not at all used to them. But my main thoughts for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is that it should definitely be seen performed for you to fully understand everything. Reading a script to actually seeing it be acted out are two entirely different things and I definitely feel like you'll get more out of seeing the show.

 

The script itself is decently written. I'm not sure if I did spot a few errors as I was reading along but it wasn't something that threw me from the book and the nostalgia that I was getting. Being able to finally read the life of Harry, Ron and Hermione 19 years later is something that I never thought we'd get to see but J.K Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany really delivered something good.

 

Albus and Scorpius made the entire script in my opinion. For some reason Harry's character was always trying for it to be about him. He blamed himself about everything and honestly I got bored of him. Harry's character was so horrible, in fact I wonder how Albus is even part of their family because he's nothing like any of them. I was disappointed with the way they ended Albus and Scorpius' relationship because I saw it heading in a gay relationship. They had way too much chemistry for friendship. And I know I'm not the only one who thought so too. So for me I saw it as a huge cop out and definitely something that annoyed me.

 

Overall, I don't think Cursed Child is something that I personally needed in my life but I'm glad I read it. But I'm more excited to see the show next year. I think I'll really be able to grasp everything that did and didn't happen in the script. But if you're on the fence on whether you should read it then my advice would be to go into it with no expectations. This is basically fan fiction. J.K Rowling didn't write any of this and it isn't a novel, it's a play. However, it does still give you nostalgia and missed feelings of Hogwarts.