Release Tour - Safe Bet by Monica Murphy

Title: Safe Bet (The Rules #4)

Author: Monica Murphy

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: January 10, 2017

Source: ARC from Publicist

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / iBooks

Sydney Walker’s new job is perfect. As the live-in nanny to the most famous quarterback in the NFL and his beautiful wife, she couldn’t have it any better. Their kids are adorable. Her bosses are more than generous. Plus, there are hot football players at the house all the time. Life can’t get much better than this. 

Until her life turns into an absolute nightmare .The media is abuzz with rumors that she and her boss Drew Callahan are having a torrid affair. Everyone knows the truth—except the public. So Drew’s wife Fable comes up with the perfect idea.

She creates a fake relationship between Sydney and one of the rookie players on Drew’s team. Wade Knox is forever indebted to Drew and Fable and readily agrees to the set up. Pretending to be in a romantic relationship with the hot nanny for a week—how hard can it be?

Crazy how it only takes one week for two people to fall head over heals in love…

(This mash-up new adult romance features characters from both the One Week Girlfriend series and The Rules series.)

Unlike some, I didn't start reading Monica Murphy's books until her Rules series was partially underway. I'd seen her name floating around, but had never picked up any of her books. But once I started on that series I was hooked. So much so that I decided to go back and read some of her older books while I was waiting for the third book in the series to release. That's how I started reading the One Week Girlfriend series. And I got just as hooked on that series as I did on The Rules. So those two series coming together in Safe Bet? I was all over that.

And guys? Safe Bet was awesome. It was the first book I read in 2017 and it was an absolutely fantastic way to kick off the year. This story was just good old fashioned fun with zero angst. Don't get me wrong, I love my angsty characters and my angsty stories, but sometimes it's just nice to read a story where everything works out and everyone comes out happy with no new scars, physical or otherwise. I loved reading Sydney and Wade's story and the way it threw back to threw back to One Week Girlfriend, what with the fake relationship that turns into something real. I mean, that trope is a fun one for a reason and personally I love seeing two people realize that what they thought was just pretend is actually a whole lot more real than they think it is. Obviously I knew right from the start that Sydney and Wade would end up in a real relationship (it's a romance, so duh), but that didn't stop me from really loving getting to watch it all happen.

The other part of this story I loved? Getting a lot of Drew and Fable again. I loved getting to read their original stories in One Week Girlfriend and Second Chance Boyfriend, and then getting glimpses of them again in Four Years Later (which I finally read right before reading Safe Bet). It was awesome to see that they were still together and that they were still the same people, just grown up. And it was also awesome to get to see some of the other characters from both the One Week Girlfriend series and the Rules series. And I loved that because I'm that person who always wants to check in on characters, just to make sure that they're still happy and together and okay. I'm just curious like that (or nosy, I guess, depending on how you look at it).

If you've read either Monica Murphy's One Week Girlfriend series or her Rules series (or both!) then you'll want to check out Safe Bet, It's a fun story that lets you peak in on characters you love all while giving you a new angst-free romance that's sure to make you feel all warm and fuzzy. 

Blog Tour - More Than Friends by Monica Murphy

Title: More Than Friends (Friends #2)

Author: Monica Murphy

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: November 14, 2016

Source: ARC from Publicist

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Kobo

He’s not perfect, but he’s all I want…

I’m your average girl at your average high school, trying to figure out my place in life. After catching my now ex-boyfriend messing around with my now ex-best friend, I’ve made some big changes. No more band, no more backstabbing friends and no more boring old life. Now I have new friends, a new job and new interests.

But there’s a certain someone who’s interested in me, and i don’t get it. Jordan Tuttle could have anyone he wants. He’s the most popular boy in school. Rich, gorgeous, smart and the star quarterback, he’s perfect. Yet he acts like he wants no one else but…me.

So despite my fears and about, I let him get close. Probably too close. I discover that he’s not so perfect after all, but it doesn’t matter. I’m falling for him, even though he runs so hot and cold. I know someday he’s going to break my heart.

And I’m going to let him.

Though Monica Murphy is known for her romance and New Adult titles, I've been enjoying her recent foray into young adult romance. So far, I've found myself enjoying all the YA she's written and it was no different with her latest, More Than Friends.

I'm not going to lie, the first book in Monica Murphy's Friends series, Just Friends, left me wanting in some ways. But I was still curious about what would be coming next, especially when it came to some of the secondary characters. With More Than Friends I got to know two of those characters better, Amanda and Jordan, and I loved having that chance. I'll admit that at first, I was getting a little frustrated with their back and froth will-they-won't-they because I could clearly see they liked each other and wanted to be together even though they each had their reservations about it. But when they finally decided to take that plunge, I was happy they did because Amanda and Jordan just fit. I don't really know how to say other than they just made sense together even when they didn't. (Could I possibly be making any less sense right now?) 

Much like with the first book, More Than Friends left me curious about many of the secondary characters. Even after two books, I feel like I still have so many questions about Olivia and Ryan and their relationship and I would love to get a second chance to read a book all about them. The other person I still really want to know more about is Em, Olivia's former best friend. Reading Just Friends, I feel like I got a really biased view of her because the story was told from Olivia's perspective. In More Than Friends, I kept getting these little glimpses of her that made me wish I could get more Em, to finally be able to understand everything that is going on with her. So I'll just be over here keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a third book in this series that will be all about Em.

If you like YA and you like Monica Murphy's romance, then I strongly recommend you check out her YA titles. They're different from what she's written before, but at their core they're still great stories with the same kind of romance you've come to expect from this author. And I can't wait to read more.

Blog Tour - Just Friends by Monica Murphy

Title: Just Friends (Friends #1)
Author: Monica Murphy
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: September 13, 2016
Source: ARC from Publicist
Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

It’s the end of summer. Just before I start senior year with my two best friends in the whole world. Dustin and Emily are everything to me. We’ve been inseparable since middle school, and when we’re together, nothing can go wrong.

But things aren’t always what they seem. Em’s turned into a drunken mess who parties too much. Dustin and I have hooked up a few times—and now he’s ready to take our relationship to the next level. Yet I’m not sure I want things to change. I’m scared if I take it any further with Dustin, our friendship will be ruined forever. Then there’s Ryan. The new guy. He’s hot. He flirts way too much. And Em has totally set her sights on him.

So when my best friend betrays me in the worst possible way, guess who’s there to help me pick up the pieces of my broken heart? Ryan. But he’s so confusing. Annoying. Sweet. Sexy. I want to trust him, yet he makes it so hard. What I really want is for everything to go back to the way it was before. 

Before I found out that best friends make the worst kind of enemies.

Though I've only been reading her books for a year (and I still have a lot of catching up to do), Monica Murphy has quickly become one of my go-to authors. Every time I hear she has a new book coming out, it automatically gets added to my TBR. Though her latest, Just Friends, left me wanting in some ways it was still a story I enjoyed reading.

When I first heard about Just Friends over the summer, I was seriously intrigued. I'm all about friendship stories, especially ones where the friendships don't seem to be all that healthy. So if the description was anything to go by, that's exactly what Just Friends was going to be. And it most definitely was. I can't quite remember the last time I read about a friendship as dysfunctional as the one between Liv, Em and Dustin. In fact, I would actually go so far as to say that Liv and Em's friendship was downright toxic. What I couldn't quite figure out was the why. For so much of the book I wished I could be reading part of the story from Em's perspective as opposed to just Liv's because I wanted to know why she was acting the way she was and doing the things she did. I wanted to believe there was more going on with her than her just being a "mean girl" for the sake of it. So much of Just Friends revolved around what was going on between Em and Liv and I just wish I could have gotten deeper into what that was...fingers crossed that gets explored in the sequel. Em and Liv's friendship aside, I loved seeing all the different relationship dynamics at play in the book, even if sometimes some of those relationships (or the motivations behind them) had me scratching my head a little. I'll be curious to see how everything plays out in the sequel because when Just Friends ended everything was pretty much all up in the air and I was left with a lot more questions than I got answers.

Though it didn't quite meet all my expectations, I still really enjoyed reading Monica Murphy's Just Friends and I look forward to reading the sequel. Mostly I just want answers to all the questions