Release Day - Play On by Michelle Smith Excerpt & Giveaway!

Today is the official release day for Michelle Smith's absolutely fantastic Play On. I've been lucky enough to have already read this book and I absolutely loved it. You can read more about what I thought in my review. In honour of the book's release, I have an exclusive excerpt and giveaway to share with you guys. Keep reading to find out more about the book, the author and to get a sneak peak!

About the book

Find Play On on Goodreads

In the small town of Lewis Creek, baseball is everything. Especially for all-star pitcher Austin Braxton, who has a one-way ticket out of town with his scholarship to a top university. All that stands between him and a new start sone final season. But when Austin starts flunking Chemistry, his picture-perfect future is in jeopardy. A failing grade means zero playing time, and zero playing time means no scholarship.

Enter Marisa Marlowe, the new girl in town who gets a job at his momma’s flower shop. Not only is Marisa some home-schooled super-genius, she’s also a baseball fanatic more than willing to help Austin study. As the two grow closer, there’s something about Marisa that makes Austin want more than just baseball and out of Lewis Creek—the wants a future with her. But Marisa has a past that still haunts her, one that she ran all the way to South Carolina to escape.

As Austin starts to peel back the layers of Marisa’s pain, it forces him to look beyond the facade of himself and everyone he thought he knew in his town. What he sees instead is that in a small town like Lewis Creek, maybe baseball isn’t everything—maybe it is just the thing that ties them all together.

Get your copy of Play On today!

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About the author

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Michelle Smith was born and raised in North Carolina, where she developed a healthy appreciation for college football, sweet tea, front porches, and a well-placed “y’all.” She’s a lover of all things happy, laughs way too much, and fully believes that a little bit of kindness goes a long way.

Michelle lives near the Carolina coast with her family.

Excerpt!

In this excerpt, Marisa surprises Austin on the baseball field…in more ways than one.

     I pass the bat to her, watching her face light up like a full moon on a summer night. “Now, it’s a little heavy,” I joke. “Think you can handle it?”

     Her eyes widen. “I don’t know,” she says breathlessly. “I may need the help of a big, strong, baseball player. Because we both know that baseball is so superior to softball.”

     I shake my head. “That’s not entirely true. You balls are bigger.”

We start at each other. Stare. Stare some more. She’s the first one who breaks, bursting out laughing. It’s one of the best sounds I’ve heard in a long time.

     “Here,” I say, still laughing. I carefully place my hands on her hips, helping her square up over the plate. “In case, you know, you’re too out of practice.”

     She bites back a smile. “Yeah. Because I’ve totally forgotten how to square up for a pitch.”

     “Two years is a long time.” Resting my hands on her shoulders, I remind her, “And relax these. You’re too stiff.”

     She hands her head. “You’re killing’ me, Smalls.”

     I walked right into that one. She relaxes her shoulders. Slowly, my hands move down her arms until they rest on top of hers. They’re so warm, fit so perfectly in mine that it almost hurts to let them go. But I do, because, you know, friends.

     “There,” I say on an exhale. “Ready?”

     Her lips curve up. “Let me have it, Floral Prince.”

     My mouth drops open. “All right. No mercy, Marlowe.”

     I grab the ball and jog out to the mound. I gotta say, she’s the prettiest batter I’ve ever been up against. Taking a deep breath, I wind up and let my fastball fly.

     That girl smacks the hell out of the ball.

     Holy…I turn, watching it sail all the way back to the fence. When I while back around, she grins, pointing the bat at me.

     “And that’s how it’s done,” she calls to me, setting the bat in the dirt. She wipes her hands on her jeans.

     All I can do is gape. Some of the guys on our team could take a lesson from her. It’s not like I thought she would be bad, but damn. I pull of my cap as I walk toward her. As soon as I tug it onto her head, she laughs.

     “Are you going to have any of these left?”

     “I have an endless supply.” I nudge the brim of the cap, so I can see her eyes. “And you’ve earned that one.”

     She quirks her lips into this little half-smirk that makes me pure weak in the knees. Takes a step closer. Another. And another. I swallow hard. My hands ache to touch her, to pull her to me and kiss the daylights out of her.

     But friends, though. 

Giveaway!

Does Play On sound like something you want to read? Then enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter form below for your chance to win a copy of the book or some other great prizes! US only.

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Blog Tour - 99 Days by Katie Cotugno + Giveway

Title: 99 Days

Author: Katie Cotugno

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Release Date: April 21, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Molly Barlow is facing one long, hot summer—99 days—with the boy whose heart she broke and the boy she broke it for…his brother.

Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything—how I destroyed my relationship with Patrick the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. How I wrecked their whole family. Now I’m serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college, and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn’t finished. I’m expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it’s just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Day 12: Gabe got me to come to this party, and I’m actually having fun. I think he’s about to kiss me—and that’s when I see Patrick, who’s supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who’s never going to forgive me. 

Katie Cotugno was a total standout for me in 2013. I absolutely adored her debut, How to Love, and have been (im)patiently waiting for more from her ever since. Needless to say that I was beyond excited when I got my hands on 99 Days and read it as soon as I could. And I am happy to say that I was not in the least bit let down by this book.

A year ago, Molly Barlow left Star Lake, attempting to outrun her mistakes. Now back for the summer, Molly has to face what she left behind when she ran away. Molly is hoping everyone has moved past what happened between her and the Donnelly brothers, but the moment she sets foot back in town, she finds out that nothing has changed. Patrick and Julia still hate her. The whole town is still judging her for what she did. The only person who seem to be happy to see Molly again is Gabe. The more time she spends with Gabe, the more Molly starts to put what happened a year ago behind her. But Star Lake isn’t ready to let her forget what she did, and everywhere Molly goes someone is there to remind her just how badly she screwed up.

No matter how awesome I think 99 Days is and how much I loved it, I know that unfortunately it’s not going to be for everyone. So much of this story revolves around cheating and cheating happens on more than one occasion. While this is something that doesn’t bother me when it’s done well, like it was in 99 Days, I know not everyone is going to share my opinion (and I have a lot of thoughts on this particular topic as you can see). In 99 Days, Katie Cotugno depicted cheating in a way that felt realistic and didn’t feel gratuitous. She didn’t just decide to have the characters cheat just for the sake of cheating, but instead showed that there are often so many other forces at play that can lead to someone cheating on their significant other. Though what made me really love this story, was the way she showed the aftermath, the way everyone treated Molly after they found out what she did. There were times that I wanted to throw the book or hit some people because of the way they were treating Molly, but the story always felt real. Knowing what I town for close-knit communities, everyone’s reaction was on point, no matter how angry it made me or how badly I felt for Molly. In 99 Days, no one is perfect, least of all Molly, but that’s what made the story feel so realistic. The ending also made the story feel realistic. The way the story ends, everything is not all tied up with a nice bow. things are left open, and if the story were to go on, it could go any of a number of ways. I know what way I would want it to go, but I don’t know for sure that that’s what would happen. It just felt like the most natural way for the story to end based on everything that had happened before.

Molly isn’t perfect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s what made me like her so much. Even though I didn’t always agree with her action, hell sometimes I wanted to downright yell at her for behaving stupidly, I was always ready to stand by her side. Because as much as she screwed up, she didn’t deserve all the crap everyone in town was giving her. The double standard with how they treated her versus how they treated Gabe especially angered me and I could write a whole review on that alone, but I’ll spare you. The point is that Molly was flawed and she behaved like a teenager and I absolutely loved her for it. And I could also understand how she could be torn between the two Donnelly brothers. I’m not going to lie, right off the bat I was all in favour of Gabe, if only because he actually treated Molly like a decent person. But then there was a moment where he did something that completely sold me on him. Patrick on the other hand, I have seriously mixed feelings about. I pretty much spent 75% of 99 Days going back and forth between liking him and wanting to hit him. It’s like I couldn’t figure him out. He definitely had his reasons for being mad at Molly, all things considered, so I got that. But then a few pages later he would be really sweet to her and I would get all confused about MY feelings for HIM. Let’s just say that by the end of the book though, I finally figured him out.

Katie Cotugno’s 99 Days left me with a lot of feelings. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I finished because I just knew that no matter what I read afterwards, it just wouldn’t compare. Be ready to have your emotions be all over the place when you read this book, it’s going to happen no matter how much you try to stay calm and collected. But it’s worth it.

Favorite Quotes

As part of the tour, I was asked to share some of my favorite quotes from 99 Days. This is the kind of book that has so many amazing words and passages and it made it hard to pick just a few. So here are three of my favorites.

Giveaway!

Do you want to read Katie Cotugno's 99 Days? Enter the giveaway below for your chance to win a signed copy of the book. US only.


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The Truth About Jack by Jody Gehrman

Title: The Truth About Jack

Author: Jody Gehrman

Publisher: Entangled Crush

Release Date: April 14, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Dakota McCloud has just been accepted into a prestigious art school. Soon she’ll leave behind the artists’ colony where she grew up—hippie dad, tofu since birth, yurt—and join her boyfriend and best friend on the East Coast. It was the plan…until Dakota finds out her boyfriend and best friend hooked up behind her back.

Hurt and viciously betrayed, Dakota pours out her heart on a piece of paper, places it in a bottle, and hurls it into the ocean. But it doesn’t quite go where she expects…

Jack Sauvage finds the bottle washed up on the shore and responds to Dakota’s letter. Except what if his straight-laced life doesn’t jive with the free-spirited girl he’s only seen from afar? As Jack creates a persona he believes she’ll love, they slowly fall for each other with each new letter. Now Jack is trying to find a way to make this delicate, on-paper romance happen in real life…without revealing his deception.

Every once in a while (well, a little more often than that if I’m being totally honest) I just want to read a light and fun contemporary romance. I don’t want too much drama and angst, I just want a story that’s going to take me out of my own head and leave me happy and satisfied when I finish. And that’s exactly what I got with Jody Gehrman’s The Truth About Jack.

When she gets her acceptance to the art school of her dreams, Dakota McCloud thinks her future is set. She’s going to leave the artists’ colony where she grew up behind and move to the East Coast to be with her boyfriend and her best friend. But on the day she receives her acceptance letter, Dakota also finds out that the best friend and boyfriend she was looking forward to seeing have been hooking up behind her back. Feeling lost and betrayed, Dakota writes a letter, puts it in a bottle and throws it into the ocean. Just after Dakota leaves the beach, Jack finds the message and finds himself completely intrigued by the girl who threw it. Determined to get to know her but unsure of whether she would like him, Jack invents a new persona and starts writing Dakota. As the two exchange letters, they start to fall for one another. But when they start spending time together in real life, Jack worries that his deception could cause him to lose the one person he really cares for.

Sometimes you just want a light and fun contemporary romance and that’s exactly what The Truth About Jack was. When I first heard about the book and read the description, it sounded like it could be a really fun story. Granted I was a little worried about how the whole inventing a person was going to work, but it worked in the story once it was all going down. Beyond that, the story was just the light and fun read I thought and hoped it was going to be. There was just the right amount of drama and angst to balance out the fun and lightheartedness of the story. While I enjoyed reading The Truth About Jack, though there were times when I found it hard to let myself get lost in the story, though that might have had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t seem to spend more than a few minutes at a time reading this book. Had I been able to sit down and read it for large chunks of time, my experience might have been better. But still, I enjoyed this story a lot. And though it wasn’t quite the escape I had hoped it was going to be, I found myself really liking all the characters.

Dakota was a fun and different character to read about. I mean, it’s not everyday that I’ll read a book where the main character grew up in an artist colony. In that sense, Dakota wasn’t exactly your typical YA heroine and it just made it fun to read her story. While reading, I felt absolutely horrible for her when she found out about her boyfriend and her best friend. I can’t say it’s something I’ve experienced, but I felt her pain and how lost she felt after having the one thing she was looking forward to sort of get taken away from her. And Jack just came across as a nice guy, even if he needed help coming out of his shell a little more. It was always entertaining watching him attempt to force himself out of his comfort zone and stumble through it. My only wish as far as characters are concerned was that I could have gotten to see a little more of the secondary characters, especially Anya, Attila and Joaquin. Yes, this was Jack and Dakota’s story, but I couldn’t help but feel like those three need more attention.

Jody Gehrman’s The Truth About Jack was a light, fun read that I found myself thoroughly enjoying while reading. If you’re in the mood for a cute and quick contemporary romance read, then this is the book for you.

Aimee and the Heartthrob by Ophelia London

Title: Aimee and the Heartthrob (Backstage Pass #1)

Author: Ophelia London

Publisher: Entangled Crush

Release Date: April 14, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

He never noticed her before, but now she’s all he can see…

Miles Carlisle is every teen girl’s fantasy. His rugged good looks and exotic British accent have helped catapult his boy band, Seconds to Juliet, to super-stardom. But after two disastrous and very public breakups, miles isn’t interested in dating just any girl; he wants The One. And the only girl he’s interested in is not only his best friend’s little sister—and off-limits—but won’t even give him the time of day…

As a kid, Aimee Bingham had a huge thing for Miles…until he made fun of her for always tagging along. Now that she’s outgrown both him and her pigtails, the prospect of spending two weeks on tour with the childhood crush who broke her heart isn’t exactly enticing. Except now Miles seems interested. Very interested. And no matter how hard Aimee tries to resist him, her crush is definitely making a comeback.

But everyone knows that falling for a heartthrob is a backstage pass to heartbreak…

Just give me all the cute and adorable romances because I will read them all. Seriously, I will read them ALL. Whenever I hear about a new one, it automatically gets added to my TBR (which probably explains why my TBR is so big) and that’s what happened with Ophelia London’s Aimee and the Heartthrob. And it definitely delivered on the cute and adorable fronts.

Miles Carlisle is part of the biggest boy band on the scene. And to fans, he’s known as the heartthrob of the band. Between his good looks and the British accent, Miles is every girl’s fantasy. Including Aimee Bingham’s. But Aimee was in love with Miles long before he shot to fame with Seconds to Juliet. She’s been in love with him since her brother brought him home and introduced him as his best friend. But after Aimee found out Miles made fun of her for always tagging along, she decided it was time to get over Miles. Fast forward two years and Aimee is forced to spend three weeks on tour with Miles and his band. Aimee is determined to show Miles that she doesn’t care about him anymore. But that would be easier to do if Miles didn’t seem interested all of a sudden. If anything is going to happen between them, though, Miles and Aimee will both have to learn to give away their trust again, even if they were burned in the past.

Have I mentioned that I love cute and adorable romance stories? Because I do. I really, really do. But if you’ve been following me or my blog for any length of time you probably know that already and don’t need to hear me say it again. But I just can’t say it enough. Cute and adorable romances are where it’s at. So Entangled’s new Teen Crush imprint? I am ALL over that. And that happens to include Ophelia London’s Aimee and the Heartthrob. When I read the synopsis for this book, I knew it was something I had to read. I mean it’s about a boy who’s in a boy band and a girl who happens to be his best friend’s younger sister. This had all the makings of an “Emilie book.” And it totally was! I sped through Aimee and the Heartthrob. The romance between Miles and Aimee was just adorable and I couldn’t get enough of it. And not gonna lie, I was totally loving the boy band aspect of the story as well. I mean how could I not? Boy bands are the best. And I want more of the boys in the band, and I am totally getting my wish in the form of another book in this series, but written by a different author. And I am definitely looking forward to it.

As I was reading, I couldn’t help but compare myself to Aimee (and vice versa). I wasn’t a teenager that long ago, but if I were still a teen today, I would totally be her, or I like to think that I would be quite similar. Except maybe minus the part where my older brother is best friends with someone in a boy band (because my brother is younger, and as far as I know he isn’t friends with anyone particularly famous, much less someone in a boy band). All that is to say that I really enjoyed Aimee as a character. She was a girl who wasn’t afraid to say what she thought and stand up for herself. But at the same time, she had her insecurities and I really liked seeing that side of her mixed in her with more confident side. And Miles. Well. He’s British. He’s in a boy band. And he’s a sweetheart. Do I really need to say more? But for real, I loved Miles. Despite his fame, he still came across as pretty grounded, even if he needed Aimee to keep his ego in check every so often. Put Aimee and Miles together and you get a very happy Emilie. I loved seeing these two together. They were just so cute and adorable (I need to find new words to use, I know). I was really rooting for them the whole time I was reading and i was so happy with their story came together.

In case you couldn’t tell I totally enjoyed Ophelia London’s Aimee and the Heartthrob. It was exactly the cute and adorable (I swear it’s the last time I use these words) romance I was in the mood for when I picked it up. And I can’t wait to find out more about the band in the next book in the Backstage Pass series. 

The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

Title: The Royal We

Author: Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Release Date: April 7, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

“I might be Cinderella today, but I dread who they’ll think I am tomorrow. I guess it depends on what I do next.”

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it’s Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain’s future king. And when Bex can’t resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick’s sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier an more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he’s fated to become. 

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the even of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she’s sacrificed for love—her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself—will have been for nothing.

I’m not going to lie, I basically didn’t know about The Royal We until I was offered a chance to review it. I might have seen it here and there, but it was never a book that I paid attention to. But once I read the description, it sounded like it could be a lot of fun. What I didn’t expect, was how much I absolutely loved this book.

The last thing Rebecca Porter expected when she decided to study abroad at Oxford was to fall in love. In going to Britain, she was looking for adventure, for new experiences. Not romance. The one thing she was definitely not looking for was living down the hall from Britain’s next king, the prince she just so happens to fall in love with. But after spending time with Nick, Bex can’t help but fall for him. But being with a prince also means being thrown into a world Bex never thought she would be a part of. Dating Nick isn’t simple. As much as she just wants to spend time with Nick, Bex also has to share him with the rest of the world. A world that doesn’t exactly think she’s what’s best for the future king of Britain. Together, Bex and Nick find a way to make it work, but on the day before they are set to get married, things are about to fall apart as Bex starts questioning everything she’s had to sacrifice to be with the person she loves.

I’m kind of a sucker for anything involving royalty of any kind. I blame it on the fact that I spent most of my middle and high school years reading Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series (to this day, it’s still one of my favourite series of all time). But despite my love of all things royal in books, I hadn’t really heard about Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s The Royal We. When I did finally hear about it, I thought it had the potential to be a book that would be right up my alley. So I gave it shot. I started reading. and the next thing I new I just couldn’t stop. I knew I was very likely to enjoy the story, I just didn’t expect to love it as much as I did and to get so caught up in it. I was having trouble resisting the urge to just read it while I was sitting at my desk at work, trying not to count down the minutes until I would be able to read it again. This was just such a fun story. I loved the way it was set up, how it was spread out over the course of seven years and I got to see Nick and Bex’s entire relationship, the ups and the downs and everything in between. It made me that much more invested in their story, made me want to root for them that much more. But the other great thing about the story was just how fun it was. So many times while I was reading, I would find myself laughing at the situation the characters were in, at something Bex would say, or at Freddie’s antics. I just had a good time while reading The Royal We.

Be was seriously the best. I loved reading this story from her perspective. She just came across as very genuine. When the story starts, she’s just a girl looking for adventure while studying abroad. And then she met a prince and things got infinitely more interesting. But the thing that I loved about Bex was that she wasn’t in love with Prince Nicholas, she was just in love with Nick, the guy who lived down the hall from her and who she watched horrible supernatural soaps with. Granted as the story moved forward she had to accept that being in love with Nick also meant being in love with Prince Nicholas. And Nick, well he was a prince, so there’s that. But really, I loved Nick when he was just being Nick as opposed to forced to be Prince Nicholas. And he and Bex were just great together. I loved seeing them together and seeing their relationship develop, even though it wasn’t without it’s ups and downs. But as much as I loved Bex and Nick, the character who stole the show was Nick’s brother Freddie. Any time Freddie was in the story, a smile just broke out on my face, I couldn’t help it. He was easily my favourite character in the story, and honestly I want him to have his own book. I would love to see everything that goes on behind the fun and goofy facade he puts on for the world. Any time I got a glimpse of what was behind that facade, I loved him even more. So Freddie needs his own book, simple as that.

Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s The Royal We was unexpected. It’s the book that I didn’t see coming and took me completely by surprise. I enjoyed every single page of this story and if you’re looking for what has got to be one of the most adorable love stories I’ve read recently, than give The Royal We a try. Odds are, you’ll have the best time reading it.