Cover Reveal - Missing Dixie by Caisey Quinn + Giveaway

I am so excited to be part of this weekend cover reveal blitz for the final book in Caisey Quinn's Neon Dreams series, Missing Dixie. I've been lucky enough to read the book already and I can tell you that it was definitely the kind of conclusion I was hoping for for this series. So keep on reading for a look at the cover, some teasers and a giveaway. And if you haven't seen it already, be sure to head over to the USA Today cover reveal featuring a chat about NA with Caisey Quinn, Cora Carmack and Sophie Jordan.

Pre-Order Missing Dixie

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / HarperCollins Publisher

Fighting for redemption…

I’ve lived most of my life in darkness, beneath the shadows of secrets and addictions. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt the only girl I’d ever loved—the one who brought me into the light. In my entire life I’d made one promise—a promise I’d intended to keep. I’ve broken that promise and now I have to live with the fallout. Dixie Lark hates me, and I have to tell her that I love her. I also have to tell a truth that might destroy us forever.

Can she love me even if she can’t forgive me?

Learning to move on…

Gavin Garrison broke his promise to my brother and he broke my heart in the process. I may never love anyone the way I’ve loved him, but at least I won’t spend my life wondering what if. We had our one night and he walked away. I’m finally beginning to move on when my brother’s wedding and a battle of the bands brings us back together.

Our band is getting a second chance, but I don’t know if I can give him one. How do you hand your heart back to the person who set it on fire once already?

Teasers!

Want a glimpse at some of what's to come in Missing Dixie? Check out the teasers below, they won't disappoint you and will definitely leave you wanting more.

Giveaway!

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The Blue by Lucy Clarke

Title: The Blue

Author: Lucy Clarke

Publisher: Touchstone

Release Date: August 11, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

In the tradition of Alex Garland’s The Beach, a spine-tingling adventure novel about a group of friends whose journey around the world on a yacht turns from a trip to paradise into a chilling nightmare when one of them disappears at sea.

A group of friends.

A yacht.

And a disappearance-at-sea that turns paradise into a chilling nightmare.

Lana and her best friend Kitty leave home looking for freedom—and that’s exactly what they find when they are invited onto The Blue, a fifty-foot yacht making its way from the Philippines to New Zealand. The crew is made up of a group of young travellers bitten by wanderlust, and it doesn’t take long for Lana and Kitty’s dream of sea-bound romance to turn into reality. 

Both women fall under the hypnotic spell of The Blue, spending their days exploring remote islands and their rum-filled nights relaxing on deck beneath the stars. But when one of their friends disappears overboard after an argument with another crew member, the dark secrets that brought each of them aboard start to unravel.

At turns gorgeously scenic and entirely haunting, The Blue is a page-turning thriller about friendship, freedom and wanting to leave the past behind. 

Though they aren’t what I typically gravitate to, I enjoy a good mystery or thriller every once in a while. Granted it often leads to me having to turn on all the lights in my house, but I still enjoy reading them. When I was told about Lucy Clarke’s The Blue, I was intrigued and having now read it, I’m happy to report it was plenty mysterious.

When they meet the crew of The Blue, Lana and her best friend Kitty feel like they have found the freedom the have been looking for traveling across South East Asia. It doesn’t take long for them to feel right at home from the yacht. Spending their days exploring remote islands in the Pacific and their nights on the deck drinking with the crew. But during the passage from the Philippines to New Zealand, things change. When one of the crew goes overboard, everything starts to fall apart. No one knows exactly what happened that night, and soon everything that The Blue was is unraveling.

As someone who reads primarily YA, good thrillers can be hard to come by. I guess it’s hard to get as dark and twisted as you can with more adult books. That’s all to say that there aren’t as many thrillers in YA as I would like. It’s not YA, but when I heard about Lucy Clarke’s The Blue, my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to find out more about this story featuring a group of young travellers sailing on a yacht in the South Pacific. Like with any good mystery, the synopsis didn’t necessarily give me much to go on, but it was just enough for me to want to know more. And so I started reading. And the way the story was told, alternating between the present and the past, made it so I just kept reading. Every time I thought I was going to be getting an answer to one of my million questions, the story would switch timelines and I would have to keep reading to find out more. I know, being forced to read more is such a hardship. The story was engrossing. I got caught up in the mystery, trying to figure out what exactly happened on the night that one of the crew members went overboard. And I wanted to know why Lana wasn’t on The Blue anymore, what caused her to leave the yacht behind when she seemed so happy on board. Like I said, I had a a lot of questions while I was reading. And those questions got more than answered. And that ending. I did not see that coming. At all. And it kind of left me rethinking everything I had just read. In a good way.

Despite jumping back and forth in time, the main focus of the story was definitely Lana. Out of everyone on The Blue, she was whose story the reader is following. Because of that, it honestly felt like at times Lana was the only sane person on the yacht. After one of the crew members went overboard, she was the only one who wanted to find out what happened, who wouldn’t just let go of the fact that one of them had died. Or at least that’s how it felt cause I didn’t really know what was going through all the other characters’ minds. Where I knew pretty much everything about Lana, I didn’t really know much about the other characters. All I really had to go one was whatever Lana thought about them. And that just added to the element of mystery in this story. There was definitely a “who did it” element to the story, and the answer to that question was revealed one little bit at a time. And that ending I mentioned? Even when Thought I had a handle on just who everyone in this story was, I had to go ahead and re-evaluate it all. The bottom line is that if you decide to read The Blue, be prepared to completely re-evaluate everything you think you know about someone every time a new piece of information is revealed about them.

Even though it’s not a book I would necessarily pick up on my own, I really enjoyed reading Lucy Clarke’s The Blue. The story was engrossing and the mystery kept me on the edge of my seat. If you’re looking for a good mystery this summer, this is the one.

Blackmail Boyfriend by Chris Cannon

Title: Blackmail Boyfriend

Author: Chris Cannon

Publisher: Entangled Crush

Release Date: August 11, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Sometimes, blackmail is the only weapon a girl has…

Haley Patterson has had a crush on golden boy Bryce Colton for ages. But when she hears a rumour that he hooked up with her she gives him a choice: be her boyfriend for a month to show other guys that she’s dateable—despite her overprotective and very intimidating brothers—or deal with the angry-cage-fighting boyfriend of the girl he actually did hook up with.

Bryce didn’t know the other Haley even had a boyfriend. He was just trying to get his ex off his back. And now, not only is he being blackmailed, he’s being blackmailed by an honor student. His new “girlfriend” has two three-legged dogs, her father meows grass at the country club, and she’s…well, difficult. And different.

Can something so fake turn into something real?

There are times when I read the synopsis of a book and though I’m curious about finding out more and the story sounds like something that would be totally up my alley, I’m still completely unsure about what I’m going to get. Most recently, that happened with Chris Cannon’s Blackmail Boyfriend, but it all worked out for the best. 

When Haley Patterson shows up at school and hears that she hooked up with golden boy Bryce Colton, she’s surprised considering she has no memory of that happening. Because it didn’t happen. But Haley is ready to make the best of this situation. If she can get Bryce to pretend to be her boyfriend for a few weeks it might prove to everyone else that she’s dateable despite her overprotective older brothers. Bryce never thought that hooking up with a girl at a party would lead to blackmail. But now he’s stuck. Either he pretenders to be Haley’s boyfriend or he gets beat up by the other Haley’s, the one he actually hooked up with, boyfriend. Now Haley and Bryce need to make the best of a difficult situation. And maybe the feelings floating around aren’t as fake as they seemed.

I’m not going to lie, when I first read the description of Chris Cannon’s Blackmail Boyfriend I was somewhat confused. I mean, I kind of understood what the story was going to be but at the same time I didn’t really know. But I was curious about the story all the same. It sounded like it had the potential to be a lot of fun. I mean, who doesn’t love a good story about blackmail. As it turned out, Blackmail Boyfriend was a lot of fun. It was a story that had more to it than I thought it would. Honestly, I was expecting cheesy fake romance that turns into cheesy real romance. And yes, the story absolutely was this. But there was more to it than that. I loved seeing the friendships between Haley and Jane and between Bryce and Nathan. I loved seeing the different family dynamics that were at play. At the end of it all, Blackmail Boyfriend was just a fun story to read. It allowed me to escape while I was reading and made me smile a whole lot.

I liked Haley right from the start. I loved that she wasn’t afraid to go for what she waned and there wasn’t a whole lot that she let get her down. I mean, in her shoes, I don’t think I would have been able to turn a hook up rumour into a blackmail scenario. So I gotta give her some respect for that. But generally speaking, Haley wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, often much to Bryce’s confusion and surprise. And Bryce wasn’t exactly who I thought he was going to be (kind of a recurring theme with this book, it seems). I’ll be honest and say that I may have had some pre-conceived notions about who I thought he was going to be, but he proved me wrong and that made me like him all the more. As much as I loved Haley and Bryce, I have to also mention Jenna and Nathan, their respective best friends. Though they weren’t the main focus of the story, I really liked seeing their friendship and relationship develop right alongside Bryce and Haley’s. 

Chris Cannon’s Blackmail Boyfriend was a pleasant surprise. This was a fun story with a little more depth than I thought I was going to get. If you’re looking for a light and fun read, this is it.

Blog Tour - Better When He's Brave by Jay Crownover + Excerpt & Giveaway

Title: Better When He's Brave (Welcome to the Point #3)

Author: Jay Crownover

Publisher: William Morrow

Release Date: August 11, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo / B&N / iTunes

In New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jay Crownover’s third novel in her sexy, thrilling Welcome to the Point series, a woman’s search for repentance leads her to the one man from her past she can’t forget as they join forces to save their city—and the explosive love neither can live without.

Titus King has always seen his world in black and white. There is a firm right and wrong in his mind, which is why as a teenager he left behind the only family he’d ever known to make a better life for himself. Now a police detective in one of the worst cities in the country, he can’t deny his life has turned a million different shades of gray.

They new criminal element in The Point has brought vengeance and destruction right to Titus’s front door, and walking the straight and narrow seems far less important now. The difference between right and wrong is nothing compared to keeping those he loves alive. To add to his already strained moral compass, the beautiful and mysterious Reeve Black has made her way back to town. This girl might be as dangerous to Titus as the guy trying to destroy The Point but he can’t walk away because he needs her—in more ways than one.

Reeve knows all about the threat tying to destroy The Point. She knows how ruthless, how vicious, and how cruel this new danger can be…and instead of running away, she wants to help. Reeve knows that she has a lot to depend for and saving the city, plus the hot cop that she hasn’t been able to forget might just be the only way she can finally find some inner peace.

With an entire city poised on the brink of war, Titus and Reeve stand in the crossfire—and it will take two brave souls to fight for the ultimate love.

Over the past year, I have fallen completely in love with the dark and gritty world of The Point. It’s a weird thing to say considering all the bad crap that happens there, but it’s a fact. Jay Crownover made me fall in love with this world she created and Better When He’s Brave only solidified this.

Titus King has made it his life’s mission to try to bring some light to the darkness that is The Point. Wanting nothing more than to make a better life for himself, Titus left his family behind and became a cop. But singlehandedly saving one of the worst cities world can take its toll. When someone new seems intent on destroying The Point and is going after everyone and everything he cares about, Titus will do everything he can to save his city. Reeve left The Point, hoping to put it all behind her. But she’s done running away and she’s ready to help Titus bring some light to The Point. But saving the city makes putting themselves in the crossfire and may require them to sacrifice what they’ve found in the midst of all this darkness: love.

I first found Jay Crownover’s Welcome to the Point series not exactly by accident but it wasn’t a series I was initially going out of my way to read. But the moment I read the first book, I became hooked. As dark and gritty and hard to read as some parts of this series are, I could read these books all day. It should go without saying that I was very much excited about Better When He’s Brave. I was lucky enough to be given access to an advance copy of the book and I wasn’t very successful in holding off on reading it. And the moment I started reading, I couldn’t stop. The thing about the books in the Welcome to the Point series is that they come with addictng stories, stories that leave you constantly wanting more, constantly trying to figure out what is happening and who is behind all the horrible things that are happening. Better When He’s Brave kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading. Much like Titus, I just wanted to know who was behind everything, why they were so set on burning the Point down to the ground. And there were some moments where I was seriously concerned for the safety of the people in this story. And I don’t really think I need to say that the romance was hot, but I will say it anyway. I was ALL for Titus and Reeve.

The whole time I was reading Better When He’s Bad and Better When He’s Bold, I was curious about Titus. There was just so much about him that I wanted to know. With Better When He’s Brave, I finally got all the answers I wanted about Titus, and then some. There was so much more to him than I could have thought, so much that I possibly couldn’t have predicted but at the same time helped explain so much of who Titus was and why he did what he did. And I’m not going to lie, everything I found out about him totally made me fall a little bit (okay, a lot) in love with Titus. So really, it’s no surprise that Reeve fell for her pretty hard. But Reeve herself, I wasn’t entirely sure about. Because of what she’d done in previous books, I wasn’t sure whether or not I could trust, if she was actually helping Titus or just trying to save herself. But the more I read, the more I grew to like Reeve and, much like with Titus, I began to understand why she was doing what she was doing. And like I’ve already said, I was all about Reeve and Titus being together. And them together was often HOT.

I loved and devoured Jay Crownover’s Better When He’s Brave. This story kept me on the edge of my seat and convinced me that I would be happy to keep reading stories set in The Point forever.

Excerpt

“Everyone has a breaking point.”

I sounded gruff and really had to concentrate on getting the words out because she leaned forward and her lips hit right below my ear on my rough jaw. Her teeth started to nibble and her tongue lapped a long wet trail all the way up behind my ear where she breathed, “I would love to see you when you reach yours.”

She curled her hand around the back of my neck and rubbed her cheek against mine. When I let my monster have at her, it took in giant mouthfuls, gobbled her up, and tried to burn as fast and as hot as the pleasure would allow.She wasn’t kidding when she said hers needed to be soothed. Every move she made was deliberate, erotic. We touched everywhere and somehow it was more intimate than all the times I had been inside of her over the last month. She brushed her chest against my own and I decided the playing field needed to level out a little, so I hooked my hands under her shirt and lifted it up off over her head. Her hair fell back around us like a dark curtain and I grabbed her face so I could kiss her. She blinked at me with big eyes and smiled.

“You are the only one that sees it, over and over again. You were the breaking point from the moment you walked in the door to tell me you helped Novak grab Dovie. I wanted to be disgusted, to hate you, but I didn’t. I thought you were beautiful and resilient. You seemed so misguided and lost, an even then I wanted to get you naked and fuck you on my desk.”

Her face lowered to mine and our lips touched just a tiny bit. One of her hands skated down the center of my chest and landed on my best buckle. I reciprocated by popping the clasp on the back of her bra and pulling it out of my way.

“You should’ve tried. I would’ve let you.” The words danced across my lips and somewhere in the center of my chest an animal howled in delight. That was what was missing in my life. Someone that appreciated all the sacrifice, the hard choices I had made to become the man I was, but who could also appreciate the fucked-up kid I had been.

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How to Say I Love You Out Loud by Karole Cozzo

Title: How to Say I Love You Out Loud

Author: Karole Cozzo

Publisher: Swoon Reads

Release Date: August 4, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Words are strong. Love is stronger.

When Jordyn Michaelson’s autistic brother joins her at her elite school, she’s determined not to let anyone know they’re related. Even if that means closing herself off to all her closest friends, including charming football stud Alex Colby. But despite her best intentions, she just can’t shake the memory of kissing Alex last summer, and the desire to do it again.

Can Jordyn find the courage to tell Alex how she really feels—and the truth about her family—before he slips away forever?

Books that take me by surprise are the best kind of books. Sadly, following closely what is said about books I have my eye on makes it difficult for books to surprise me. One book that succeeded in surprising me, was Karole Cozzo’s How to Say I Love You Out Loud. 

Jordyn is finally finding her stride at her elite school. She has friends, she’s on the field hockey team and she’s hoping to move her relationship with Alex from friendship to something more. But just as the school year is starting, Jordyn’s autistic brother has to transfer to her school, and she becomes afraid that everything will change. That once again she will become the autistic kid’s sister. Jordyn’s solution is to cut herself off from everyone. But Jordyn can’t keep pushing everyone away forever. Eventually she’s going to have to find the courage to let someone in.

I had been looking forward to reading Karole Cozzo’s How to Say I Love You Out Loud for quite some time. But right before I started reading it, I was on Goodreads and saw that people were either loving the book, or not liking it at all. And that made me kind of nervous. All of a sudden, I was worried that this book I had been excited to read wouldn’t end up being as enjoyable as I had hoped or thought it would be. But I really didn’t have anything to worry about. I ended up falling on the loving side of things where How to Say I Love You Out Loud was concerned. To be completely honest, I didn’t expect this book to make me feel so many things. Because it totally did. It kinda crept up on me. I was getting caught up in the story, but by the end there were actual tears falling down my face. I just couldn’t help it. The story in How to Say I Love You Out Loud ended up going a lot deeper than I thought it would and it was a lot more touching than I thought it was going to be. Reading it, I could tell that Karole Cozzo has experience working with children with autism, portraying how the autism affects not just the person who suffers from the disorder, but also everyone around them. It felt real, and it made for a touching and moving story.

I’ll admit that at first I had some issues with Jordyn. As much as I could understand not wanting to be defined by the fact that her brother is autistic, I didn’t always agree with some of her behaviour. But at the same time, not having ever been in a situation like she was, it’s hard to say how I would react or behave if I were in her shoes. But as I kept reading the story, I started to understand better why Jordyn behaved and thought the way she did. Once I found out the whole story about what happened in the past, I started being a whole lot more sympathetic towards her. And those tears I mentioned earlier, she was totally the one who was responsible for them happening. In the grand scheme of things, what I wanted for Jordyn was for her to finally open up to someone, so that she wouldn’t be alone all the time. And you can bet that I was rooting for that person to be Alex. If there was one person who would understand what she was going through and would stand by her it was him. Even if it just stayed at the friendship level, I still loved the relationship between Jordyn and Alex. But being the romance lover than I am, I couldn’t help but hope for more.

Karole Cozzo’s How to Say I Love You Out Loud surprised me in all the ways that matter. This story was both fun and touching and I would highly recommend it.