A Little in Love by Susan Fletcher

Title: A Little in Love

Author: Susan Fletcher

Publisher: Chicken House

Release Date: August 25, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Inspire by Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Miserables, A Little in Love beautifully conveys the heartbreaking story of street girl Eponine.

Paris, 1832

A girl lies alone in the darkness, clutching a letter to her heart.

Eponine remembers being a child: her swing and the peach tree, and the baby brother she loved. But mostly she remembers being miserable. Taught to lie and cheat, and to hate the one girl, Cosette, who might have been her friend. 

Now, at sixteen, the two girls meet again, and Eponine has one more chance. But what is the price of friendship—the love of a boy?

Though I may not have ever fully read the original text, I am a big fan of the different versions of Les Miserables. Therefore, I was excited about the idea of a book telling Eponine’s story. Though A Little in Love didn’t quite deliver in the way I had hoped it would, I still really enjoyed it. 

All Eponine has ever wanted was to loved and she would have done anything to earn her parents’ love. As a child, that meant stealing for the guests of her family’s inn and being mean to the one person who could have been her friend. She remembers nights secretly caring for her baby brother with Cosette when she was happiest. But that was before Eponine’s family was forced to flee to Paris and live a life of poverty. But Paris is also where Eponine falls in love with a boy and gets one more chance at friendship.

So I love Les Miserables and am more than happy to read or watch anything related to this story. And I’ll admit that when it comes to the musical, the one song that is guaranteed to get me every time is On My Own. To me, what you see of Eponine’s story is just heartbreaking. So when I heard that someone was writing a book that was all Eponine’s story, I was basically all over that. When the time came to read said book, I was fully prepared for all the possible emotions that were likely to come up while I was reading. I knew that there was a strong likelihood that tears should be shed by the time I got the end. Unfortunately, I’m sad to report that A Little in Love didn’t quite deliver the emotional punch I thought it would. While I was reading, I kept waiting for the big emotional punch to the gut to happen, and it never seemed to get there. At least not in the way I had hoped. But that didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the story. Because I did enjoy reading A Little in Love and seeing a story I’m very familiar with from a different perspective. 

Being a fan of Les Miserablesto begin with, I already had a good idea of who Eponine was. But reading A Little in Love, I got to find out more about her, and get a better understanding of who she was. And even if the story as a whole didn’t give me the emotional punch I had hoped for, my heart does go out to Eponine. All this girl ever wanted was to be loved, and from an early age she was told the only way she could do that was by stealing, lying and cheating. So whenever I saw her caring for her younger sister and her baby brother, basically giving them the love she wanted herself, my heart broke a little. As I got further in her story, I also had to admire how hard she was trying to make a better life for herself, even though it wasn’t exactly easy. So all that to say that even if the story wasn’t as emotional as I thought it would be, Eponine herself still broke my heart little. 

Though the story wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be, I still found myself enjoying Susan Fletcher’s A Little in Love. If, like me, you’re a fan of Les Miserables, this book is worth checking out.

In the Dark by Monica Murphy

Title: In the Dark (The Rules #2)
Author: Monica Murphy
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: August 25, 2015
Source: ARC from WordSmith Publicity
Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Stuck spending the summer with his screwed up family, Gabriel Walker is bored out of his mind and looking for adventure. And he seems to find it with the hot girl who lives next door. The attraction between them is instant. Electric. Soon they’re spending every stolen minute together. Talk about the perfect summer fling…

Lucy isn’t what she seems. She doesn’t live next door—she’s the girl who’s been hired to house sit for the summer while the family goes on a worldwide vacation. If Gabe wants to believe she’s a spoiled rich girl looking for some fun, she can go along with that. After the summer, she’ll never see him again.

They don’t count on running into each other at college. Now Lucy must keep up the prettiness of being a rich girl—and it’s exhausting. She knows she’s falling in love with Gave and she’s scared he feels the same. Will he still care about he discovers the truth?

Earlier this summer, I loved reading the first book in Monica Murphy’s The Rules series. It was fun, it was flirty and had some awesome banter. And the second book in this series, In the Dark, was just as good as the first.

The last thing Gabriel Walker wanted to do the summer before his last year of college was be stuck in a house with his parents. Gabe was counting down the days until the end of summer, but when he noticed the hot girl staying at the house next door, things started looking up. Lucy scored a great summer job: house sitting a house on the beach and spending her days reading by the pool. When Gabe, the hot guy staying next door, comes around and assumes he’s just a spoiled rich girl, Lucy goes along with it. After all, once summer is over it’s not like she’s going to see Gabe again. At least, that’s what should have happened. When they run into each other at school, Gabe and Lucy will have to come to terms with the fact that maybe what they had wasn’t just a summer fling after all.

When I read Monica Murphy’s Fair Game earlier this summer, I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. I mean, I knew going in that there was a very strong likelihood that I would enjoy the story. It’s New Adult and it’s romance, basically it had my name written all over it. But I quickly fell in love with what I was reading and by the time I finished, I was more than looking forward to reading more. So I was totally excited about In the Dark. And it absolutely didn’t disappoint me. Much like with the first book, I loved that this story was more than just a fluffy and flirty romance. Sure, the romance was fun and I loved every minute of it. But there were also deeper elements to the story, especially with the romance that only made me love it that much more. It’s all hard to explain without diving too much into the details and spoiling things, but just no that with In the Dark you’re getting more than just a fun romance. And I loved the way the romance happened. How it felt like it happened all at once, and then it happened all over again. Have I mentioned that the romance in In the Dark was great? In case it wasn’t obvious let me say it again, the romance and the relationship between Gabe and Lucy was fantastic and I loved it.

I can’t even begin to explain how much I loved Gabe and Lucy. I had gotten glimpses of Gabe in the first book and I’ll be honest and say that he didn’t exactly make a great first impression. But at the same time I had had the same thoughts about Shep and that turned out for the best. And the same thing happened with Gabe. As much as I didn’t think much of him in the first book, from the moment I started reading In the Dark, I really liked him. Sure, there were times when I questioned why he was doing certain things but that didn’t mean I didn’t like him. And I loved Lucy as well. Granted I didn’t always agree with her lying about her family and her background, but at the same time I could understand why she was doing it. Outside of that, I loved Lucy. And it should go without saying that I loved Lucy and Gabe together. I loved their summer relationship, and I loved their relationship once they were together at school. And when unexpected things happened, they were there for each other. Well for the most part, but it worked out in the end and that’s all that really mattered. So moral of the story, I loved Gabe and Lucy.

In case it wasn’t super obvious by now, I absolutely loved Monica Murphy’s In the Dark. This is the kind of book that you start reading and don’t want to put down until you’re finished. Though I’ll be sad to see the end of the Rules series, I still can’t wait to read Tristan’s story in Slow Play.

Until Friday Night by Abbi Glines

Title: Until Friday Night (The Field Party #1)

Author: Abbi Glines

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Release Date: August 25, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

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 year 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, son 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…

This is where I admit that I have never read a book by Abbi Glines. At least that was true until last week when I read Until Friday Night. And though there were parts of the book that weren’t my favourite, I still found myself really enjoying this story while reading it.

Everyone in Lawton, Alabama knows West Ashby as one of the stars of the high school football team. And that comes with certain expectations that West is more than happy to live up to. But at home, things are different. At home, West is trying to just keep it together while he slowly watches his father die of cancer. Just when he things he can’t hold it all in anymore, Maggie Carleton comes to town and West sees her as the perfect person to talk to. It’s not like the girl who doesn’t talk could tell his secrets to anyone. Maggie has been through her fare share of trauma and grief and she hasn’t spoken since she told the police everything that happened on the night her father killed her mother. But spending time with West, Maggie finds herself wanting to talk again, wanting to him because no one was there to help her at the time. And before either one of them knows what’s happening, a connection they both need and rely on forms between them. 

If you want a foolproof way to get me to read a book, compare it to Friday Night Lights. Or say that it’s for fans of Friday Night Lights. Basically, just mention Friday Night Lights in some way, shape or form in relation to the book and it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll want to read it. So I’m sure you can all guess what happened when I heard Abbi Glines’s  Until Friday Night being compared to Friday Night Lights. If you guessed that I suddenly desperately wanted to read it, you guessed right. I was excited about Until Friday Night, I couldn’t wait to read. But then I started seeing reviews and I got a little nervous. People seemed to either love the book or completely hate it. Based on that, I got a little worried I would fall on the hate side of things and then I would be disappointed because I had been so excited about the book. But as scared as I was, I started reading and quickly found myself enjoying the story. And that kept up throughout the whole book. Sure, there were some things that I wasn’t completely okay with, but that’s true for a lot of what I read. And some of those things along the way that I was really not  okay with, and many of those were addressed which made me happy. Until Friday Night might not have become quite the favourite I had hoped it would be, but it was till a story I found myself really enjoying while reading and got me curious enough to see where Abbi Glines will take the series next.

Despite having some issues with him along the way, I liked West pretty much right from the start. Granted, I would sometimes get frustrated with the front he would put up around people, I really liked his more vulnerable side, the side of him that saw his father as his hero and would do anything for his mother. That side of West I was more than happy to get behind and it was the side I wanted him to show to everyone. At least he showed Maggie that side of him pretty quickly so threw as that. And that brings me to Maggie. I can only begin to imagine the horror of what she had gone through and the strength it took to come out of it on the other side. So I was hoping that West would treat her right. And he did. Until some of his behaviour really rubbed me the wrong way. And without revealing too much, the behaviour in question was addressed in no uncertain terms. And that made me happy. Because it needed to be addressed. And then there were the other female characters in the story. Without getting too into it, let’s just say that they weren’t exactly portrayed in the best light and it felt like at times that was done to make Maggie look better. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with the way the girls behaved, but there were some troubling elements to their depiction. So there was that. But other than that, I liked the characters and I’m curious about a good number of them and I’m looking forward to finding out more about them in future books. 

Though it wasn’t entirely what I had hoped it would be, I still really enjoyed reading Abbi Glines’s Until Friday Night. And I still very much look forward to seeing what Abbi Glines will do with the future books in the Field Party series. 

Bounce by Noelle August

Title: Bounce (Boomerang #3)

Author: Noelle August

Publisher: William Morrow

Release Date: August 25, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Playing the occasional club gig just isn’t cutting it for twenty-two-year-old cellist player Skyler Canby, who’s trying to support herself and her mother back home in Kentucky. Persuaded by her best friend Beth to accompany her on an audition of rate first feature film launched by Blackwood Entertainment she figures why not? Beth’s a shoe-in for the lead, but maybe Skyler’s newly dyed pink hair will help her stand out enough to score a small speaking part.

Never in her wildest dreams does Skyler imagine she’ll land the lead role or that she’ll have her shoes knocked off her feet by the kiss her audition partner, Grey Blackwood, plants on her—a kiss that feels very real an not at all “acted.”

After throwing a party that causes thousands of dollars of damage to his older brother’s home, reckless musician Grey Blackwood gets roped into working off his debt on the set of his CEO brother’s newest project. Grey spends his days fetching coffee and doing odd jobs around the studio, but he lives for nights when he performs with his band. Heinous if he can stay focused, success as a singer is just around the corner. But that’s tough with a distracting pink-haired girl occupying his every waking thought.

Skyler and Grey have every reason to resist each other. But, like a song neither of them can get out of their minds, they have no choice but to go where the music takes them. 

Though I haven’t reviewed the first two books, I have been loving Noelle August’s Boomerang series. I was really excited about the release of Bounce and I can now officially say that out of the three books, it’s officially my favourite.

Skyler loves the cello and performing in clubs, but it’s not easy supporting yourself only on club gigs. Unless she finds a way to make money fast, she’s going to have to move back home to Kentucky even if it’s the last thing she wants to do. When her best friend convinces her to join her at a film audition for Blackwood Entertainment, Skyler figures she has nothing to lose. But she also never thought that she would be cast as the lead or that she would feel an instant connection to Grey Blackwood. Grey has a lot to make up for. After throwing a party and trashing his brother’s home, Grey finds himself working on the set of his brother’s latest project. The one upside to working at the studio is getting to spend more time with Skyler. They both know they should resist the attraction that’s between them, but Grey and Skyler can only deny their feelings for so long.

I love fun and flirty New Adult. Don’t get me wrong, I also love my sexy-times filled NAs, but there are times when all I want is an adorable story that’s fun and flirty. And that’s why I’ve been loving Noelle August’s Boomerang series in the last year. Though I haven’t reviewed the first two books in the series, Boomerang and Rebound, I loved them and they only made me more excited about the final book, Bounce. And let me just say that Bounce is officially my favourite out of all three. With the second book, I had gotten curious about Grey and I wanted to know more about him. There was just something about him that drew me in so I was really excited to finally get to read his story. And his story didn’t disappoint me. Bounce completely drew me in, until a few hours later I realized that I had spent my entire afternoon reading the book. And I didn’t regret that one bit. This story was fun and the romance was everything I had wanted it to be. And that’s because Grey and Skyler became friends before they became anything else and those are my favourite kinds of romance. 

So Grey and Skyler. Can I just say that I loved them and leave it at that? I mean, that’s really all there is to it. I loved them as individuals right from the start, and then I loved the potential for a romantic relationship between them. And when that didn’t really happen, I absolutely loved them as friends. And then I loved them as something more than friends. Can you tell, yet, that I loved them? But for real though, I was curious about Grey based on what I had seen of him in the first two books. And when I started reading Bounce, I was pretty much instantly charmed by him. And even though sometimes there were moments when I sort of wanted to slap some sense into him, I still loved him and was rooting for him all throughout the book. And the same pretty much goes for Skyler. I loved her from the start, and I understood her tendency to want to take care of everyone around her, sometimes at her own expense. And like with Grey, there were certainly some occasions where I wanted to slap some sense into her. But at the end of the day, what they did is what ended up bringing them together and seeing all that happen was my favourite part of this story. So it’s not like I can really complain. 

Noelle August’s Bounce was absolutely fantastic. There was just so much that I loved about this story and nothing I could really say would come close to doing it justice. So just read it, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Title: The Accident Season

Author: Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Publisher: Kathy Dawson Books

Release Date: August 18, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

For fans of We Were Liars and How I Live Now comes a haunting, sexy, magically realistic debut about a family caught between a violent history, a taboo romance, and the mysteries lurking in their own backyard.

Every October, Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it’s bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it’s just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident seasons—when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17—is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think.

Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There’s a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she’ll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she’ll uncover the dark origins of the accident season—whether she’s ready or not.

For most of 2015, I’ve been reading primarily contemporary books. But there are always a couple books that stand out to me in other genres and I’m curious about reading them. I had heard so many great things about Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s The Accident Season and those great things, and more, proved absolutely true.

To the outside world, Cara and her family just look like they’re extremely clumsy, especially when October rolls around. But they know better. For reasons they can’t explain, every October, Cara and her family become extremely accident-prone. Some years it’s not too bad, a few scrapes and bruises, maybe a broken bone. But there are other years when it’s especially bad, like the year her father died. This year, it’s hoping up to be especially bad. But it’s also the year that they may finally get some answers, about the accident season and about their family’s story. But Cara might not be ready for it all.

So here’s something you might have noticed if you’ve been following my reviews for some time. When I first started blogging, I read just about any genre of YA. But over the last couple of years, I’ve started reading mostly contemporary, forgetting that there are other genres out there. That doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention to other genres, because I totally am. And when a book catches my attention, I am more than willing to hit pause on all the contemporary and pick up another book. After hearing so much about Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s The Accident Season, I just knew that I had to read it. And here’s the thing, for the majority of the book, it almost felt like I was reading a contemporary story. Sure there was clearly something a little out of the norm happening, what with all the seemingly unexplainable accidents and the fact that Cara and her friends were the only ones who seemed to even know of Elsie’s existence. But there always seemed to be a logical explanation for what was happening. Until there wasn’t and then things took a little magical turn. Or so I thought. Even now, after having finished reading The Accident Season, I’m still not sure if there was something magical happening. But that only made the story that much more interesting and intriguing. And I loved it.

Here’s the thing about the characters in The Accident Season: because of the nature of the story, there were times when I questioned whether or not they were real. It made for an interesting reading experience because of the fact that I was always doubting what I was being told about the people in the story. It’s not so much that Cara was an unreliable narrator, because she wasn’t, but because she sometimes was starting to doubt some people’s existence. Like I said, it was interesting. But the good kind of interesting, the kind that makes you want to read more. Beyond Cara, the other characters in The Accident Season were interesting to read about. And I will admit that the whole time I was reading, I was hoping for some romance between Cara and Sam. And I sort of got my wish, but I also didn’t. This is what happens when I read too much contemporary romance, I start hoping for romance in everything I read. But in the grand scheme of things the lack of romance, didn’t take away from my enjoyment of The Accident Season. At all.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle’s The Accident Season was so different from everything I’e been reading lately and I loved reading it. It was mysterious, it was creepy and at times it even messed with my head a little. It was absolutely worth the read.