Blog Tour - Chasing River by K.A. Tucker + Giveaway

Title: Chasing River (Burying Water #3)

Author: K.A. Tucker

Publisher: Atria Books

Release Date: July 7, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

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

Armed with two years’ worth of savings and the need toe experience life outside the bubble of her Oregon small town, twenty-five-year old Amber Welles is prepared for anything. Except dying in Dublin. Had it not been for the bravery of a stranger, she might have. But he takes off before she has the chance to offer her gratitude.

Twenty-four-year-old River Delaney is rattled. No one was supposed to get hurt. But then that American tourist showed up. He couldn’t let her die, but he also couldn’t risk being identified at the scene—so, he ran. Back to his everyday life of running his family’s pub. Only, everyday life is getting more and more complicated, thanks to his brother, Aengus, and his criminal associations. When the American girl tracks River down, he quickly realizes how much he likes her, how wrong she is for him. And how dangerous it is to have her around. Casing her off would be the smart move. 

Maybe it’s because he saved her life, or maybe it’s because he’s completely different from everything she’s left behind, but Amber finds herself chasing after River Delaney. Amber isn’t the kind of girl to chase after anyone.

And River isn’t the kind of guy she’d want to catch.

By now it shouldn’t be a secret or a surprise that I love K.A. Tucker and her books. In the last year and a half I have devoured every book she’s published and I just can never seem to get enough. The last few months I was dying to read her latest, Chasing River, and I was not in the least bit disappointed by the story.

Amber Welles has never ventured outside the comfortable bubble of her small Oregon hometown, but she’s decided that it’s time to experience life for what it is. Setting off on a trip around the world, Amber is ready for an adventure wanting to see what the world has to offer. What she never expected was almost dying in a terrorist bombing in Dublin. At the last second, a stranger jumps in and saves her, before taking off again without giving her a chance to thank him. Determined to find her mysterious saviour, Amber keeps looking around Dublin hoping she’ll find the man who saved her life. The one problem is that River is doing everything he can to stay away from Amber, no matter how much he feels a pull towards her. It’s not just to protect himself and his family, it’s also for her own protection. But even if it means putting themselves in danger, Amber and River can’t keep fighting the forces that keep pulling them together.

Here’s the thing about writing reviews for books written by a favourite author: it’s HARD. If I’m being completely honest, all I really want to say about Chasing River is that it was freaking amazing and everyone should read it. But in my opinion, I could say the exact same thing about every one of K.A. Tucker’s books that I’ve read (so all of them), so that’s not entirely helpful. Unless you’re just going to take my word for it and walk over to your local bookstore to pick up any one of her books. So I’ll try to give you all a little more than that where Chasing River is concerned. For starters, this story gave me wanderlust like no other. I’ve been to Dublin and other parts of Ireland before, but reading Chasing River totally made me want to go back, even with the book starting off with a bombing in one of the busiest areas of Dublin. And speaking of that bombing and all its implications, I really enjoyed how much of the story was tied to the history of the IRA and how over time the organization has changed from what it originally was. It added another layer of depth to the story, beyond just the “traditional” suspense and the romance. Which, speaking of the romance, it should go without saying that I loved it. I loved the way the relationship between Amber and River developed, how despite that initial attraction they both tried to resist it, knowing that it was likely not going to end well. It only made it that much better when they did get together

In many ways I could related to Amber, especially when it comes to doing the “safe” thing and never really doing anything to stray from that supposedly “safe” path. Because that’s pretty much what I’ve done with my life so far. So I appreciated and understood that side of Amber’s personality. And I could totally understand her desire to want to go on an adventure, to see what the world had to offer. So it didn’t take long for me to connect to Amber and her story. And as much I would love to go off on a trip around the world the way Amber does, I would like to hope I wouldn’t end up almost killed in a bombing like she did. Or if that were the case, maybe there would be my own River on hand to save me. Because I wouldn’t mind having my own River, or even stealing this River from Amber and keeping him for myself, because, well, yeah. River was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but he was doing the best he could to do the right thing by his family and the people he cared about and that often put him in difficult situations. But I admired his loyalty, even if sometimes it led to him making some questionable decisions. It all worked out though, but there were still some close calls. But none of that stopped me from absolutely loving River. Also, Ivy was awesome. I loved seeing so much of her in Chasing River and it made me that much more excited about reading her story in Surviving Ice.

Chasing River was exactly what I had hoped it would be. This story was packed with intrigue, drama and romance, just the way I liked it. K.A. Tucker absolutely delivered with this story and I can’t wait to see what she does next with Surviving Ice. 

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Blog Tour - Jesse's Girl by Miranda Kenneally + Giveaway!

Title: Jesse's Girl (Hundred Oaks #6)

Author: Miranda Kenneally

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Release Date: July 7, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

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

Practice Makes Perfect.

Everyone at Hundred Oaks High knows that career mentoring day is a joke. So when Maya Henry said she wanted to be a rock star, she never imagined she’d get to shadow *the* Jesse Scott, Nashville’s teen idol.

But spending the day with Jesse is far from a dream come true. He’s as gorgeous as his music, but seeing all that he’s accomplished is just a reminder of everything Maya’s lost: her trust, her boyfriend, their band, and any chance to play the music she craves. Not to mention that Jesse’s pushy and opinionated. He made it on his own, and he thinks Maya’s playing back up to other people’s dreams. Does she have what it takes to follow her heart—and go solo?

It should be no secret by now that any time Miranda Kenneally’s name appears on a book, I will read it. In the last few years, she’s become one of my favourite authors and I eagerly await each one of her new releases. It was no different with Jesse’s Girl and, no surprise there, I loved reading it.

Maya Henry has always been into music. In fact, she wants to make a career out of it. So when career mentoring day comes around, Maya says she wants to be a rock star. Everyone at school knows, the day is a bit of a joke and Maya never in a million years expected they would pair her up with an actual rock star. Well, country music star. It would all have the makings of a fantastic day if Maya were actually a Jesse Scott fan. But the more time she spends with Jesse, the more Maya realizes that the Jesse the world knows is not the same Jesse she’s getting to know. And the more she’s around him, the more Maya realizes that maybe she doesn’t need other people’s help to make her own dreams happen, that she’s capable of doing it all on her own.

In my books, Miranda Kenneally can do no wrong. Everyone of her books I read, I love and I will keep reading her stories as long as she keeps writing them. It’s as simple as that. So, yeah, I was totally excited about reading Jesse’s Girl. Though I was a little worried because Breathe, Annie, Breathe, Miranda Kenneally’s previous release, it pretty much my favourite out of all of her books and I was scared that whatever book would follow it just wouldn’t be as good. But I was worried for nothing. Miranda Kenneally just knows how to write a story that is both fun but also goes a little deeper than you might expect. And Jesse’s Girl was all of those things and it should go without saying that it absolutely did not disappoint me. I got sucked into the story right away. The music aspect of the story totally did it for me with this book. It was just so fun and I loved all the references to the 80s music Maya would make throughout the story. And like with any good Miranda Kenneally book, my favourite part was of course the romance. Jesse and Maya didn’t particularly like each other when the story started but it grew to be something more (obviously), and that’s one of my favourite tropes to read about it romance. So yes, the romance was exactly what I wanted when I read Jesse’s Girl.

I loved Maya Henry. And yes that last name should look familiar if you’ve read Miranda Kenneally’s other books, because she is Sam Henry’s little sister (more on that momentarily). Maya was interesting to read about. When you meet her one on one, she comes across as this super confident, comfortable in her own skin girl who knows exactly what she wants to do in life. But then you put her in front of a group of people and that all seems to melt away. It’s like she didn’t trust herself and her abilities anymore when she was in front of a crowd. So I loved seeing her growth over the course of the story, see her gain confidence and become more sure of herself when performing by herself. And that’s where Jesse comes in. Jesse was able to help Maya see herself in the way he saw her. And with Maya, Jesse was able to realize that he could still have fun while playing music, something he’d sort of forgotten about as his career got bigger and bigger. And they were just adorable together and they put a smile on my face. But as much as I loved Maya and Jesse, one of my favourite parts of Jesse’s Girl was how much I got to see Jordan and Sam. Every time they would make an appearance in the story, I would just get this goofy smile on my face, and five books later I still love them as much as I did when I first read Catching Jordan.

If you’re thinking that I loved Miranda Kenneally’s Jesse’s Girl, you totally guessed right. I got sucked into this story and didn’t want it to end. I loved getting to know new characters while also getting to reconnect with some familiar ones. Jesse’s Girl was the romance I was looking for and it absolutely delivered.

About Miranda Kenneally

Growing up in Tennessee, Miranda Kenneally dreamed of becoming an Atlanta Brave, a country singer (cliché!), or a UN interpreter. Instead, she writes and works for the State Department in Washington, D.C., where George W. Bush once used her shoulder as an armrest. Miranda loves Twitter, Star Trek and her husband. 

Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

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Second Position by Katherine Locke

Title: Second Position (District Ballet Company #1)

Author: Katherine Locked

Publisher: Carina Press

Release Date: April 13, 2015

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Four years ago, a car accident ended Zedekiah Harrow’s ballet career and sent Philadelphia Ballet principal dancer Alyona Miller spinning toward the breakdown that suspended her own. What they lost on the side of the road that day can never be replaced, and grief is always harshest under a spotlight…

Now twenty-three, Zed teaches music and theatre at a private school in Washington, D.C. and regularly attends AA meetings to keep the pain at bay. Aly has returned to D.C. to live with her mother while trying to recover from the mental and physical breakdown that forced her to take a leave of absence from the ballet world, and her adoring fans.

When Zed and Aly run into each other in a coffee shop, it’s as if no time has passed at all. But without the buffer and escape of dance—and with so much lust, anger and heartbreak hanging between them—their renewed connection will either allow them to build the together they never had…or destroy the fragile recoveries they’ve only started to make.

Dance movies and TV shows are my absolute guilty pleasure. When I come across one, I can’t help myself, I just have to watch. So a dance book? Totally up my alley. So why it took me this long to read Katherine Locke’s Second Position, I truly don’t know. 

Before, Alyona and Zedekiah were attached at the hip. They told everyone they were just friends, but everyone knew they were so much more than that. But then a horrible car accident took everything away from them, ending Zed’s ballet career and starting Aly down the path that would lead to a mental breakdown jeopardizing her own ballet career. Now four years later, Zed and Aly run into each other after years without the slightest communication. Everything both of them have tried so hard to put behind them come rushing forward. But spending time together reminds Aly and Zed of what they once had and slowly they start building it all back up. But will they be able to avoid heartbreak this time?

Since it came out earlier this year, I had seen plenty of people talking about Katherine Locke’s Second Position and it had been on my radar. But since it came out around the same time as seemingly every other book published this spring, I kind of forgot about it. But while on vacation, I finally read it (and the prequel novella, Turning Pointe). Despite what people had been saying, I didn’t expect this story to be what it was. I knew it was about ballet, and the description clearly indicated that it wasn’t going to be all sunshine and rainbows. But then I read Turning Pointe and that punched me right in the feels. So I was prepared for what might be coming in Second Position. And it was a good thing. Because there were plenty of times when this story took a dark and emotional turn. Katherine Locke didn’t hold back when it came to showing the different ways that grief and heartbreak can affect people. There were so many times when the emotions leapt off the page. As a reader, it wasn’t difficult to buy in to the pain that these characters were feeling, and their small joys felt that much more rewarding. Because at the end of the day, I got pretty freaking attached to Zed and Aly so when they were happy, I was very happy.

I loved Zed and Aly. They were flawed, they were hurting, they were struggling, and that made me love them even more. I could feel their pain while I was hurting. I could easily see and understand how much they were struggling not to fall back into old patterns with each other and with themselves where their relationship, past and present, was concerned. The relationship between Zed and Aly could have so easily become one that wasn’t healthy for either one of them, and I loved that they both recognized that and they were both afraid that that’s what would happen between them no matter how hard they tried to avoid that particular outcome. At times, though, it felt like this story was almost more about Aly’s recovery and her struggle. Like so much else in Second Position, that struggle felt completely real. Aly was struggling and hurting and Katherine Locke didn’t shy away from depicting that struggle in ways that were sometimes hard to read. My one slight disappointment about Second Position was that I didn’t get to see that much about Zed’s recovery. There are many times that you see Zed struggle with not taking a drink when things get tough, but I wish I could have seen more of him struggling with his addiction, the way I saw Aly struggle with her eating disorder and her relationship to ballet. But from what I can tell from the description of the sequel, Finding Center, I may be getting my wish.

Though it wasn’t entirely what I thought it was going to be, I loved reading Katherine Locke’s Second Position. This was an engrossing story that was at times hard to read for all the right reasons. I can’t wait to see what happens next to Aly and Zed in Finding Center. 

Loving Dallas by Caisey Quinn

Title: Loving Dallas (Neon Dreams #2)

Author: Caisey Quinn

Publisher: William Morrow

Release Date: June 16, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

In the second novel in bestselling author Caisey Quinn’s Neon Dreams series, a country rock band and its members embark on the rocky rad to fame and find love along the way.

Dallas Lark is so close to achieving his dream of making it big in country music that he can taste it. Arriving in Nashville after signing with sexy, successful manager Mandy Lantram, his life goes from tragedy and turmoil to one lucky break after another—except it isn’t really luck because Dallas has sacrificed everything for his career, leaving behind his band, sister, best friend, and high school sweetheart, Robyn, in the pursuit of fame.

Robyn Breeland is a successful marketing coordinator and promotions specialist for a thriving liquor distributor out of Texas. She loves every aspect of her job: coming up with new ideas, traveling, hosting promotional parties and exclusive events—until it brings her face-to-face with the man who broke her heart, prompting her to erect a steel cage around it.

When their paths collide and they’re forced to work together, Dallas and Robyn realize that the old spark they thought they’d extinguished might still be a burning flame.

Since turning the last page of Caisey Quinn’s Leaving Amarillo I have been pretty much dying for Loving Dallas. I just had to know where the story would go next and what was going on with Dallas. My patience paid off because Loving Dallas was ABSOLUTELY worth the wait.

Dallas is finally getting what he wants after so many years of chasing his dream. Now he’s ready to make it big in country music. But getting to Nashville, hasn’t been easy. Dallas has had to sacrifice everything, including his band and most of his relationships, in order to get to where he is today. So the last person he expected to find on his tour is Robyn, the girl he left behind in order to chase his music dream. Robyn has put the past behind her and is now a successful marketing coordinator and promotions specialist for a big liquor company. She loves her job, but working on the same tour as Dallas, the man who broke her heart, is proving more difficult than she expected. It doesn’t take long before old feelings get stirred up and both Dallas and Robyn start wondering if everything they’ve sacrificed was worth it, if it meant not having each other in their lives.

Oh man. Loving Dallas. When I finished reading Leaving Amarillo earlier this year, I was pretty much dying to read Loving Dallas. But at the same time, I was a little apprehensive because I didn’t particularly like Dallas in the first book. In fact, I pretty much downright disliked him. So reading a book that was all about him and half told from his perspective? Yeah, I wasn’t sure how that was going to go down. But well, that didn’t turn out to be an issue. At all. Once I started reading Loving Dallas, I had a whole lot of trouble putting the book down. I just couldn’t stop reading. The story completely grabbed me. I wanted to find out everything there was to know about Robyn and Dallas, about their history together and what that meant for them now. The romance between those two was so much more than what I thought it was going to be (did I mention I had a few issues with Dallas before starting this book). It doesn’t hurt that seeing people who have a history get together is one of my favourite things to read when it comes to romance, but still. Even if that wasn’t the case, I would have loved Robyn and Dallas’s story. There’s just no way I couldn’t have. And once again, Caisey Quinn totally left me begging for the next book. I finished Loving Dallas and all I could think about was how much I wanted to read Missing Dixie. Like right now.

Any hang ups I had about Dallas Lark went out the window the moment I started reading Loving Dallas. He wasn’t the asshole I had thought him to be after I finished reading Leaving Amarillo. I mean, I suspected he wasn’t, but he didn’t exactly give me much to go on in that first book. But now I’m pretty much all in favour of Dallas. I would be happy to keep reading about him. And falling for him in the process. Because that’s totally what happened to me while reading Loving Dallas (totally an appropriate title, for what was happening to me). Sure, there were some times when I wanted to knock some sense into him because he was making some stupid choices, but at the end of the day, I loved Dallas. Almost as much as Robyn loved him. And Robyn was basically awesome. I loved reading about a girl who was kicking ass in the business world and didn’t take crap from anyone. But at the same time, I could feel her pain. How much she had been hurt by everything that went down with Dallas. So she was hesitant to start something again with him, especially in the middle of a huge music tour. But Dallas and Robyn together were kind of perfect in a totally imperfect way. And that’s really the best kind of romance. 

Needless to say that I loved Caisey Quinn’s Loving Dallas. If you love romance and country music, the Neon Dreams series is one you should get your hands on. It has music, drama, sweetness and romance…basically everything I love all rolled into one. And on that note, here’s Robyn’s description of Dallas. And it’s a pretty damn accurate description of how I felt while reading. 

Blog Tour - Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler

Title: Under the Lights (Daylight Falls #2)

Author: Dahlia Adler

Publisher: Spencer Hill Contemporary

Release Date: June 30, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Josh Chester loves being a Hollywood bad boy, coasting on his good looks, his parties, his parents’ wealth, and the occasional modelling gig. But his laid-back lifestyle is about to change. To help out his best friend, Liam, he joins his hit teen TV show, Daylight Falls…opposite Vanessa Park, the one actor immune to his charms (Not that he’s trying to charm her, of course). Meanwhile, his drama-queen mother blackmails him into a new family reality TV show, with Josh in the starring role. Now that he’s in the spotlight—on everyone’s terms but his own—Josh has to decide whether a life as a superstar is the one he really wants.

Vanessa Park has always been certain about her path as an actor, despite her parents’ disapproval. But with all her relationships currently in upheaval, she’s painfully uncertain about everything else. When she meets her new career handler, Brianna, Van is relieved to have found someone she can rely on, now that her BFF, Ally, is at college across the country. But as feelings unexpectedly evolve beyond friendship, Van’s life reaches a whole new level of confusing. And she’ll have to choose between the on thing she’s always loved…and the person she never imagined she could.

It’s only just recently that I finally read Dahlia Adler’s Behind the Scenes, but as soon as I was finished reading I knew I needed Under the Lights. I was so excited about reading this story and I’m so happy it lived up to everything I built it up to be in my mind.

Josh Chester has a reputation as a Hollywood bad boy and he loves it. But lately, Josh is getting tired of the bad boy lifestyle. Especially when it involves being blackmailed by his own mother to be on a reality TV show. In an effort to get out of it, and to help out his best friend and help his own reputation, Josh takes a guest starring role on Daylight Falls, playing Vanessa Park’s new love interest. But unlike every other female in Hollywood, Vanessa is completely unaffected by Josh, and that only makes him more intent on charming her. For maybe five seconds, Vanessa was interested in Josh. But that was al on time ago. Now, she sees him for who she really is and the last thing she wants is to have to act opposite him on her TV show. She already has enough on her plate with her best friend having moved across the country for college and the feelings she’s been having for Brianna, her publicist’s new intern. There’s never been a single doubt in Vanessa’s mind about wanting to be an actor, but can she still do that while also being with the person she never could have imagined she would want. 

When I read Behind the Scenes a couple months ago, I read it in the span of a day. I got sucked into the story and I didn’t want to stop reading. So guess what happened when I started reading Under the Lights? If you guessed that I read it in a day, you would be right. It’s typically what happens when I read one of Dahlia Adler’s books. So Under the Lights. I was so excited to read it. But at the same time, I was curious as to how a story told in alternating perspectives by characters who aren’t love interests for each other would work. I mean, in my experience, when there’s alternating points of view, those two people tend to end up together. But that wasn’t the case with Josh and Vanessa. Instead, this ended up being a story about their friendship, which I pretty much loved. But outside of the unlikely (and at times very amusing) friendship between those two, this was obviously also about the romance. And that wasn’t a “traditional” romance. Dahlia Adler wrote a romance between two girls that felt completely real, and reading about it and the difficulties that came with it at times broke my heart. But what I loved most of all about the romance between Vanessa and Brianna was that Dahlia Adler wasn’t afraid to go places that you don’t necessarily see in other YA novels, even LGBTQ ones. So many of the scenes between Van and Bri were touching and heartwarming and ultimately that had a lot to do with the two girls themselves.

It didn’t take long at all for me to start rooting for Vanessa and Brianna. I already knew Vanessa from Behind the Scenes, but I didn’t know everything that was going on inside her head. How she was questioning every romantic relationship she’d had in her life because none of them had ever felt the way she was told they were supposed to feel. I could tell how much she was struggling and I wanted so much for her to find that thing she was looking for that she had heard so much about. And that’s where Brianna came in. Brianna knew exactly who she was, and who she wanted. But just like Van, Bri also had her own insecurities and struggles. And the two of them together were fantastic. I’ve said it already, but I was rooting for them right away. And then they broke my heart a few times. And then they put it back together. So I loved them. And then there was Josh. I’m not exactly sure how to put Josh into words. But as horrible of a human being as he could be, I liked him right away (don’t know what that says about me, though). And that’s because I knew that he wasn’t the asshole he let people believe he was. In his own way, he was there for the people he cared about, even if he sometimes didn’t know exactly how to show it. So I loved seeing him come into his own over the course of the book. I loved seeing him figure out who he was and who he wanted to be. And as I mentioned earlier, I loved seeing his friendship with Vanessa develop. A friendship between those two didn’t exactly make sense (he calls her K-drama because she’s Korean-American and an actress—and as offensive as it was, he meant lovingly…for the most part). But both of them needed that friendship in their lives, they just didn’t know it. But I loved it all the same. 

As you might have guessed by now, I absolutely loved Dahlia Adler’s Under the Lights. This was a beautiful story about a friendship between a boy and a girl, and a romance between two girls. But I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Favorite Quotes!

As part of the tour, I was asked to share some of my favorite quotes from Under the Lights. There were so many quotes that I could share, but here are three of my favorites, one each from Vanessa, Brianna and Josh.

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