Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Following up



After You by Jojo Moyes



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How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living?

Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.



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Oh how I waited for this book from the very first minute I heard it was being released, months ago. I adored Me Before You so anything that would follow it up was for me. I did enjoy spending more time with the characters I felt so good with before. At the same time, this book was a paler companion to the original. I didn't feel the same spark and dizzying heights that Me Before You brought. However I am not saying pass this book by, I think it is well worth the time to get a closure on the ensemble. 




Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Good decryption



Black Cipher Files  - boxed set by Lisa Hughey



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BLOWBACK

Years ago, Jamie Hunt sacrificed everything to keep her sister protected and safe. Now she lives alone, works alone, survives alone. When a covert mission goes horribly wrong, she can trust no one.

On the trail of a missing teenager, private investigator Lucas Goodman’s investigation leads him to Jamie. Despite her attempts to ditch him, Lucas tenaciously shadows Jamie, realizing he doesn’t just want information...he wants her.

When Jamie’s sister is in danger, Jamie is forced to team up with Lucas. Together they must expose the connection between agents’ murders, a missing teenager, and a sixty-year-old government conspiracy.

Betrayals

Staci Grant is dead. Jordan Ramirez saw the photographs, but he refuses to believe. His missing lover is the best CIA officer in the field. Now Jordan must find Staci and convince her that trusting him means the difference between staying alive or staying dead.

Staci has been betrayed. Captured, imprisoned and tortured, it took all her skills to escape. Now she is determined to uncover who set her up and why, a mission that leaves no room for trust.

When Jordan finds her, he won’t take no for an answer, and together they desperately race to unravel a decades’ old secret. But each revelation brings fresh betrayals that threaten their love and their lives.

Burned

Zeke Hawthorne, a programmer and hacker at the NSA, is in trouble. Under investigation to make sure had hasn’t divulged national secrets, he’s sent on a boondoggle. All he has to do is keep an eye on Sunshine, from afar, and make sure she’s safe.

Sunshine Smith’s entire world was blown apart thirteen years ago when her obsessive stepfather killed her grandparents. She and her mother went into hiding to escape. For years they’ve been safe…until now.

When Sunshine is threatened, Zeke cannot keep his distance. Only danger and betrayal are coming for Zeke too. Zeke and Sunshine must combine forces to stay one step ahead of the peril that stalks them, but trust between two people who grew up without faith is a difficult bond to form.



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I am so glad I found this gem of a boxed set. Each story flowed into the next with the just the right amount of connection to the others. I will say about half way through I did figure out who "the" big bad villain of the whole plot was, but this did not deter me from one second of reading enjoyment. Instead I was engrossed in the spy craft and of course, the love that bloomed along the way. With these stories you get the best of both. The author did say she is thinking of writing two more stories for two fringe characters who deserve a happily ever after, I will be there when she does!




Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Lots of arranging



The Arrangement 18,19 & 20 by H.M. Ward



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18

Sean is the last person I expected to pull open the door to the Ferro mansion, and yet here he is. My plan turns to dust and blows away. After everything I went through, I'm back at the beginning, falling at the feet of the only man that can save me.


19


Some things come easy in life, but this is the hardest situation I could have imagined. The man I love, the broken billionaire Sean Ferro, has finally dropped his guard and opened his heart. He's let me in. He's shared his life and his love. Then the unimaginable happens. One event cascades into another until I’m standing at the shore with blood on my hands, betraying the man I swore to love forever.


20

My life fractures with a single gunshot. It pierces the night, shattering my heart. The unstoppable billionaire Sean Ferro is brought to his knees by a bullet. I can't stop it. I can't save him.

A silent scream lodges in my throat as I watch in horror. The consequences of my past decisions are catching up with me. My mother's sins are now mine, and nothing that can wash the innocent blood from my hands.

This is my fault.

I'm forced to defeat my biggest adversary alone, and the worst part is he's my only brother.




Rate & take



#18 and #20 have a rating of...


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Rating for #19...


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Since all of the books in this series are short, quick reads, I saved them up for a mini-marathon session. Also, part of me was worried I had lost my lovin' feelin' for this series and figured if I had more to read I would push through any falter in the plot. Once I starter I was quickly reassured H.M. Ward was still working with all her magic and these three books just flew by. Now I'm excited for the next one. We'll see if I can be disciplined again and save a few up before I dive in once again.





Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Intuition led me here



Streetlights Like Fireworks by David Pandolfe


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Psychic flashes, haunting visions, missing persons and visits from ghosts. That's just their first date.

Jack has been getting on his parents' nerves for some time. Bad enough he's a rock musician, has crappy grades and hangs out with his "loser" friends. But Jack's ability to predict the future-well, that just annoys the hell out of them.

Jack's classmate, Lauren, is said to have unique abilities too. The town still talks about when she kept badgering her mother about the money in their wall. For the longest time, Lauren's mother didn't listen. Finally, she did and Lauren's mother hasn't had to work since.

Jack would really like to connect with Lauren but can't figure out how. She's never looked at him twice. But when he experiences a mystifying event involving visions, voices and spectral visits, Jack figures there's only one person to help him understand who's calling out to him and why. Before long, Jack and Lauren are off on a road trip of discovery that could provide answers to a mystery left unsolved for twenty years. More importantly, they might even unravel the greatest mystery of all- how every so often someone will accept you for who you are.



Rate & take


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Another title I bought a while ago and gave no love to. Then I was doing my best Wheel of Fortune imitation while moving the carousel on my Kindle, and this book jumped out at me. The time was now. A very different story that led me right along and then left my mouth hanging opening, 'casue I never saw the twist coming. I was more than happy finding out there was one more book to finish things up properly. So I hopped right to it, and now you can see my review below.




The Dragonfly Season


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For Lauren, there's nothing particularly scary about seeing ghosts or experiencing psychic flashes. After all, this is the world she knows. Still, none of that prepares her for suddenly connecting with the mind of Vicky Stearns, a girl she's never seen before. Lauren has no idea what caused the connection to happen or why, of all the people in the world, she received this psychic distress call. Her confusion soon turns to fear when she learns that the girl went missing earlier that same day.

Part of Lauren wants to pretend this vision didn't find her. It's darker than anything she's had to deal with before, the stakes so much higher. She also knows more than anyone what it means when a child goes missing. After all, she's been searching for her own brother for over a decade.

There's only one person Lauren can think of with abilities keen enough to help her navigate the visions gripping her. Jack, the boy whose own psychic awakening drew them on a journey across the country together last summer. But Lauren hasn't seen Jack in nearly a year. She also gave him every possible signal that it was over between them, hoping he'd be better off without her in his new life. When Lauren sets out to unravel the mystery, she knows only two things: This will be her last chance with Jack and her only chance to save Vicky Stearns.


Rate & take


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This book was a dialed down version of the first, when it came to the thread of magical reading goodness that inhabited it. Part of me thinks it was the switch to her perspective in this book, part of her appeal in the first book was trying to guess what she was thinking, now that that is gone, she is not so mysterious. I still maintain it was a good story and I am glad I got the full closure of the packaged deal.