Darkest Night by Tara Thomas 3 ✭

Title:	Darkest Night
Author:	Tara Thomas
Publisher:	St. Martin's Paperbacks
Series:	Sons of Broad
Genre:	Romantic Suspense, Thriller
Publish Date:	February 27, 2018
Sold by:	Macmillan
Pages:	352
Ages:	18+

Rating: ✭✭✭

Now, I am still trying to catch up on all the books I have requested from NetGalley. I love that site. I love getting copies of books to read. I love reading. This, as you can see, was released a while ago but I am going to continue to read through what I requested.

Darkest Night is the start of a romantic suspense series by Tara Thomas that takes place in Charleston. The series features one of three brothers romance in each of the books. While I am writing this, there are only three books in the series, and I haven’t researched to see if there are plans to go beyond that. Their family is being targeted by someone trying to destroy the Benedicts. 

The first book is the introduction. So you usually try to give it a little to help build up the story, but they rushed the first 25% of this book. It is all murder chaos, rushed character introductions, and few descriptions of what's going on. Most of it feels like just conversations.  

It starts with Tilly Brock and Keaton Benedict. They were best friends throughout childhood and first loves until they charged her father with embezzling funds from the Benedict‘s family company. At that point, it gets weird with the writing style. Keaton’s mother told him Tilly and her family moved to Texas, and he never contacted Tilly again. She was even hinting for him to date another family’s daughter, Elise, right after. There is only a handful of mentions about the embezzlement scandal and it leads you to believe it was a mistake. It doesn’t touch that plotline at all after those few sentences. Then Elise moving in and practically promised to Keaton because her father worked with his father. Apparently, marriage is all business then. That character felt odd, because she was angry and vindictive, but turns out to be a throwaway character in a bizarre turn of events. It felt clunky and thrown in for some hopeful intrigue. Not to mention there is a murderer who is targeting Tilly specifically. Why because she knew the Benedicts almost 10 years ago…. what… like she is from the deep past childhood, why is she a lynchpin to taking the boys down? It is written like the killer intended for Tilly and Keaton to meet, but they wrote the scene like a random meeting. There are so many random plot things in the book. The murders, a family affair with a half-sister, there is a mastermind with minions who murder. I think there is a human trafficking element.

I want to touch beyond the story and hit the characters a little here too. Keaton is supposed to be this “notorious bachelor” but he feels like just some random college kid in a rich family. The family doesn’t feel like they are as famous as that label suggests. Maybe one of the other brothers would fit that description better, but beyond their own household, they don‘t feel like they are that renown to the community. They really could just be any slightly rich people. It just added to the rough feeling of the story.

There is a lot of unanswered questions left in this book. The writing got better as the story progressed. It ends well to lead you into the next book(s) I feel. I just don‘t know if it is a strong enough start to pull people in for the whole series. I almost quit myself at the start. There are issues with the story I have, but again, that will hopefully be resolved in the future books. I’m just not sure if I am interested enough to try and finish it. I try to push through tough points in books. I am glad I did it with this book. I appreciate this story, but I wasn’t completely sold on it. 

If you would like to take a look at the start of Tara Thomas' Darkest Night, you can click below to read a sample without leaving the page. 

Colllision Point by Lora Leigh 4 ✭

Title:	Collision Point
Author:	Lora Leigh
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Series:	Brute Force (#1)
Genre:	Romantic Suspense, Military Romance
Publish Date:	February 27, 2018
Sold by:	Macmillan
Pages:	331
Ages:	18 +

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

I’m always nervous about starting a book series that is a spin-off without reading the original that it came from. Thankfully, this never seemed like a spin-off because all the information to understand the story is there for you to read. That made this an easy beginning to a new world for me. Which is funny because my notes from reading the book completely contradict how I started this post. I know how that sounds, but bear with me, the confusion there seems like that is completely authors intention here. 

See Amara is like a Russian crime lords daughter. At the start of the book, someone breaks her body while she was being held captive. Then as she is weak, she gets rescued. So my first thought while I was reading and as she is seeing people she knows are rescuing her. On top of that, she is already completely in love with one, Riordan. During the rescue, she knows it is a trap that is meant to kill Riordan. So as they are escaping, she trying to warn him of the trap and he gets shot carrying her. As they are making their escape on the helicopter, Amara hears that Riordan is dying from one of the men helping with the rescue. He dies but comes back a time or two. Amara wakes up completely forgetting him and a bunch of stuff from the past year. So you get to read the journey while she rediscovers her love for him. Amara forgets a lot, from meeting him on to waking up in the hospital was completely gone. She couldn’t remember any of it. There is only one thing that she remembers and it is an intense loss. She lost someone that day.

Flash over to Riordan because he isn’t just a hunk of meat to throw at the reader to enjoy super hot romps. I mean he is in a way but... Anyway; he is a good a good Irish boy that has a family attribute that is magical. It’s not actual magic but it might as well be labeled that way. Basically, Malone men if they have the soulful Irish eyes and when they fall in love with their one soulmate, they have this intense bond with them. It reminds me of a bond you find in some vampire romances. Where they instinctively know how the other is feeling or thinking. Oh, they also connect to each other through dreams and nightmares too. It’s called “finding their way” which I like. I like that it has its own family legacy to it.

Having that soulful connection and her memory loss was a strong way to explain that soul connection that they share. There are few surprises that I feel were predictable and then some I didn’t expect. I didn’t see it going that way. The whole journey through the book was good as she rediscovered her memories and her love and loss. I really like the book and how well the whole story was written out. 

Now I have heard Lora Leigh over the years and I know that she has tons of books but I have never read one. If I have it was so long ago that I completely forgot the story. Although I really don’t think I have. So my opinion is this is a pretty good book with a little mystery and “magic”. I’m calling it magic.

If you would like to read the beginning of Collision Point by Lora Leigh for free, you can click below. You won’t even have to leave the page. 

Consumed by J.R. Ward 4 ✭

Title:	Consumed
Author:	J.R. Ward
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Series:	Firefighters
Genre:	Romance, Mystery, Suspense
Publish Date:	October 2, 2018
Sold by:	Simon and Schuster
Pages:	416
Ages:	18 +

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

Thank you Gallery Books for giving me this ARC copy of consumed. Reading Consumed was like coming home. When you read a book, and you easily enjoy the complexity of each individual character instantly for however brief the introduction you get to them, you know that it is going to be a good series. To me, it felt like meeting a new set of characters with that same quality of the OG Black Dagger Brotherhood characters.  I say OG BDB because I haven't read the last few books and I lost a little interest in them. I want to continue but it isn't high on the list. This makes me not a superfan but a fan. So when I say I have that original feeling of expectation to a great new series, I mean it.

There are a ton of good characters that get some screen time here. It isn't just a story about Anne and Danny, although their story is amazing, you don't have to focus on them. This is a whole crew of people who all have their own life problems. So seeing everyone in this world interact through the rest of the series as it comes out should be really good. They're all relatable in their own ways, and if you can't relate, you understand the character type in general.

One of the things that I really liked was reading J.R. Ward's acknowledgments section in her new book. She wrote about how she worked with police and fire while there were working. It sounds like they gave her some job shadowing time to help her learn more about the careers behind her characters. They answered her questions and got to see their selfless heroism, her words not mine, in action. I think that truly helped her story feel even more real. You get the feeling of pride in what they do, but also that they're regular guys/gals who are just doing their job.

I really recommend Consumed. It is a great beginning to a series. It isn't drawn out building a world or characters, they develop as you go. The cliffhanger is just enough that you want to continue the plot without having to stress out about it until whenever the next one is. I personally appreciate this. I hate when books leave you with more questions than answers. Thankfully this doesn't do that.

 Consumed is slated to release on October 2, 2018. The prices at the time of this review are $12.99 for Kindle, $17.70 for the Hardcover.

Her Dark Half by Paige Tyler 4 ✭

Title: Her Dark Half

Author: Paige Tyler

Series: X-Ops

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Supernatural Romance

Publish Date: September 5, 2017

Pages: 354

Ages: 18+

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

Her Dark Half was a little hard for me to get into at first. This is also the seventh book in this series and I have read none of the previous ones. I got this copy of the book from NetGalley for review purposes. I will say that by 28% (thank you kindle) I got HOOKED into this book. The mystery of waiting to see how they get the baddie was a lot of fun to read. The events that occur within the book flow naturally. Thanks to the author's skillful writing tying you in. So if you haven't read the previous books like me, you will be fine to pick this up. You get a feel for the world and previous events pretty early in the book.

I love shifter style books because the idea is just magical. Who wouldn't want to be an animal right? In Her Dark Half, there are some who are born as shifters. And then there are some who were kidnapped, tortured and, turned into shifters with science backed by a shady congressman. Thorne is an evil man, and it is left to the only shifter left in the DCO to ferret out the truth of all the previous events from other books. Trevor is a coyote shifter and he only has a few friends left that are helping out. Thorne thinks he is slick and hires a former CIA agent who is skilled at getting traitors to be Trevor's partner.

Alina is a bad-ass with a past. She quit working for the CIA because she been obsessed in finding a criminal. The criminal had once been her team member who betrayed her whole team killed. Alina was so obsessed with finding traitors that it became her specialty. Alina got sick of doing that job. Always looking for people in your own ranks who are traitor's has got to wreck your emotions. So Alina saw a new opportunity to work with the DCO and took it. The problem was she didn’t' realize that she would be watching her new partner Trevor to see if he is a traitor. 

To start these two do not trust each other at all. Alina is under the impression that Trevor is probably a traitor. Trevor knows that Alina is most likely a plant to keep an eye on him so he can't bust Thorne and Dick. Dick is the current head of the DCO and he is definitely shady. There are a bunch of shifters who are on the run, one is even pregnant. And they are all trying to survive and find out what Dick and Thorne are up to. There are a lot of people in this story that are from the earlier books and you get to see parts of them but not much. There are more books in the series and this series seems pretty solid from what I have read. It had solid action and solid action.

For a Free sample read check out below. You don't even have to leave the page.

Blocked by L.P. Dover 3 ✭

Title: Blocked

Author: L.P. Dover
Series: Breakaway 
Genre: Sports Romance, Mystery & Suspense, Contemporary
Publish Date: October 31, 2017
Pages:  --not listed--
Ages: 18 +
Rating:  ✭✭✭

The tough and gruff cocky goaltender of the Strikers gets blindsided by a hot chick. Dallas Easton is a jerk. I'm being completely honest. At the start of the book he is a total ass and not someone you would be interested in. Obviously, things change over the duration of the story, but the start of his storyline left a bad taste in my mouth. Overall the changes he goes through seem possible but not really believable. Maybe I just can't believe a dominant male who has aggression issues and only cares about banging would switch so effortlessly to a sweet romantic gentleman. I guess what I mean is, if a guy is going to come off as a pig, at least let that core character type last more than the first meet and great with the heroine. Then again, maybe that is more possible than I think it could be.

I did like Callie Davis. She was a very likeable character. She was tough but was still a women with emotions that made you feel for her. She grew up with only brothers so that toughness comes in handy when she skates and plays hockey with them their whole lives. The way the two meet is one of the great points of the story so I won't discuss that because of spoilers, but lets just say that it starts off like a smack in the face.

This book confused me. Sometimes is came across like it was just going to be a short smut book, and then other times if felt like a true contemporary romance. I liked the overall storyline of the book, but I feel like different sections of the book where written when the author was at a different emotional place. Almost like the same person didn't write all of it. It has its flaws but overall the book was likeable, just not a favorite. I will say that this book was not predictable to me. It wasn't the usual story with what events occur. It follows a similar path to most romance books but the problems that pop up for the two were not predictable and that was nice.

This is a good book to read and I think some people may enjoy it more than others. I just wasn't a super fan of Dallas and how quickly his personality changes. I received a FREE copy from the publisher so that I would be able to rad it and offer a review. It won't be published by Loveswept and sold by Random House LLC, until October 31 as a Kindle Edition.

Saving Grace by Aubrey Wynne 4 ✭

Title: Saving Grace

Author: Aubrey Wynne

Series: Enchanted Keepsakes

Genre: Paranormal & Urban Fantasy, Romantic Suspense, Mystery

Publish Date: May 1, 2017 

Pages: 120

Ages: Mature

Rating: ✭✭✭✭

Saving Grace is a wonderful start to a new series. Aubrey Wynne has managed to write another book, or in this case a small novella, that will compel you to read the rest of the series. I am becoming a pretty decent fan of the author I would say at this point. She managed in such a short amount of pages to thrill me with some lore, romance, and suspense.

I grew up a military brat, and part of that time was spent in Virginia. Virginia is a wonderful state full of rich history. So having a story with a heroine, Chloe, being haunted by a ghost, Grace, and having legitimate history mixed in with Aubrey Wynne's own story telling is just a treat for me. Also the idea of Chloe seeking out information about what could be happening and a historian falling in love is just super cool to me. This story was written where is was flipping between past and present and is was done great. You are able to follow what is going on pretty easily.

If you would like to read a FREE SAMPLE of Saving Grace, you can below without even leaving the page!

Hidden by Kendra Elliot 3 ✭

This is the first book in the Bone Secrets Series by Kendra Elliot. It is a total of a six book series.Lacey Campbell is a former gymnast and the survivor of the Co-ed Killer. Lacey's testimony was the one that put him away in jail. Now eleven years later she is a forensic odontologist, which means she looks at teether and bones. So in the beginning of this book, it is truly devastating when she is inspecting a set of teeth at a homicide and realizes that she knows whom they belong to while they are just sitting in the palm of her hand. They belong to her best friend Suzanne who went missing when they were both attacked by the Co-ed Killer.

Jack Harper is a former cop who now runs his families business. He is seen as a rich "playboy" but thankfully the book doesn't focus on this like a lot of other books where the millionaire playboy is the main love interest. Suzanne's body was discovered on one of his properties. What makes this even more puzzling is that he was one of the cops on the case all those eleven years ago.

This book has many perspectives and sometimes it jumps a little weird. The best way that I can explain it is that they needed to cut down on the size of the book and just cut whole paragraphs of descriptive scene changes. That is the ONLY reason why it is rated so low and that may just be my personal take on the writing and my comprehension of these scene changes. I hope that I am not judging this too harshly because of my personal comprehension issues, but that's just how I felt.

This is an amazing book if it wasn't for that. The characters points of view are written great. It makes you think about who could be the killer many different times. Not only does it give you Jack and Lacey's view but it also shows you the killers perspective, one of the cops on the current case, and even Lacey's report ex-boyfriend/ best friend. I really enjoy mysteries that make you guess along while you read. It's the kind of thing that you have to take a break to really think, did they give me enough clues to figure it out for myself.

Click below to read a free preview without 
even leaving the page!

I borrowed this book for FREE using my Prime Reading, but you can also borrow a copy for free using Kindle Unlimited. Prime Reading is free if you already pay for Amazon Prime and it is like a lite version of what you can get with a Kindle Unlimited Subscription. Now that I am done with the #sellout mode, haha.