Accidentals by Sarina Bowen

Coming July 10th

 

SUMMARY

A YA novel from USA Today bestselling author Sarina Bowen.

Never ask a question unless you’re sure you want the truth.

I’ve been listening to my father sing for my whole life. I carry him in my pocket on my mp3 player. It’s just that we’ve never met face to face.

My mother would never tell me how I came to be, or why my rock star father and I have never met. I thought it was her only secret. I was wrong.

When she dies, he finally appears. Suddenly I have a first class ticket into my father’s exclusive world. A world I don’t want any part of – not at this cost. 

Only three things keep me going: my a cappella singing group, a swoony blue-eyed boy named Jake, and the burning questions in my soul.

There’s a secret shame that comes from being an unwanted child. It drags me down, and puts distance between me and the boy I love.

My father is the only one alive who knows my history. I need the truth, even if it scares me.

LINKS

Amazon Global Link: http://geni.us/ACCAmazon 

Audio: http://geni.us/ACCaudio 

Paperback: http://geni.us/ACCpaperback 

iBooks: http://geni.us/ACCibooks 

Kobo: http://geni.us/ACCkobo 

Nook: http://geni.us/ACCnook 

SARINA LINKS

https://www.sarinabowen.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7737308.Sarina_Bowen

https://www.facebook.com/authorsarinabowen

https://twitter.com/SarinaBowen

https://www.pinterest.com/sarinabowen/

https://www.instagram.com/sarina.bowen/

Red Queen

This is a world divided by blood – red or silver.

The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change.

That is, until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power.

Fearful of Mare’s potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.

But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance – Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart.

I finished this book roughly around 8 hours ago.
8 hours.
8 hours of bickering in my head about this book.
How do I rate a book that I both loved and loathed?
This book brought out a RoLlErCoAsTeR of emotions.

Let me start with the main characters of the book.
Mare: This girl had me wanting to pull out every hair on my head. One minute she is in love with Maven and the next page she is kissing Cal. Bad Mare. Although to be quite honest, I still can’t decide which boy to choose either.
Maven: Poor, misunderstood and unloved spare for an heir Prince. I fell for your sweetness and smooth moves just as Mare did. Then you pull a one-two punch at me and I STILL wanted to like you. How can you do that to me?…I mean Mare.
Cal: The Prince that matters to the Kingdom. Not only is he first in line for that throne, but he has everything going for him. Feelings that get in the way and make you care. Oh let’s not forget how you can set us on fire….literally.

Now the plot reminded me of Game of Thrones.
There. I said it. I actually compared a book to another book and I am waiting for the ruler to strike my hands. I can’t help it though. I kept picturing the characters from GoTs in each role in Red Queen. Think about it for a few minutes and it works — and it is amazing!

Then we get to the final page and I am so frustrated with it. Seriously?! You chose that point in the story to stop and leave me hanging? No. Just NO! Just for the record authors, if you are going to leave us with that big of a cliff hanger, you better deliver sooner on that next book. Write faster!

With all that being said though, I love this book. I love how I was yelling out loud at the characters.  I wavered in my choice of which Prince was the right one for Mare. I was excited for each traitorous move on the chess board. I screamed at the ending and maybe thought about throwing it against the wall. All in all, the emotions the author put me through in this book is exactly what books should do. So bring on the next one. I can’t wait.

“The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”
― Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen

GOODREADS / AMAZON

15851732

 

THE VINCENT BOYS
Series: The Vincent Boys #1
Author: Abbi Glines

There was something wicked about Beau that drew me to him. What was wrong with me? Why did I want to sin so badly?

Ashton is getting tired of being good, of impressing her parents and playing ideal girlfriend to Sawyer Vincent. Sawyer is perfect, a regular Prince Charming, but when he leaves town for the summer, it’s his cousin Beau who catches Ashton’s eye. Beau is the sexiest guy she’s ever seen, and even though he’s dangerous, Ashton is drawn to him.

Beau loves his cousin like a brother, so the last thing he wants to do is make a move on Sawyer’s girl. Ashton is off-limits, absolutely. That’s why he does his best to keep his distance, even though he’s been in love with her forever. When Ashton wants to rekindle their childhood friendship in Sawyer’s absence, Beau knows he should say no.

Ashton and Beau don’t want to hurt Sawyer. But the more they try to stay away from each other, the more intense their urges become. It’s getting way too hard to resist..

Where do I even start? I really wanted to enjoy this story after so many people on Goodreads had rated it with high marks.  I am in that lower percentile that didn’t have such high praise for it.

The writing wasn’t too bad.  The author had some great writing and narration.  Heck, even most of the dialogue wasn’t that bad.  I think it was the flat out cheating that bothered me the most. I am not a fan of stories with cheating involved. I don’t like cheating in real life and I certainly don’t want to read about cheating.  Yes, sometimes it is not so black and white and might be able to work in a fictional world, if the author handles it very carefully.  Well, I was disappointed with the way this one was handled.  It seemed that right off the bat the main characters were getting it on and moved straight into the no-fly zone. I also was about ready to pull my hair out if I had to read how perfect Sawyer was on almost every other page.

The characters were frustrating and seemed not to have any sensible values whatsoever.  Perfect Ashton (who happens to be the preachers daughter). Perfect Sawyer. Bad boy Beau (which everyone in town looks down on). Like I said, the writing was decent, but the story and characters were not.

GOODREADS / AMAZON

7092412

 

STOLEN
by Lucy Christopher

Gemma, 16, is on layover at Bangkok Airport, en route with her parents to a vacation in Vietnam. She steps away for just a second, to get a cup of coffee. Ty – rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar – pays for Gemma’s drink. And drugs it. They talk. Their hands touch. And before Gemma knows what’s happening, Ty takes her. Steals her away. The unknowing object of a long obsession, Gemma has been kidnapped by her stalker and brought to the desolate Australian Outback.  

Stolen is her gripping story of survival, of how she has to come to terms with her living nightmare – or die trying to fight it.

Where to begin? After reading the last page of this book, my feelings are all over the place. I loved the build up and the descriptive narration. I loved how the POV is from Gemma, but it is her writing the story to Ty. I loved that!

I might actually have Stockholm Syndrome for a fictional person.  I can completely understand how it would be easy to fall into that behavior because Ty was actually a nice guy. He knows what he did is wrong, but his reasoning for the kidnapping falls into the “knight in shining armor” mentality in his head.

Even though Gemma fights him every step of the way, she does start to understand him and come to care for him.  By the end of the story I was in tears. You can feel the heart break Ty experiences when the hardest decision he has to make comes sooner than later.

— “People should love what needs loving. That way you can save it.” — Ty, page 216.

AMAZON / GOODREADS

16122034

 

For twenty-one-year-old Sydney, being in love with Kyler isn’t anything new. They’d been best friends ever since he pushed her down on the playground and she made him eat a mud pie. Somewhere over the years, she fell for him and fell hard. The big problem with that? Kyler puts the ‘man’ in man-whore. He’s never stayed with a girl longer than a few nights, and with it being their last year in college, Syd doesn’t want to risk their friendship by declaring her love.

Kyler has always put Syd on a pedestal that was too high for him to reach. To him, she’s perfect and she’s everything. But the feelings he has for her, he’s always hidden away or focused on any other female. After all, Kyler will always be the poor boy from the wrong side of tracks, and Syd will always be the one girl he can never have.

But when they’re stranded together at a posh ski resort due to a massive Nor’easter, there’s nothing stopping their red-hot feelings for each other from coming to the surface. Can their friendship survive the attraction? Better yet, can they survive at all? Because as the snow falls, someone is stalking them, and this ski trip may be a life-changer in more ways than one.

 

I have had this book waiting to be read for at least a year now.  A friend had passed it on to me and it sounded like an okay read to me, but it kept getting pushed back in the pile. There are a few things that I didn’t enjoy about the book and I will admit that one or two things is superficial and in no way regarding the writing. For example, The Cover. Not a fan. It is too much focus on a barely there male chest.It is snowing and you happen you have your shirt wide open. Maybe that is to distract us from the fact that he is in desperate need of a haircut. So those are my superficial gripes about the book.

Lets talk the relationship between Kyler and Syd. We basically have a bad boy who thinks with his penis instead of his brain. Then we have the constant damsel in distress that can’t seem to do anything by herself. Oh and a previous boyfriend who happened to call her frigid in bed the one and only time she had sex is her favorite thing to go on about.

Overall, lets just say that I made it to the last page. Was it a struggle? Yes. Would I read it again or really recommend it to anyone? Probably not.

GOODREADS / AMAZON