prdgreads

Today is my stop on the #randomthings blog tour! Thank you to Headline for my copy.

Pages: 336

Synopsis: You could say it started with vanity. We believed we were special. But the truth is we were simply vulnerable.

Months after landing their dream job, five brilliant young minds are sent on a remote retreat.

But when one of them disappears, they’re forced to question why they were brought there in the first place.

And for the first time in their lives, they realise too much knowledge can be deadly . . .

One of them is lying.

One of them is guilty.

No one is safe.

My rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5

My Review: This book started off a little slow and confusing. it’s told from multiple difference perspectives with not much differentiating them. I honestly think that for the first 30% of the book that if you didn’t make a point of looking at the beginning of each chapter you wouldn’t know who each chapter was about.

It took a while to get into the main part of the story, but once we arrive on the retreat, the action and the twists and turns just keep coming – I honestly think I found myself loving and hating each individual character at different points in the book.

I’d get to a point where I was confident I’d worked out what was going on and where the story was headed & then another spanner would be thrown into the mix.

I can honestly say, not once did I see a twist coming before it arrived and the book really kept me on my toes.

I was a little confused because the book felt like a completely different book once we hit part 2, the pacing changed and it seemed like the writing style did to, so although part one left me feeling like I’d missed the point, the rest of the book more than made up for it, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of mystery/psychological thrillers and will definitely be picking up more from Colette in the future

Today is my stop on the #randomthings tour for Stilettos and Stardust by D.L Pitchford.

Pages: 252

Synopsis: A modern day Cinderella with a twist…

When high school seniors Noah Barton and Eden Prince’s academic rivalry ruins a thermodynamics demo, their physics teacher decides to help them get along. By forcing them to be lab partners.

As graduation approaches, Noah and Eden are too busy figuring out college to deal with each other. Noah’s football-loving dad sabotages his chance to win a big scholarship. Eden’s traditional mother cares more about finding her a serious boyfriend than encouraging her dreams.

Winning big at the regional science fair is their last hope.

Will Noah follow in his astronaut mother’s footsteps? Can Eden show her parents the environment is more important than any relationship? Will Noah and Eden finally learn to work together?

Follow Noah and Eden’s budding romance in this emotionally charged, gender-swapped retelling of Cinderella.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My thoughts: this story is told from 2 perspectives Noah’s and Eden’s. The chapters alternate characters and they both have a unique style so even if you don’t look at the chapter heading it was easy to tell who’s chapter you were in at any time.

We start off meeting Noah who is still trying to get over the death of his mum, he visits her grave every day after school and tells her about everything that’s going on in his life and the lives of his brothers and his father, I could tell by the way he spoke about them that he feels like they don’t care, they’re just getting on with their lives whilst for Noah losing his mum is still very raw.

Then we meet Eden who wants to focus on her education but is being told by her mother she’s 18 now so it’s time to find a husband and she has the perfect one in mind.

We soon find out that Noah and Eden attend the same school, they’re in the same psychics class, but they hate each other, they both think they’re the best and everything’s a competition. – something happens in the classroom and the teacher decides to put them together as lab partners.

This brings them together and once they actually get to know each other they find out that they have more in common than they first thought.

The character development in this story was amazing. Every single one of the characters learnt something about themselves, but it was done in a realistic believable way which can sometimes be hard to do.

This book had me feeling so many emotions which was surprising considering it’s relatively short!

A thoroughly enjoyable read that I will be recommending to all fans of YA Romance

Pages: 658

Synopsis: CAMILLA WALTERS and ALEXI CARRERO embark on the final installment of their trilogy.

Love confessions hanging in the air and yet a fog of mistrust and confusion clouds the way. So much has passed and yet so much still to resolve. Danger still lurking in dark corners, threatening her life and all she is building.

A mafia based enemies to lovers tale that has gripped our hearts and pulled us on a turbulent journey to this moment.Love him or leave him, put the past to rest or let it destroy what could be.

Can she ever forgive him and allow her heart the happiness it deserves?.

Can Alexi truly be what she needs?

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: I have no idea where to start with this, this is book 9 in the Carrero series and the final instalment of Alexi and Camilla’s trilogy. I will do my best to remain spoiler free, but please forgive me if I let anything slip 😂

I put off starting this trilogy for a year, because I knew L.T. Marshall would leave me wanting more after then ending of each book. Once I started book 9 I was instantly sad because I knew the end was near, but in true L.T. fashion she didn’t make it easy and took us on an emotional rollercoaster.

We got to see more of the past and background of both main characters which helped us to understand why they both are the way they are. It was nice to be able to see why they can’t just fall into each other arms and claim their undying love for each other even though that’s what you want.

As the story develops you see them both starting to open up and relax around the other and even start to let each other in, but again it’s not all straight forward, they give a little and then take a little back. the constant push and pull of it made it feel more realistic and also meant that neither of them lost their true selves in the process! Alexi remained the controlling bossy arsehole and Cam remained her sassy ‘never back down’ self.

This is by far my favourite trilogy of the three and Cam and Alexi’s story will stay with me for a long time.

I’m definitely #teamlexi now I couldn’t help but fall for the broken bad boy ❤️

Hey guys!

This is a little later than planned, the end of June was a busy one for me socially but in the best way, & then I spent the first 2 days of July with fatigue recovering from my busy weekend, living with MS can be interesting sometimes 😂

Anywayyy… June was a really good reading month for me, I managed 11 books in total! A mixture of ratings within that, but most were good.

1. Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer – 🐧🐧
2. The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale (Blog tour) – 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
3. Forget me Not by Claire Allan (ARC) -🐧🐧🐧🐧
4. Poppy’s recipe for life by Heidi Swain (ARC) – 🐧🐧🐧.5
5. Our Stop by Laura Jane Williams (ARC) – 🐧🐧🐧🐧
6. Lady Smoke by Laura Sebastian -🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
7. The Carrero Contract – Finding Freedom by L.T. Marshall – 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
8. A Shifting of Stars by Kathy Kimbray (ARC) -🐧🐧🐧🐧
9. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn – 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
10. Vox by Christina Dalcher – 🐧🐧🐧🐧

Secret Vampire by L.J. Smith – 🐧🐧🐧

There you go, I know I won’t be able to read that many books again this month, but I will complete my reading challenge and probably have to update it.

🐧❤️

I was kindly sent a copy of this by the author in exchange for an honest review ❤️

Pages: 387 pages

Synopsis: A squandering emperor.

A handsome stranger.

A reluctant heroine.

And the ancient magic that will capsize a kingdom.

Seventeen-year-old Meadow Sircha watched her mother die from the wilting sickness. Tormented by the knowledge that the emperor failed to import the medicine that would have saved her, she speaks out at a gathering of villagers, inciting them to boycott his prized gladiator tournament.

But doing so comes at a steep cost.

Arrested as punishment for her impulsive tongue, Meadow finds herself caught up in the kind of danger she’s always tried to avoid. After a chance meeting with an enigmatic boy, she’s propelled on a perilous trek across the outer lands. But she soon unearths a staggering secret: one that will shift her world—and the kingdom—forever.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: I had no idea what to expect going into this but I was intrigued by the synopsis.

Meadow is a young woman still dealing with the grief caused by losing her mother the year before, she goes to a gathering of story tellers to get it all off her chest in the hopes of easing her sadness a little, yet she had no idea that the people she meets and the actions she takes will change the course of her life forever.

The world building in this was amazing, the writing style was perfect and flowed really well, I sometimes find fantasy books to be confusing sometimes but that wasn’t the case with this one.

Meadows character development was done in a believable way too, she starts the book as a scared young girl, but slowly becomes more confident and sure of herself, it’s always nice to see a strong woman as the main character in a book.

The ending of this threw me completely and I’m really hoping there is going to be a sequel.

I would definitely but this fantasy novel up there with the big names and will be recommending it to everyone.

Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale held by Random Things Tours.

Pages: 400

Synopsis:The Girl on the Train meets Before I Go to Sleep with a dash of Bridget Jones in this chilling tale of love gone horribly wrong …
    Some love affairs change you forever. Someone comes into your orbit and swivels you on your axis, like the wind working on a rooftop weather vane. And when they leave, as the wind always does, you are different; you have a new direction. And it’s not always north.’
    Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge.
    Taylor Bishop is hurt, angry and wants to destroy Angus Hollingsworth in the way he destroyed her: ‘Insidiously. Irreparably. Like a puzzle he’d slowly dissembled … stolen a couple of pieces from, and then discarded, knowing that nobody would ever be able to put it back together ever again.’
    So Taylor consults The Art of War and makes a plan. Then she takes the next irrevocable step – one that will change her life forever.
Things start to spiral out of her control – and The Sunday Girl becomes impossible to put down.

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: this books is quite honestly the definition of “unputdownable”

We follow Taylor who has just split up from her fiancé Angus, he puts a video of her on the internet and then finds out he’s taken his ex on the skiing holiday that she was meant to be on, she decides to get her revenge on him, getting her ideas from “the art of war by Sun Tzu”

At first things seem to be going well and she feels confident in her plans, but the Angus turns up at her door with flowers and all seems to be forgotten, can they give this relationship another go and forget everything that’s happened?

Taylor believes that she’s left no trail that can lead back to her in her plot for revenge but soon learns that’s not the case, all her hard work begins to unravel and she soon realises that she’s in serious danger, can she do something about it before Angus works out that she knows.

It’s hard to believe that this is a debut novel for Pip Drysdale, it was such a page turner and read like it was written from an experienced author with lots of novels under their belt.

I will definitely be picking up more from her in future, I would recommend this book to everyone who enjoys the psychological thriller genre.

I RECEIVED MY COPY FROM AVON BOOKS UK VIA NETGALLEY

Pages: 400

Synopsis: What if you almost missed the love of your life?

Nadia gets the 7.30 train every morning without fail. Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma’s after too much wine.

Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn’t been able to sleep properly since his dad died.

One morning, Nadia’s eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper:

To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I’m the guy who’s always standing near the doors… Drink sometime?

So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.

A wonderfully funny will-they-won’t-they romance told with real emotional honesty, perfect
for those who loved Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love as well as fans of Lucy Vine, Holly Bourne, Mhairi McFarlane’s Don’t You Forget About Me and Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare.

My rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My Thoughts: As soon as I read the synopsis for this I knew I needed to read it, I love myself a good love story and this one seemed like it wasn’t going to be your straight forward romance and I was living for it.

The story is told from 2 perspectives, Daniel’s and Nadia’s. Daniel has recently lost his father and just started a new job and therefore getting a different train, where he sees Nadia and likes what he sees. Nadia is a bit ditzy, always running late even though she starts off with the best of intentions, this means more often than not she misses her 7:30 train to work.

Daniel decides the best way to get Nadia’s attention is to leave her a message in the missed connections section of the paper that he sees her reading.

This starts an almost daily thing of back and forth between them, but when it comes to meeting each other they just keep missing each other.

I felt that the pace of this book was a little slow but it didn’t bother me as such because I was invested in the story.

There also seemed to be a lot political discussion thrown in & I’m not really sure why, it didn’t add anything to the story.

As well as the will they/won’t they relationship, There was a couple of good friendship groups too which was nice to see.

The story covered a lot of good topics, consent and grief being just two of them.

I really enjoyed this and will recommend to anyone who is a fan of contemporary romance.

Today is my stop on the Rough Magic blog tour organised by Random Things Tours and I’m hosting a giveaway on my Twitter! For a chance to win a copy of this book search for @prdg, follow me, retweet the giveaway tweet and tag 2 friends you think might be interested- winner will be announced on the 1st July!

Publisher: Ebury Press

Pages: 320

Synopsis: The Mongol Derby is the world’s toughest horse race. A feat of endurance across the vast Mongolian plains once traversed by the people of Genghis Khan, competitors ride 25 horses across a distance of 1000km. Many riders don’t make it to the finish line.

In 2013 Lara Prior-Palmer – nineteen, underprepared but seeking the great unknown – decided to enter the race. Driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses, she raced for seven days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she found she had nothing to lose, and tore through the field with her motley crew of horses. In one of the Derby’s most unexpected results, she became the youngest-ever champion and the first woman to win the race.

Told with terrific suspense and style, in a voice full of poetry and soul, Rough Magic’s the extraordinary story of one young woman’s encouter with oblivion, and herself.

About the author: LARA PRIOR-PALMER was born in London in 1994. Her aunt is Lucinda Green, a legendary rider and one of the UK’s best-ever equestrians. Lara studied conceptual history and Persian at Stanford University. In 2013, she competed in the 1000-kilometer Mongol Derby in Mongolia, sometimes described as the world’s toughest and longest horse race. Rough Magic is her first book.

She can be found on Twitter here @LaraPriorPalmer

Early praise for Rough Magic:

“Rough Magic is (Prior-Palmer’s) chronicle of the experience, and if her debut as an author is half as strong as her maiden effort in racing, it will be well worth the read.” HuffPost

“Rough Magic is the most entertaining memoir I’ve read in years. It’s thrilling, hilarious, unexpected, and ul- timately breathtaking. I loved every minute of this wild ride.” Abbi Geni, author of The Wildlands and the award-winning The Lightkeepers

“Prior-Palmer’s style is a fascinating mix of pep and poignancy. A really terrific story by a spirited new voice.” -Sara Baume, author of A Line Made by Walking

I RECEIVED MY COPY FROM SIMON AND SCHUSTER UK VIA NETGALLEY

Pages: 400

Synopsis: Things haven’t always been straightforward in Poppy’s life but her dreams are finally within her reach.
 
She’s moving into a cottage in beautiful Nightingale Square, close to the local community garden, where she can indulge her passion for making preserves and pickles. She may not have the best relationship with her family but she is surrounded by loving friends, and feels sure that even her grumpy new neighbour, Jacob, has more to him than his steely exterior belies.
 
But the unexpected arrival of Poppy’s troubled younger brother soon threatens her new-found happiness and as the garden team works together to win community space of the year, Poppy must decide where her priorities lie and what she is prepared to fight for …

My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5

My Thoughts: this is the first time I’ve read a story by Heidi Swain and it was an absolute delight!

Poppy has plans to move into her dream home on Nightingale Square and nearly has everything packed when just one phone call from her mum derails everything. She has to give the money she’d saved up for the deposit to help with her brother.

In a surprising turn of events a couple of months later the landlord of the house she was supposed to move into tracks her down at work and tells her that the tenants she had in were a nightmare, they’ve left and she would love Poppy to move so she knows the house is being looked after.

With the house comes access to the community garden and poppy is looking forward to being able to use the spoils in her homemade chutneys and pickles.

She’s just starting to settle in when her 16 year old brother Ryan comes to stay with her and throws everything off completely, how do you look after a teenager when you’re used to living on your own?

This is a beautiful story about love, the romantic kind, the sibling kind and the friendship kind.

It shows what a community can achieve when they pull together and why you should never jump to conclusions and judge someone on their past actions.

I RECEIVED MY COPY FROM AVON BOOKS VIA NETGALLEY IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW

Pages: 400

Synopsis: It’s six in the morning during the hottest summer on record when Elizabeth O’Loughlin, out walking her dog, comes across Clare, a victim of a horrific knife attack, clinging onto life at the side of the road.
 
Clare dies minutes later, but not before whispering her haunting last words to Elizabeth.
  
When it becomes clear that Clare’s killer has more than one murder on his mind, Elizabeth has to take drastic action or face losing everything.
 
But what if she can’t stop a killer determined never to be forgotten?

My rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧

My thoughts; this is my first dive into one of Claire’s books and I definitely wasn’t disappointed, I read it in one sitting because I just could not put it down.

The story starts with Elizabeth taking her dog Izzy for a walk, Izzy runs off and soon starts yelping and whining, Elizabeth goes to investigate and discovers a body by the side of the road, on closer inspection she realises that the woman (Claire) is still alive so she holds her hand and reassures her she’s not alone. Claire manages to say two words before she dies “warn them”

Who is she warning? what is she warning them of?!

The story is told from 2 perspectives, Elizabeth’s & Rachel’s (one of Claire’s childhood best friends) the story has so many elements and so many twists and turns. The tension builds and builds until the dramatic ending when you learn that Elizabeth may not be a stranger to the victim.

Can they get to the bottom of what really happened to Claire before someone else gets hurt?

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller.

Trigger warnings for suicide and abuse.