WHATCHA READING WEDNESDAY

This week felt more like a marathon than a sprint mostly because of poor planning on my part (I can't speak for Courtney). I somehow thought I was ahead in my reading for our blog and quickly discovered that if I didn't pick up my pace, I'd be behind. Fortunately, everything I've read has been engaging and we had quite a diverse collection of things to read. Sidenote: Court: Neither of us planned well...at all....how we made it out of this weekend alive and not zombies is seriously a miracle!!!

I started my week with J. A. Redmerski's The Edge of Never and that totally rocked my world (see yesterday's Texts and Talking about THAT!). I finished it at 2:20 in the morning and actually had dreams about the plight of those characters during the very little sleep I manage to get that night/morning. If you haven't read it yet, you may want to put it on your TBR list.

I also picked up Emma Hart's The Love Game and Playing for Keeps were so much fun to read. They are companion novels about several friends and their attempts at finding love while attending Berkeley. If you need something good to read while on vacation this summer, these would be great choices.

In the middle of the week Paris Love Match by Nigel Blackwell kept me entertained. This is less on the smut side and more on the action/adventure side. It's set in Paris and has a lot of snappy dialogue between our two lead characters (who are desperately trying to escape the clutches of criminals AND the police).

My last 2 reads couldn't be more different. Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland is a piece of literary fiction that demands that you ponder and think your way through it (or at least it did for me). By the end I was left with lots of conflicted emotions and I'm still working out exactly what I think about what happened. This is not a bad thing...it's a refreshing thing and one worth your time, if you're looking for something a little heavier than what we normally review here. Leaning more towards the light and easy reading, I just finished Falling for the Backup by Toni Aleo. I've not read anything by her until this novella and Courtney says that her Assassins series is swoonworthy..so I'll be adding that to MY TBR list. This novella was a very quick and sweet read...definitely good beach reading material.

I'm about to delve into Shannon Mayer's High Risk Love and if the prologue is any indication of the rest of the book, I'm in for a 'just one more chapter' kind of night. I'm also looking forward to J. Sterling's The Game Changer and J.A. Redmerski's Killing Sarai. 

Here's to another great week of reading! 

So yeah...we have this little thing going where we think..Hey! We are two books ahead, let's read KA books all night long...and that seriously almost killed us this weekend. Not going to let myself get that out of hand again.....Sorry... who am I kidding, I probably will! But she listed a lot of our book awesomeness! So I am going to say I'm not sure what...but if any other time of me blogging and being tired is an indication I talk too much! 

How about I take this moment to relish on how awesome of an invention I think NetGalley is? Anyone? It is like Christmas morning every single time we get approved for a book. I hope that we've found some great books that you all might like! Sisterland was a major NetGalley surprise. It looked promising, but sometimes you just can't ever tell...and I was completely blown away by it. If I get a chest clench of my heart breaking for a character (I know, my husband is mortified by this fact too...I get waayyy to emotionally invested) then I feel like I've hit gold...and these books we've read lately have made my heart hurt. 

I just finished Playing for Keeps by Emma Hart....and I just want to grab baby Aston up and run away with him....pure beautiful torture, that was. (Our review is live today too, so I won't rehash anymore details of that one, but check out Emma Hart!) 

Something I've waited on and let sneak up on me is the release of Come Alive by Karina Halle. It is book 7 of the Experiment in Terror series, and can that girl write some supernatural smut! Well...Dex and Perry can see ghosts = supernatural, and they don't really have any romance happen until book 4..so maybe not all that much smut, but now that it's happened...it is amazing. I was never one for a more horror type genre, until this, and this series is absolutely amazing, IMO. Book 1 is Darkhouse so check it, STAT! Darkhouse is also FREE on Amazon, so is there an excuse not to at least try it? No. No there is not. (And I just found that all the way through book 4 is currently 99 cents...sorry for being a bad used car salesman just now, but I LOOOVVVEEE this series! To quote our Twitter friend Stacy..."Pimpin' ain't easy, ya know"...and she is so right...\m/

PARIS LOVE MATCH BY NIGEL BLACKWELL BLOG TOUR + REVIEW

Follow Paris Love Match on tour. More details here

Piers Chapman had seen Paris,
In pictures, 
In movies, 
In books.
What he hadn't seen was the mobster.
Or the dictator.
Or the trained killers.
Or the diamonds they were chasing.
But it was Paris,
The city of light,
The city of love.
And a girl had already stolen his heart.
What could possibly go wrong?

Getting a taxi in Paris can be hell. Piers Chapman expected a boring business trip to Paris. What he didn't expect was to fight over a cab with a beautiful girl. After a bad meeting, Sidney Roux just wanted to hail a cab, go home, and have a glass of wine. She didn't expect to fight over a cab with some pompous British tourist. Neither of them expected another man to jump in their cab. Or to be involved in a gun fight. Or a car chase through the streets of Paris. Or for the man to die. But they're thrust together when the mob demands they return what the dead man stole. Will Piers and Sidney work together? Will they find what he had stolen? Will they stay alive? And will they do the last thing they expected? Will they fall in love?

Title: Paris Love Match

Author: Nigel Blackwell

Publisher: Bandit Publishing

Release date: May 2, 2013

Genre: Romance humorous

Age Group: New Adult

Tour organized by: AToMR Tours

Source: Copy received from Bandit Publishing for tour + honest review

Where to Find Paris Love Match:

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

Nigel Blackwell was born in rural Oxfordshire in England. He has a love of books, a PhD in Physical Chemistry, and a black belt in pointing out the obvious. As a teenager he toured Europe and loved seeing the wonders of the world and the people in it. Since then he has been fortunate enough to travel across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Japan, and hasn't been anywhere that doesn't have the potential for a story. He now lives in Texas with his wife and daughter, where they enjoy the sunshine and listen to the coyotes howl at night.

                          


Where to Find the Author:

                          Website | Facebook | Twitter

Our Review:

Paris Love Match is a little action, a little adventure, and a little romance. To get in the right headspace for this, I'd say to approach like you would a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie--there will be many scenarios that are unlikely ever to happen in real life, so you just have to go with it! It's a book about how two people unlikely to ever be friends or even know each other are thrown together in an impossible situation and must work together to stay alive. I would say they have to work together to stay out of trouble, but it's evident really early that they cannot seem to do this.

No, they can't seem to stay out of trouble! It's one bumbling scenario after another, but creates a fun race through Paris running from the bad guys, but not knowing what on earth they are looking for. The first scenes are set with a horrible dictator making plans to sell something to go where there is no extradition and leave his country in ruin, and the people buying said item and what they each will do to keep what they want and not actually have to pay for it. I liked the story put together with the writing and always like a clear picture of where we are, what is going on, and just enough intrigue to keep the story moving at a nice pace.

Piers, a momma's boy in Paris for business, and Sidney, in Paris trying to launch a fashion line, meet while arguing over a cab. As the argument escalates they unknowingly get caught up in the middle of a heist gone terribly wrong and over the next 48 hours are chased by criminals and police. As I tried to visualize it I imagined it to be a mix of The Three Stooges and Burn Notice--some physical comedy paired with action--because of the goofy bad buys and the crazy action sequences.

Perfect examples! The Three Stooges in this case would be Two Stooges in what Sidney and Piers double as Little and Large, obviously by each of their differences in stature. They are the worst "bad guys" in the history of the world, but I found myself really enjoying their sporadic appearances. Several different events throw a loop in their plans for figuring out who the guy who died in their cab was and why he was getting shot at in the first place. And oohh, Piers was definitely a momma's boy...Wow, if I was Sidney I would have chucked his phone in the Seine at my first opportunity and helped him with a little bit of tough love. There's nothing wrong with being close with your parents, but his mother talking to him like he was still 16 was grating for me...his growth to becoming a James Bond type guy made me like him a little better after these situations.

The chemistry between Piers and Sidney wasn't quite what I expected. They were both snarky and snippy and sarcastic with each other so when they had these little flickers of romantic thoughts it felt almost like an afterthought. When they had their big romantic moment at the end, I wasn't quite sure if I was ready to see them feel so interested in each other..but as I said before, I just went with it. 

While I too was surprised by their feelings at the end, since they wouldn't say anything to each other along the way about any attraction they might feel, I was glad that it didn't go further than that. Declarations of love after two days would have seriously lessened the appeal, so I am over the moon glad that did not happen. It was a fun journey of opposites attracting though, so I am always rooting for the normal guy! (AKA non-Christian Grey-esque guy).

This book is a fast paced action novel with a little taste of romance thrown in. It's a quick read with lots of dialogue and the always lovely city of Paris as a backdrop. 

Shelley: 3 Stars
Courtney: 3 Stars

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PARIS LOVE MATCH TEASER & GIVEAWAY

Getting a taxi in Paris can be hell.

Piers Chapman expected a boring business trip to Paris.
What he didn't expect was to fight over a cab with a beautiful girl.

After a bad meeting, Sidney Roux just wanted to hail a cab, go home, and have a glass of wine.
She didn't expect to fight over a cab with some pompous British tourist.

Neither of them expected another man to jump in their cab.
Or to be involved in a gun fight.
Or a car chase through the streets of Paris.
Or for the man to die.

But they're thrust together when the mob demands they return what the dead man stole.

Will Piers and Sidney work together?
Will they find what he had stolen?
Will they stay alive?

And will they do the last thing they expected?
Will they fall in love?

Published: May 2, 2013

Published by: Bandit Publishing

Genre: Romance humorous

Age Group: New Adult

Event organized by: AToMR Tours

Paris Love Match Teaser:

“Well?” she said.
“Well what?”
“A shower. Are you going to have a shower?”
“Yes, right.” He turned to the shower. “Are you going to—“
“Look away? Ewww, yes. Of course.” She turned around to face the same corner as he had. “I’ve got my eyes closed.”
He removed his coat, decided not to ask her to place it over her head as she had done to him, and hung it on a peg on the wall. Then he took his shirt and jeans off and self-consciously folded his boxer shorts inside them. There was nowhere to put them.
“Would you hold my clothes?”
She nodded and held out her arms.
He flipped the lever that started the water. It was lukewarm. The soap was in a push button dispenser and he quickly covered himself in lather. He shivered. “Takes a while to warm up, doesn’t it.”
“You only get one shower for your euros.”
“Oh, thanks. Vital tip that.”
“You were the one that jumped in.”
He tried to keep his back to her. “This is getting bloody cold.”
“Hey, you have a scar.”
“I thought you had your eyes closed!”
“I can’t stand here all this time with my eyes closed. It’s not normal. How did you get your scar?”
“Fell out of a tree and tore up my shoulder when I was young.”
“No, not the one on your shoulder. The one on your bu—“
He crunched up, covering himself. “Do you mind?”
“I was only trying to make conversation.”
The water was freezing now. The overhead fan was still blasting away. He could feel his skin prickling with the cold. He swept a blob of shampoo through his hair and rinsed it away immediately, thrashing his hands to clear the soap off his body. He snapped the tap to off and ran his hands over his body to wipe off the water. “God, I’m cold.”
“Turn on the dryer,” she said.
He pressed the button and nothing. He pressed again. Then he thumped and banged it. Nothing happened. He was shivering uncontrollably. “Oh, god. One shower, one run of the dryer.” He ran his hands over his body, trying to ward off the cold and flicking more water onto the sopping wet floor.
She leaned over to the sink and pulled a handful of paper towels from a dispenser. “Here.”
“Are you closing your eyes at all?”
“Will you stop being a wimp?”
She juggled the towels in her hand and backward-passed them to him. At the same moment his clothes fell out of her other hand.
He dived to grab them from the wet floor. She did the same. Their heads cracked, his eye socket against the back of her skull. A storm of twinkling lights erupted in his vision and darkness threatened to overcome him. He slid down and sat on the floor. “Oh, god, why’d you do that?”
She picked up his clothes from the wet floor. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
He grunted and held his head in his hands.
“Wow. You’ve got abs,” she said.
He sighed. “Everyone’s got abs.”
“Yeah, but not ones you can see.”
He drew his knees up to his chest. “That’s because I’ve got no clothes on.”
“I meant—“
There was an insistent knocking at the door followed by Little’s high-pitched squeak. “You two are wasting time.”
Piers rolled his head forward. “Oh, shit.” The twinkling lights swam around in circles.
“Go away,” said Sidney, “we’re busy.”
“So I can hear. You two lovebirds might be having fun, but you’re wasting time. Get out here.”
“Oh, god. Give me my clothes,” said Piers. He heard a burst of schoolgirl sniggers from outside.

Where to Find Paris Love Match:

Amazon | Goodreads

About The Author:

Nigel Blackwell was born in rural Oxfordshire in England. He has a love of books, a PhD in Physical Chemistry, and a black belt in pointing out the obvious. As a teenager he toured Europe and loved seeing the wonders of the world and the people in it. Since then he has been fortunate enough to travel across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Japan, and hasn't been anywhere that doesn't have the potential for a story.

He now lives in Texas with his wife and daughter, where they enjoy the sunshine and listen to the coyotes howl at night.

Where to Find Nigel Blackwell:

website | facebook | twitter

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