Icon Tag: ARC

Review ~ Dead Money ~ Srinath Adiga

Review ~ Dead Money ~ Srinath Adiga

I picked up Dead Money because the premise intrigued me. Those first few sentences of the synopsis reeled me in. I’m ever so glad I happened upon this masterful debut. Although Dead Money wasn’t always easy to sit with, it’s worth the time sitting with. “How can you stop something that’s on a mission to destroy itself?” -Theo, Loc 6278 In Dead Money, SAdiga deftly weaves together three stories in three locales with three different characters connected by one cleverly crafted over-arching plot. In the first story, set in Hong Kong, we meet a stock market trader and see the scary genius employed to create Afterlife Dollars. We’re also privy to the greed and corruption that led to its creation. […]

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Review ~ Seducing His Secret Wife ~ Robin Covington

Review ~ Seducing His Secret Wife ~ Robin Covington

Seducing His Secret Wife is the second installment in RCovington’s Redhawk Reunion series and it’s a worthy addition. I knew it’d take quite the woman to capture Justin’s attention. Hooboy did the sparks fly! And then we find out who *she* really is. Watching the romance bloom between Justin and Sarina was heartwarming and fun. These two are broken in their own ways and it was something to see as they proved to each other that they were enough just as they are. I only wish I’d gotten to see even more page time between them. Sarina has experienced abandonment most of her life. Being separated from her parents and split from her brothers was only the beginning. Foster care […]

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Review ~ Mafia Bride ~ CD Reiss

Review ~ Mafia Bride ~ CD Reiss

With Mafia Bride , Reiss returns to the world of the Italian mafia and it’s a world I delight in. Being more fully immersed in the customs, the rules, the violence…it’s all so foreign and yet fascinating. And Reiss’s writing is exceptional. She’s the only author I’ve read whose words are beautiful in their brutality. I was enthralled from the first page. The first time I see Santino, I don’t know how old his is, but I am 12, and he is a man. Though I expect him to carry all the subtle and seductive dangers of men, his menace is controlled, with the direction and force of gravity. He comes to my uncle’s house, where I’ve lived since I was a […]

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Blogger Wife Chat Review ~ The Right Wrong ~ Michelle Mankin

Blogger Wife Chat Review ~ The Right Wrong ~ Michelle Mankin

Wow. The Right Wrong certainly toyed with my emotions. Both Ben and Sierra had a lot to overcome in order for their romance to blossom. But it did bloom and it did so rather quickly for my tastes but this is a fairytale. 😉 I didn’t really see the parallel to Sleeping Beauty here… even metaphorically 😀 But yeah, there were definitely feels here. I had to do some thinking on it but I eventually got the parallel…   Ben’s childhood was far from idyllic. I can’t imagine being told – your whole life – that you’d ruined a parent’s life. That you were the reason they were unhappy. It was no wonder Ben drank himself to oblivion and/or buried […]

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ARC Review: The Bookstore on the Beach – Brenda Novak

ARC Review: The Bookstore on the Beach – Brenda Novak

The Bookstore on the Beach is a rather compelling story, with characters that are attaching, and a quirky beach town as the backdrop to all the drama. The Bookstore on the Beach started out very well, with Autumn going back to her home town for the summer holiday. Seeing her mom, letting her children be free, and possibly stopping her search for her missing husband. Autumn needed to know what had happened to Nick, but she also needed to start living again. After a year and a half of Nick’s disappearing act, Autumn just couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore. As I said, the story is rather compelling, but there is so much going on. Too much for a single novel […]

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ARC Review: The Last One Home – Victoria Helen Stone

ARC Review: The Last One Home – Victoria Helen Stone

The Last One Home is a rollercoaster of a psychological thriller, where the narrators make you doubt them with almost every step they take, and every thing they say. I was already a huge fan of Victoria Helen Stone when she wrote romance novels under the name Victoria Dahl. But I have to say, her psychological thrillers are even better than her romances. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but The Last One Home had that creepy feeling from the very start. In The Last One Home, the readers follow Lauren, 35, in the present, and her mother, Donna, in the past – when Donna was 35. The back-and-forth works perfectly well for the story. And with each thing I […]

Posted 23 February, 2021 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 3 Comments
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Review: The Iron Raven – Julie Kagawa

Review: The Iron Raven – Julie Kagawa

The Iron Raven features Puck as the main character, and I feel like I have waited for his book since forever! What a pleasure to be back in Kagawa’s fairylands once more. And even more so to learn much more about Puck, and how he was often somewhat an outsider, but one who wanted to fit in – at least sometimes. There is trouble in Faerie, and this trouble is so big it might just be too much for Puck, the Iron Fey, and a new possible ally to fight the good fight. The Iron Raven shows a different side of Faerie, now that there is a specific place where the Forgotten have taken up residence. Ethan as their champion […]

Posted 3 February, 2021 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 6 Comments
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ARC Review: Love in Moments – Scarlett Cole

ARC Review: Love in Moments – Scarlett Cole

Love in Moments really touched me! It is so well written, and the characters were so realistic. Love in Moments is the second book in Cole’s Love Distilled series, and Scarlett Cole definitely still has it! It’s a realistic story, where the characters not only mention difficult subjects, they also work through them. There was no miraculous healing of either of them through their meeting and falling in love.The characters are fantastic and well fleshed out. The author’s hockey knowledge is definitely above average. And the hero and  heroine dared to be vulnerable with each other in order to move forward and grab life and love with both hands. I already knew Liv from Love in Numbers, even if she […]

Posted 1 February, 2021 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 4 Comments
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Blogger Wife Chat Review ~ Layla ~ Colleen Hoover

Blogger Wife Chat Review ~ Layla ~ Colleen Hoover

With Layla, CoHo dipped her toes into unchartered waters – paranormal romance. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get other than I knew I’d enjoy it. And I wasn’t wrong. CoHo delivered on what I knew to expect from her – a well written story with fully realized characters – and on what I could only have imagined. Layla was suspenseful, mysterious, twisty, romantic, and AMAZING. It really was! I had so many different theories as I was reading Layla, with each little thing that happened, I was totally going off in my imagination. As always, CoHo did very well. I adored Layla from the start. She was so open and honest, insightful and REAL…refreshing. Her meeting Leeds […]

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Review: Driven – Rebecca Zanetti

Review: Driven – Rebecca Zanetti

Driven is the perfect culmination to the Deep Ops series! It had even more suspense than the prior books, and I have to say that the way the mystery unfolded left me surprised and satisfied at the same time. Driven is fast-paced and filled with danger. Not only for Angus himself, but also for his whole team of misfits. I loved how the plot thickened in this final novel in the series, and the mystery became even more difficult to decipher. At the beginning of the novel, the HDD disbanded Angus’ team, and things were looking extremely dire for all of them. In Driven, there is also an amazing redemption arc for Angus, and of course, he needed that, but […]

Posted 15 January, 2021 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 5 Comments
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