What I’m Reading: The Week in Review

Summer’s drawing to an end (no matter how much I try to deny it, it’s true), so I’ve been trying to get as much reading in as humanly possible before the dreaded “S” word starts up again.

SIGH.

I started the weekend reading the three Indulgence titles that were due to come out on Monday, so I could get their reviews done. I let Mini Moe #2 pick the order, which she did according to how smutty the titles started. (She’s fourteen. Therefore she is scornful of smutty-sounding titles. This is a good thing, for now.) First was Something’s Cooking (decent, but not my favorite), then The Best Man’s Baby (really cute and fun–I’ve read the author before), and finally Talking Dirty with the Player—or, as MM#2 called it, “That dirty talking book”. I reviewed all three Sunday and Monday.

Bliss Books had their backlist on sale on Amazon for 99 cents each on Sunday, as since I’m part of their anniversary blog hop I HAD to buy a few. Okay, I bought ten. But they were 99 cents! MM#2 was not impressed. Let’s not tell her that I bought two more last night when the sale was up again, okay?

I also read two books by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez this week, A Curse of Passion and Deceiving the Witch Next Door. They were okay reads, though a bit uneven. Curse started out really strong and then got a little bit crazy, whereas Witch was kind of all over the place for the first half at least but got to be really intense–and more fun to read–toward the last twenty-five percent or so. Overall I think I’ll read more from this author—there’s definite promise there even though neither book *quite* did it for me this time. Witch ended in a place that tells you there’s more to come, and I’m curious to see where that series is going.

Next up—some of those Bliss titles to get ready for the blog hop, and Darker Days (YA paranormal), which comes out on Monday.

On audio I was pretty busy—demon dog does like his walks. And both the Mini Moes love to eat but not so much the whole washing dishes thing. I read Not Quite Dating by Catherine Bybee—book one in the series that for some unknown reason I’d already read book two of. It was cute, but not terribly memorable. Or realistic, with the multi-bazillionaire saving the poor waitress who works at Denny’s. Still, with the super-cheap Amazon/Audible Whipersync deals (curse you Amazon, with those daily deals and the “add narration for only–” prices!), I’m sure I’ll read the next one when it comes out too, since I’m fond of the heroine.

Then I read Lauren Willg’s latest Pink Carnation book, The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, which somehow I forgot was coming out. Soooo good. When first I heard that Lauren’s next book was about Miss Gwen—Miss Gwen, the scary chaperone of the Pink Carnation herself, who must be at least sixty if she’s a day!—I wasn’t at all sure about it. Well, it turns out she’s only forty-five. And made an awesome heroine. Who knew? It looks like some interesting things are in the works for Jane and her gang. Can’t wait for the next one…though I know I’ll have to.

Sigh again.

Next I decided to listen to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (another Amazon/Audible deal—curses again), and oh my goodness it was wonderful. The narrator did a particularly fantastic job, even managing to sound short of breath when Hazel was–even if it wasn’t specifically  stated in the narrative at that point. Fantastic, fantastic book. I do not recommend reading the last third while walking the dog out in public, though. Even if it’s dark out and (in theory) no one can see you, it will cause your canine undue stress when you suddenly start sobbing for no apparent reason. I may or may not have gone a little crazy afterwards looking for TFIOS merchandise online to add to my collection of geeky book stuff, but that is neither here nor there.

My Audible credits weren’t coming fast enough for me to spend them, so I filled in the void between when I finished TFIOS and when could get a book I needed to read (Claim Me by J. Kenner) by reading the fairly short Unleashed, book two in Cherrie Lynn’s Ross Siblings series—another series I inexplicably read the second book of before the first. I enjoyed it a lot–a cute friends-to-lovers story–though the female lead used the “p” word a lot to describe her lady bits, which really didn’t seem to go with her character at all, at least the way I perceived her. It was a bit jarring every time.

Finally, I was able to download Claim Me. I’m not really crazy about this series—book one (Release Me) had me rolling my eyes so hard they practically fell out of my head—but I won the third in the series (Complete Me) from LibraryThing’s early reviewers, and they pay attention to whether or not you’ve reviewed the books you’ve gotten when they decide whether or not to give you more, so…I’m taking one for the team. So far it might be marginally better than the first, but it’s still early times.

What are you reading this week?