Cover Reveal: Wicked Kiss

Wicked Kiss, the second book in Michelle Rowen's Nightwatchers series that started with Dark Kiss, now has a cover, title, blurb and a release date!

MY KISS CAN KILL. 

I used to be ordinary Samantha Day, but that's changed. Now, after one dark kiss from a dangerous boy, I can steal someone's soul...or their life. If I give in to the constant hunger inside me, I hurt anyone I kiss. If I don't...I hurt myself. 

Bishop is the one whose kiss I crave most, but if I kiss him, I'll kill him. Then there's another boy, one I can't hurt. One whose kiss seems to miraculously quell my hunger. They're both part of a team of angels and demons that's joined forces in my city to fight a mysterious rising darkness, an evil that threatens everyone I know and love. I just wonder if I'll be able to help Bishop - or if I'm just another part of the darkness he's sworn to destroy.... 

Look for  Wicked Kiss in bookstores Feb. 26th 2013!

Foolish Games

Title: Foolish Games
Author: Leah Spiegel
Genre: YA
Rating: 5/5
Cover: 3/10

Joie Hall just wanted to get away from her mother. Now that high school is over, Joie's mom seemed to take far too much interest in what Joie's plans for the future would be - which would be frustrating enough if she actually knew what she wanted to do. Since she has no idea, Joie jumps at the chance to spend the summer with her two best friends, following a band, even though the idea of being a groupie holds zilch attraction for her. Even so, she agrees to drive Riley and Lizzie across the country for The Grimm Brothers Band's summer tour.
When Lizzie hooks up with the bassist, Warren, Joie finds herself stuck in an extremely awkward elevator ride with the two lovebirds and the lead singer, J. T. Hawkins - a ride that would change her life forever.  When Hawkins makes a snide remark about her to Warren, he sparks a flame of resentment that ends up spilling out the next day, when Riley asks for her help reviewing the concert for the band's official website. In a moment of driving despair, the full email with Joie's bitter words gets sent to the website.
That review started a verbal and cyber war between Hawkins and Joie that would drag in everyone they know, as they battle it out to find out who can be more stubborn, and come up with the wittier comeback.
Worst of all, it put Joie and her friends in the spotlight of a deranged, psychotic stalker of the band, hell-bent on destroying Hawkins... no matter the cost in collateral damage.

I could not put Foolish Games down. For such a good book, I was most pleasantly surprised at the low Kindle price, and pounced on it; only to find myself now, mere hours after starting it, feeling adrift and lost now that I've been kicked back into the real world. Joie's world is compelling, with heart-thumping, grip-your-chair-in-anxiety action and suspense, and a love story to make any fan of a good romance fall in head over heels. Most definitely recommended!

Size 12 and Ready to Rock

Title: Size 12 and Ready to Rock (Heather Wells Mysteries #4)
Author: Meg Cabot
Genre: Adult, chick-lit
Rating: 4/5
Cover: 7/10

I've always loved Cabot's writing for one reason: her writing is so light, so easy to read, it's really the biggest pleasure, and always makes me smile.
Heather Wells has been gone from bookstores for some time now, so I was thrilled to see her come back (not to mention that hilarious book trailer! Kudos to whoever had the idea), and let me tell you: she sure came back in big style.
When Tania Trace, wife of Heather's ex-boyfriend Jordan Cartwright is almost shot at, she ends up, along with Jordan, inside the closest building they found: Death Dorm. Neither Heather nor Cooper, Heather's fiancé and Jordan's brother, are happy to see the starlet couple barge in, especially when Tania announces she wants to move the filming of her new reality show into the dorm, claiming to be too scared of being out in the open again. She also contracts Cooper to protect her, which Cooper does quite happily, since it means spending his day in the same building as his fiancée.
Which is how Heather finds out that the shooting might not have been a stray bullet, like everyone has been saying... but rather Tania's ex-husband that no one, much less the media, know about.

Pulled kicking and screaming back into the popstar world, Heather resigns herself to helping Tania escape her ex, even if it means Jordan, along with the entire Cartwright family have to find out about her secret engagement to Cooper, the black sheep of the family - a fact that most certainly won't go down too well with some of them... But what's a girl to do? And popstar sensations have to stick together after all, even when it involves getting almost killed by a psycho ex. What is fame for, after all?

Dream Chaser

Title: Dream Chaser
Author: Angie Stanton
Genre: YA
Rating: 5/5
Cover: 6/10

Let me start by saying I wasn't sure what to expect from Dream Chaser when I started it. The description made it seem similar enough to countless other romance novels out there: a girl and a boy who once upon a time were best friends, then something happens, they fall apart, years later their paths cross again, and BAM! love.
What I found was something so much richer, so much more compelling than just that. Oh, sure there are those elements (all of them), but Stanton took them, shook them around, and then twisted them in such a way that I just could not put Dream Chaser down.
Willow and Eli's story was funny, sad, exasperating, maddening, touching and, at times, just plain mesmerising. Willow is a cheerleader who used to dance. After a disaster during cheer practice, Willow clams up whenever she has to do her jumps, forcing her to quit the squad. But her problems really start when her old dance teacher, along with her choir teacher, decide Willow should be in the upcoming event of the town: a musical. But not just any musical; one directed by a Broadway man. Dancing has always been Willow's passion, and it takes is a while to find out why, exactly, she quit a few years back, because when she steps on to the stage for the audition, it's like she never stopped dancing. Wanting just a side part in the production so she can give her best friend a good excuse for not going back to cheer ever, Willow is stunned when the director tells her she has just gained the female lead in the piece.
Which is when things take a decided swing into 'disaster' land. Not only does the rest of the cast - along with her old cheer squad - now hate her for taking the place of the old lead after weeks of practice already, but the male lead of the musical is none other than Eli, her ex-best friend, and reason she quit dance to start with.

Eli isn't happy with the situation either, having to work so closely with the girl who crushed him. And it gets worse: the director insists on a steamy kiss onstage. Faced with the failure of the musical, which has turned into her new love, or facing her year-old guilt and resentment about Eli, both of them are forced into a situation neither expected to be in ever again. The only question is if their relationship will park at a wobbly friendship, or if they will have the guts to do what they didn't all those years ago.

52 Reasons to Hate my Father

Title: 52 Reasons to Hate my Father
Author: Jessica Brody
Genre: YA
Rating: 4.5/5
Cover: 10/10

This is what I imagine when I hear the term 'contemporary fairytale'. Because no fairytale is complete without a beautiful message in it, mixed in there with the drama, and seemingly-impossible love with the prince charming. Granted, Luke is no Prince, and for at least half the book, he is about as far from charming as a guy can get, and still I wished we'd seen more of Lex and Luke together, but the rest of the book totally made up for the lack of togetherness on their part.
Most YA books are in first person, and most of the time, we enjoy the narrator's voice (it's hard to get through the book otherwise...). But not Lexi. Oh, no. Lex's voice is the I-met-this-girl-last-weekend kind of voice. 
If you made a habit of meeting filthy rich heiresses during your weekends, I mean. But other than that, you can actually picture her throughout the book. 
The obnoxious, snotty girl from school? Mix that up with a healthy dose of living in a bubble, being forced down from the obnoxious and snotty horse to work as a maid and clean up horse poo, a sprinkle of romance, lots of humour and you get 52 Reasons to Hate My Father.
And for the first time in a long time, I wasn't rooting for the bad guy. Which turns out to be good in the end, of course, but it's a nice change of scenery, too. So yay to that ;)

Definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a light read.

Cover Contest

So you like reading (and if you don't, then I have no earthly idea what you're doing here...). And let's face it: who wouldn't kill - or die - to have their name in their favourite book? Say, if you were a character in Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. Well, sadly both of those series are over, so that won't be happening any time in the foreseeable future, especially not with the latter, seeing as Tolkien isn't among us anymore; maybe you can convince Rowling to edit the books and add you in, I mean hey, you never know.
But while that doesn't happen, I know how you can get the next best option: your name in print in the same book as sexy-as-all-get-out Kaidan, the son of the demon of lust. If you need a reminder of just how sexy he is (it's in his very genes to be sexy, after all! The guy can hardly help it, poor thing... *ahem*), you can find my review of Sweet Evil here.

As I was saying before Kaidan distracted me, you have the chance to be a character in the next book of the trilogy. Just head on over to Bewitched Bookworms and read up on their rules and regulations, get out your artistic little fingers, and get to work on those covers, girls! Plus, even if you don't get to be a character in Sweet Hope, you might still win some signed swag!