#BookReview: The Cracked Slipper (The Cracked Slipper #1) by Stephanie Alexander

Synopsis: When Eleanor Brice unexpectedly wins the heart of Gregory Desmarais, Crown Prince of Cartheigh, she's sure she's found her happily-ever-after. Unfortunately, Prince Charming has a loose grip on his temper, a looser grip on his marriage vows, and a tight grip on the bottle. 

Eight years of mistreatment, isolation and clandestine book learning hardly prepare Eleanor for life at Eclatant Palace, where women are seen, not heard. According to Eleanor’s eavesdropping parrot, no one at court appreciates her unladylike tendency to voice her opinion. To make matter worse, her royal fiancé spends his last night of bachelorhood on a drunken whoring spree. Before the ink dries on her marriage proclamation Eleanor realizes that she loves her husband's best friend, former soldier Dorian Finley.

Eleanor can’t resist Dorian’s honesty, or his unusual admiration for her intelligence, and soon both are caught in a dangerous obsession. She drowns her confusion in charitable endeavors, but the people’s love can’t protect her from her feelings. When a magical crime endangers the bond between unicorns, dragons, and the royal family, a falsely accused Eleanor must clear her own name to save her life. The road toward vindication will force a choice between hard-won security and an impossible love.

The Cracked Slipper is a book club friendly fairytale retelling in the vein of Gregory Maguire, with a dash of romance. Set in a pseudo-renaissance, corset-and-petticoats enchanted kingdom, The Cracked Slipper brings a magical twist to women’s fiction. 

#BookReview of Single Chicas by Sandra Lopez

About the Book: 

Perfection is a Barbie doll, and, unless you're looking for a guy with a fake smile, a hard head, and no genitalia, then you're better off NOT being perfect―Single Chicas 

Single Chicas is a collection of stories about modern Latinas being in, out, and around the zany hurdles of relationships. 

One woman receives strange calls from a lonely soul, another seeks advice on how to love herself, and another wakes up in a parallel universe to a man she's never met. These chicas will make painstaking effort to survive the complexities with humor and grace. 

Once again, López dazzles audiences with her brilliantly candid craft. Smart, witty, and funny, these stories will explore the true endurance of singlehood.

#BookReview of Forest Secrets: A Magical Mystery Novel by @woodward_laurie

Reviewed By: Rachael

Publisher: Create Space

Recommended Age: Middle Grade

Genre: Fantasy

Goodreads | Amazon

About the Book: The half-tree, half-human beings lived a secret existence deep in the old growth forest.
Until now.
When 11-year old Daisy Castillo discovers a plot to destroy the forest, she tries to halt the approaching evil while keeping these magical creatures from being discovered.
But danger waits in every shadow. For if these corrupt men succeed, the Forest People will die. A few surprises are in store, as some unknown and undiscovered friendships hold the key to her success. Fate hangs in the balance as Daisy faces her deepest fears, including heartbreak from the past, to rise up against all odds.
Suspenseful, mysterious, and full of danger, Forest Secrets captures the enchantment of nature and the power of friendship in this classic tale of good vs. evil.

#NerdBlast: TwoSpells by Mark Morrison

Publisher: Createspace

About the Book:

Sarah and her twin brother Jon are heirs to an ancient magical realm and its most valuable treasure, an enchanted library. The library endows readers with the supernatural means of crossing into the uncharted inner-sanctum of the second dimension, inhabited with peculiar and sometimes perilous creatures. 

The children are emboldened with a wondrous mystical gift that no other being has ever possessed. But fate intervenes and triggers a disastrous inter-dimensional war that disrupts the fabric of time and space spanning multiple universes, tearing destiny a new and savage pathway. 

The two must rescue their world from a phantom hybrid alien race controlled by a demented dark-wizard, Jeremy Sermack. They will either assimilate or be exterminated. 

Will they be the saviors the prophets spoke of, or will they retreat to the perceived safety of their distant homeland?

#BookReview of The Rainmaker by @PetraLandon

About the Book: 

As they race to untangle the past and thwart a ruthless enemy, Tasia must face her toughest decision yet. Can she take a leap of faith to follow her heart - and risk her deadliest secret?

Tasia is no longer a nondescript, friendless and naïve Wizard on the fringes of San Francisco's Chosen community. Publicly associated with a powerful Shifter Pack, she must navigate the minefield of Pack politics while safeguarding her secrets and cover from the Chosen who hunt her.

The stakes have never been higher as old fault lines, long-buried secrets, Wizard dysfunction, and Lady Bethesda's ambitions draw the Chosen ever closer to a civil war. While Tasia grapples to avoid the pitfalls and confront her demons, it is an unlikely nemesis who forces her to face her moment of truth. Tasia finds herself at the crossroads - at stake are her carefully constructed house of cards and her tangled relationship with the man who holds her enemies at bay. Will Tasia risk opening Pandora's Box or walk away to disappear into the shadows again?

(Author's Note: The Rainmaker continues the story from The Prophecy. The books are not standalone and are intended to be read in order. The Saga of the Chosen continues with The Siren.

#BookReview of Unspun: A Collection of Tattered Fairy Tales by Chris Cutler

About the Book: 

Whatever happened to “happily ever after”?

Heroes search for happiness, villains plot revenge, and nothing is as easy as it once seemed. Gretel suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, an orphan girl questions Rumpelstiltskin’s legacy, a monster cat searches for a child to eat, and the pied piper realizes stealing a hundred and thirty children may not have been his smartest idea.

Fairy tales have endured for centuries even though—or perhaps because—their conclusions are often more unsettling than satisfying. In Unspun, eleven storytellers come together to challenge and explore a few of those classic tales. Unexpected twists are sure to provoke both thought and laughter. 

Gorgeous illustrations by Ruth Nickle accompany each piece.

Stories in the Anthology:

“Heart of a Thief” by Chris Cutler (Jack and the Beanstalk)

“Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter” by Ruth Nickle (Rumpelstiltskin)

“Tsar Vislav, Tsarina Vislav, and the Firebird” by Sarah Chow (Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf)

“Tatterhood and the Prince’s Hand” by Katherine Cowley (Tatterhood)

“The Little Mermaid” by PJ Switzer (The Little Mermaid)

“Ásthildur and the Yule Cat” by Sarah Blake Johnson (The Yule Cat)

“Perfectly Real” by Robin Prehn (The Princess and the Pea)

“The Pied Piper’s Revenge” by Scott Cowley (The Pied Piper)

“Ethical Will” by Kaki Olsen (The Nutcracker)

“Breadcrumbs” by Jeanna Mason Stay (Hansel and Gretel)

“Spring’s Revenge” by Anika Arrington (Snow White)

#BookReview: We Own the Sky (The Muse Chronicles #1) by Sara Crawford

About the Book:

What could you create if you fell in love with a Muse?

16-year-old musician, Sylvia Baker, has always been different. She's the only one who can see the "flickering people." When she sees a gorgeous flickering man named Vincent, she learns that they are Muses.

With his help, she finds herself creating exquisite songs that she loves almost as much as songs by her favorite bands--Radiohead, M83, and The Black Keys--and she is falling in love in a way she never knew was possible. While trying to maintain her newfound friendships and her band, she falls deeper into the world of the Muses.

When the original Greek Muses wake to find a world in which the internet has given everyone the tools to be an artist, a battle between traditional and new methods of creation ensues. As Sylvia discovers how she is connected to the world of the Muses, she learns that this war may put her music, her love, her very life at stake. 

#BookReview: The Missing Piece by Nicole Knapp with @thelitcoffaerie

About the Book:
Leah Knox lives in a world where everyone is guaranteed a soulmate. The only catch? She has to find him first...
Armed with the only tool given to her to help find her soulmate, a puzzle piece charm bracelet, and with the company of her two best friends, Leah sets out on the adventure of a lifetime with the promise of true love at the end.
But in a world where true love is guaranteed, things aren't always so easy. Leah learns this lesson the hard way as she navigates the world, trying to find her missing piece, as well as trying to find herself.
Follow Leah on her adventures, and her misadventures, as she travels the world looking for love.

#BookReview: Elemental Claim (War of the Myth #1) by Miranda Grant (@MirandaCGrant) with @thelitcoffaerie

About the Book:
Emma lived her whole life believing she was a mere human, but when she’s attacked by a gang hunting creatures of the Myth, her entire existence is called into question. As she is forced to go on the run with a dangerous man, she learns that monsters are real, her twin sister has turned into a mass murderer, and despite her earth upbringing, she’s actually a bonafide descendant – a forbidden child of the gods. Rogan is the leader of an Elv’ve’Norc team, a Mythical agency tasked with the protection of the Seven Planes. He’s on a mission to stop a sadistic vampire, bringing him into the path of Emma Sterling – the twin sister of the woman he’s most likely going to kill. And if that wasn’t enough of a romantic dealbreaker, he’ll be ordered to send Emma to stand trial, where she’ll be sentenced to life in the Myth’s highest-security prison simply because of what she is.

#BookReview: Mystery Date by @hilarygirl87 (Amber Nadine) with @thelitcoffaerie

Reviewed by: Jaiden K. 

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Number of Pages: 196
Recommended Age Group: Adult

Fiction Genre: Mystery, Thriller

How I Acquired this book: Amber Nadine

Time it took to read: 12 hours

Overall rating: ★★★★
Goodreads | Amazon

About the Book:
Rayn Parrington is a twenty-two year old script distribution company owner living in New York City. When her boyfriend Adam Lanes leaves her suddenly, her best friend Oliver (Ollie) Haggard talks her into joining a dating site. When she finds Adam is also on the dating site she decides to pose as Taylor Jones in hopes of winning back his affection. What Rayn doesn’t know is that she’s not the only one pretending to be someone else online. Adam isn’t really Adam.

#BookReview: Tunnel Rat by John M. Ward #Giveaway

 

When former US Army captain Eric Tucker decided to visit Old City in Jerusalem with his daughter and granddaughter, he thought it would be a chance to get some family time with his girls and enjoy his retirement. But when a terrorist organization threatens his family’s safety, Captain Tucker must reach into his past in order to survive. Can he do so without becoming the cold-blooded killer he once was?

Emir Farouk is falling on hard times, and the loyalty that once came so easily to him is dwindling. When an old man and a teenage girl from America appear in his sights, he believes it is a sign and orders his men to kidnap them. But things don’t go as planned…

What follows is an intense cat-and-mouse game between a powerful terrorist cell and one man who’s determined to protect his family, the woman he loves, and his ship. Captain Tucker can’t—and won’t—give in, even if it means returning to the man who led an elite unit of soldiers into claustrophobic tunnels after their enemies with nothing but flashlights, knives, and pistols: the infamous Tunnel Rats.

#BookReview: Quinsey Wolfe's Glass Vault (Glass Vault #1) by @Literarydust @Netgalley

  Some see it... Some don't...

People in the town of Deer Park, Texas are vanishing. There is a strange museum, known as Quinsey Wolfe's Glass Vault, that appears overnight. Perrie Madeline's best friend and ex-boyfriend are among the missing. Perrie, along with her friend August, go on a pursuit to search for them in the mysterious museum. Could the elusive Quinsey Wolfe’s Glass Vault have anything to do with their disappearances?

A book that intertwines horror elements and retellings, with humor and darkness

Making Bad Choices by @stradling_rita #BookReview

  [Recommended 16 + this is a mature YA or New Adult book]

Watch the Book Trailer: Here 

Culter Fuller came back into my life on the day my mother died, as if losing my mother wasn't bad enough.

We hated each other since childhood. Well, I hated him. He had a very different story. 

When I moved to my dad's house to finish my last semester of high school, we went from bitter enemies to. . . something else. He was suddenly everywhere, occupying my space, determined to pull me into his life, filling me with thoughts I knew were wrong. 

I knew that soon we would cross a line that should never be crossed. 

I knew crossing that line could have very serious consequences; because Culter Fuller wasn't just any irresistible boy, Culter Fuller was my stepbrother. 

But, I was always very bad at making the right choices.

Shadows of the Forest by Emma Michaels #BookReview

  Everyone is dying to live in the Shadows of the Forest.
They gave me three rules to follow in exchange for my brother’s life:
1. Do not enter the West Wing;
2. Do not go outside after darkness falls; and
3. There is only one exit; The Gates.

This is what happened when I broke them…

Streaks of Blue (Nikki #1) by Jack Chaucer #BookReview

  Adam Upton and Thomas "Lee" Harvey are plotting the next big school massacre at their New Hampshire high school. Nicole Janicek, who knew Adam in elementary school, tries to reconnect with the damaged teen at the start of their senior year. But will Nicole’s attempt to befriend the would-be killer disrupt the plot and turn Adam’s life around before the clock strikes 12:14?

Captivate by Vanessa Garden

  In a glittering underwater world, where danger lurks behind beauty and power...

For the past twelve months since her parents’ death, seventeen-year-old Miranda Sun has harboured a dark secret — a secret that has strained the close relationship she once shared with her older sister, Lauren. In an effort to repair this broken bond, Miranda’s grandparents whisk the siblings away on a secluded beach holiday. Except before Miranda gets a chance to confess her life-changing secret, she’s dragged underwater by a mysterious stranger while taking a midnight swim.

Awakening days later, Miranda discovers that she’s being held captive in a glittering underwater city by an arrogant young man named Marko...the King of this underwater civilisation.

Nineteen-year-old Marko intends to marry Miranda in order to keep his crown from falling into the sinister clutches of his half-brother, Damir. There’s only one problem. Miranda is desperate to return home to right things with her sister and she wants nothing to do with Marko. Trying to secure her freedom, Miranda quickly forms an alliance with Robbie — Marko’s personal guard. However, she soon discovers that even underwater, people are hiding dangerous secrets...

Of Light and Darkness (Of Light and Darkness #1) by Shayne Leighton #BookReview

  Shayne Leighton's stunning New Adult debut is a fiercely imaginative, multilayered dark fantasy where Alice In Wonderland meets Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire in a story about a girl caught between two societies . . . two magic sides . . . and two loves.

Charlotte is the only mortal in a society of beasts and nightmarish things. By night, she hunts other humans to satiate her Vampire guardian. By day, she struggles to find her place of belonging among the magic and monsters.
But when war conflicts her peaceful, however odd little life, she must fight for love and survival the only way she knows how...
...with her blood.

#Review of Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy Series #1) by @TerryMaggert

Genres: Paranormal Pages: 264 Source: Netgalley Add it to Goodreads Come for the waffles. Stay for the magic.

Carlie McEwan loves many things.
She loves being a witch. She loves her town of Halfway, NY—a tourist destination nestled on the shores of an Adirondack lake. Carlie loves her enormous familiar, Gus, who is twenty-five pounds of judgmental Maine Coon cat, and she positively worships her Grandmother, a witch of incredible power and wisdom. Carlie spends her days cooking at the finest—and only—real diner in town, and her life is a balance between magic and the mundane, just as she likes it.
When a blonde stranger sits at the diner counter and calls her by name, that balance is gone. Major Pickford asks Carlie to lead him into the deepest shadows of the forest to find a mythical circle of chestnut trees, thought lost to forever to mankind. There are ghosts in the forest, and one of them cries out to Carlie across the years--Come find me.
Like the forest shadows, danger can run deep. The threat is real, but Carlie’s magic is born of a pure spirit. With the help of Gus, and Gran, and a rugged cop who really does want to save the world, she’ll fight to bring a ghost home, and deliver justice to a murderer who hides in the cool, mysterious green of a forest gone mad with magic.

#Review of Twisted by Lola Smirnova

  Author: Lola Smirnova  Published By: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Release Date: January 21st 2014 Genres: Adult Pages: 314 Source:  Add it to Goodreads Back in the 90’s, the corrupt post-Soviet Ukraine with its faltering economy, is thrown into a devastating depression. Times are hard. Opportunities are scarce.

Three eager young sisters – Natalia, Lena and Julia - dream of a better life and weigh their options: do they stay and struggle like their parents, or join scores of their compatriots in the sex trade in glittering western European cities, who earn in a night what they’d take several months to earn at home? Naive and tempted by the allure of 'quick' money, the girls set off on an adventure that changes their lives forever...

Can they stay out of trouble enough to fulfill their ambitions?
Can they hold on to their idealism in a world where depravity and danger are constant companions?
How far are they willing to go to make a buck?

Inspired by real-life events, Twisted is a fascinating New Adult SUSPENSE THRILLER about vulnerability, courage and the art of making a living in the sex trade...

'TWISTED' IS THE FIRST BOOK OF A PLANNED TRILOGY. THE SECOND ONE - 'CRAVED' - IS ABOUT TO BE RELEASED! To stay updated follow Lola on Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/twistedlolas... or Twitter - @AuthorSmirnova. 

#Review of Snow Globe by @jskartsiaris #Thanks @Barclay_PR @Netgalley

Troubled teen. Juvenile delinquent. Aja Harmon is familiar with the labels. She and her mom live like gypsies, moving every year. Her mom works as a psychic and Aja fights to suppress her own intuitive abilities because the power scares her.  After losing a cool job at Abercrombie & Fitch, the only work Aja can find is as a waitress at an elderly residence home. Slowly she begins to enjoy working with the seniors. Unlikely bonds forge, making their worlds bigger while shrinking the generation gap. 
If only a corrupt police officer hadn't set his sights on Aja—a beautiful girl with a sketchy past. An easy target to add to his twisted collection. 
Snow Globe is a story about a teen who tries to do the right thing but continues to find trouble with her smart mouth and fearless attitude. Working at the assisted living facility, Aja learns compassion and how important yet fragile life is.