{Blog Tour} Book Review + Giveaway: The Last Hour - Charles Sheehan-Miles

Welcome to my stop for The Last Hour blog tour! You can follow the tour here.

Title: The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters)

Author: Charles Sheehan-Miles

Release Date: April 19th 2013

Publisher: Cincinnatus Press

Age Group: Adult

Genre: Contemporary

Source: eARC for blog tour

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Twenty-seven year old Carrie Thompson-Sherman has the life she always wanted: her PhD, a prestigious fellowship, and an amazing husband.

Her life begins to unravel as a jealous colleague puts her fellowship in jeopardy and a haunting secret Ray Sherman carried home from Afghanistan comes to light.

Hounded by a federal investigation and the ensuing media feeding frenzy, Carrie and Ray desperately lean on each other, until a disastrous accident puts both Ray and her sister's lives at risk.

In the last hour, Carrie and Ray will each find themselves faced with a choice.

A choice that will change everything.

Attention, reader. If you want a light romance read for a plane ride or a day-off, The Last Hour isn't the book for you. Why? Because it's the most tear-jerking book I have ever read. The opening scene immediately took hold of my attention. How could it not when it felt like the climax already? And then in less than four chapters, the waterworks started. 

As was the case in A Song for Julia, the first Thompson Sisters book I read, I really admire how well the author sculpted his characters. He wrote the book from both Carrie and Ray's perspectives, and he was able to mold two fleshed-out characters with their own distinct voices. Also, his ability to portray every little emotion that goes on between his numerous characters is nothing short of amazing. 

I really admired Carrie. She was obviously a strong and smart woman, hardened by having to look out for her sisters because of their emotionally-absent parents. Even in the hardest times, she still looked out for them. She never bothered with wasting time on unimportant crap like a jealous co-worker or a spiteful future mother-in-law. Ray, on the other hand, was deeply traumatized because of his time in Afghanistan. I pitied the poor guy but at the same time admired him, too, because he still chose to do the right thing - kinda spoiler-y if I say more on this - and tried his best to live. 

While dealing with serious issues in the family, work, and even the military, the story still centered on Carrie and Ray's sweet and heart-wrenching romance as they struggled to go through everything together. This was mostly shown in the flashback chapters which were, basically, the only reprieves in this intense story. I don't know when I'll get to read Just Remember to Breathe but I'm sure looking forward to it because only God knows how much I enjoy revisiting these characters and how I wish the author won't leave the three younger Thompson sisters with their stories untold. 

MY FAVORITE PARTS were every happy moment which I'm glad I savored.

RATING:

 

About the author:
Charles Sheehan-Miles has been a soldier, computer programmer, short-order cook and non-profit executive. He is the author of several fiction and non-fiction books, including the indie bestsellers Just Remember to Breathe and Republic: A Novel of America's Future.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Giveaway!

Top Ten Tuesday {1}

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish where we post our top tens of anything bookish. This is my first time joining this meme; I've been meaning to for months, and this week's topic, "top ten fave covers of books I've read", was hard to resist!

(in no particular order)

  Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) - Tahereh Mafi I'm so happy with the cover redesign for this series, although I can't help but wonder if we would have gotten to see Adam and Warner in the next covers if not for it...
The Selection (The Selection #1) - Kiera Cass I love the dress. I love the color. I love the typography. Enough said. The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark #1) - Shana Abe I sometimes get tunnel vision so I didn't notice the smokey part of the cover until I'd finished reading the book, lol. Indigo Awakening (The Hunted #1) - Jordan Dane For me, red and blue seldom work well together, but my oh my, is this good. I also love how the dog kind of mixes with "indigo".   

Through the Ever Night (Under the Never Sky #2) - Veronica Rossi
I love this shade of blue, and having Perry on the cover doesn't hurt, either.

Nobody But Us - Kristin Halbrook
I often dislike neon colors, but I really like how the blue strikes out from the overall pink of this cover.

A Shimmer of Angels (Angel Sight #1) - Lisa M. Basso

I have a thing for shiny, glowing orbs, so yeah.

Burn for Burn (Burn for Burn #1) - Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian

I like how the typography doesn't overpower the cover models' photo (they're perfect for the characters, BTW) but can still easily be read.

Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush #1) - Becca Fitzpatrick

Patch falling from heaven? Yes, please.

Amy & Roger's Epic Detour - Morgan Matson

I love how the cover photo fits the roadtrip aspect of the story so well, and also the typography is just gorgeous!

Book Review: Screwed - Laurie Plissner

Title: Screwed

Author: Laurie Plissner

Release Date: May 18th 2013

Publisher: Merit Press

Source: NetGalley

Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository

Flattered by the attentions of Nick, the cutest guy in school, seventeen-year-old Grace Warren, captain of the math team, lets down her guard and gets pregnant the night she loses her virginity. Hopeful that Nick will drop to one knee and propose when she breaks the baby news to him, Grace is heartbroken—Nick wants nothing to do with her. Her best friend, Jennifer, thinks she should get an abortion, but Grace is certain that her morally upright parents will insist that she keep the baby. After she comes clean to her super-religious, strait-laced parents, they surprise her by insisting that she terminate the pregnancy to avoid humiliating the family. But when she sees the fetus on the ultrasound, she decides she can't get rid of it. Deciding to save the tiny life growing inside of her, Grace must face the consequences of being that girl - the good girl who got knocked up.

Starting a book with the prose version of the "How can you call it murder if it doesn't even have a heartbeat yet?" debate might make it boring for some people, but this certainly wasn't the case for me. That argument was the first amongst the many dilemmas for Grace, the main character here in Screwed, and even though I'm very much against abortion, I'm sure I would consider it too if I were in her shoes.

Grace was a typical goody-two-shoes with straight As, but even so, I never disliked her. I actually sympathized with her, enough to make me shed a handful of tears. She was naive and sometimes downright stupid, but it was nurture, not nature. I liked how she, for the most part, kept herself level-headed—the most obvious exercise of which was her choice to keep the baby. She also never made sure to blame the baby for her five-minute lapse of judgment, and she really surprised me when she decided to go through her senior year with her bulging baby bump for everyone to see. If that didn't prove the strength inside this twelve-year-old-looking seventeen-year-old, then I don't know what would.

But aside from understanding for Grace's situation, this book also gave me some characters to hate. First were Grace's parents, the kind of people I hate the most: church-going hypocrites. They volunteered for the soup kitchen and whatnot, but being the local head advocates of chastity before marriage, they were even worse than angry and disappointed with Grace when she told them about her pregnancy—they were hateful, all the time worrying about what their whole town would think of them in the face of the scandal. And second was Nick, father of the "bean" inside Grace, who thought of girls as conquests and planned to conquer twenty-one properties before he went off to college.

Although getting knocked up on her first time having sex—with a condom, no less—was nothing short of unfortunate, Grace still had luck on her side in the form of her personal support group. Her BFF, Jennifer, who was practical and sassy but ever-supportive; Helen, the ridiculously rich, loving, and helpful old woman who lived right across the street; and Charlie, who was a very nice surprise. I had absolutely no idea about his character because he's a no-show in the blurb, so forgive me if this is a little spoiler-y. Anyway, Plissner sure knows how to create an attractive gentleman of a character. Even if the growth of the romance between him and Grace wasn't shown very well, it was still believable enough to be sweet.

Admittedly, the plot could've used more complexity, but the characters shone enough to overshadow that. Also, the ending left me wanting a tad bit more, but it was still satisfying. Screwed definitely made me question a lot of my previously-solid opinion on teenage pregnancy and whatnot, and it has nailed down Laurie Plissner in my list of auto-read authors.

MY FAVORITE PART was when Grace went into labor—or, more specifically, that scene from Jennifer's perspective :))

RATING:

Cover Reveal: Romancing the Bookworm - Kate Evangelista

Title: Romancing the Bookworm

Author: Kate Evangelista
Release Date: July 9th 2013

Publisher: Omnific Publishing

Genre: Romance

Age Group: New Adult

Cover reveal organized by: AToMR Tours

  

Sometimes, even the best-laid plans can unravel.

It's spring break, and Tamara Winters would rather stay on campus and read romance novels than flaunt her size-fourteen body on a beach. But her best friend, Ronni, has other ideas. Against her wishes, Tamara is whisked away to picturesque Maverick Bay, where she's wrangled into waiting tables with Ronni at the Shore Shack for its busy week leading to Maverick's Surf Invitational. There she meets fellow schoolmate Xavier Solomon, the Invitational's organizer and campus womanizer by reputation. From the moment Tamara sees him emerging from the waves like a hero in of one of her romance novels, all she wants to do is run away from the feelings he inspires in her.

Little does she know Xavier has been watching her for weeks now. In fact, after failed attempts at asking her out on campus, he's concocted a crazy plan: fabricating romantic situations straight out of her favorite books. Xavier quickly realizes that if Tamara gets a whiff of his designs, he might as well spell CREEPER across his forehead. Yet as they grow closer, he's convinced it's a risk worth taking. What he hasn't planned on, of course, is his drug-addicted, alcoholic stepbrother, who decides to join the fun and put a wrench in Xavier’s scheme.

Spring break is proving hotter than Tamara expected. Will her romance novels be able to compete?

About the author: 

When Kate Evangelista was told she had a knack for writing stories, she did the next best thing: entered medical school. After realizing she wasn't going to be the next Doogie Howser, M.D., Kate wandered into the Literature department of her university and never looked back. Today, she is in possession of a piece of paper that says to the world she owns a Literature degree. To make matters worse, she took Master's courses in creative writing. In the end, she realized to be a writer, none of what she had mattered. What really mattered? Writing. Plain and simple, honest to God, sitting in front of her computer, writing. Today, she has four completed Young Adult novels.

Kate Evangelista | Twitter

{Blog Tour} Spotlight + Giveaway: Click to Subscribe - L.M. Augustine

Thanks for dropping by my stop for the Click to Subscribe blog tour! You can follow the tour here.

Title: Click to Subscribe

Author: L.M. Augustine

Release Date: May 9th 2013

Publisher: Self-published

Goodreads | Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Barnes & Noble | Smashwords

1,135,789. That’s how many subscribers sixteen-year-old West Ryder has on his web vlog series. But he only has eyes for one of them.

As one of the internet’s most prestigious video bloggers, West talks about high school relationships under the name “Sam Green.” As far as he knows, no one from school, not even his best friend, Cat, has seen his videos. But the highlight of the whole thing is Harper Knight, who comments every day at exactly 2:02 in the afternoon. He doesn’t know anything about her aside from the occasional deep philosophical messaging on why pizza tastes so delicious, but as stupid as it sounds, he might be falling for her. So when they finally agree to meet in real life, West’s hope for romance seems more and more in reach. But that all changes as soon as he arrives at their meeting spot and sees Cat walking toward him, wearing the same “I <3 Sam Green” T-shirt Harper promised she'd have on.

To his alarm, West realizes he is falling in love with the best friend who has always been a sister to him.

About the author:
L.M. Augustine is a YA romance author who is obsessed with writing about dorky teenagers, love, and happy endings. He currently lives in New England, where he spends far too much time reading books and screaming at his computer, and he believes that the solution to the world’s problems can be found in chocolate cake. Click To Subscribe is his first novel, but it won’t be his last.

Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Blog

  

Giveaway!