An Angel for Emily by Jude Deveraux

Here's the summary from Goodreads

Emily Jane Todd has just found her guardian angel. Actually, the small-town librarian had just been stood up by her fiancé when she ran into the errant angel with her car. And while he appears to be unscathed, "Michael" continues to insist that his pedigree is quite legitimate. Emily just hopes his brain hasn't been scrambled in the accident; besides, she's not inclined to believe that an angel could be so dangerously sexy. 
Yet Michael quickly reveals the most astounding things about her, and makes her laugh in a way she never has before. What's more, he declares that he's been sent to save her. At this point, the only rescue Emily has in mind is her upcoming marriage, and she's ready to bid her most attractive angel good-bye. But when he lets slip that he also looks at souls -- and hers is a rare beauty -- Emily's ready to risk heaven in his arms. Their journey will break every angelic and earthly rule before it yields her one wish: a love divine.

It wasn't bad. Emily was a kind, nice, girl next door kind of character, who suddenly comes by an angel called Michael (who isn't archangel Michael) who want to protect her from a mysterious evil. Michael was kind of exasperating at times, and it was so focused on the relationship between Emily and Michael and Emil and Donald that you could almost forget there was an evil they were supposed to be looking for. 

It was overall enjoyable, but I had higher expectations. 

The Clockwork War by Katy Haye (Clockwork War #1)

Here's the summary from Goodreads

Imagine that Queen Elizabeth I never ruled. 
England and Scotland never unified. 
It’s 1845 and the two countries are once more at war. 

Mechanical genius Clara Lissing cares little for the war. She just wants to keep her five brothers safe. But when her youngest brother Tom enlists with the army everything she’s worked for starts to fall apart. 
Clara goes to London to work with Duke Murgatroyd building a device that will bring an end to the fighting. Clara is determined to do her duty, help win the war and send everyone’s brothers home to safety. 
But life in London brings with it the distracting presence of Gordy, Murgatroyd’s 18-year-old nephew. Gordy is a loose cog, twisting her clockwork life out of shape and making her think of things that aren’t work and duty. 
Then Clara discovers Murgatroyd’s true plans for the army, the city, and England itself. With war reaching to the heart of London, Clara and Gordy must match duty with determination if they’re to save a nation


I really liked this book. It was engaging and exciting, and I could hardly put it down. Clara is (to me) quite relatable, and I officially declare Gordy a cinnamon roll. Clara can be a bit dense sometimes, but given he fact that she's human and not that used to human company, generally prefering machines, it's understandable. I am really curious to know what really happened to princess Myrtle (and McAllister), as I'm sure it's a story worth hearing, and I hope it's touched in the next books.

You can get this copy in the Shattered Worlds anthology (which has 20 other novels!) or in paperback. I really hope I get to read the next one soon!

(I bought the anthology, but received a copy of this novel for review as well)

All for the game trilogy by Nora Sakavic

Here's the summary of the first book (the foxhole court) from Goodreads

Neil Josten is the newest addition to the Palmetto State University Exy team. He's short, he's fast, he's got a ton of potential—and he's the runaway son of the murderous crime lord known as The Butcher.

Signing a contract with the PSU Foxes is the last thing a guy like Neil should do. The team is high profile and he doesn't need sports crews broadcasting pictures of his face around the nation. His lies will hold up only so long under this kind of scrutiny and the truth will get him killed.

But Neil's not the only one with secrets on the team. One of Neil's new teammates is a friend from his old life, and Neil can't walk away from him a second time. Neil has survived the last eight years by running. Maybe he's finally found someone and something worth fighting for. 

I feel very confused. Loke, the writing is bad, there are so many things that just simply do not happen in real life, and sometimes the characters just seem just so exagerated it makes you wonder why you even like the book at all. However, the plot is very exciting, so you can't help yourself from reading like a maniac because you just need to know.

I have issues on the fact that Nora has no idea of how drugs work, how professional sports work, and didn't bother explaining her invented sport (exy) until the end of the second book (where she wrote the rules almost like an afterthought). I mean, even if you write a book about a well known sport, you should assume that at least some of your readers don't know the rules well, and so you must explain them. Even more important if the sport is something you made up yourself. Also, you shold take into account no kind of sports team allow their players to play either drunk or drugged, let alone have their coach turn a blind eye to their getting drunk or drugged. Also, mixing antipsicotics with alcohol is a bad idea. In fact, mixing any kind of drug with alcohol is a bad idea. And shouldn't the same courts who decided to drug Andrew have told him so?

As for the level of unreal some of the things... jusy don't add up. Either they don't really happen that way in real life (like using a trigger of a horrid memory as a way to calm down) or they're just too random to make sense and leave you feeling like ummm.... ok?

And yet, it was such an exciting series, and such an emotional roller coaster, I can't even say I won't ever read them again. In fact, between my ridiculous academic load I still managed to finish this three books in about a week and a half.

I really have plenty of things against this books, but can't bring myself to dislike them... but the fact that it was exciting still doesn't make them good! I'm so conflicted I can't even say if I recommend them or not, so do as you please with this ones.

My Partner the Wolf by Hollis Shiloh

Here's the summary from Goodreads:

Tom Langley and Sean Goods work together in a human-and-wolf shifter partnership, assisting the police, rushing in to solve crimes wherever their bosses send them. They're a great team, and they have fun together, too: joking and enjoying each other's company in a way that doesn't happen every day.

Tom is also a married man. And his husband hates the wolf shifter with a passion. Tom tries to balance the sides of his life—one minute on a high-pressure chase with Sean, the next placating his husband Lowell.

Then the unthinkable happens: his marriage ends. Heartbroken, he's not expecting to ever get over Lowell's betrayal or to be able to love again.

Sean offers a solution: sex as friends. They have chemistry, and they trust each other.

But can they change their partnership that much? And is Sean secretly harboring feelings for him—expecting more than just sex?

Sean is a loveable, funny, strong, and protective. He's the best buddy a guy could have. But Tom might not be able to keep from breaking his heart—if Sean is in love with him, and Tom can't love him back.

This book is definitely emotionally heavy, but entertaining all the same. Tom finds it VERY hard to deal with the fact that his marriage is over, and that makes him hesitate a lot over pretty much everything. Sean, however, is pretty much the dream  partner anyone would want. Cute, hot, attentive, he kind of is everything Tom needs and wants, even though he doesn't know it. It is very obvious to everyone but him. 

The book is good, but the fact that Tom takes over two thirds of the book and half a year or more without being able to pick up his slack makes it a bit tiring.  It is part of a VERY long series, and I'm not so sure that I want to invest myself on it. If there's standalones, then I might think about it, as I really liked how Hollis Shiloh writes. But 13 books is a lot, and my to-read pile (both the physical and the digital one) is big enough as it is. 

Dissent (Echoes of Earth #2) by Katy Haye

This book is the continuation of Discord, and I honestly have no idea how to summarize this book without spoiling the first book, but if you're desperate enough to know, here's the link to Goodreads.

This book has a different narrator than the previous one, and his name is Hiran. He has a less upbeat tone than Beth does, but given what he's been through, that's definitely understandable. He's been given a very hard life, and is currently in love with a girl who doesn't really love him back. Beth and Toby appear in this book, but they aren't the main focus of it. In fact, Ivo and Oshi appear more than they do, and as they're my favorite couple from Steptoe house, that makes me really happy.

As much as I'd love to gush about my love for Hiran and Roisin and how exciting this book is, it would definitely involve spoilers if you haven't read Discord, so you should take my word and believe that this book and it's predecessor are definitely a worthy read. And it's a good sequel, which is always a plus in my books.

The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer

Here's the summary from Goodreads

She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn’t even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.

Now, she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They’ve killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

When her former handler offers her a way out, she realizes it’s her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires only makes her situation more dangerous.

Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.

I really like the way Stephenie Meyer writes, and I've liked both the Twilight saga and The Host (sue me). So, of course I had to read her newest book. And this suspense book deviates from her previous dabs with the supernatural because there is no supernatural. In this book we have a regular girl with a nondescript appearance (as told by herself) who happens to be a genius. She was part of a hush hush part of the government, who decided to eliminate her and her mentor because they know something someone doesn't want them to know. 
She's been on the run for years, taking many preventions from being killed and living in total paranoia. Then she receives an email from a member of the department where she worked, where he claims they need her, because only she can stop a massive world-scale crisis from happening. And one of the causes is a common school teacher, called Daniel, whom she has to interrogate. And things happen, I'm not spoiling anything, but it's really exciting. 
First, I love that the lead is an ethnically ambiguous girl with no physical prowess, whose ultimate weapon is her brain. And that the romantic interest is like "Okay, she's leagues smarter than I am, and that's really cool". I could do with more of that. Also, her general self doesn't change when she falls in love. If anything, I find her panic upon the idea of love and feelings to be quite refreshing, and that the romantic interest is the one who gushes the poetic romantic stuff. Yes, the guy is the romantic one, and I love that. Also, he cooks. Give him a medal, please. 
Added to a refreshing couple you have conspiracies, the general mystery of not knowing what's going on but the nagging need of finding out, general adventure and fear, and guns and fire and poisons. 

In conclusion, this book successfully managed to keep me awake making theories of what happens next, and that level of attachment with a story is what I look for in a book to make it a 5 star read. I really recommend this book, you'll likely not regret it. 

The Captive Prince (volumes 1&2) by C.S.Pacat

I found these books by chance, and thought “Why not?” Well, let me tell you that this series  (which is still missing it’s third and final book) is amazing.

 It starts with Prince Damianos (Damen for most of the book) who is betrayed by his half-brother and sold as a personal salve to prince Laurent of Vere. The thing is, in a recent war with Vere, Damen killed Laurent’s beloved brother Auguste, and Laurent wouln’t want anything better than seeing Prince Damianos dead (other than killing him himself).

Damen is a noble, honorable person that used to believe everyone was like that, until he was betrayed by his brother and sent to Vere, where he finds the cruelty that goes on both in Vere and in his own country. Being in the verge of war, Damen finds Laurent, the crown prince, is his only chance to maintain peace and save many lives. But if Damen is found as the prince of Akielos he is likely to face not only death in the court of Vere but also the hate from Laurent, for whom Damen slowly develops feelings for.

Laurent was a hard character for me to like. He is an absolute sadist (with a couple of apparent glimpses of humanity) in the first book, yet the second shows a bit more of the person he actually is underneath the heaven-knows-how-many walls that he uses to protect himself. Both the death of his brother as his uncle’s attitude towards him make a TON of reasons for Laurent to be an a**hole, but his heart is noticeable every now and then, reason for which I could never actually hate him.

Romance isn’t a hurried affair in this two books as it can be in many others, but that makes every development between both Laurent and Damen all the more sweeter when they happen (and all the more painful when they are interrupted somehow).

This series isn’t all romance, because both characters are set in a imminent war between kingdoms and their separate fight for each of their thrones. Laurent needs to gain the support of his people and win against his uncle’s strategic battle for the throne (which his uncle currently holds as a regent). Damen, on the other hand, needs to get out of Vere alive, return to Akielos and fight his brother for the stolen throne. Filled with court intrigues, battles, fights, and plenty of other stuff, this books are a certain recommendation for all people who don’t mind a sex scene every now and then.

total rating: 4.5 stars

The expected publication of Kings Rising, the final book of this trilogy, is February 2^nd, 2016 (as told by Goodreads). I’ll be more than happy waiting for it to come out.