Book Review Groups

Hacking IT by Kimberly Dean

 

FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Pump Up Your Book in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Hacking IT by Kimberly Dean was a different book for me to read.  I love that the author made the main character a female hacker because not many authors do that.  I wish that more people would write books like this so that girls would do more of this stuff in the real world.  Anyway, let’s get back to my thoughts on this book.  This book was shorter than other books that I have read lately, and I loved that about this book because I was able to read it in about a day.  I wasn’t the biggest fan of Luke and I can’t really pin point what I didn’t like about him, but he was just a character that drove me insane.  I really like Kylie because like I said before I love to see women in tech jobs.  I thought this book was well written and I wouldn’t mind reading more books by this author in the future.  I think that anyone who likes chick lit with enjoy this book as much as I did.

About The Book

Title: HACKING IT
Author: Kimberly Dean
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 200
Genre: Romantic Suspense

Independent software developer Kylie Grant is on top of her game in the world of IT. She has loyal clients, a good reputation, and a prestigious membership in technology giant Afire Industries’ small business accelerator. Things are going well until she stumbles across an innocuous issue with the lighting in the building where she rents space. When she digs into the problem, she discovers something unexpected—a hack.

The incursion doesn’t affect her, but Kylie leaves enough clues to fix the problem. That earns her a visit from Luke McAllister, Afire’s chief security officer. Luke is handsome and rugged and everything that Kylie likes in a man, but she soon finds that he is blaming her for the security breach. Before long, the two are on a collision course, but also secretly looking at more than each other’s digital footprints.

When a fluke accident sends Kylie to the emergency room, Luke fears that the beautiful developer is in danger beyond the online world. Little does he know that she is also hiding a secret that threatens to jeopardize their now sizzling relationship.

Can Kylie fix Afire’s problems without falling victim to the hacker? And can Luke learn to trust her and keep her safe before their enemy strikes again?

About The Author

When taking the Myers-Briggs personality test in high school, Kimberly Dean was rated as an INFJ (Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging). This result sent her into a panic, because there were no career paths recommended for the personality type. Fortunately, it turned out to be well suited to a writing career. Since receiving that dismal outlook, Kimberly has become an award-winning author of romance and erotica. When not writing, she enjoys movies, sports, traveling, music, and sunshine.

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Playing The Pauses by Michelle Hazen & Guest Post

We are excited to celebrate the release of PLAYING THE PAUSES by Michelle Hazen. This is the second installment in her Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll series. Follow the tour for reviews, excerpts, guest posts, plus enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card!  

“Hazen’s use of the frantic energy of a rock band’s tour contrasts perfectly with the slow and seductive dance this couple engages in. Readers are sure to enjoy following The Red Letters on their drama-fueled climb to fame. “ —RT Book Reviews

“To call Playing the Pauses an erotic novel alone would be to belie its equally strong explorations of the boundaries between personal, career, and sexual growth.” —Midwest Book Review

When an ultra-independent tour manager meets the one musician she can’t resist, their kinks fit together perfectly, but their lives don’t. Michelle Hazen is back with PLAYING THE PAUSES, the second, stand-alone installment in her Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll series. Fans of Kylie Scott’s Stage Dive Series and YOU REALLY GOT ME by Erika Kelly, will love this bad boy, friends with benefits romance with a dash of BDSM mixed in.

Title:  Playing the Pauses

Author: Michelle Hazen

Release Date: March 5, 2018

Publisher: Self-published

Series: Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll #2

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Page Count: 290

Rock Star Dom + his Queen of the Spreadsheet employee = KRYPTONIT

Kate is a globe-trotting tour manager who can’t be tied down.

Danny is a Dominant rock star and tattoo artist who needs her help to explore his true kinks.

Kate just got her big break, running an international tour for a rising band. Her job is everything to her…at least until she meets the band’s enigmatic bass player.

After they collide in one unforgettably erotic night on a hotel balcony, he comes to her with a proposition. As a former BDSM club performer, Danny’s spent so long fulfilling other people’s fantasies that now he wants to reclaim his own—and he says she’s the only one who can help.

Getting caught in bed with her rock star boss could cost her career, and yet there’s something about Danny’s quiet intensity that she can’t resist. He steals her heart, hard. But the end of the tour is approaching, and their jobs are headed two different directions.

To be together one of them will have to stop touring, but the only thing they crave as much as each other is music.

** This book can be read and understood as a standalone, but does contain spoilers for earlier books in the series. **

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About Michelle Hazen:

Michelle Hazen is a nomad with a writing problem. Years ago, she and her husband ducked out of the 9 to 5 world and moved into their truck. As a result, she wrote most of her books with solar power in odd places, including a bus in Thailand, a golf cart in a sandstorm, and a beach in Honduras. Currently, she’s addicted to The Walking Dead, hiking, and Tillamook cheese.

Follow Author:  Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Pinterest | Instagram

Guest Post

The Inspiration Behind Playing the Pauses

The funny thing about Danny is that he already existed.

With most of my characters, I start with a glimmer and then start to fill it out. Brainstorm flaws, hobbies, the unique way they speak. This time, I invented Jera for A Cruel Kind of Beautiful (Book 1) and the first thing I knew about her was that she was a drummer and her best friend was a bassist who was also a tattoo artist and his name was Danny. Just like that, all those pieces of information wound up together like it was a single fact. Like they were a single fact. I didn’t even know Jera’s name at that point but I knew Danny’s.

He came fully formed. I always knew exactly what he would do; the challenge was explaining it to other people because he doesn’t think like anyone else. Half the time, he doesn’t think at all. His brain is this silent, beautiful plane. It’s why I didn’t write his book from his perspective: it wouldn’t make any sense. I had to let Kate tell it for him. There’s a novella later in the series half-told from his perspective and it’s an utterly exotic experience. Remember that old movie Being John Malkovich? It’s like that. It’s tourism into the brain of a person so different from you and I that it’s hard to comprehend.

The most frustrating thing about Danny is that he’s an artist and I know what his tattoos look like. They’re described in his book and they sound so pretty but I myself can’t draw a stick figure without a ruler. Which means all those gorgeous tattoo designs are always going to stay locked up in my head with no way to get out.

It’s also frustrating that I always know WHAT he does, but sometimes it takes me a bit of time to get him to tell me WHY.

Like for instance, Danny’s a vegetarian who hates vegetables. And fruit. I always knew that, from his first scene where he walks in eating Cheetos, but I didn’t know why until I wrote his book and I literally watched my fingers type the story behind his vegetarianism without having any idea what I was about to say (It’s a crazy weird story, too, you guys).

Danny’s real in a way none of my other characters quite are, and that would creep me out if it didn’t feel so…utterly natural.

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Margaret Margaret

Lullaby Road by James Anderson

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Lullaby Road by James Anderson was a very interesting book.  I loved that this book takes place in the same state that I live in because it seems like books never take place here.  There is one book before this one and I am for sure going to go back and read that now.  You don’t have to read the first one in order to understand what is going on in this one so if the first book doesn’t interest you then you don’t have to worry about reading it.  This book wasn’t one that kept me on the edge of my seat, but it did hold my attention and made me want to keep reading until I finished the book.  I enjoyed this authors writing and he did a great job of making me feel and understand why the characters did what they did.  I can’t think of anything bad to say about this book because I just really enjoyed the entire thing.

About The Book

Ben Jones, protagonist of the glowingly reviewed Never-Open Desert Diner, returns in a devastatingly powerful literary crime novel about parenthood, loss, and the desert in winter.

Winter has come to Highway 117, a remote road through the Utah desert trafficked only by oddballs, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. So when local truck driver Ben Jones finds an abandoned, mute Hispanic child at a lonely gas station along his route, far from any semblance of proper civilization, he knows something has gone terribly awry. With the help of his eccentric neighbors, Ben sets out to help the kid and learn the truth. In the process he makes new friends and loses old ones, finds himself in mortal danger, and uncovers buried secrets far more painful than he could have imagined.

About The Author

James Anderson was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. He received his undergraduate degree in American Studies from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and his Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Pine Manor College in Boston Massachusetts.

Undergraduate thesis: Word-man/Poet: The Poetry and Poetics of Lew Welch
Masters thesis: The Never-Entered Kingdom: Beyond Linguistics in the Rendering of the Literary Child in Adult Fiction

His first publication in a national magazine, a poem entitled Running It Down, occurred at age nineteen, in Poetry Northwest. The poem was later anthologized. His poems, short fiction, essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in Northwest Review, New Letters, The Bloomsbury Review, Solstice Magazine and many others.

In 1974, while still an undergraduate, Anderson founded Breitenbush Books, a book publisher specializing in literature and general interest trade titles. From 1974 to 1991 Anderson served as publisher and executive editor. Breitenbush received many awards for its books, including three Western States Book Awards, juried by Robert Penn Warren, Elizabeth Hardwick, N. Scott Momaday, Jonathan Galassi, Jorie Graham, Denise Levertov, William Kittredge and others. Notable authors published include Mary Barnard, Bruce Berger, Clyde Rice, Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Simms, William Greenway, John Stoltenberg, Sam Hamill and Gary Miranda.

From 1995 to 2002 Anderson co-produced documentary films, including Tara’s Daughters, narrated by Susan Sarandon. The film, which won Best Documentary at the New York Film Festival, chronicled the plight of Tibetan women refugees as carriers of Tibetan culture in the diaspora.

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Servie’s Song by Heidi Tucker

The true story of one mother living in Zimbabwe, Africa who encounters a devastating loss leaving her unable to care for six children. In a heart-wrenching sacrifice she surrenders to a desperate plan to leave her children and find work in the United States. It is a door which feels impossible to walk through. But perhaps, the only door which holds any promise. 

Servie’s Song takes you on an emotional journey of tragedy and heartbreak to an inspiring path of hope. This touching story is complemented by gospel principles which will teach and motivate you to grab onto your faith and move forward trusting that you are never alone. God always hears your prayers. 

 ~ Amazon ~ Amazon UK ~ 

YouTube Trailer For Servie’s Song:

 

Heidi Tucker won the 2017 Illumination Award for her first inspirational book Finding Hope in the Journey and her newest release is entitled Servie’s Song. Her passion for writing and speaking about light and hope has inspired thousands. Heidi is known as a great storyteller who motivates us to rise up and find new strength. She teaches how to recognize truth and make a difference.

When Heidi isn’t writing her next book, or speaking at a conference, you’ll find her spending time outdoors with her husband, four grown children and eight grandchildren. She loves sunflowers, hiking, and ice cream … not necessarily in that order.

 

Find out more about Heidi at ThePickledSunflower.com

Connect with the Author here: 

~ Facebook ~ Website ~ Twitter ~ Instagram ~

Character Casting

Character                       Actress

Servie –  Alfre Woodard

Kimberly –  Lyric Ross

Angela –  Jessica Chastain

Snippet

Servie was startled by a loud wailing noise then realized it was coming from somewhere deep within her chest. A harrowing cry from the darkest depths of despair. Servie knew this place intimately – a place that she had visited too many times. Not another child. How many times could her heart break?

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 


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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Margaret Margaret

The Twofer Murder by Lauren Carr

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from iRead Book Tours in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Twofer Murder by Lauren Carr was another great book.  I have reviewed several other books by this author, and I have liked all of them.   I always worry as I read more and more books because I figure at some point I will find a book that I don’t like so I still fear that the book I am reading is the one that doesn’t like.  I love how all of her books intertwine so that you always basically know who everyone is and how they are all related to each other.  I am a huge fan of Mac and his dog Gnarly, so I always love when they are in the book as well.  This book didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat, but I also wasn’t able to figure out how it ended so I always enjoy books like that.  I loved just about everything about this book, and I can’t wait to read the next installment in this series.

About The Book

Book Title: Twofer Murder by Lauren Carr
Category: Adult fiction, 400 pages
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
Release date: November 17, 2017
Tour dates: Dec 4 to Jan 19, 2018
Content Rating: PG + M (Please be aware that TWOFER MURDER is a murder mystery. There are depictions of murder and some violence–though easy on the gore contents. No f-words but there may be some mild profanity, and mild religious expletives such as “damn”, “hell” and “Oh God!”. Some depictions of brief sexual content (kissing). No drug use or underage drinking among the protagonists.)

Twofer murder? What’s a twofer murder?

Twofer Murder is a treat for fans of best-selling author Lauren Carr’s fast-paced mysteries! Lauren’s latest novel contains the main characters from her three successful series: Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose mysteries. The guys go away for a fishing weekend only to get caught up in the murder of a journalist investigating fraud at a timber company. Meanwhile, the ladies are spending the weekend in the presidential suite at a posh resort where Jessica Faraday is to accept a lifetime achievement award for her late grandmother at a murder mystery writers conference. But before they have time to get their facials, they get wrapped up in their own real mystery when an up and coming author ends up dead!

Lauren Carr’s Twofer Murder is a 2-for-1-making it a must-read for any mystery fan!

To read more reviews, please visit Lauren Carr’s page on iRead Book Tours.

About The Author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries-over twenty titles across three fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, romance, and humor.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, and three dogs on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with the author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Instagram

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Pre-Order – Make Me Want by Katee Robert

Have you Pre-ordered MAKE ME WANT Yet?

In MAKE ME WANT, Lucy a bold and confident lawyer seeks the help of her good friend Gideon to reawaken her passion in the bedroom. Fans of Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz or Expecting a Royal Scandal by Caitlin Crews will want to one-click this sizzling matchmaker romance.

Pre-order MAKE ME WANT and add it to your TBR pile on Goodreads! Then keep reading to get a sneak peek excerpt and enter the giveaway for one of five (5) eBook copies of MAKE ME WANT!

Title: Make Me Want

Author: Katee Robert

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: March 1, 2018

Publisher: Harlequin Dare

Series: Make Me

Page Count: 159 pages

Format: Digital

ASIN: B071LSKSSG

Sexy. Passionate. Bold. Discover Harlequin DARE, a new line of fun, edgy and sexually explicit romances for the fearless female.

Praise for MAKE ME WANT:“Dare is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author

“I want everything.”

She’s taking control. And it’s driving him wild!

Lucy Baudin’s ex did a number on her self-esteem, but it’s time for her to regain control. In her job as a lawyer she’s bold, confident. But in the bedroom she needs inspiration to reawaken her inner seductress. Asking her friend Gideon Novak for help seems wrong…yet so deliciously right!

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Make Me Want Excerpt

Copyright © 2018 Katee Robert

“What the fuck, Lucy?”

“Hmm?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He pulled her dress up, though he didn’t need the confirmation. “You come in here with that cock tease of a dress and you aren’t wearing panties.” Jealousy and desire twisted viciously through him. “Were you going to give Aaron a little show?”

“Oh, please. Give me a little credit.” She lifted her chin. “I’m proving a point. You, Gideon Novak, don’t get to make my decisions for me. I appreciate your help, but that’s where it ends.”

She didn’t want him.

He was good enough to fuck but not good enough to listen to.

He kept a white-knuckled grip on his temper because having a knock-down, drag-out fight here and now wasn’t an option for either of them. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t have a right to be pissed. She’d laid out the terms that first day and if he chose to ignore them, that was on him—not on Lucy.

It didn’t make how shitty this situation was any easier to swallow.

Gideon stepped back. “The table. Bend over it.”

Her eyebrows inched up. “You can’t be serious.”

“As a fucking heart attack. I told you what would happen if you showed up like that, and you were all too eager to pick up that gauntlet. Choices have consequences, Lucy. This is one of them.”

She backed toward the table. One step. Two. “The consequences being that you’ll spank my ass red and then fuck me right here.”

She wants it.

It didn’t soothe his temper. If anything, it ratcheted it up a notch. She might want it but she didn’t want him. “The table.”

Lucy turned and, prim as a princess, bent over the table. She seemed to consider and then lowered her chest further until the top half of her body was flush against the polished wood. The position left her ass in the air and had her skirt riding up so he could see how turned on she was by this.

“Which part is getting you?” He stood between her and the door and pushed her dress the last few inches to bare her completely. “The spanking, the defiance, or the fact that we’re in an unlocked room where anyone could walk in—including your fucking date?”

She tilted her ass up, just a little, an offer that made his mouth water. But it was her words that sealed her fate. “All of the above.”

 

About Katee Robert

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Katee Robert learned to tell her stories at her grandpa’s knee. Her 2015 title, The Marriage Contract, was a RITA finalist, and RT Book Reviews named it ‘a compulsively readable book with just the right amount of suspense and tension.”  When not writing sexy contemporary and romantic suspense, she spends her time playing imaginary games with her children, driving her husband batty with what-if questions, and planning for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Connect with Katee at: Website | Facebook | Twitter| GoodReads | Instagram

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Margaret Margaret