This Is My Brain On Boys by Sarah Strohmeyer

Cute, quirky, and just the right amount of silly. 

Addie Emerson is incredibly intelligent, more so than the average teenager.  Addie doesn’t believe in love. In fact, she and her lab partner, Dexter, are working to prove that you can make anyone fall in love under the right circumstances.  Then she meets Kris, a boy with a major secret, a secret that affects Addie.  Now she’s struggling to figure out these new romantic feelings while making sure her experiment doesn’t fail, and her chances to go to Harvard along with it.

Have you ever read The Rosie Project?  This felt like a young adult version of that novel. 

Have you ever watched The Big Bang Theory?  You can picture Addie Emerson like a young, female version of Sheldon Cooper, albeit very toned down and not nearly as frustrating. 

Addie is a very bright senior at The Academy.  She speaks directly, misunderstands typical teenage speak, and struggles with everyday social skills (something her best friend Tess is working with her on).  Addie is funny, adorably awkward, and smart without being annoying.  She has three friends that she treasures dearly, but when she meets Kris she considers a romantic relationship for the first time.

This book was entertaining from start to finish.  I found myself laughing often, frustrated occasionally, and constantly ready to turn the next page.  I would definitely recommend This Is My Brain On Boys to people who want a charmingly innocent young adult novel. 

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald is one of the most quirky, unique, and downright hilarious books I've read this year, and perhaps last year as well. 

You'll have to cut me some slack because this is not a romance novel in the way that we romance novel enthusiasts would define a romance novel (i.e. no scenes of an sexual manner), but I still thought it had enough love to warrant a review on my blog.  In fact, I don't think you will find a book with more love in it than Broken Wheel.  There's people loving their town, people loving complete strangers, friends loving friends, parents loving their children, and most importantly, people loving books.

In The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Sara Lindqvist arrives in Broken Wheel, Iowa to meet her long time pen pal, Amy.  She's eager to finally see the beautiful town and hilarious friends that Amy has been describing in her letters, but is dismayed to find that she has arrived on the day of Amy's funeral.  The town is elated to have a tourist in their midst and do everything they can to make Sara feel welcome.  Sara, however, feels quite overwhelmed in this new arrangement and seeks a way to pay back the townspeople for their kindness.  The townspeople think Sara must be crazy to open a bookstore in a dying town like Broken Wheel, but soon they find themselves under the bookstore's spell.

This is the warmest, most enchanting story I have read in quite some time.  It is impossible for me not to love a book about loving books.  It would be completely out of character for me.  From the first moment I started reading Broken Wheel I knew it was going to leave an impression on me.  I couldn't put it down.  It was too wonderful.

The characters were some of the funniest individuals I've had the delight of reading about. Their passion and disdain for their town is something we've all felt (re: I can make fun of my hometown, but god help the stranger who does it).  Not to mention I feel that anyone reading this blog will have felt like Sara at some point: nose in a book, oblivious to the world, head in the clouds.  I'm, also, quite sure that most of us have dreamed of opening a bookstore at some point of another.  We've all been these characters, we've all felt what they feel, and I think that's what makes this book so wonderfully relatable.

Don't be too disappointed that this isn't a romance novel for there is  a little romance in it.  I don't want to spoil it by talking it to death, so I won't.  Just know that it's heart-warming, frustrating, and downright ridiculous, in the best way.  You'll love it.  

The secondary character's stories are just as, if not more, important than the budding romance.  All the stories come together to build a perfect picture of Broken Wheel in your mind.  I would find myself laughing, crying, smiling at times as though the townspeople were my very own friends and family, and as if Broken Wheel was my own town.  

This book isn't totally realistic.  The author certainly took some liberties, especially with the legal aspects of the book that arise, but while the story was at times improbable, you'll be too busy laughing, to care much about it.   

Intercepting Daisy by Julie Brannagh

Grant Parker is a quarterback for a popular football team.  His PR team works hard to make sure he appears to be a squeaky clean, church attending saint.  Grant prefers to spend his free time sleeping with women… lots of women.  After one such night of entertainment Grant discovers an e-book on the e-reader of his date for the night, a book about him.  The author certainly has some interesting ideas about what she’d like to do with Grant, but who is this anonymous author?  Soon Grant discovers that the sweet, funny flight attendant he’s seeing is the author of this raunchy story that’s threatening to end his career.

When I first started reading Intercepting Daisy by Julie Brannagh I was instantly drawn in.  The writing style was familiar and comfortable and the Grant Park seemed likeable enough.  I don’t usually read sports romance, but I liked the “mystery” aspect of the story.  Obviously, we as the readers know who wrote the story, but it was entertaining to watch the story unfold with Grant Parker unaware.

I have a few bones to pick with the novel, however.  While I don’t need my romance novels to be one hundred percent realistic, per se, I demand a certain amount of believability.  There were a few areas of the books that had me rolling my eyes with the stretches that the author was willing to make.

First, I don’t believe that a star quarterback’s career would be threatened by rumors of a sexual nature.  At one point in the novel Grant is almost fired from being a star quarterback because it got out that he wasn’t the religious saint he was pretending to be.  I mean, there are star football player who beat their wives, do drugs, and participate in animal cruelty and I’m supposed to believe that a few rumors are enough to unseat an amazing player?  I don’t think so.

Second, I find it hard to believe that a self-published e-book about a football player would be enough to unseat Nicholas Sparks in the best sellers list.  I strongly dislike when authors “date” their books, i.e. reference pop culture, it always pulls me out of my read and back into the present, which isn’t what a reader wants to happen.

My final disappointment in this novel is the lack of drama.  A football player, a flight attendant, and a secret raunchy novel?  How is there not drama?  The reveal, the confrontation, the aftermath… all boring compared to what they could have been.

So, while I appreciated the writing style and genuinely enjoyed the idea for the story, I just wasn’t feeling the slow moving, pretty unrealistic, easy-going aspect of the novel.  I am confident that there are people out there who prefer their novels this way, in which case, I would whole heartedly suggest this book to those people who don’t mind when the author takes a few artistic liberties and keeps things relatively clean.  It just wasn’t for me.

This book is on sale 9/6/2016 in e-book format.

The Mane Event by Shelly Laurenston

Do you like shapeshifter romance novels? 

Have you ever given one a try?

I received The Mane Event as a Christmas gift in 2009.  That was a really risky move on the part of my friend for two reasons:

1. I’ve read a ridiculous number of romance novels.  So it was sheer luck that she happened to pick one that was unfamiliar to me.

2. I am super picky regarding my romance novels.

However, she’d written “Merry Christmas” on the inside of this one, so I had no choice but to keep it and read it.  And thank gosh I did! The book was wickedly funny, totally sexy, and thrilling from start to finish.  Usually I find romance novels to be either funny and cute, or dark and sexy.  I don’t know that I’d ever found a romance novel to be both hilarious and spine-tingling, but holy hell, this book did it.  Instantly, Shelly Laurenston became one of my favorite authors.

The Mane Event actually houses two different stories: Christmas Pride, and Shaw’s Tail.  In Christmas Pride we meet Mace Llewellyn and are introduced to the idea of shapeshifting.  Mace and Desiree met as gangly, awkward teenager in high school but Mace moved away before anything could happen between them.  Now Mace is back from the Navy Seals, tall, sexy, and built to kill, and he’s ready to claim what’s rightfully his… Dez.  The only issue is convincing her to stick around after she discovers that he can shift from man to lion in the blink of an eye. 

In Shaw’s Tail Brendon Shaw is rescued from certain death by shape-shifter wolves, including one cowboy boot wearing babe, Ronnie Lee Reed.  Ronnie doesn’t have time to be messing around with lion shifters when she should be settling down with a nice wolf mate, but something about Brendon Shaw is calling to her.  Brendon Shaw’s lion side instinctually knows that Ronnie Lee Reed is his mate… he’s just got to convince her.

These men are everything you want in a romance novel.  They’re tall.  They’re dark.  They’re handsome.  They’re everything in between.  Her men all have very different personalities that can relate back to the animals they shift into.  Her lion shifters are total alpha males, arrogant, and a little selfish, but the women quickly put them in their place.  Her female characters are take no prisoners type of women whose confidence and independence rival the men’s.  The relationships in these novels are explosive and wickedly naughty, but still with enough romance to make you believe that these characters are meant to be together.

While the two men in these novels are lion shifters, Laurenston also delves into the swoon-worthy shifter lives of wolves, bears, hyenas, wild dogs, and a few more.  Laurenston does an amazing job creating character personalities based on the animals they shift into (i.e. Bears shifters are as curious and easily startled as their wild Bear relatives). I swear, sometimes I spew out a fact about wild dogs without thinking and then realize I only know that fact because of these shifter novels (that can get… embarrassing). 

If you’re looking for romance novels unlike any other I implore you to give Shelly Laurenston a chance.  There are nine books in the Pride series and Laurenston does a fabulous job keep the books consistently amazing and the plots interesting.  Characters do flit between the books, so while it isn’t necessary to read them in order it will be more enjoyable if you do. 

Shelly Laurenston has recently started a new series Call of Crows involving Viking Gods and their sexy followers, and she also writes dragon shifter novels under her pseudonym G.A. Aiken.  Her dragon kin novels are like the Game of Thrones of romance novels.  They’re incredibly detailed novels with sexy dragon shifters, temperamental gods, intricate plot lines, and more than enough erotic scenes to keep your romantic side sated. 

I cannot stress this enough.  You will not be disappointed.