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This Chick Read: Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson #12) by Patricia Briggs

A deadly fae creature escapes Underhill, it’s bite allowing it to take over the host body and wreak havoc, killing everything around them and gaining more power from that chaos. When two people close to Mercy become inhabited it turns personal and Mercy must find a way to kick the host out without getting more people killed.

As with most of the novels in this series, there are a couple of storylines running simultaneously. Not only does Mercy need to figure out the puzzle about how to stop this fae creature, she also needs to find out what’s been bothering her husband, and Alpha, Adam. The last couple of novels have been about Mercy’s evolution and I really loved how Smoke Bitten shifted focus back towards Adam and Mercy’s relationship.

My love for Urban Fantasy is closely followed by my love of a good romance and their union is one of my favorite’s in the Urban Fantasy world. This novel has Mercy and Adam face, as a couple, many of the insecurities and fears that we in our normal lives can identify with, even if theirs take the shape of actual monsters. Sometimes my own inner fears take that shape and reading Adam and Mercy’s story and seeing how they battle those physical monsters makes me feel a little better. Isn’t that why we read fiction? We can slay dragons through the actions of our favorite hero’s and learn things through their words and actions?

Smoke Bitten moves several storylines forward. In addition to Mercy and Adam’s relationship, their relationship to Aidan, Mercy’s place in the pack, and her “friendship” with the fae all take a big step forward. By the end of the book I felt like a lot was accomplished, so not only did I love the story but I had that feeling after you eat a great meal. Full, but not stuffed like I’d overeaten. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it is honest!

Click this link to purchase!* Smoke Bitten (A Mercy Thompson Novel)

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you should purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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It’s Monday, what are you reading? (3/16/2020)

It’s Monday and the world is in the midst of a pandemic. I am working from home and practicing social distancing. Picking up a book is a great way to forget about the stresses of our lives. So, what book will you pick to help you escape? This post originated over on Book Date , so thanks for the idea and letting me continue on the discussion.

JUST FINISHED

Another wonderful installment in the Mercy Thompson series!

JUST STARTED

Yep, another fantasy series that I love! The Crown of Shards series has a great heroine and a lot of action adventure. It’s a lot of fun!

What book are you reading this Monday?

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The Reading Chick Also Bakes: Bouchon Bakery-Cream Puffs

How often does a person make Pate A Choux? For this person, it’s when you get to the Pate A Choux chapter in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook. At first, I was pretty excited about making Cream Puffs. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love a great cream puff? I do! At least I did until I tried to make my own. It wasn’t all bad, but boy was this a lot of work for something that, and I quote “are best as soon as they are filled, but can be refrigerated for 1 hour.” Umm, 1 hour?

I actually thought making the dough was pretty easy. There are only a few ingredients, flour, water, eggs, butter, salt, and water.

Essentially, you cook the water, butter and salt on the stove until the butter is melted and then add in the flour to create a paste. I’ve seen this done a thousand times on The British Baking Show or a Food Network baking production and thought it seemed pretty simple. In fact, it was. I got it to the correct consistently, threw it into the mixer and started adding the eggs. Having never made this before, I wasn’t too sure what I ended up with was correct, but not knowing for sure, I put the dough in the molds I bought and threw them into the freezer. Yes, this is another recipe where you can take them out one at a time to cook. Too bad I didn’t do that.

First confession! “Transfer the dough to a pastry bag and pipe into the mold.” Yeah, I didn’t do that. I was just so tired! It took much longer than I thought to make the dough, and I was almost positive I did something wrong. I just spooned the dough in. It wasn’t pretty.

I left these in the freezer until the next weekend when I thought I’d conquer the “Cookies for Cream Puffs.” These are not real cookies! they are some kind of crumbly mix of brown sugar, flour, and a very small amount of butter than I was supposed to roll out and then cut into nice round shapes to place on the top of the cream puffs. The idea being to create a crunchy outer layer to contrast nicely with the soft puff.

You can tell from looking at this dough that it was one hot mess. I rolled and froze, rolled and froze, and then just gave up and took the cream puffs out of the freezer, placed them on a pan, put cookie dough bits on top and threw them into the oven.

While these were cooking I started making the Pastry Cream. It’s not a Cream Pull without that cream, right? I’ve made pudding’s and custards from scratch before so I actually found this to be a pretty easy process. However- 2nd confession- I was supposed to use whole milk, and we only had 2% milk in the fridge. Guess what? It worked anyway. It may not have been as luscious as if I’d used whole milk, but you can still get a pretty good pastry cream. The hardest part of this process was putting the cream through the sifter to get the chunks out. I got impatient and just ended up dumping it all into the bowl to chill.

This time I did actually use the pastry bag and you know what? No longer afraid of it. I found these reusable bags that you can wash out and it was really quite easy!

So, I take the puffs out of the oven and I’m pretty pleased! I think they rose the way they were supposed to? I will admit, there was a second batch that was slightly bigger and they collapsed. Note to self, leave the bigger ones in a little longer than the smaller. Once these had cooled, and the pastry cream was also cool, I piped the cream into the puffs.

You can’t tell, but there are cream in those puffs! Here’s the problem. No one felt like eating them! We all had one to taste and then I put them in the fridge where they got kind of soft and doughy. Not good. So, be warned, they are really serious about that time in the fridge. No more than one hour, otherwise all of that hard work will go to waste.

I worked so hard, over two weekends on these, and I have to admit, I was disappointed! I think I had profiteroles in my head and the cream just didn’t do it for me. I’d much rather of had ice cream! LOL.

Would I make these again? Not even for a dinner party. It took way too long, had to many moving parts and the shelf life is too small. I’m glad I did it the one time, but it’s not happening again!

Until the next recipe!

Deb

Click this link to purchase! Bouchon Bakery (The Thomas Keller Library)

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This Chick Read: Fumbled (The Playbook #2) by Alexa Martin

Poppy Patterson left her hometown at sixteen. Kicked out because of her pregnancy, she found a new home with her aunt in Denver. Now in her 20’s, Poppy is raising her son alone and working as a waitress in a nightclub when Wide Receiver, T. K. Moore is seated at her table. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem except that T. K. is the father of her son… and he doesn’t know it.

This second chance love story had everything the first novel had, and I ate it up. Two great lead characters, wonderful female friendships, and a renewal of a love story that should never have ended. I like that they were an interracial couple and whereas this is a fictional novel I felt like some of the problems they’d see in real life as an interracial couple also played out in this book. However, the biggest conflict in this book was portraying the consequences of head injuries in the NFL. I really liked how real that made Poppy and T. K.’s relationship and how she struggled with helping him see how much his personality had changed since high school. I thought that topic was really relevant. Especially after reading the author’s bio and knowing that her own husband played in the NFL. It may be a real topic in her own household (?).

Once again Alexa Martin hits a home run. Poppy was a female protagonist that a reader loves. She fell on hard times but never gave up, worked hard, and put herself in a place she can be proud of. T. K. was a little more stereotypical but I really liked him once he got past the shock of being a father. This story was a little more serious than the first but once Poppy was introduced to her WAGS group those friendships brought out the fun and funny.

Again, if you haven’t read this series and you are a fan of contemporary romances, you must pick them up! I do think the first couple of books could be read as stand alone’s. After all, I read the third novel first. There’s a tiny bit of backstory with a couple of other characters but I think you can catch on pretty quickly and enjoy the story on it’s own. However, if you’ve got the time to read them in order go for it! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

“I really enjoyed reading the book, both times. It made me happy. It’s a good book. Right after I finished it the first time, I read book 1 of this series called Intercepted, which was also really nice.” The Wordy Habitat

“I thought the book was kinda rushed but I didn’t get bored and I’m definitely looking forward to the final book of the trilogy.” My World of Books

Click this link to purchase!* Fumbled (Playbook, The)

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I will receive a small stipend.

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It’s Monday, what are you reading? (3/9/2020)

I can only hope that this week is a little better than last week. I can’t think a tornado will hit twice in one area (knock on wood). I had an ARC due this Tuesday that was a tear jerker. I’m not sure if it was because I’d had an abnormally emotional week? I did go through a TON of kleenex and sniffled my way through to the finish late last night. This post originated over on Book Date , so thanks for the idea and letting me continue on the discussion.

JUST FINISHED

Grab your box of kleenex! This is a great story about a wonderful friendship and finding the meaning of love.

JUST STARTED

I am loving the audio books in this series. Thank goodness it’s a long series!

What books are you reading this week?

Deb

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This Chick Read: Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club #2) by Lyssa Kay Adams

When Liv walks in on her celebrity chef boss sexually harassing a hostess in his restaurant she rushes to the girls defense only to have the chef fire her and blackball her from getting another job despite her reputation as a great pastry chef she starts plotting revenge. She finds an unlikely ally in Braden Mack one of her brother in law’s friends. Not only does he fight by her side but their chemistry has him fighting for her heart, but he needs his bromance book club’s advice because nothing is working! Undercover Bromance is as fun as the first novel, but a depth that this reader found to be gripping, emotional, and actually very personal.

First the characters. Liv is gun shy when it comes to men. She had a father who left she and her sister when they were very young and that taught her to never trust a man. It also turned her into a fighter. She’s a woman who does not stand by and accept what is obviously wrong. What I loved about her the best is that she fought on behalf of others in this novel. Yeah, sure, she got fired, but she herself wasn’t sexually harassed. She saw it happen and wanted the truth to come out and the chef to bear the consequences of his actions. Braden Mack was clueless when it came to women, which made him charmingly endearing, but he also was a man that wouldn’t stand for a person to be treated improperly. You’ve got to love that! The two of them together provided a lot of heat, but even more importantly, humor! This was a novel that really needed a good laugh to counter the serious subject matter, and it really delivered! I laughed so hard I cried through the last 50 pages of this book.

It used to be that these types of topics weren’t mentioned and especially weren’t tied to a romance novel plot! Sexual harassment has been pushed aside, closeted, wiped under a rug, etc. Introducing this topic as the main plot of a romance novel made this one stand out. The premise of these Bromance Book Club novels is that a group of guys read romance novels to help them figure out their problems with women. Cute theme, right? How exactly does that apply to this topic? Well, Liv wasn’t your usual lady so it actually worked well and the altercations between she and her ex-boss turned this into a kind of romantic suspense plot which worked really well.

I thought this novel hit it out of the park on many levels. It introduced an important subject, provided a great love story, and made me care about the characters. It also made me laugh out loud which is always a winner in my book. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for my honest review and it was honest.

Click this link to purchase!* Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club)

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- If you purchase this book through the above link I will receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Intercepted (The Playbook #1) by Alexa Martin

Marlee Harper has been dating her boyfriend on and off since high school. When she finally faces up to him being a player she moves out, with the help of brand new Denver Mustangs quarterback and one time fling Gavin Pope. Vowing to never date a pro football “player” again, Gavin has his work cut out for him.

I recently got an ARC and reviewed the third book in this series, Blitzed. I LOVED it and vowed to read the first two in the series immediately. Thank goodness I had a vacation where I could binge read this series. Seriously, I read this book in a few hours, then the second, back to back.

There were a few reasons why I liked this novel so much. 1) I loved how respectfully Gavin treated Marlee. After her horrible prior relationship Gavin’s treatment shone a light on how wonderful she should be treated. 2) Marlee was sassy and smart. I liked that she had self respect and dumped her boyfriends butt. It did take her a little while to want to see how horrible he was, but once she did? It was O-V-E-R. 3) I liked the behinds the scenes look into the wives and girlfriends of pro players. I know this is fiction but it fit what I had imagined to a T. 4) I LOVED the female friendships! I am a sucker for a romance novel with a great group of side characters and this series reminds me of how Kristen Ashley used to write before she went all S&M. Female friendships can be fun and loyal and this novel showed that strength. 5) At first I was put off by the hashtags, but after the third chapter I started to laugh at the intended humor and started to look forward to them. #luvthehumor

So, yeah, I loved this novel. I thought it was fun, had a great message, and loved the characters so much I am asking for a sequel. LOL. Luckily you can catch up with these characters in future novels because, you know, great friendships! If you haven’t yet read this novel and like light hearted romances, well what are you waiting for?!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣️

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

“All in all, I’m kicking myself for not picking up Intercepted so much earlier. I fell in love with the characters and the romance and I can’t wait to pick up the next book in this series.” Books and Blends

Click this link to purchase!* Intercepted (Playbook, The)

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you should purchase this book through the above link I will receive a small stipend.

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It’s Monday what are you reading? (3/2/2020)

Even though I had a busy weekend I found the time to read. My downtime was spent doing what I loved best. What books did I read? I’ll tell you, if you share with me! This post originated over on Book Date , so thanks for the idea and letting me continue on the discussion.

JUST FINISHED

First Sentence Read: “It had been a mistake to invite himself to the wedding.”

JUST STARTED

First Sentence Read: “Professor Hanover’s eyes were affixed to his smartphone with the determined unsteadiness of a man who was exceedingly uncomfortable.”

Both very lighthearted books but just what I needed in my downtime. What books are you reading?

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This Chick Read: Bad Bachelor (Bad Bachelors #1) by Stefanie London

Being listed as the worst reviewed bachelor on the hottest new App Bad Bachelor couldn’t have come at a worse time for Reed McMahon, a rising star in the PR business. His father is ill and his clients are starting to turn their backs on them. When he takes on a pro bono job to help a local library raise resources, librarian Darcy Greer is leery of his reputation but can’t pass up the free help. As they work together she starts to see a different side of Reed than what she’s read on the Bad Bachelor App. Should she take the chance and open herself up to a man that may not be revealing his true self?

Just like the legions of women who gave Reed bad reviews on the Bad Bachelor App, I felt like I had the wool pulled over my eyes. I’m pretty careful about making sure I don’t ask to review a book in the middle of a series and Bad Bachelor looked like a fun book. However, the book was released a couple of years ago, and in fact, there are three books out in this series. The cover is new, and it is cute and eye catching, but this ARC could also have been checked out in my own local library. Taking all that and putting it aside, I did find this novel pretty easy to get into and the story engaging.

I easily identified with our heroine Darcy. A young woman who is kind of shy, yet she has this edgier side with her pierced tongue and tattoo sleeves. She’s a little insecure and likes to escape into her library and a good book. Reed is a good looking, charming guy. On the surface he looks to be everything the Bad Bachelor app says he is, but when we see what’s going on behind closed doors he becomes much more interesting. I liked the depth these two interesting characters brought to this kind of light synopsis. I was mildly surprised at how invested I became in this story and really pleased with how the characters evolved and the story ended. You can’t ask for much more than that!

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

“What I loved the most about this book is the characterization of the hero and heroine.” Romance Library

Click this link to purchase!* Bad Bachelor (Bad Bachelors)

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I will receive a small stipend

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This Chick Read: Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Cassie Hanwell is a decorated firefighter with a plan of rising through the ranks. She gets a call from her estranged mother who wants her to move up to the Northeast because she has recently lost sight in one eye and needs help navigating her new world. After a surprise incident lands Cassie in hot water at work, her work plans derail and she decides to start anew in Maryland with her mother. Unfortunately the firehouse family she is joining is nothing like the one she left behind and she has to prove herself as well as live with a woman she hasn’t had a relationship with since she was sixteen.

There was a lot going on in this book but Katherine Center did a great job of not overwhelming the reader and somehow tying all of the plots together into a cohesive story and a really solid novel.

At first I thought Cassie was never going to warm up. She had an awful back story and didn’t seem willing to forgive her mother. If it hadn’t been for the change in firefighter houses and how she tried so hard to prove herself to the guys I may not have been able to wait her out. Fortunately her interactions at work helped make the pages turn quickly, THEN she finally warmed up to her mother! Whew! Throw in the side love story and by the second half of the book I was all in.

This was a novel about relationships. Cassie’s relationship with her mother, the guys at work, her attraction to the rookie, her relationship with her father. There were some heartwarming and heartbreaking moments and even though there were a few different sub plots I liked how they all added to Cassie’s story and didn’t work against each other. All in all, I liked this novel, it was easy to read and made me feel good at the end. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

“I loved every minute of this book and was sorry to turn the last page. A wonderful, humorous story of love and forgiveness with a strong and endearing main lead, ‘Things you save in a fire’ is a book you won’t forget.” Happy Tonic

“I loved this book- at times it has a light touch- but Katherine also provides some meat in the situations Cassie must face- and decide how to handle them.” Traveling with T

Click this link to purchase!* Things You Save in a Fire: A Novel

Copyright 2020 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I will receive a small stipend.

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