This Chicks Sunday Commentary: My 5 Most Anticipated Oct’19 Releases

Now, I know my taste in books may not match your own, but hopefully I’m going to remind you of a couple of releases you may have forgotten was approaching. Or maybe one of these books will just sound good and you’ll add it to your TBR. In either case, these are 5 books that I’m looking forward to reading… some day. LOL

#5 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASE

Release Date: October 8th

Genre: YA Contemporary

I love it when something happens in your life to make you take a look at how you are living it and make you want to change things. And she works in a bookstore. How could I resist this one?

Synopsis:

From the moment she first learned to read, literary genius Darcy Wells has spent most of her time living in the worlds of her books. There, she can avoid the crushing reality of her mother’s hoarding and pretend her life is simply ordinary. But when a new property manager becomes more active in the upkeep of their apartment complex, the only home Darcy has ever known outside of her books suddenly hangs in the balance.

While Darcy is struggling to survive beneath the weight of her mother’s compulsive shopping, Asher Fleet, a former teen pilot with an unexpectedly shattered future, walks into the bookstore where she works…and straight into her heart. For the first time in her life, Darcy can’t seem to find the right words. Fairy tales are one thing, but real love makes her want to hide inside her carefully constructed ink-and-paper bomb shelter.

Still, after spending her whole life keeping people out, something about Asher makes Darcy want to open up. But securing her own happily-ever-after will mean she’ll need to stop hiding and start living her own truth—even if it’s messy.

Click this link to purchase! The Library of Lost Things

#4 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASE

Release Date: October 8th

Genre: Contemporary Romance

I can’t resist my favorite enemies to lovers trope! This one looks totally cute. Oh, and did I ever mention my first job out of school was working for a Tool Company? LOL.

Synopsis:

Emmie Echavarre is a professional faker. She has to be to survive as one of the few female employees at Nuts & Bolts, a power tool company staffed predominantly by gruff, burly men. From nine to five, Monday through Friday, she’s tough as nails–the complete opposite of her easy-going real self.

One thing she doesn’t have to fake? Her disdain for coworker Tate Rasmussen. Tate has been hostile to her since the day they met. Emmie’s friendly greetings and repeated attempts to get to know him failed to garner anything more than scowls and terse one-word answers. Too bad she can’t stop staring at his Thor-like biceps…

When Emmie and Tate are forced to work together on a charity construction project, things get…heated. Emmie’s beginning to see that beneath Tate’s chiseled exterior lies a soft heart, but it will take more than a few kind words to erase the past and convince her that what they have is real.

Click this link to purchases! Faker

#3 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASE!

Release Date: October 22

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Yes, well, after reading Unhoneymooner’s I’m a Christina Lauren fan. This tale of love and redemption sounds like a must read!

Synopsis:

Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak.

During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.

Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice.

Click this link to purchase! Twice in a Blue Moon

#2 MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASE!

Release Date: October, 1

Genre: YA Historical

Well, I can tell you one thing. I’m not listening to the audiobook while driving. I couldn’t see from all of the tears I shed for Salt to the Sea! This one looks to be just as fabulous, and possibly as heartbreaking. Can’t wait!

Synopsis:

Madrid, 1957. Under the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, Spain is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, tourists and foreign businessmen flood into the country under the welcoming guise of sunshine and wine. Among them is eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of a Texas oil tycoon, who arrives in Madrid with his parents hoping to connect with the country of his mother’s birth through the lens of his camera. Photography–and fate–introduce him to Ana, whose family’s interweaving obstacles reveal the lingering grasp of the Spanish Civil War–as well as chilling definitions of fortune and fear. Daniel’s photographs leave him with uncomfortable questions amidst shadows of danger. He is backed into a corner of decisions to protect those he loves. Lives and hearts collide, revealing an incredibly dark side to the sunny Spanish city.


Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys once again shines light into one of history’s darkest corners in this epic, heart-wrenching novel about identity, unforgettable love, repercussions of war, and the hidden violence of silence–inspired by the true post-war struggles of Spain.Includes vintage media interstitials, oral history commentary, photos, and more.

Click this link to purchase! The Fountains of Silence

MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASE FOR OCTOBER ’19!

Release Date: October 8th

Genre: New Adult, Fantasy, Horror

It looks dark. It looks mysterious. Dark and mysterious. Mysterious and dark. Oh, and magical. That’s all I’ve got, but I’m still going to read it.

Synopsis:

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

Click this link to purchase! Ninth House

Now you know what my Top 5 are for next month. I’m sure yours differs, right? What books are you interested in reading that release in October?

Let me know in the comments!

Deb

Friday YA: Storm and Fury (Harbinger #1) by Jennifer Armentrout

Trinity Marrow is the only human living in a community of Wardens, guardian Gargoyle shifters whose main purpose is to protect humans against a Demon invasion. Trinity’s ability to see ghosts has her stumbling upon a conspiracy that could be tied to her mothers death a year earlier and may be led from inside her own community. But seeing ghosts is not the only secret she’s hiding! Her secret gets revealed when Wardens from the DC community come to visit and she’s forced to use her powers to save her own life.

Storm and Fury was so easy to fall into. Somehow the situations and characters felt familiar and about 1/3 of the way through I had an aha! moment and realized this is a spinoff to a The Dark Elements series I’d read several years ago in which Zayne was featured prominently. In this novel, Zayne’s past experiences with Demons comes in handy as they travel to DC where he and Trinity meet up with some familiar past characters (a few of whom are demons) to investigate the disappearance of her friend.

I liked Trinity’s character a lot. She was an interesting mix of innocence, strength, and stubbornness. As the plot moves forward and her secrets are revealed she becomes even more interesting. Her failing eyesight, a very human frailty, is an interesting contrast to a girl who refuses to admit weakness. In fact, it takes a little while for me to figure out she’s actually almost blind. Read the Afterword about her ailment, Retinitis Pigmentosa, and how that disease has a personal tie to the author.

Zayne was a mystery even though he’d been part of a previous series. I couldn’t figure out his motives right away and I liked him as the love interest, but at the same time I felt he was a little more mature than Trinity. As his life was revealed and I realized all that he’d been through I realized what a great fit he actually was for her, as they had similar tragedies in their background. After I figured out what series and where I read his story before I liked him even more, but if you hadn’t read The Dark Elements Series, I think you can jump right in and not miss a beat in this story. It stands on it’s own.

Jennifer Armentrout does such a great job of writing in this YA fantasy genre. I love her world building and she has a deft hand with giving characters interesting backgrounds and emotional ups and downs. All things that keep me reading and move the plot forward. It’s rare that I get bored and I certainly didn’t with this novel. I relished reading it. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

“I absolutely love the way the author writes relationships because they are always the slow burn romances that begins with flirtatious banter and escalates to sexual tension that literally everyone can feel. I loved watching Trinity and Zayne come together and the steaminess of their relationship. I thought that they definitely complimented one another.” The Reading Chemist

“Overall, this book was everything I wanted. If you want action, romance, kick-ass gargoyles, and a girl with an eye condition representing how strong she is this is the book for you.” Classy x Book Reviews

Click this link to purchase!* Storm and Fury (The Harbinger Series)

Copyright 2019 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate

This Chick Read: Until it Fades by K. A. Tucker

Catherine lives in the small town of Balsam, Pennsylvania working as a waitress in a truck stop while trying to quietly raise her five year old daughter. At twenty-four she has already seen her fair share of press due to her involvement with the son of a prominent Balsam family and she wants to steer clear of anything high profile and just quietly live her life. One night while traveling home from a bad blind date she comes upon a sports car that has crashed against a tree and even though there’s danger from the car catching on fire she saves the life of the passenger of the vehicle. Little does she know that by that one event her life will be put back in the spotlight. She has just saved the life of NHL star Brett Madden.

There were moments in this novel that I really enjoyed. I liked Catherine’s fight against adversity. She had gotten involved with a teacher while in high school and because he was from a prominent family she was black balled and treated horribly as the temptress while the teacher who was thirteen years older got off without a slap of the hand. Reading about that subject from Catherine’s perspective was tough. You feel so bad for her and want her life to be better than it is. You also totally get why she doesn’t want anything to do with Brett and the publicity machine that follows him. Of course, it’s a love story and you know Brett’s going to help her overcome that stigma, but that didn’t make it any easier to read although that contrast did make their love story shine brighter.

Brett was a pretty normal guy for being a pro NHL player and son of a super famous movie star and he was written as the white knight in a way. However, the bulk of the conflict centered around Catherine, her daughter, and the town of Balsam. She had some great friends who added character and humor to the novel and I enjoyed how her true spirit was portrayed and how she finally got the respect she deserved. I found it kind of strange that the romance felt underplayed, but Catherine did have a lot of inner turmoil to work through.

If you like romances where your heroine overcomes adversity, Until it
Fades is the novel for you! I enjoyed the outcome because of what Catherine went through in her past and found she and Brett easy to root for. It did take me a little bit to overcome my uneasiness of her childhood romance with her teacher, I’ll admit, so because of that it gets a three and a half rating. ❤️❤️❤️❣️

Opinions from around the Blogosphere

” Unfortunately I didn’t love it – it was enjoyable but nothing in the story stood out making it an average read. ” Faith Books and Pixie Dust

Click this link to purchase!* Until It Fades: A Novel

Copyright 2019 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate

This Chick Read: His Dark Magic (Northern Circle Coven #1) by Pat Esden

Chloe comes from a magical family but a tragic accident from her past has brought shame down upon her and she has escaped away to college in Vermont to re-evaluate and recover her self confidence. When she is approached by the handsome Devlin to come and check out the Northern Circle Coven Chloe is hesitant, but decides to take a chance and meet with them. She is excited to learn that their purposes align, to use magic to heal, and she agrees to join their group. 

Athena, the high priestess of the Northern Circle coven has an ancient relic that she wants the coven to use to bring Merlin back to life, saying that they’ll use his knowledge to make great discoveries in the medical field. Her purpose is actually quite a bit darker which gives this novel a malevolent feel turning it from a romance to a thriller.

I really liked a lot of the characters in His Dark Magic, but there was something holding me back from loving them. Chloe seemed tentative and even though she is taking a chance with joining them, she is fearful of her choice. It turns out her gut feelings were right, but I did rather wish she’d just owned that decision from the start. The surrounding characters, including her love interest Devlin were interesting and I wanted to know a lot more about them, however, the author chose to only give depth to Chloe’s character leaving the others feeling rather 2-D. 

I liked the idea of this book more than I actually liked the book. My feelings were pretty ambivalent which is too bad because it had so much promise! 

❤️❤️❤️

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

Click this link to purchase!*His Dark Magic

Copyright 2018 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate

This Chick Read: A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) by V. E. Schwab

I was excited to finally get to A Gathering of Shadows, the second book in V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series. I was fascinated by these worlds she has created with a series of London’s that went from no magic to full magic, colorless and colorful. There were moments of brilliance, but  those moments were overshadowed by a dullness, my feelings mirroring her London’s spectrum of colors.

I still really liked the characters. Delilah is a fascinating mix of distrust and curious cat. In A Gathering of Shadows she expands her knowledge of the magic she holds by serving as a pirate and tutoring under the captain Alucard. Alucard was probably my favorite new character in this book, his roguishness was charming and I couldn’t quite figure him out, which held my interest. Kell, stuck in London, held captive by his own spell tying he and his brother Rhy’s lives together, a tether that was necessary but now binds his adventurous soul. Maybe it was because of that tether thet the first half of the book was really slow moving and dare I say boring? Part of the fun of the first novel were his journeys, and there were only a couple of those in A Gathering of Shadows. Kell and Lila apart also made the story lack fire, noticeably, because when her ship finally docked in Maresh even the thought of the two of them spotting each other made me sit up in my seat scanning the pages for that moment. That moment did not disappoint.

The latter half of the book made up for my lackluster feelings for the first. It was vibrant, exciting, and passionate! However, I can’t forget my struggle to keep slogging through the first half so I am giving this one only ❤️❤️❤️.

Do you agree? What kept you reading this book? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Click the link to purchase! A Gathering of Shadows: A Novel (Shades of Magic)

Copyright 2017 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

This Chick Read: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Spoiler alert!

I think we’ve all read books whose reviews were so great but once read it we were like ” what was all the fuss about?” This was one of those for me. Not to take anything away from the author because the book was very well written, it just didn’t strike a chord with me. Here’s what I felt were its issues; the characters were too flawed, kind of whiny, and way too tortured. I’ll admit that I might be a little older than this book’s target audience but I read YA and NA books a lot and that doesn’t usually bug me.
Abby Abernathy and Travis Maddox’s best friends were dating. This fact throws them together and while Travis is hot, he is also a slut. So Abby declares him in the friend zone and they stay in that zone getting to know each other. Travis starts to have feelings for Abby, but she’s clueless. Each time someone tries to make her see it, she says he’s just a friend, she’s not attracted to him, etc. He gets mad, gets drunk and has a one night stand with one of the many girls who chase after him. Yeah, that’ll endear you to her Travis. First strike. Travis  also fights in these underground college fight clubs. That’s how he pays for his school and living expenses. Ok I’ll give him this one, a guy has got to pay his way, right? But dating material? Let’s see how this goes.

On to Ms. Abernathy. Abby comes from a dysfunctional family. Her dad is an ex famous poker player who has fallen on bad times and bad luck. Abby has run away from her troubled past and is trying to start fresh. Not a bad thing, true. However, she decides that leaving that life also means she has to act and date a certain way. She wears pearls and cardigans and wants to date guys named Parker. Kind of stereotypical which probably wouldn’t have annoyed me so much if we weren’t getting glimpses into her not so perfect past. Hypocritical? Yes.

So the two of them finally give each other a chance, but they fight all the time and  they are both so insecure that those insecurities start to eat away at them. Abby constantly gets scared of the strength of her or Travis’ feelings that she runs away from him constantly. Why does he like her so much? I just can’t figure that out!  At this point I’m really tired of the back and forth, angst, pain and crying, but I’m almost done so I keep reading.

Abby’s past comes back to haunt her in the form of her father who owes the mob $25k. I’m thinking what?? Where did this plot turn come from? Abby, now a pro poker player who was blamed by her father for making his luck go bad, must go to Vegas to win the money to pay her father’s debt before the mob “teaches him a lesson”. They are short on the cash, Travis has to beat up everyone to save them and then takes the mobster up on his offer of being his “fighter”. This just keeps getting worse, right? The mob tries to kill them yet our boy Travis wants to be the mobsters fighter? That makes no sense! Abby does the first sensible thing in the book and leaves his ass.

Travis cries, begs and pleads, she says no way Jose and they are broken up. Though they still love each other. Months go by. I’ll say that again. Months go by! She goes on a date with Parker, Travis see’s her with him. He’s got an underground fight that night and he asks her to leave her date and go support him. She does! I’m tearing my hair out! The place the fight is being held in  catches fire. He saves her they declare their love and run off to Vegas to get married. Seriously. That one is a divorce waiting to happen. Yet we have our HEA.

As you can tell, I did not like this book. Yet I finished it.  I can only give it  ❤️❤️❣️. Just in case you’re interested in reading the story from Travis’s POV, you can! The book is called Walking Disaster. I kid you not! Lol.


Click the link to purchase! Beautiful Disaster: A Novel (Beautiful Disaster Series)

Copyright 2017 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

This Chick Read: The Matchmaker’s Playbook (Wingman Inc 1) by Rachel Van Dyken

First impression: boy were these guys sluts!   This novel, written by a woman, was told from the guys perspective.  The premise was silly, and the author wrote it very tongue in cheek.  Ian knew he was a slut, and he was pretty funny about it and the writing was really entertaining.  Ian and Lex best friends since childhood, are in college, very attractive and pretty bright. They create a business based on a mathematical algorithm that matches up girls/women  of all types and sizes to their man.  Ian and Rex take it one step further by tutoring them in how to look more attractive, go on dates, and have a first kiss, very Pygmalion-esque.   Continue reading “This Chick Read: The Matchmaker’s Playbook (Wingman Inc 1) by Rachel Van Dyken”

This Chick Read: Beyond the Stars by Stacy Wise

Beyond the Stars is a New Adult romance.  New Adult is a relatively new term, at least to me.  It is not YA, where the characters are in their teens, but is about people in their low to mid 20’s.  The storyline for Beyond the Stars is every New Adult woman’s fantasy, at least it was mine Continue reading “This Chick Read: Beyond the Stars by Stacy Wise”