REVIEW: Tortured by Kate Givans

Tortured by Kate Givans

Series: #1 Tortured Soul
Published: 19th July 2014
Genre: NA Contemporary
Format: kindle | for review

Overall: DNF

goodreads | amazon

Summary:      A contemporary romantic drama about loss, healing, and love's ability to reach beyond scars and secrets, no matter how deep or hidden.

WARNING: This book is intended for 18+ readers ONLY. Potentially triggering content and concepts in books to follow.

More than a year after the death of his best friend, Josh is still tormented by the past. Everything changes when free-spirited Willow barges into his life. She challenges him, helps him feel something other than the overwhelming pain, sadness, and anger.

There’s just one problem.

Underneath that carefree spirit, Willow is elusive and secretive. Josh believes she may be fighting a few demons of her own, but the harder he tries to uncover the truth, the more she pushes him away.

Can Josh get her to open up before it’s too late? Or will he discover that some secrets are better left untold?

I was contacted to review this book and post for the blog tour, after reading the summary on goodreads I wanted to give it a shot. I have been reading a lot of New Adult lately--too much, honestly-- and I figured I may enjoy this one. I liked that it would be told from a male's POV.

I'm pretty sure that if I read this a year ago, or even a few months ago, I would love it. But I am so burned out on new adult and the same storyline that I could not take the book seriously, at all.
I'm over the harboring secrets, the push and pull, helping each other through their "dark" pasts, blah blah blah... ENOUGH!!!

From the very very very beginning, there was no one else but Willow and Josh and this attraction that Josh had towards her for no reason. At all. I could not find a single moment when I thought "I could see why you would like her." We knew nothing about her other than she smelled like vanilla and sugar and had a "side smile." That's not enough for me to want to be with someone. Especially the vanilla and sugar scent. Gag. [Two of my very least favorite scents....ever.]

Josh is harboring all this pain for possibly killing his best friend on a drunken night and Willow blows in and brings him smiles and laughs and etc etc... the same thing.
I'm sure something else along the way may be different than any other book, and maybe Willow's story grows and we learn more about her, but I just couldn't bring myself to care enough to read further.

This may very well be a book for someone, judging by the reviews on Goodreads, but this book was just not for me!!

I need to run from the NA contemporary genre and come back when I've cleared my head of the repetitiveness. Redundant.

It's repetitive and redundant. It's repetitive and redundant. (Gilmore Girls, anyone?)

REVIEW: Connected by Kim Karr

Connected by Kim Karr
Published: 22nd March 2013
Format: Kindle
Genre: New Adult
Overall: [DNF]
Goodreads | Amazon

What if a ‘Once in a Lifetime’ could happen twice?

Suffering from a past full of tragedy, Dahlia London's soul has been left completely shattered. Happily ever after is a far cry from reality in her world. But, when she is reconnected with her past, the bonds that form are irrefutable.
When River Wilde, lead singer of The Wilde Ones, comes back into Dahlia’s life, the intensity that fires their relationship combined with underlying feelings that have never died lead her to believe she has met her soulmate.

Struggling with confusion as old connections fade and new ones begin, Dahlia's grief begins to lift--but guilt remains. River wants to be the one to mend all that is torn within her.

But with a past that is never really gone, can their future survive?

My thoughts:
To be fair, I give this book about a 2½ to 3 star rating because it started off really really good.  But somewhere in the middle it slowed down to almost a crashing hault and I was bored to tears!

You first meet Dahlia who is a happy relationship with her long time boyfriend Ben, when she decides to go to a club and there she meets River. There is insta-love that she doesn't want to admit to and for the next 4 years she pushes him out of her mind and ends up getting engaged to Ben. And then Ben dies. [spoiler? get over it. It's better to crush your soul now if you actually plan on reading it.] I could handle Ben's death, and I thought she did a proper [if there is a such thing] amount of grieving and self loathing before decided to get back into the world and take a job offered by her best friend to interview....River Wilde. [Anyone else hear the ominous dun-dun-dunnn?]

The way River takes control of the situation and let's her know from the beginning how he feels, made me love him. The fact that Dahlia  let herself feel something she didn't want to be real because she felt it betrayed or lessen Ben's love; proved to me that she was stronger than she let on.

Ohh folks, this is where I have to stop with the lovey dovey-ness towards this book.

After Dahlia decides that she can't live in this fantasy any longer and must go home and deal with real life thus begins the back and forth and even when they finally DTR [determine the relationship], it still just feels like random, pointless scenes to fill the book until either the climax--or what I hoped would happen soon--the ending.

I gave up half way through the chapters that were from River's POV. He thought too much about how he loves her & her pouting and how he wants her body. I didn't get a real sense of his life and therefore, I was done, 80% through.

This may be the book for some, but it just wasn't for me.

Plot:
Characters: ½
Ending: --
Writing:
Cover: (The girl looks brunette though Dahlia is supposed to be blonde.)

Author Info:
Kim karr lives in Florida with her husband and four kids. She’s always had a love for reading books and writing. Being an English major in college, she wanted to teach at the college level but that was not to be. She went on to receive an MBA and became a project manager until quitting to raise her family. Kim currently works part-time with her husband and recently decided to embrace one of her biggest passions—writing.
Learn more on her: Website | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook

REVIEW: Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

Published: September 11th, 2012 by Margaret K. McElderry
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Format: Hardcover
Goodreads | Amazon | Author

Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess. She will dance and summon her tribe's deity, who will inhabit Liyana's body and use magic to bring rain to the desert. But when the dance ends, Liyana is still there. Her tribe is furious--and sure that it is Liyana's fault. Abandoned by her tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert. Until a boy walks out of the dust in search of her.
Korbyn is a god inside his vessel, and a trickster god at that. He tells Liyana that five other gods are missing, and they set off across the desert in search of the other vessels. The desert tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. But the journey is dangerous, even with a god’s help. And not everyone is willing to believe the trickster god’s tale.
The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she has no choice--she must die for her tribe to live. Unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate--or a human girl can muster some magic of her own.

My Thoughts:
This book started off promising and somewhere through the middle of it I slowly began losing interest.
However, this is not because the book wasn't good; it was simply because this isn't my type of genre. If this were in movie form, I'm sure it would be a favourite I'd watch over and over!
While reading, I thought that it'd be an awesome book to turn into a realistic anime style movie. The imagery portrayed in this book deserves to be showed through the best  way possible if it were to be a movie. And I feel that CGI or any computer generated images for the sake of an actor who is placed in front of a green screen would just not do it.

But that has nothing to do with the book.

I loved Liyana's fighting spirit who kept pushing forward to find her goddess no matter the crazy things they encountered.

When I was about 100 pages from the end, I read the last chapter and prologue and was surprised by the ending. That was not where I saw the book going. But it wasn't enough for me to finish the parts I had skipped over.

If you like high fantasy that needs a very visual brain, you'll love this. It is not romantic driven, but it can be sweet and sexy at times!

Even though I didn't finish it, I still give it 3 stars [or owls].