Recent Reads I've Loved!

Summary:
May Fredericks hates New York. Which is fair enough, since New York seems to hate her back. Just weeks after moving from Wisconsin to Manhattan, she receives the world's worst marriage proposal, stabs her boyfriend with a shrimp fork in a very public venue, and accidentally becomes notorious. And that’s before she gets mugged.

At her wit's end, May washes up at a Packers bar in Greenwich Village, where she meets a surly, unhelpful guy who hates her shoes and calls her ex a douche.

His name is Ben. He used to be a chef. Now he's a rooftop beekeeper with anger management issues. She wouldn't even like him, but he reminds her of home … and he knows where to find all the best food in the Village.

She makes him laugh. He buys her tacos and cowboy boots. The longer they’re stuck together, the better May and Ben get along … and the harder they fall. TRULY is a quirky, modern New York love story unlike any you've read before.

My Review:
Ruthie Knox does it again! I’ve loved her ever since I read About Last Night and she’s won her place again in my heart as one of my top favorite contemporary writers with her new novel, Truly.

There’s something about Knox’ writing. I mean, there’s a lot of contemporary romance writers out there right now. But Knox takes it several shades deeper—both emotionally and at a simple craft level. She just an incredibly gifted writer. The way she works metaphor. The way she makes an art out of sentences. With other contemporary writers, you might get an occasional burst of beauty at the artistic level once or twice in an entire book, but with Knox’s writing, it’s the entire way through. But she’s sneaky about it also. She does it in such a way that it doesn’t detract from the voice of the characters or the story.

Speaking of characters! They are so deep and nuanced that you as the reader are just immediately in it with them. I was sucked into this story from page one and spit out on the other end totally dazed and emotionally sated by May and Ben’s journey. That’s another thing. This story was unique! Which yeah. I read a ton. The stories run together. This one sticks out in my head. Because Ruthie Knox is just awesome like that. Five gazillion stars.

Um, we’re on the gazillion star rating system, right? Yep, when it comes to Ruthie Knox we are ;)

Comes out August 5th
Price: $3.99 e-book, worth it folks, IMO!
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Summary:

Lauren Layne’s New Adult novel tells the story of a girl with secrets, a guy with scars, and a love that could save them both... or destroy them.

When Olivia Middleton abandons the glamour of Park Avenue for a remote, coastal town in Maine, everyone assumes she’s being the kind do-gooder she’s always been. But Olivia has a secret: helping an injured war veteran reenter society isn’t about charity—it’s about penance. Only, Olivia’s client isn’t the grateful elderly man she’s expecting. Instead, he’s a brooding twenty-four-year-old who has no intention of being Olivia’s path to redemption . . . and whose smoldering gaze and forbidden touch might be her undoing.

Paul Langdon doesn’t need a mirror to show him he’s no longer the hotshot quarterback he was before the war. He knows he’s ugly—inside and out. He’ll do anything to stay in self-imposed exile, even accept his father’s ultimatum that Paul tolerate the newest caretaker for three months or lose his inheritance. But Paul doesn’t count on the beautiful twenty-two-year-old who makes him long for things that he can never have. And the more she slips past his defenses, the more keeping his distance is impossible.

Now Paul and Olivia have to decide: Will they help each other heal? Or are they forever broken?

My Review:

Guys. GUYS! The synopsis doesn’t let you in on the secret, but I will: this is a modern day beauty and the beast story!

Which is only Heather’s secret Achilles’ heel of favorite story tropes of all time. FAVORITE. Yeah. I was about halfway through before I realized. That should’ve been obvious to me from the beginning. And then I was like, oh my gosh, Lauren Layne, you have won my heart forever if you don’t screw this up.

And guess what? She didn’t screw it up!

In fact, the book was freaking awesome. I loved it. Girl moves to mysterious hidden away mansion with disfigured beast-like veteran. They’ve both got their damage, and maybe, just maybe, each is just what the other needs to heal. That this wasn’t any, awww, you poor wounded soldier, let me Florence Nightingale you kind of thing. Ha ha, no, this was more, he shouts and is an ass hole and she gives it right back with a whole ton of sass and then it gets hot as hell with sexual tension and you have to start fanning yourself with your e-reader!

Oh yeah. My kind of updated Beauty and the Beast story ;)

Anyway, this was an amazing read! Yes, it had its super sexy moments, but not at the expense of the deeper emotional themes too. At the same time, you didn’t feel like the author was using PTSD as just a surface plot device. It felt real and complex and humanized in the person of Paul Langdon. Olivia was a super strong heroine too—none of that wimpy, whiny heroine nonsense here—and their love story, obstacles, and growth felt both very real and very natural. These are characters, that in spite of their many flaws, you are rooting for.

An excellent read. This is not an author that I’ve heard a lot about before--haha, maybe everyone else has and I'm just behind the bandwagon!--but now I want to go and read her backlist of books because this one really stands above a lot of the usual fare that I read!

Comes out: September 2nd
Price: $2.99

*I got these books as advanced readers copies. I get to read a bunch of advanced readers copies, perks of being an author :) I usually only pimp the ones on my blog that I really loved :)