The Perfect Girlfriend - Karen Hamilton Review

“Juliette loves Nate.
She will follow him anywhere. She's even become a flight
attendant for his airline, so she can keep a closer eye on him.
They are meant to be.
The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing.
Because Juliette has a plan to win him back.
She is the perfect girlfriend.
And she'll make sure no one stops her from
getting exactly what she wants.
True love hurts, but Juliette knows it's worth all the pain...”

Thank you to Net Galley and Wildfire publishing for providing me with an ARC copy! All opinions in this review are my own.

This was yet another brilliantly realistic psychological thriller! Again, because this is a thriller there’s not too much I can say about the plot without ruining it, so sorry! It follows Juliette who is sure that she is the perfect girlfriend and will stop at literally nothing to show that she is the perfect girlfriend and win back her ex-boyfriend no matter what the cost. The things she does at first are slightly creepy but very realistic and could actually happen if you put enough thought into it and that’s what makes this so creepy! As Juliette escalates in the things she does to prove that she’s so perfect they escalate again in creepy, realistic ways and that’s what makes this so great!

Again, one of the best things about this was that the story was told from the psychotic side and not the victims side. This gave us so much more insight into her reasonings behind her actions and it’s so fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes. Juliette truly believes that she is in the right and is doing everything to prove that she’s the best girlfriend and the ex-boyfriend is just being temporarily blind to how great she is, and people are dragging him in the wrong direction and he’ll soon see how perfect she is. Using the Airline jobs as a pilot and air hostess really helped make this book come together and was a new and interesting setting for a book that worked so so well!

This another one of those books where you’re not really sure what to make of the main character; you feel sorry for Juliette at first, especially since the book starts with some of Juliette’s background and what happened to her brother. But to me she was obviously delusional and one of the things that got me the most, was that I was sort of rooting for Juliette to be back together with her ex, Nate despite all that she was doing and most of it, if she hadn’t taken it that one step too far, I could see a lot of people doing in normal everyday life which is crazy!

I figured out the twist literally a few pages before it was revealed and it was a well thought-out a rounded twist that made sense and wasn’t ridiculous which again, was great. It didn’t have a solid ending but in a way, it sort of made sense and I wasn’t mad at it!

Overall, this is a great thriller and I would definitely it! It’s being released on March 08^th 2018 and you can find pre-order links below:
Amazon UK: Hardback / Kindle 

Waterstones 
Book depository

Make Me Want - Katee Robert Review

"Lucy Baudin’s ex did a number on her self-esteem, but it’s time for her to regain control. In her job as a lawyer she’s bold, confident. But in the bedroom she needs inspiration to reawaken her inner seductress. Asking her friend Gideon Novak for help seems wrong…yet so deliciously right! "

Thank you to Net Galley and Harlequin Dare for providing me with an ARC copy of this book. All opinions are truthful and my own. 

This book follows Lucy who needs a husband within the year to help her get the promotion she wants at work and in order to find her this husband, she asks one of her old friend Gideon for help as he runs a recruitment company. Gideon was also best friends with Lucy’s ex-fiancé and was the one who had to break it to Lucy that her fiancé was cheating on her.

Ok so my main issue here was the plot – the main point of this whole book was that Lucy needed a husband because otherwise she wouldn’t get the position as partner. She then goes on to mention that a previous co-worker went for partner but was overlooked and her male counter-part got given the position all because she was single. I just find that whole notion and concept so backwards and ridiculous and I honestly can’t believe that a book written in 2017 is using this as a plot point and as an excuse to find a blood fake husband to get around it!! Lucy is a lawyer and helps defend criminals, yet she stands for that sort of bullshit? What a lad of crap – I honestly can’t believe that her solution to this is to find herself a fake husband – it really annoyed me.

The other thing was that she not only asked Gideon to find her a husband, she also asked him to teach her ‘sex tips’ and basically give her sex lessons as her ex-fiancé told her one of the reason that he cheated on her was because she didn’t keep him satisfied in bed. I’m just going to interject here and say that I did enjoy that Lucy couldn’t shake the toxic things her ex said as I think it’s very realistic of coming out of a toxic relationship as all the bad things they said about you sticks with you the most and can leave you feeling like you’re not good enough for anything or anyone. So I definitely liked how this was shown in the book but I did think that the fact she was asking for bloody sex lessons from Gideon was a bit ridiculous. I mean there are god knows how many articles online to help or other ways she could help learn to improve her sex life without using Gideon.

So it’s obvious where this was going to go – Lucy develops feelings for Gideon and Gideon had feeling for Lucy way back when she decided to date Jeff over him so that wasn’t going to be made better by sleeping with Lucy. But what annoyed me again, was that despite Lucy having he balls to somehow date and marry and sleep with whichever random man that Gideon found to be her future, she couldn’t tell him how she felt?! She was willing to marry a complete stranger instead of simply telling Gideon how she felt and maybe marrying him instead. She had nothing to lose as he is meant to be finding her a bloody fake husband so why the hell did she not tell him and possibly have a fantastic life because of it! Gideon was just as bad – he also had nothing to lose and yet he still didn’t say anything to her despite having  had feelings for her for however long – he’d rather find her a fake husband than admit his bloody feelings and it’s all a pile of crap. 

The writing for this book is what saved it slightly and despite the bad plot points is was a well written book and the sex scenes were super steamy. But ultimately, as mentioned above I couldn’t get over all the bad plot points which is why I rated this 2 stars.

Autumn Book Haul 2017 - Part One!

Hi everyone and welcome to part one of my Autumn Book Haul 2017!

I've got a lot of books from September to October - this is mainly due to the fact that I had a few Amazon UK vouchers which I've got given through my work which expired at the end of 2017 and needed to be spent! I've been trying not to buy a lot of books in the past few months as I knew that I would be needing to spend these vouchers and would be buying loadssssss of books! I've also been unhauling books just before I started this blog and I've managed to fill 2 boxes of books which I've donated to charity so far :)

I managed to get just over 30 books in total for this book haul and I've split it into 2 posts to make things easier. This is part one (obviously!) and the books featured here are mainly romance books. I'm going to list the books I've got and once I've read them and the reviews are up I'll link the reviews to the book :)

As mentioned above I did get all these off of Amazon but I got most of them through the Marketplace option where anyone can sell their copies of the item on Amazon. I use this option a lot on Amazon as you can get used books which are in "Like New" and "Very Good" condition for a lot cheaper than brand new from Amazon and is therefore a much more affordable option of buying books! Some of these are also sold through Amazon which means that you can get these items delivered on prime also.

The Cocktail Series - by Alice Clayton
Wallbanger
Rusty Nailed
Scredrivered
Mai Tai'd Up

Hacker Series - Meredith Wild
Hardwired
Hardpressed
Hardline

Losing It - Cora Carmack
Faking It - Cora Carmack
Finding It - Cora Carmack
Nuts - Alice Clayton  
Beautiful Bastard - Christina Lauren
Beautiful Stranger - Christina Lauren
Ugly Love - Colleen Hoover
It Ends With Us - Colleen Hoover
A Love Letter to Whiskey - Kandi Steiner
Unteachable - Leah Raeder
Simon and the Homosapiens Agenda
Three Dark Crowns - Kendare Blake
One Dark Throne - Kendare Blake

Once the reviews have been posted I'll attach a link to the book!

Do you have any books off this list which I need to get to ASAP? Or have you got any of these on your TBR that you can't wait to read? I'd love to hear!

Fear - Dirk Kurbjuweit Review

"You'd die for your family. But would you kill for them?

Family is everything.
So what if yours was being terrorised by a neighbour - a man who doesn't listen to reason, whose actions become more erratic and sinister with each passing day? And those you thought would help - the police, your lawyer - can't help you.
You become afraid to leave your family at home alone. But there's nothing more you can do to protect them.
Is there?"
 

Thank you to NetGalley and Orion Books for providing me with an ARC! All opinions are honest and my own. This isn't released until January 25th 2018 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon UK for kindle and in paperback.

Reading the synopsis, I went into this thinking it was going to be a tense, fast-paced thriller however I was left disappointed. This was an interesting read nevertheless however it was not the one that I was expecting.

This story follows Randolph and their family as they move into their new home only for them to be stalked by their neighbour who lives in the basement. He sends’ Randolph’s wife letters and poems, spies on the family and even reports them to authorities with false accusations. This all sounds quite chilling and terrifying especially when since this story is loosely based off the Authors own experiences with being stalked by his neighbour. You already know how this is going to end in a sense, as this book begins with his father in prison and you find out early on why he is in prison.

The writing of this made it feel a lot more like an autobiography than a fictional story which is what I was expecting or really wanting. This is only confirmed with all the backstory which is littered throughout the plot about Randolph’s childhood and growing up and also his father’s passion for guns. Whilst some these backstories were interesting, they did pull away from the main plot and I didn’t find a lot of them useful to the main plot line of the stalking neighbour. I understand that a lot of the backstory about Randolph’ relationship with his father were meant to lend to how his father perhaps helped him with fixing the neighbour problem but a lot of it could have been cut out to make for a more streamlined story. 

I feel like this book did portray “fear” itself well and how it can have an effect on how you act both in the moment and also how it effects your everyday life. The false accusations make Randolph start questioning whether what he’s doing is wrong even though he knows what he’s doing is 100% right and OK and he starts overthinking everything that he does and how other people will see him doing these things.

This wasn’t a bad book itself and I didn’t see the twist at the end of the book coming either. I enjoyed how it went on to explain how life after the stalking incident and twist is like and as mentioned, shows how much fear can affect you even when the threat of the fear has disappeared. I just didn’t enjoy the way this was written and how much backstory was involved which I didn’t feel was necessary. As this was a translation from the original language of German, maybe some of the flow of the main plot and back story was lost? Or maybe that’s how the Author intended it to be, who knows? Either way, the writing wasn’t for me, but I did enjoy the actual storyline.