Cover Love: Cassandra the Lucky

Oh, yeah, as soon as I saw this cover I knew I had to share it!! 

Cassandra the Lucky comes out on December 3rd, 2013

Meet Cassandra, the newest student at Mount Olympus Academy! She has an amazing talent—but will her new friends believe her?

This Goddess Girls story is based on the myth of Cassandra, who has the gift of seeing the future—except no one believes her. Can Apollo, the god of prophecy, help his new crush?

But, before that on August 6th, Penelope the Daring

Book Review: Pheme The Gossip by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

At First Sight: As the Godess Girl of Gossip and Rumor, Pheme sees it as her duty and job description to get into everyone's business and report on it, often before she thinks of the consequences of her tales.

Currently, Pheme is trying to get into Principal Zeus' good graces so he'll write her a recommendation letter so she can apply to a job in Teen Scrollazine, the hottest magazine around.

All she needs is a really good piece of information to take to Zeus. Good for her that she's the girl's floor hall monitor and gets to snoop around quite a bit in that capacity, even if she shouldn't exactly. 

Second Glance: If Pheme the Gossip proves one thing is that it's very hard to like a gossip, and I'm sad to say I never got quite there with Pheme.

See, when Medusa and Pandora - two girls that the original 4 goddess girls didn't have the highest regard for at the beginning of their books - took center stage, it took me but a couple of chapters to feel these waves of empathy toward both girls, to care for them. Medusa has had it pretty rough and more than mean, she lacks social graces and acceptance; Pandora can't help to be curious, but she honestly doesn't mean any harm by it.

Pheme can't help to gossip because... well, she likes being the center of attention. That's pretty much it. We get hints of her past story but it's never explored enough as it to actually make a difference. And, in the end, I kind of felt like Pheme was being rewarded without quite learning her lesson.

Bottom Line: *sigh* I guess I'm not meant to be friends with Pheme. Was it bad? not really. Writing was as light and fluffy as ever, and kept a brisk pace. I'm still a huge an of the series, and I'm still REALLY looking forward to Persephone the Daring and Cassandra the Lucky, but to me Pheme was a bump in an otherwise smooth road. 

1/2

Book Review: Never Deny Your Heart by Maureen Driscoll

The Deal: Rosalind Carson has been in love with her best friend's brother Liam Kellington, Duke of Lynwood since she was about 12 and he was 18 and they met by chance. Years later, Rosalind struck a friendship with Liam's sister Lizzie and the two became inseparable, with the whole Kellington clan giving Rosalind the sense of family she never got from her own relatives. 

Not wanting to lose them all, Rosalind never did anything about her feelings for Liam, whom she's convinced will never love her. She was quite sure of this fact... up until the day of Lizzie's wedding, when Liam pulled her aside and the two of them shared some heated moments. 

Which would be all fine and dandy... if not for the fact that Rosalinds mother and brother had recently betrothed her to another man, and that Liam values his honor too much to take up with another man's fiancé... or does he love Rosalind more?

And will Rosalind stay put just waiting for Liam to do something?

My Thoughts: Oh, Never Deny Your Heart was a bit of a hot mess but in a surprisingly entertaining way. I actually skipped the middle books of this series, I read and reviewed Never a Mistress No Longer A Maid - which was silly and fun - and during that book I picked up on the frisson between Rosalind and Liam so I wanted to read their story, so I skipped all the way there. 

It was pretty fun, though it had some obvious flaws. One, Liam's motivation, he would rather let Rosalind enter a loveless marriage than do something about it ... until he's convinced that his honor would be best served by him taking her away from the other man; to which I say: That's poppycock!!!

Two: This book is full of historical inaccuracies  to the point where they just jump at you a lot, there are things in this book that just wouldn't have happened, even with the most open minded lot of people you cold have found at this time period. 

And, three: the fake out love quadrangle. For a moment there it looks like there were going to be new love interests for both Liam and Rosalind, and they were actually nice if unrealistic, but nope, in the end it didn't go down that route and it was just a bit of a cope out. 

Yet, despite all of this or maybe because of it, the story was loads of fun to read. Again, it's a silly book but it was a silly sweet and fun piece of brain candy. 

Book Review: Never a Hero by Marie Sexton

At First Sight: Owen Meade is shy and lives the life of a recluse, working from home and avoiding interacting with others as much as he can. He's gay, stutters occasionally and has a congenitally amputated arm, and he has a mother who has always made him feel like all of these things are his fault and that he's actively ruining her life.

But then, Nick Reynolds moves to the apartment bellow him and decides he wants to be Owen's friend. Nick is confident and sexy, loves animals - he's a vet - and seems determined to draw Owen out of his shell.

Nick is also very reserved in some aspects, and much as he gives up a vibe of liking Owen and maybe wanting something more with him... he keeps backing away when things start to progress between them. 

Second Glance: Never a Hero is the fifth book in the Tucker Springs series and this was a nice enough read. Both Nick and Owen were kind of hard to like at times though. Owen is VERY shy and insecure and once you meet his mom it totally makes sense why he's like that, but before that it's like "Okay, man up a little here, come on!!!".

And Nick is always sending mixed signals. Once you get t know what happened to him and why he acts like he does, he also makes sense, but at the same time he's a bit of a martyr.

They do, however, seem to bring the best of each other, which was nice. And I actually liked the relationship between Nick and his sister (who has a similar condition to Owen but who doesn't let it stop her) and how he's not blind to how abrasive she can be.

There were some small cameos by other people of the Tucker Springs universe, which was nice too.

Bottom Line: Never a Hero was a good entry to the series, it was a pretty entertaining read and it only took me a couple of hours to read it. I respect the book and the subjects it took on, but I kind of wish everyone would stop turning conveniently gay (if you have read this series you'll probably understand me, if not sorry, I don't try to be confusing), and that we got a story that was not love at first sight because that's what all the stories up to now have basically been. 

Never a hero will be released May 13th, 2013. 

Ps - Review copy provided by the publisher via Net Galley. 

Speed Date: Girls Most Likely To by Kate Davies

The Plot: The Girls Most Likely To are connected stories that happen around a high school reunion. The first story, Most Likely to Succeed is about Kelsey Moore who was one voted the girl most likely to succeed but had to give up her scholarship to stay in town and help her mother run the family's flower shop.

And 10 years later she's still in town in the same dead-end job with the reunion looming ahead of her. Not to mention seeing her high school crush - and fellow nerd - Nathan Barrow, who went on to become all the things Kelsey did not.

The second story, Cutest Couple, is about one of Kelsey's best friends, Bree. She was voted cutest couple with her boyfriend Marc. But then they broke up around prom when Bree found out he had joined the army - something that hit Bree pretty bad as her dad was also a soldier who died overseas leaving her and her mother alone.

Ten years later they see each other again... and Marc finds out that all those years go, when he left, Bree was pregnant with their son Ben and due to some misplaced letter, he never found out about it. 

First Date: On Most Likely to Succeed - It's fun, I do wish Kelsey would get over herself already.
On Cutest Couple - Big misunderstanding plot, full steam ahead! 

Second Date: On MLtS - Mmm... yeah, are they ever going to do anything other than have sex?
On CC - Okay, that's the flimsiest excuse ever. Again, wish these people would get over themselves already!! Bree doesn't like the military, that's okay, still not a reason to keep her son from knowing her father. Marc is pissed off... because he joined the military without ever mentioning it to his girlfriend before and she got mad. These are supposed to be grown ups!!

Third Date: On MLts - So... that's the ending. Uh.
On CC - So... that's the end, again. Double Uh. 

Relationship Status: It's no me, it's you. We can still be friends, though.

Here is the thing, Both Cutest Couple and Most Likely to Succeed, the aren't bad stories, in fact they had potential to be really good stories and I liked that they basically take place over the same weekend, BUT they also read someone lifted every interaction of the main couple out of a larger novel and just strung said interactions together.

I hope I'm making sense here, basically, what I mean to say is that these two stories (along with what I guess will be the third one about Kelsey and Bree's remaining best friend Tess) would make a heck of a lot more sense if they were all together as a novel, with proper scenes to link them and move the story forward, rather than in the current format as independent novellas.

They are cute, but they do feel like a series of vignettes more than anything else.  

What's a Book Speed Date, you ask? It's a quickie review--about 150 words or so--of any genre book (variety is the spice of life, after all).

If you want to join in or just read other speed date reviews, check out The Book Swarm