Book Review: Bedding the Wrong Brother by Virna de Paul

The Deal: Melina Parker grew up being best friends with twins Max and Rhys Dalton, she was one of the few people able to tell them apart, mostly because she felt an easy friendship toward Max and had a huge crush on Rhys.

As the years passed and the boys followed in their parents' footsteps and became famous and successful magicians, Melina became an entomologist and they remained relatively close. Though, ever since her 16th birthday - when Rhys stood her up - she has been a lot closer to Max, yet she has never been able to fully get over her crush on Rhys.

After a few bad relationships, Melina has decided she needs to learn how to please a man in bed - since her last boyfriend told her something to the effect that she was bad at it - before she gets into another relationship, and who better to teach her than her best friend Max? Who is experienced and fun and whom she trusts completely.

Max isn't quite sure he's on board with this plan, mostly because he knows Melina is in love with Rhys and that is mutual, but that they both are too blind to see it (and because of something he did in the past).  So he decides to pull a good-ole switcharoo, trying to get both Melina and Max what they really want. 

My Thoughts: Bedding the Wrong Brother was a surprisingly fun read. It was campy to be sure and it required a large suspension of belief for a while, but what the heck, it was a lot of fun to go along with it.

I'm not sure I loved Mel and Rhys as characters - they kind of tended to make the same mistake over and over - but I liked them, and that was enough. I liked the whole magician stuff, that was an interesting profession, and Ms De Paul actually spent some time going over what it meant to work as a magician (how they had to practice the tricks and design them, and that it wasn't easy to make it, and all that).

I liked Max too, I wished we had spent a little more time in his head, though I think he might get a book of his own at some point.

Anyway, I do recommend Bedding the Wrong Brother if you're in the mood for something quick and fun. 

1/2

Ps- thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for the review copy
PSS - I think this book was previously published as This Magic Moment. 

2013 NetGalley Knockout

So, I've decided to participate in the NetGalley Knockout hosted @Goldilox And the Three Weres, which is an event aimed to getting on top of those review books that just keep on accumulating.

Here are the details, per Goldilox's post:

Here's all the details you need to know:

• Netgalley Knockout will run from July 1 - September 30

• You are not limited to ebooks from Netgalley! You can include any ebook you have received for review from Netgalley, Edelweiss, or from a publisher or author directly. It just must be an ebook and it must be a review book.

• You can only count books that you read from July 1 to September 30. Nothing read before the challenge starts or after it ends will count toward the challenge!

• You do not have to only include books released during the months July, August, or September - but you can include these, of course! Any electronic review book counts, whether it has already been released or is still yet to be released!

• Again, even if the book has already been released, if you're reading a review ebook copy of it then it counts toward the challenge!

***And if you find this post after July 1st - no worries! You can join the challenge through the linky all the way up to September 1st if you'd like!***

PLUS 

There will be a giveaway for any blogs who link up their wrap up post at the end of the challenge in September! Every blog on that linky will be entered and one winner will be randomly chosen to receive an ebook of their choice under $15.00 from the ebook seller of their choice!

Just link up your post about joining the Netgalley Knockout challenge on the linky list below! Your post can be as simple as "Here's a new challenge I'm joining, here's the link to find out more information". 

And feel free to grab the button above and add it to your blog's sidebar. That would be *awesome* of you!

Share in the comments below or in your sign up post how many of your egalley books you plan to knockout during this challenge!

SIGN UP!

Book Review: Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols

At First Sight: After a lifetime putting on a show with her younger sister Julie, Bailey is told that her music stardom dreams are over when a big record company offers Julie a solo recording deal. From then on, Bailey is forbidden from playing music and spends her senior year rebelling, until she's given an ultimatum - her parents won't pay for her dream college if she doesn't straighten up - and she's sent to live with her grandfather in Nashville for the summer.

Once there, it's kind of hard to escape music, and much as her parents and Julie's record label don't want Bailey playing, her grandfather helps her land an under-the-radar playing gig at the mall: playing background with different impersonators.

There she meets Sam, who is in his father's Johnny Cash act and who decides that Bailey's fiddle playing is just the thing  his high-school band needs to make it big.

But Bailey isn't sure she can or wants to play in a bad again, BUT she IS sure that her parents won't aprove.

Second Glance: Where do I start? Well, I'll start to say that it's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination but, after hearing so much about Jennifer Echols and how awesome she is, this fell a little short and kind of flat.

It might be totally my fault, but the book didn't really come alive for me. Part of it was that, much as I agree that Bailey's Mom was awful and that Bailey got dealt a suck-y hand, I didn't care about her and I didn't connect with her, and I thought she was a bit whiny.

Yes, she has a raw deal but she also needs to get over herself - that's what I kept thinking for more than half the book. And her acting out (when we finally get to what's what she did) didn't give her any points with me.

Then there is the setting. I don't know country music, it's not a thing in my country so I half the time I didn't know what Bailey was talking about in that regard, and my only real reference on Nashville is watching Hellcats re-runs when there is nothing else on TV, so yeah, I was a little lost and all the details and minutia that Bailey supplied went over my head, really.

I liked some aspects of the book, I ended up liking Bailey's sister Julie somewhat and her grandfather and the people in the band Bailey joins - Sam, Charlotte and Ace were nice - but that's not really the stuff that makes me pick up a book again.

I do like the play on the title though, it applies in many levels.

Bottom Line: Maybe it was a case of too high expectations, maybe it was a cultural divide, I don't know, but Dirty Little Secret wasn't really for me. I think that other readers, more patient readers might like it but for me it was solid but not memorable. 

Book Review: The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair

The Deal: A young girl one day decides that she's not going to brush her long, beautiful hair, that's simply her way. Soon tangles start to form and a few mice find out, and decide that her hair is the perfect home from them.

Soon, the girl has a full array of mice living in her hair, and though she might not have mind at first, she does care by the end.

My Thoughts: The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair was ADORABLE. It's a kids books for very young children but it was still pretty charming and the drawings were really really cute.

As a young girl, I was the type who never brushed her hair either, I always had it all long, lose and tangled so I felt connected to our young protagonist and the book was just whimsical enough for a little kid.

Nice book to read with the little kids in your life, and adorable for a pressent.

The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair comes out September 10th, 2013

 1/2

Book Review: The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler

Hello my peeps!! I'm doing another free form review this time!!! And on this occasion I'm going to tackle The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler. 

The Bookstore follows the life graduate student Esme Garland, who moved to New York to get her masters studying the artwork of a very obscure painter. In New York, she's pretty happy, she has fallen in love with the city, she likes her apartment and her neighbors; she even has a handsome and rich slightly older boyfriend Mitchell. 

Everything seems to be going perfect... until the day she realizes she's pregnant, and then gets dumped by Mitchell, before she can even really tell him. 

Esme then turns to her refuge and favorite place in the city: a shabby, second hand bookstore called The Owl, where she lands a part-time job to help her make end's meet. 

Okay, so I started this book with a lot of hope, I liked the idea of a book set in and around a bookstore and The Owl sounded like a delightful indie bookstore at that. But I had a lot of trouble getting into it - and I'm not sure I ever did - because Esme's voice is so full of apathy and she makes it sound like one thing is just as good as the next, and like, things just happen to her. 

This made it very hard for me to like her or like her voice, and I got this weird feeling of dread each time I was reading it, like something was dragging me down. It had that sort of mood, even at the beginning when Esme was saying how much she liked living in New York, I never really felt like she was happy. 

Individually, I liked plenty of characters, mostly the people who worked at the Owl, but the book and story just never came alive for me. 

Maybe someone who likes slower paces and is more inclined toward woman's fiction would enjoy it more. If you're looking for something light and fluffy, this aint't it.

The Bookstore comes out August, 2013

 (but not really for me)

Thanks to the Publisher and Edelweiss for the review copy.