Tag: Elizabeth Hayley

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Excited to Read In 2021 But Didn’t Get To

~ Jolie ~ 2 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

She assigns each Tuesday a topic and then posts her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

I saw this prompt and had to laugh a little bit. Why? Because 90% of the books that are on my TBR are books that I was excited to read and never got to….lol. There are a lot of books on that list and I am going to take the first 10 that I see. So, in no particular order, here are my books.

Also, please let me know if you have read any of these books and if you have, what you thought about them!!! Inquiring minds want to know!!

1. Rebel by Beverly Jenkins

Book Cover
Valinda Lacey’s mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life—and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq.

As an architect from an old New Orleans family, Drake has a deeply personal interest in rebuilding the city. Raised by strong women, he recognizes Valinda’s determination. And he can’t stop admiring—or wanting—her. But when Valinda’s father demands she return home to marry a man she doesn’t love, her daring rebellion draws Drake into an irresistible intrigue.

2. The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-eight-year-old Georgia Stanton has to start over after she gave up almost everything in a brutal divorce—the New York house, the friends, and her pride. Now back home at her late great-grandmother’s estate in Colorado, she finds herself face-to-face with Noah Harrison, the bestselling author of a million books where the cover is always people nearly kissing. He’s just as arrogant in person as in interviews, and she’ll be damned if the good-looking writer of love stories thinks he’s the one to finish her grandmother’s final novel…even if the publisher swears he’s the perfect fit.

Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy” of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century—the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.

But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book—it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes—even if it means destroying Noah’s career.

3. The Poet by Lisa Renee Jones

Some call him friend or boss.
Some call him husband or dad.
Some call him son, even a favorite son.

But the only title that matters to him is the one the media has given him: The Poet.

A name he earned from the written words he leaves behind after he kills that are as dark and mysterious as the reason he chooses his victims.

One word, two, three, a story in a poem, a secret that only Detective Samantha Jazz can solve. Because he’s writing this story for her.

She just doesn’t know it yet.

4. The One-Night Stand by Elizabeth Hayley

Gabriel Torres thought his life after major league baseball would be simple and quiet—or at least quieter. However, as he takes over running the exclusive Players Club, he finds himself constantly embroiled in scandal and drama. Surely nothing or no one could make his life any crazier…right?

Rachel Adler is a blast from Gabe’s past who crashed back into his life with the finesse of a freight train. But she’s a welcome distraction. At least for a night.

Rachel’s been working hard to become one of the top sports journalists in the country, and she doesn’t have time for an irresistibly charming baseball player. A one-night stand with a man who she knew would hit it out of the park was all she wanted.

But when Rachel gets a tip that Gabe could have ties to one of the biggest sports stories in history—a story that could make her career—she decides she has time for the sexy baseball player after all. As Rachel gets in deeper with both her story and Gabe, she begins to question who she is, what she wants, and what exactly she’s willing to sacrifice for her career.

Will this potential grand-slam romance be stopped short? Or will Rachel and Gabe go the distance?

5. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

6. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

7. Bully by Penelope Douglas

My name is Tate. He doesn’t call me that, though. He would never refer to me so informally, if he referred to me at all. No, he’ll barely even speak to me.

But he still won’t leave me alone.

We were best friends once. Then he turned on me and made it his mission to ruin my life. I’ve been humiliated, shut out, and gossiped about all through high school. His pranks and rumors got more sadistic as time wore on, and I made myself sick trying to stay out of his way. I even went to France for a year, just to avoid him.

But I’m done hiding from him now, and there’s no way in hell I’ll allow him to ruin my senior year. He might not have changed, but I have. It’s time to fight back.

I’m not going to let him bully me anymore.

8. The Comeback Season by Jennifer E. Smith

Book Cover
The last place Ryan Walsh should be this afternoon is on a train heading to Wrigley Field. She should be in class, enduring yet another miserable day of her first year of high school. But for once, Ryan isn’t thinking about what she should be doing. She’s not worried about her lack of friends, or her suffering math grade, or how it’s been five whole years since the last time she was really and truly happy. Because she’s finally returning to the place that her father loved, where the two of them spent so many afternoons cheering on their team. And on this — the fifth anniversary of his death — it feels like there’s nowhere else in the world she should be.

Ryan is once again filled with hope as she makes her way to the game. Good luck is often hard to come by at a place like Wrigley Field, but it’s on this day that she meets Nick, the new kid from her school, who seems to love the Cubs nearly as much as she does. But Nick carries with him a secret that makes Ryan wonder if anyone can ever really escape their past, or believe in the promise of those reassuring words: “Wait till next year.” Is it too much for Ryan to hope that this year, this season, might be her comeback season?

9. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. 

Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

10. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
 
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
 
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
 
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
 
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

I Hate You, I Love You by Elizabeth Hayley

~ Jolie ~ Leave a comment

I Hate You, I Love You by [Hayley, Elizabeth]

3  Stars

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, Loveswept

Date of publication: October 9th, 2018

Genre: Romance

Where you can find I Hate You, I love You: Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Goodreads synopsis:

There’s a fine line between love and hate. And these two can’t decide which side they’re really on. . . .

Poetry professor Naomi Price is loved by her students, happily works around the clock, and has credentials no one could deny. Except, it seems, for her arch-nemesis at Hainamor University. The man never has anything polite to say, and now the two of them are competing for a prestigious honor that just so happens to come with a cash award. With every move Naomi makes to impress her colleagues, her rival is right there beside her, elbow to elbow, making it impossible to ignore how devastatingly hot he is—even if he is a total bastard.

Sebastian Blake knows what Naomi thinks of him, and he’s trying hard not to care. Maybe he’s been grouchy with her in the past, but she isn’t making his life any easier with her crusade to win over the Personnel Committee and earn an honor that is rightfully his. Naomi just doesn’t quit, and though he’d never admit it, there’s something sexy about her. Something that has him tied up in knots. Something that makes him want to move beyond his painful past and take a chance—at least for as long as it takes to kiss her silly and see what happens next.

Warning: Intense bickering leads to intense sexual chemistry!

My review:

Ever read a book and think “Wow, I am going to like this” but reading the blurb? That’s what I thought when I first read the blurb for I Hate You, I Love You. I had this book built up in my mind. I started thinking to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if this book was like 10 Things I Hate About You“. So, yeah, I was pumped up for this book. It was a disappointment when I started reading this book and realized that it was not what I thought it was going to be.

The first half of the book was a huge disappointment. I thought Naomi and Sebastian’s rivalry was immature. While Sebastian did start it (he could have handled Naomi’s gift a bit better), Naomi didn’t let it go. Instead of being the bigger person, she started acting childishly. Misplacing mail and messing stuff up on his desk? Really? I thought that she was an adult, not a vengeful teenager. What got me was that she thought she was justified in doing what she did. Sebastian was just as bad. The only thing was that he was verbal with his childishness. I kept shaking my head while reading those scenes. I said to myself during one scene “Are you freaking kidding me???” Then to have them competing against each other for a prize? Like my 12-year-old, my eye rolls were constant.

The second half of the book was a bit better but still. Naomi and Sebastian still were taking pot shots at each other.  But it was alright because they were dating. Uggggh. Then that whole debacle in front of the Personnel Committee. They both should have been fired for acting the way that they did.

There was zero chemistry between Naomi and Sebastian. Zero. So when they started having sex, it didn’t jive for me. Don’t get me wrong, the sex scenes were hot but I couldn’t get past Naomi and Sebastian’s dislike of one another. I guess I should have looked past it because you can love someone you hated but I couldn’t.

I didn’t like Naomi. She rubbed me the wrong way. While I felt bad for what happened when she was in college, she should have told Sebastian what she was going to do with the money up front. It would have saved her a lot of heartache down the road. I wish more attention had been put on her teaching. I thought what she taught was interesting. Once her and Sebastian were an item, I did think that she had a dry and sarcastic sense of humor. I wish that I could have liked her more.

I felt awful for Sebastian. I could never imagine something like that happening to me. No wonder he was so grouchy. But, I do wish that his past had been explained earlier in the book. Instead of being dragged out the way it was. I also liked that he didn’t stoop down to Naomi’s level when she was being petty. I did like his zingers but I felt that he crossed a line a couple of times with what he said to Naomi. I felt that his issues with what she was going to do with the prize money should have been addressed before they went before the Personnel Committee. But, I did like that he was able to accept that he was wrong. And that he tried to make it up to Naomi. What he did at the end of the book made me cry.

The end of the book was the best part of the book. The author was able to end it on a HEA. As much as I disliked Naomi, I felt that she needed to be supported by her decision. I also felt the Sebastian needed to have a happy ending too. I do wish that there was an epilogue. I would have loved to see them in a year or two from the ending.

What I liked about I Hate You, I Love You:

A) The location. I love Vermont.

B) What Naomi taught

C) The end of the book

What I disliked about I Hate You, I Love You:

A) Naomi. Felt she was childish

B) Zero chemistry between Naomi and Sebastian

C) Sebastian’s backstory

I gave I Hate You, I Love You a 3-star rating. I was disappointed by this book. I felt that the main characters had zero chemistry. I also felt that they acted like spoiled teenagers for 90% of the book. What saved the book for me was the location and the end of the book.

I gave I Hate You, I Love You an Adult rating. There is explicit sex. There is language. There is mild violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I am on the fence about if I would reread I Hate You, I Love You. I am also on the fence if I would recommend this book to family and friends.

I would like to thank Random House Publishing Group, Loveswept, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review I Hate You, I Love You.

All opinions stated in this review of I Hate You, I Love You are mine.

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**