It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment and add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at The Book Date.

Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kid-lit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle-grade novels, young adult novels, or anything in those genres – join them.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. I hope you are having a safe holiday with lots of fun!!

I know it has been a while since I have updated anything on my life. I have been super busy with my kids and end-of-school stuff. Thankfully, school is over on June 2nd. Yay for sleeping in past 6 am…lol.

Reading-wise, I am doing pretty good. I am two weeks ahead in reading (I am reading books marked for the week of June 5th). I am behind four reviews (not complaining, though). I will be caught up by the end of the week.

On Friday, I found out that Amazon banned me from reviewing. To say I am upset is an understatement. Their reason: I have repeatedly violated community guidelines, which is crap. I have gone out of my way to ensure my reviews are Amazon-safe. I have appealed, and hopefully, they will overturn it. I have let my indie authors know, and I am planning on letting my publishers know tomorrow. If it isn’t overturned, oh well. I still have my other sites to publish on.

So, here is what I plan on reading this week. Please let me know if you have read these or are planning on reading these.

What I am Reading Now:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. 

Books I plan on reading later this week:

“That place has been my whole life. Everything I thought I knew about myself was constructed in those few months I spent within touching distance of the sea. Everything I am is because Alistair loved me.”

Rachel has been in love with Alistair for fifteen years. Even though she’s now married to someone else. Even though she was a teenager when they met. Even though he is twenty years older than her.

Rachel and Alistair’s summer love affair on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island has consumed her since she was seventeen, obliterating everything in its wake. But as Rachel becomes increasingly obsessed with reliving the events of so long ago, she reconnects with the other girls who were similarly drawn to life on the island, where the nights were long, the alcohol was free-flowing and everyone acted in ways they never would at home. And as she does so, dark and deeply suppressed secrets about her first love affair begin to rise to the surface, as well as the truth about her time working for an enigmatic and wealthy man, who controlled so much more than she could have ever realized.

Joining a post #MeToo discourse, The Girls of Summer grapples with themes of power, sex, and consent, as it explores the complicated nature of memory and trauma––and what it takes to reframe, and reclaim, your own story.

Celine Bower is a hometown girl living the quiet life and a successful veterinarian. She is twenty-six year sold. Then, she is drugged, kidnapped and gang-raped. The local police seem to be unable to find out who did it. Celine and her best friend dream of ways of getting even with the men responsible for her trauma and the crime. Thoughts of revenge consume Celine. Then a seemingly supernatural
force gives her a sudden insight into who her unknown attackers are and also where she can find them. Systematically and unknown to anybody, she seeks out the assailants and strikes back viciously seeking her revenge Everyone in town begins to look for the mystery woman committing these acts of vengeance. Can Celine keep her true identity secret while she creates this new vengeful creature? Can she eliminate these predators before her own identity is revealed?

Mosaic Press published The Celine Bower Story: Chronicle One in 2020 which established Carly Brown as an original voice in this genre. She was awarded the Winner Readers’ Choice Niagara Falls Review, 2020, The reviews were unanimous in their overwhelming critical praise. The highly anticipated Chronicle 2 is schedule to be published in 2022.

“I couldn’t put this book down! It kept me on the edge of my seat…Can’t wait for Part 2.” —Kara Foster

“I devoured this book! If you love a badass female protagonist overcoming all odds, this book is for you! From start to finish, this book keeps you riveted on Celine, her palatable need to over come her trauma, and on what will happen next. Can’t wait to see more from this author.” —Nicolle McKinnon

Run and save your life…or stay and fight for what’s yours

Isolated at her family’s wildlife refuge in northern Georgia, 18-year-old Raven longs to escape. Instead, she spends her days shoveling manure for bears, wolves, and a tiger. Until her father contracts the Hydra virus, a bioterrorist-engineered pandemic devastating the country.

Suddenly, she’s stuck caring for the refuge on her own. There’s not enough food. And the generator powering the electrified fences is running out of fuel.

When she journeys into town to get medicine for her father, she discovers the outside world is collapsing into chaos. There’s no police, no law, no hospitals. No one coming to help.

But the threat is just beginning. A dangerous gang of human predators follows Raven back to the refuge. And they want what she has.

She can run. Or she can stay and defend her home and the animals within it, risking everything—including her life.

A stand-alone companion novel to The Last Sanctuary Series.

“Remember that actions have consequences, boy.”

The Calamity changed the world forever. Gods created by the six battled for control of the World. The creators decided there had been enough fighting and death. They chose to end the war by exterminating all the god’s offspring that fought for power. With the gods now banished from the world, the mortal race was left to fend for themselves.

Centuries later, Weaver Rizer is born in the capital city of Ellipsis. Due to his father’s unexpected death, Weaver and his mother are left to run a brothel in his place. Under the same mysterious circumstances, his Mother dies some years later. But instead of closure, he only received more questions. On her deathbed, she gifts him a creator’s stone without truly knowing its purpose. The only downside, it is now embedded into his skin.

With the new stone and his best friend’s sudden resignation, Weaver begins to lose his grasp on life. When Weaver challenges the wrong man, it causes the destruction of everything he once knew. Creating a new future with unknown possibilities of death and love. It all leads Weaver to the knowledge that he is meant to deliver the stone to another. He must travel across Ellipsis, towards a rebellion that might hold the person he searches for. All to keep a vengeful god from waking.

But with every step closer to the end of Weaver’s task. The god of Ellipsis tells Weaver It will be another step towards his own death.

***The book is meant for Young Adult 15+. It has sexual themes, graphic violence, and lite swearing. ***

Be careful what you wish for. You might just get Dax Pierce…

The life of a small town girl is not my thing. I’ve waited twenty-six years to run from it.

My chance at freedom comes when my Hollywood crush, Dax Pierce, comes to Mistport, Maine.

The moment his burning amber eyes land on my face… and my ass, I shiver with longing.

When he lures me to Hollywood with the promise of stardom, I don’t hesitate. I walk away from my boring life and into the limelight.

Now everyone knows me as Emma Stanton, an up-and-coming Hollywood star. But I’m more than that. I’m Dax Pierce’s fiancée. The hot actor on the movie screen was mine all along and I didn’t even know it.

Now I have it all. Or do I?

To the world, I’m living a Hollywood fairytale. I used to think so too, but I’m not so sure anymore. There’s a dark side to Hollywood and its name is Dax Pierce.

No one told me that wearing his ring on my finger comes with a heavy price. A price I can’t afford to pay. A price I can’t afford NOT to pay.

What’s my name again? I can’t remember because I’m losing myself inside his web.

*This book contains dark themes that could trigger emotional distress in readers.*