Blog Tour Review & Giveaway!- Thick Love (Thin Love #2) by Eden Butler

Title:  Thick Love (Thin Love #2)
Author:  Eden Butler 
Genre: NA Contemporary Romance
Publication Date: August 31st 2015

Plot:  He doesn’t ask their names.

He doesn’t deserve to know them.

Ransom Riley Hale's friends think his life is charmed: first string as a freshman on a championship-winning college football team. A father with two Super Bowl rings. A mother with platinum albums and multiple Grammies under her belt. But that brilliant shine on the surface hides the darkness beneath; it's all Ransom has ever known.

Despite the shadows he walked in, once there was a blinding light fracturing the darkness. It brought the promise of hope and happiness. He’d been careless, filled with pride and stupidity and lost that light. Ripped it from the world. 

Now, the shadows are dimming again. Aly King surges into his life threatening to pull him from the darkness. She is everything Ransom can never be again. Her light feels too warm, promises him that there is more waiting for him beyond the shadows. 

But the shadows are relentless, resurfacing when he thinks he is safe, and Ransom knows he must keep Aly from them too before he pulls her down into the darkness with him.
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Hosted by:  As the Pages Turn

☆✮ My Review ✮☆

☆ I received an ARC via As the Pages Turn in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ☆

*Yes! Fist pumps in the air. It’s Ransom’s story!! Fans self profusely.*

Those of you who haven’t read the first two books of this series, please do so. It will help in giving you the full reading experience of this book in its entirety.

Thick Love was another fabulous, angst-ridden read by the talented Eden Butler.

Although it did kinda hit some of my hard limits at times, I just couldn’t bring myself to stop reading. It was that difficult to put down.

Ransom, boy is that boy mind-fucked over in the head, is one of those tragic characters I wanted to cuddle, and yet, run over time and time again for his inner demons and dilemmas .....

AND THEN, hump his leg for his undeniable sexy alpha vibe he gives off. *wink wink*

As for Aly. Wah, isn’t she a ray of sunshine, with her unwavering hope and devotion for Ransom? I really loved her pureness and undeterred understandings of Ransom's predicament, and her relentless pursuit in just being there for him-- flaws and all.

Thick Love is a story of love, loss, family, forgiveness, second chances, and redemption.

As much as I would love to have provided more of an outline to it in general,  it’s more complicated to put into words and would just ensue spoilers for other readers and ruin its dramatic and poignant plot line

Just know, that while reading it, I felt a flurry of emotions from happiness, to sadness, to frustration, and to having my heart ripped out from under me.

Eden Butler is a bold and fearless woman. Damn her, her brilliant writing skills for making me feel so much feelings and contradictions!!

A MUST-READ from the Thin Love series!!

My Rating:

♥♥♥♥♥

☆✮ Excerpt ✮☆

She offered me a quick glance, one that was closed off and guarded before she held her weight on her knees, shaking harder than ever, rubbing herself right against my dick. When she brushed her fingers across my face, over my mouth, I let her, didn’t pull away, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to enjoy this. That I shouldn’t be touching her at all.  “Beautiful,” I started, closing my eyes when her breath moistened my bottom lip and she rested further back, a low, satisfied moan leaving her throat when I lowered my fingers on her hips. The sensation was potent, made me drunk and I did what I wanted for once, what I needed. Ironside had gone. The window was covered with a dark curtain, but I still kept up the show. Only now, I wasn’t acting. This wasn’t a performance. “God...who...who are you?” No one had managed to make me want like this, make me crave like this in a long time.  But she didn’t answer. She was wrapped up in the music, letting it move through her as though it controlled her. The sounds she made, that sweet, eager groan from her throat when I breathed against her bare stomach was too much. I couldn’t help myself. Not for another damn second.  “Shit...I...” My mind spun and the confusion of feeling guilt and shame and lust and desperation had me stuttering, unable to keep my hands from stretching over her flat stomach. She didn’t stop me, didn’t protest when my fingers touched the top of her thong. “I need to touch you.” Only for the night. That’s all it would be. One night. One moment, and fixating on that one small slip of time allowed my mind and my body to agree, for once, to forget that I shouldn’t feel this good, that I didn’t deserve this, that touching something this beautiful, this sweet, had almost destroyed me.  She moved over me, exulting my senses, exposing emotions that I thought I’d buried deep, and for just those few sweet, obliterating minutes, a beautiful stranger made me feel what no one had since Emily. “Lower, please” she asked and I was too caught up, too turned on to deny her a thing or to stop myself from feeling what that small, breathy word did to my body.  

☆✮ Teasers ✮☆

☆✮ The Thin Love Series ✮☆

☆✮ About the Author ✮☆

Eden Butler is an editor and writer of Romance and SciFi and Fantasy novels and the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum. Her debut novel, a New Adult, Contemporary (no cliffie) Romance, “Chasing Serenity” launched in October 2013 and quickly became an Amazon bestseller.

When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.

She is currently imprisoned under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.

Author's Links:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

☆✮ Giveaway! ✮☆

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/05dc89ff226/

☆✮ Buy Links ✮☆

Review- Igniting Ash by M.A. Stacie

Title:  Igniting Ash
Author:  M.A. Stacie
Publication Date:  August 4th 2015 

Plot: "When the embers of pain transform into passion."

After a terrible start in life, Asher Harris picks himself up and manages to carve out a fairly decent future. Content with living alone in his bookshop, he shies away from relationships and keeps trust to a minimum. 
Emma Carnes hasn’t seen Asher in years, though she’s never forgotten him. Their one interaction as teenagers became pivotal to them both. It gave her a career.
It saved his life.
Taking small steps, hoping to get him to open up, Emma finds Asher’s emotional walls hard to climb. He is far from receptive to her gentle persuasion, even when she seeks his help with a wounded child from the shelter she works in. 
Emma sees the parallels between him and Asher, and tries to replicate the past. However, as she takes tentative steps with both of them, someone is taking steps toward her. Watching her for a pattern. Watching her to find out what she knows.
They each battle to stay together to keep what they’ve fought so hard to gain, will a cruel twist of fate finally show Asher what he could lose? Could it be too late to save the one person in life he trusts?

☆✮ My Review ✮☆

☆ I received an ARC via StarAngels Reviews & Promo Stars Services in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!! ☆

A childhood connection transcending to the forefront many years later.

I've always loved and admired these types of reads and will without fail, be lining up for another young to adult lovers romance.

While I did like the read in general, one thing that drives me up the wall is reading books in third person. It is a tactful ploy I feel is best used in narrating events while not divulging characters' guts and feelings.

Otherwise, I enjoyed Asher and Emma's story immensely. For me, I think in everyday life, all it takes is for one simple moment to change your life. One simple act, or for this case, one act of kindness to impede your future.

Asher and Emma's rapport was like none other. They saw each other. They got each other and accepted the other for what they were. Not to mention, they (particularly, Emma) supported the other's cause.

That's not saying that each had their own demons and issues to hammer through, cause they did. Especially, Asher, Mr. “I have trust issues a mile and a half long.”

I really enjoyed this, in a sense, “coming of age,” story as it truly was one of letting go of your past and making a new start...and falling in love.

My Rating:

♥♥♥♥

☆✮ About the Author ✮☆

M. A. Stacie is never without a book or her eReader. A voracious reader, with a love of sexy, yet angst ridden novels, she loves getting lost in new worlds. Her need to write did not grip her until after her second son was born, when her previous rambles became fully fledged stories.

She describes herself as one huge contradiction, and though not the most conventional of hobbies, she counts getting new tattoos as one of hers. Along with running, knitting, and listening to loud music. However, she is yet to work out how to do them all at the same time.

M. A. Stacie lives in the UK with her husband and three sons.

Author's Links:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter 

☆✮ Buy Links ✮☆

HOT NEW RELEASE!- The Lost by Cole McCade

Title:  The Lost: A Crow City Novel
Author: Cole McCade
Publication Date: August 25th 2015

Plot: There's something wrong with Leigh.

She's known it her whole life. She knows it every time she spreads her legs. Every time she begs for the pain, the pleasure, the heat of a hard man driving deep inside. She's a slave to her own twisted lusts--and it's eating her alive. She loves it. She craves it. Sex is her drug, and she's always chasing her next fix. But nothing can satisfy her addiction, not even the nameless men she uses and tosses aside. No one's ever given her what she truly needs.

Until Gabriel Hart.

Cold. Controlled. Impenetrable. Ex-Marine Gabriel Hart isn't the kind of man to come running when Leigh crooks her pretty little finger. She loathes him. She hungers for him. He's the only one who understands how broken she is, and just what it takes to satisfy the emptiness inside. But Gabriel won't settle for just one night. He wants to claim her, keep her, make her forever his. Together they are the lost, the ruined, the darkness at the heart of Crow City.

But Leigh has a darkness of her own. A predator stalking through her past--one she'll do anything to escape.

Even if it means running from the one man who could love her...and leaving behind something more precious to her than life itself.

TRIGGER WARNING: 18+ This book contains material that may be triggering or deeply disturbing to some readers, including scenes discussing or detailing rape, physical and emotional abuse, and incest. Please focus on self-care and, if this book is triggering to you, do not be afraid to put it down and walk away, or skip certain chapters. Be good to yourselves. -C 

☆✮ Teaser ✮☆

Note: This book contains material that may be triggering for some readers

PROLOGUE

"State your name."

Cold, clipped words, blending into the noise of the police station. Leigh lifted her head from a fixed study of her clenched fingers. Colors whirled around her in a lurid carnival nightmare, too bright, too blurry. On a bench on the far side of the room, a wasted and broken scarecrow woman picked at a scab on her wrist with a certain habitual listlessness, oozing diseased red-brown blood over liver spots. Her tendons were rails under her skin, and the dull gleam of cuffs chained her to the bench. She raised her head and stared at Leigh with yellowed eyes that captured her with a sort of empty, terrifying promise.

Across the desk a policewoman waited, with that compassionate impatience only a half-step from pity and shoulder-to-shoulder with disgust. Her flat blue eyes said she'd been trained to care, but couldn't be bothered anymore. Leigh swallowed and tugged her hoodie close against the tinny air-conditioned chill. Her mouth had dried to a tacky, sticky mess, gummy pills of lipstick beading on her lips, and her tongue was a bloated and useless organ, this swollen pink thing pushing pointlessly against her teeth.

"Leigh," she ground out. "Clarissa Leigh…" Her married name scratched sandpaper syllables against her throat. "…van Zandt."

"And Miss van Zandt, do you know why you're here?"

She nodded, her neck a creaking wooden puppet-hinge. "I do."

"Your family's been worried about you."

"I know."

She knew what she should do here. Bow her head in shame and contrition, maybe even sniffle. But she looked for the emotions and they weren't there; just scraps and tatters, clinging to the empty place where they belonged. She had no feeling left, hollowed out and lost and wondering how she'd ended up here. This didn't feel real. Instead it was a dream where everyone leered in fisheye close-up, their smiles all teeth and stretched red lips and manic glee. She wanted to run, but somehow she'd gone too numb to do anything but sit here surrounded by the stink of fear-sweat, stale beer, and that particular police-station smell of urine soaked into concrete for decades on end.

"What happened to you?" the officer asked. Leigh didn't answer, and the officer's pen tapped against the forms on her desk, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, Morse code for I'd rather be anywhere but here with this spoiled little runaway princess. "It's been four years. You were declared legally dead."

"That's all right." She closed her eyes with a laugh that ripped her guts up into her mouth, and buried her face in her hands. Dead. Dead.

Yeah, that was about right.

"Miss van Zandt?"

Stop calling me that.

"Miss van Zandt. I need you to focus on my voice."

Stop calling me that!

Leigh took a measured breath and opened her eyes. Her shoulders squared. The bolts on the back of the hard, ass-biting chair dug into her shoulder blades. "I am focused. I can hear you just fine."

"Eyes are dilated." The officer—her nametag read Maroni, could there be a more clichéd name for a Crow City cop—leaned across the desk, peering at her face. Then she beckoned to the aide hovering over them like a mannequin. "I've seen this too many times. Drugs and prostitution." She talked about Leigh like she wasn't even there. "We'll have to clean her up before her husband gets here."

"I'm not on drugs. I've never been on drugs."

Maroni's pen-clicking stopped. Her disbelief was a heavy thing, push-push-pushing until Leigh nearly laughed.

"You're not on drugs."

"No."

"Then what happened?"

There it was. The first hint of exasperation. Of frustration, stitched into knitted brows and the purse of lips in just the right shade of I can't be a woman, I'm a cop mauve. Because like anyone normal, anyone who wasn't fucking broken to pieces and liked being that way, Maroni needed to make sense of this. Needed to quantify it in a world where the rules worked as normal and everyone wanted to chase that dream of happiness that wasn't anything but desperation painted over of a frantic tally of things. Things of plastic, things with value created by people whose upper lips curled when they looked down at little girls like Leigh, and demanded she account for herself in sane, rational ways that made proper sense.

Sorry, Officer Maroni.

I'm not the kind of thing that makes much sense.

Maroni pushed a harsh sound through her teeth. "You had a job, a husband, a newborn son. You had a life other people would kill for, and we find you here on the streets. Were you pressured? Kidnapped?"

"No. None of that." Leigh shook her head.

"You'll have to explain, then."

"I left." She trailed off, lips parted; no words came for long seconds, until she managed, "I…I was afraid."

"Of what?" Maroni tried to catch her eye, but Leigh looked down at her hands, at her chipped pink fingernails dipped in the sparkles of shooting stars. "Miss van Zandt. If someone was hurting you, you need to tell us now so we can take appropriate steps to protect you."

"No. No one hurt me. Not like that."

"I'm afraid you'll need to be more clear. What were you afraid of?"

"Of…"

She struggled for an answer. Struggled for something this woman would accept, something that would make her sigh with sympathy and pity and relieved disdain that said there, but for the Grace of God…

But again, she found nothing. Nothing but the truth, and Leigh shrugged as she looked up at the policewoman and wondered if she had daughters who might one day be like Leigh, daughters who would cut stark red lines of fingernails in the walls of flesh that caged her in the shape of pop culture's perfect woman.

"Of the inevitable monotony of it all," she said.

And smiled.

☆✮ About the Author ✮☆

Corporate consultant by day, contemporary romance author by night.

Mid-thirties. Coffee addict. Cat lover. Bibliophile. Technophile. Definite sapiophile. Native Southerner. Runner. Country boy turned city suit. Shameless collector of guitar picks, vinyl records, and incense holders. Aficionado of late-night conversations over live music in seedy bars. Browncoat with a secret crush on Kaylee Frye.

Fascinated by human sociology, and particularly by the psychology of sex and gender – and their effect on relationship expectations, the culture of dating, and what it means to fall in love.

Non-smoker. The picture's just a stock photo. A rather broody, dark one for someone who isn't all that broody or dark, but sometimes forgets to smile even when he means to.

Author's Links:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

☆✮ Buy Links ✮☆

Double Review- Unsurprisingly Complicated (Unexpected #2) && Uncharted (Unexpected #3) by Claudia Burgoa

Title:  Unsurprisingly Complicated (Unexpected #2)  

Author:  Claudia Burgoa

Publication Date: April 30th 2015

Plot:   AJ 

The lies between my parents and I came to light and now I’m working on a new life for myself. Along the way, I have my trusty superhero, Mason, to lean on when I have a hard time standing or when my crazy ex-boyfriend continues to feel he has a claim on me.

Porter has trouble understanding that there hasn’t been an ‘us’ for more than three years plus all the issues he had brought upon himself. My father was right, drugs do kill. My other concern is the growing feelings I am having regarding Mason. There’s something between us I want to explore but I keep getting mixed signals. Here, I thought that after telling my parents about my lies and having their full support, things wouldn’t be as complicated as they are.

Mason 

My parents divorced before I even made my entrance into this world. My father has been obsessed with that love for years while my mother searches for love in all the wrong places. I don’t want a place to call home or a girl I can claim as mine. Except… Ainsley Janine –better known as ‘Nine’—has some special power that makes me question my preferences. The more I try to stay away from her, the more she pulls me closer.

Exploring the possibilities of having something steady in my life isn’t a problem; it’s the long term that worries me. In addition to that, the scumbag she dated years ago keeps popping up everywhere we go. If I could use my license to kill, maybe I can stop worrying about one thing and concentrate on what to do with the green eyed girl who keeps me awake most nights.

☆✮ My Review ✮☆

☆ I received an RC via the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!! ☆

For an up and coming author, Claudia Burgoa is definitely a rare talent wading to break out at the seams.

After finishing bk1, I had been waiting to see what would be in the future of both AJ and Mason.

Nonsurprisingly, in eloquent fashion, the threads to their history and subsequent romance are as intricate and complicated as ever.

I had a wide range of thoughts and reactions while going into and reading this throughout. It was just that unique perplex. One minute I was content and relaxed, and then the next, I was either raging or pent up with unbridled feelings and emotions.

Everyone has pasts and hardships. But what's even harder is to let go and open yourself up to life again and to take risks and chances within it.

Unsurprisingly Complicated 'unsurprisingly' definitely lives us to the book title as it was cuts into the unforeseen twists, turns, and obscurities that each of us has to face and what paths we can choose to take.

A powerful and beautifully written second installment of the "Unexpected" series!!

My Rating:

♥♥♥♥

☆✮ Buy Links ✮☆

Title:  Uncharted (Unexpected #3)

Author:  Claudia Burgoa 

Publication Date: July 21st 2015

Plot:   Jacob

As a rule, men don’t grow up believing in a happily ever after. We don’t believe in meeting the love of our lives; or the white picket fence, and 2.5 children. Every man thinks that those stupid dreams or fantasies are just nonexistent shit until it happens to them. We should have been forewarned. 

I wish I was prepared for someone to appear in my life and change all my priorities. I suddenly wanted that fence and children. The part of meeting the love of my life became very real, but I wasn’t ready for suddenly losing it all, and my life plummeting into this shithole forever.

The heartbreak of losing your soulmate is one of the worst pains you will ever live with. I should campaign and warn the young people. Vaccinate against love because if you lose it, you could lose yourself for the rest of your life. The burden on your back will forever mark you and wither away your soul, darkening your days and the rest of your natural life. 

This isn’t false advertisement or a dramatic display of one bitter soul.

Pria

I fought by my mother's side until her last breath, and tried to help my father until his last memories dissipated. My sister is the last one standing, but her life is a miracle that can end at any given moment. All my life I’ve never been alone, but always felt lonely.

Today, my options on how to live my life are endless, yet my heart and my best friend limit them. Stay in Seattle, close to the one person that will never let me inside his world.

The thug, as mom would've called him. A man with a bad boy attitude and a heart bigger than the ocean.

☆✮ My Review ✮☆

☆ I received an RC via the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!! ☆

I'll be the first to say, that before you go into this book, it would be best to get the full experience and 411 of all the characters by reading from bk1.

That all said, Uncharted pretty much indicated what was yet to come in this series. Traveling into uncharted waters in life and with these characters.

No one truly knows what's in store for them, as everyday and time is a learning process of trial and tribulation, and this read captured it completely.

With the two main leads, Jason and Pria, being so young and quite inexperienced to life and love, it was a fulfilling journey although even if it was at times tough.

I really felt in synch with all of the characters, their plights and their emotions.

Definitely, a recommended read for all!!

My Rating:

♥♥♥♥

☆✮ Buy Links ✮☆

☆✮ About the Author ✮☆

Born on the mystical day of October 30th in the not so mystical lands of Mexico City, Claudia grew up with a childhood that resembled a caffeine-injected soap opera. Seventeen years ago she ventured to the lands of her techie husband—a.k.a. the U.S.—with their offspring to start a new adventure.

She now lives in Colorado working as a CFO for a small IT company, managing her household filled with three confused dogs, said nerd husband, two daughters wrought with fandoms and a son who thinks he’s the boss of the house. To survive she works continually to find purpose for the voices flitting through her head, plus she consumes high quantities of chocolate to keep the last threads of sanity intact.

Author's Links:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter