He’s arrogant, domineering, and… To. Die. For.

Hunter is a ruthless killer. And the Department of Defense has him firmly in their grasp, which usually doesn’t chafe too badly because he gets to kill bad guys. Most of the time he enjoys his job. That is, until he’s saddled with something he’s never had to do before: protect a human from his mortal enemy.

Serena Cross didn’t believe her best friend when she claimed to have seen the son of a powerful senator turn into something… unnatural. Who would? But then she witnesses her friend’s murder at the hands of what can only be an alien, thrusting her into a world that will kill to protect their secret.

Hunter stirs Serena’s temper and her lust despite their differences. Soon he’s doing the unthinkable—breaking the rules he’s lived by, going against the government to keep Serena safe. But are the aliens and the government the biggest threats to Serena’s life… or is it Hunter?

Three words summed up my feelings toward Obsession by Jennifer L. Armentrout: “Oh. My. Goodness.”  It was hot, sizzling, and full of one gorgeous, gorgeooouuus man. Obsession is an adult spin off of Armentrout’s Lux series. I had no idea that this book was coming out…let alone that it was already out. Yeah…it’s pretty much a no brainer that I devoured this book in like less than 24 hours.

The number one highlight of this book was Hunter. Oh my gosh..Hunter was absolute perfection. Yes, he was a complete and utter asshole, but he was hunky, snarky, dominant, a natural born killer who didn’t think that he was capable of any human emotions. It was amazing watching those emotions slowly leak out toward Serena. I did think that their “relationship” came on a little too fast. It was cute and hesitant toward the beginning, and then BAM! It was like they’d been together for years. A bit too fast for my liking, but I still loved the book.

Serena was a strong female lead, but I never fell head over heels in love with her. There’s something about Armentrout’s female characters that put me off a bit. Katy, in the Lux series, drives me absolutely bonkers. I can stand her, and I even like her in some situations, but I never fell in love with her. It was pretty much the same thing with Serena. Armentrout’s male and supporting characters, as well as her writing, tend to make me forget all about that. I don’t know how she does it. In normal situations, if I don’t like one of the lead characters, then I’m probably going to hate the book. Somehow that doesn’t work the same way with Armentrout’s books.

The plot of Obsession was really catchy. In Armentrout’s YA series, we learned about the Luxen. Now, we’re learning about the Arum. It was pretty interesting to see how both species view each other and to know that the Arum aren’t completely horrible like we’re led to believe in the Lux series. I didn’t know how I would respond to Hunter, since the Arum are really bad creatures in the Lux series, but I loved the danger, the suspense, and the overall hotness of the book.

Fans of the Lux series will be wayyy excited to read this book since there are appearances from a couple of characters from the Lux series. Remember Luc? The creepy teenager guy in the club? Well, he’s in it. Daemon is also in this book, but only for a brief glimpse. It was really cool getting to see more of Luc, but I’m getting a bit annoyed that I don’t know too much about him, yet. Is more of him going to be leaked out in future books? Is he going to get his own book? These are things I eventually want to know.

Obsession is a tad bit dirty….to the point that I went on Goodreads to see if it was categorized under erotica. It’s not. It’s actually subcategorized under New Adult, which makes nooo sense. I’m not kidding, once you get about halfway through the book there’s like a sex scene every five pages or so. I almost hate myself for saying it, but that took away from the book…a lot. That’s actually one of the reasons I docked it down to a 4 instead of a 5. I wanted more plot and less romance. As I said before, the romance also moved very quickly. I wanted to see Hunter and Serena’s relationship grow over time. While I still loved the book, it was a bit much at times.

Obsession was such a steamy read. I fell head over heels in love with Hunter, and you can bet yourself that I’m going to be reading the next one. This is a great book for someone who enjoys paranormal romances. It’s only available as an eBook, but I got it on Barnes and Nobles for only $2.99. Definitely give this one a shot!

Pages: 370

Publication Date: May 31st, 2013

Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC (Covet)

Rating: :

Teaser Quote: “Are you done acting like a psychotic, cracked-out Muppet baby?” he asked, and I could tell by the way his fingers spasmed around my wrists, he really wanted to shake me.
“Or do you need a couple more moments to return to sanity? I have all day. And you actually feel kind of good under me, so take your time.”

Anna Van Housen is thirteen the first time she breaks her mother out of jail. By sixteen she’s street smart and savvy, assisting her mother, the renowned medium Marguerite Van Housen, in her stage show and séances, and easily navigating the underground world of magicians, mediums and mentalists in 1920’s New York City. Handcuffs and sleight of hand illusions have never been much of a challenge for Anna. The real trick is keeping her true gifts secret from her opportunistic mother, who will stop at nothing to gain her ambition of becoming the most famous medium who ever lived. But when a strange, serious young man moves into the flat downstairs, introducing her to a secret society that studies people with gifts like hers, he threatens to reveal the secrets Anna has fought so hard to keep, forcing her to face the truth about her past. Could the stories her mother has told her really be true? Could she really be the illegitimate daughter of the greatest magician of all?

I’ve been really excited to read Born of Illusion for quite some time now. Who doesn’t want to read a book about magicians, mediums and mentalists in 1920′s New York City? How cool! Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. If you follow my review, you know by now that I’m not the biggest fan of historical fiction. This book was not an exception. While some of the magic was pretty cool, I found it to be just too boring for my taste.

One thing that this book really has going for it is that the main character, Anna, is very likeable. Anna was the reason I was trying to make it through the book. She was strong, powerful, yet still a nervous child trying to make it in the world. The other characters in the story were also very likeable or interesting, but they weren’t enough to carry the story.

Here was my thing with Born of Illusion: There wasn’t enough magic or spark to it. There was mystery…but not enough. I found myself not caring what was going to happen next. I didn’t care who Anna’s father was or what would happen to Anna’s mother. I didn’t care if anyone was killed off or if something bad happened. I just didn’t care. I only read half of Born of Illusion before I set it down, but there weren’t really any action scenes or “aha!” moments. There were a couple cool scenes involving magic, but nothing that really knocked my socks off. It was just kind of bland.

Fans of The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd and Pantomime by Laura Lam should enjoy Born of Illusion.

Pages: 384

Publisher: Balzer & Bray

Publication Date: June 11th, 2013

Rating: N/A not rating due to DNF

Teaser Quote: “”You’re quite good–for a girl.” “Thank you,” I tell him, ignoring the girl remark. If I argued with every male magician who made a snide comment about my gender, I’d never have the time to do magic. I prefer to outperform them on stage, where it really matters.”

Elissa used to have it all: looks, popularity, and a bright future. But for the last three years, she’s been struggling with terrifying visions, phantom pains, and mysterious bruises that appear out of nowhere.

Finally, she’s promised a cure: minor surgery to burn out the overactive area of her brain. But on the eve of the procedure, she discovers the shocking truth behind her hallucinations: she’s been seeing the world through another girl’s eyes.

Elissa follows her visions, and finds a battered, broken girl on the run. A girl—Lin—who looks exactly like Elissa, down to the matching bruises. The twin sister she never knew existed.

Now, Elissa and Lin are on the run from a government who will stop at nothing to reclaim Lin and protect the dangerous secrets she could expose—secrets that would shake the very foundation of their world.

Riveting, thought-provoking and utterly compelling, Linked will make you question what it really means to be human.

Elissa’s world for the past three years has been a nightmare. She’s experienced horrific pain, random bruising all over her body, blackouts, nausea, and numerous other symptoms that have beat up her body and left her feeling close to death. Over the past three years, Elissa has seen doctor after doctor, and they finally found a cure: brain surgery. The doctors have guaranteed Elissa that this surgery will remove all of the symptoms she’s been experiencing and give her back her normal life. And they’ve given her all of four days notice.

Having just convinced herself that she can go through with the surgery, Elissa has a horrible vision of a girl in trouble. She soon discovers that this girl is her twin sister removed from her family at birth. And the even weirder side of the puzzle? They’re linked. Now Elissa must fight to keep both herself and her twin alive, even if that means evading her planet’s officials and racing off to somewhere that no one will ever be able to reach them.

Linked by Imogen Howson threw surprise after surprise after surprise my way. Going into it, I knew that it was a dystopia/paranormal type book, but it’s really more Sci-fi than anything. I haven’t read very many amazing Sci-fi books out there, so I got a little worried when that aspect of the book started peeking through, but it was amazing! The world that Imogen Howson created was beautiful, startling, well thought out, and just brilliant.

The first part of the book focuses more on the dystopia aspect of the book. This is probably the part of the book that I enjoyed the most, but we’ll get into that further on in the review. It was really obvious that this was not planet Earth. People could drive on rooftops, every door, everywhere, had locking mechanisms that were very different from what we experience today. Oh, and they had a government spacecraft that they used to communicate with other active planets. In the first half of the book, Elissa and her twin are trying to run from all of these people that are after them and trying to find a safe place to catch their bearings. So many things happen in this part of the books. They’re learning who to and who to not trust, more about the twin and their link together, changing their appearances, and really making the big decisions on where to go from there. This first half was really upbeat, fast paced, and a little bit stressful (in a good way.)

The second half of the book focuses more on the Sci-fi aspect of the book. Please be warned that this paragraph may be very spoilery. This half of the book focuses on the girls travelling in space to another planet. Here, we get to meet the crew, the captain and the co-captain, witness how the space ship works. And there’s lots of action going on in this section of the book. There’s a lot going on with Elissa’s twin and people are after them. This means that a bunch of other space ships are attacking them in the middle of space. It’s really cool, and it’s like no other YA book that I’ve read before. And the book is really well written, which it makes it that much more fascinating. The only complaint that I have is that their time in space got a little repetitive. I wish that it would have been cut down a little bit.

There’s not really that much romance in this book. There is a slight one, but it really doesn’t develop until like the last 3 chapters of the book. It was really awkward for me, because the characters basically hated each other throughout the whole book. There was no subtle flirting or touching. It was really just a “I don’t like  you” kind of thing. And it was really awkward for me to have those two characters latch on and profess their love for each other at the end of the book. Where did that come from? I was fine with their being no romance in the book, and I would have preferred that it stayed that way rather than have that awkwardness.

Some things in the book were a little confusing at times. This didn’t happen very often, though. I think what the issue was is that this was a whole different world. Not to mention that there were surrounding planets and moons, AND there was a space ship that we had to learn about. It’s really a book that you need to concentrate on or you’re going to get lost.

One thing that did bug me was that the chapters were verrrry long. I’m a pretty fast reader, but there were a couple chapters in the book that took me about 45 minutes to an hour to read. I’m a person who prefers stopping points in my books, so it was a bit annoying, but not anything major.

The ending of the book was really enjoyable. There are no cliffhangers, which I LOVED! I can’t stress to you guys how much I hate cliffhangers. I understand why authors do it, but it’s really just annoying. The ending of Linked sets it up really nicely for a second book. I’m not sure if this will become a series or if it’s a standalone. I almost think that Howson has to create a second book with how she set it up, but a bunch of questions that arise in the beginning of the book are answered in the last two chapters.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a really heavy read, though, and made me want to read something very light right after it. It’s intense, it kept me on my toes, and it left me craving more. Linked is 100x better than I thought it would be, and I’m really interested in reading more by Imogen Howson.

This book released today, so make sure you guys go pick up a copy! You’re not going to regret it.

Pages: 368

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers

Publication Date: June 11th, 2013

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

Rating: :

Teaser Quote: She was elsewhere. In someone else’s body, looking through someone else’s eyes.

There was the cold, gritty feel of dried mud and grass beneath her curled-up legs, the taste of dust and metal in her mouth. All around the night pressed against her, thick, hot and full of noise. Something thundered over the bridge above her head, then faded into the distance; not the quiet rattle of a beetle-car, but the rumble belonging to a heavy-goods vehicle.