Book Blitz & Giveaway: Kind of Famous by Mary Ann Marlowe!



Kind of Famous
Mary Ann Marlowe
Publication date: April 7th 2020
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Layla Beckett has a secret. For the past ten years, she’s run the most trafficked fan site on the Internet for her favorite band—under an alias, naturally. When she lands a job at the prestigious New York City music magazine The Rock Paper, she’s suddenly thrust into the world she’s only observed from the cheap seats. Now that she’s brushing elbows with sexy guitarists and hot frontmen, she wants to play it cool and keep her superfan status on the down low. Although she’s dying to gush on her forum, posting her insider adventures online could expose her real-life identity and blow her cover.
And that’s all before one of those sexy musicians becomes a fan of her.
From the minute he meets Layla, Shane Morgan’s heart beats a heavy metal rhythm, but his head is full of doubt. Since only the most hardcore fans could pick the drummer out of a lineup, he’s resigned to groupies using him to get closer to the more famous guitarists. But he doesn’t want to be Layla’s passthrough.
As Layla gets to know the real people behind the music, she’s drawn to the less-than-flashy drummer’s sweet charms, fascinating mind, and banging hot body, but she worries about his insecurities. She needs to convince Shane she’s moved beyond fandom before he discovers her online history and loses all faith in her intentions.
But the Internet is forever, and secrets have a way of getting out.
—
EXCERPT:
The moon shone bright, but Shane’s eyes remained dark as the deepest ocean. He blinked twice and ran his thumb down my cheek to my chin. I confess that I’d had some illicit fantasies about the guys in the band, but I’d never felt the one-two punch to the gut that I got when his hand slid around the back of my neck and he pulled me forward to press his lips against mine.
He drew back, slowly enough that his lips continued to touch mine for a lingering moment, and I opened my eyes before he did. He looked like he’d tasted ice cream for the first time and wanted to savor it. My mind reeled with questions, and I had this crazy thought that I wished he were more famous so I’d have read something about him on the Internet before, so I’d know who he was and what I might be getting myself into.
If he were like Adam, I’d know to grab hold of him and never let go. If he were like Noah, I wouldn’t want to give him the time of day.
But those lips.
A tiny smile lit his face. “Should I apologize again?”
With that, I threw caution to the wind and twisted both hands into his T-shirt. He laughed when I pulled him back into a less hesitant kiss, but his laughter stopped when my tongue brushed his, and he spun us around so he could press me up against the metal door behind us.
It had been a long time since I’d been physical with a man. Way too long.
Shane’s lips teased mine, and I felt like I’d lived in a desert my whole life, never knowing that water existed. Suddenly I’d fallen into a deep pool. It might turn out to be an oasis, or I might drown, and I didn’t care. My fingers traced his cheek, then brushed his neck, and his body responded in shivers. He lifted the edge of my shirt and explored my lower back, creeping up my spine until he reached my bra.
I’d lost track of where we were. Everything was him. His mouth on mine. His hands on me. His skin. His . . . I gasped. He pressed harder into me, and I ground back, need flaring inside me.
He took the first step away. “Layla.” The fact that his voice came out ragged and breathless only made me want to tear his shirt off and spend the next ten hours licking every inch of him while he said my name.


Author Bio:
Some Kind of Magic is Mary Ann Marlowe's first novel. When not writing, she works by day as a computer programmer/DBA. She spent ten years as a university-level French professor, and her resume includes stints as an au pair in Calais, a hotel intern in Paris, a German tutor, a college radio disc jockey, and a webmaster for several online musician fandoms, plus she has a second-degree black belt. She has lived in twelve states and three countries and loves to travel. She now lives in central Virginia where she is hard at work on her second novel. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.maryannmarlowe.com, on Facebook, www.facebook.com/marlowemaryann/, and at twitter.com/maryannmarlowe.


We'd like to thank the incredible team over at Xpresso for allowing us to be a part of this book blitz!



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Spotlight: Dawn of Mist by Helen Scheuerer!
















Hi everyone! Today on the blog, we have a spotlight for Dawn of Mist by Helen Scheuerer -- an author that we love working with here at The Book Bratz!  Check out our Interview with Helen, a Guest Post and a Spotlight of War of Mist! 

Title: Dawn of Mist (The Oremere Chronicles Prequel Collection)
Author: Helen Scheuerer
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Talem Press
Publication Date: April 16th 2020
Kindle, 350 Pages

Summary:
Before their fight to save the realm from mad tyrants and toxic mist, Bleak, Henri and Swinton led separate lives. In this novel-length collection of prequel stories, teenage Bleak sails across the seas, seeking adventure with her best friend, Bren, and guardian, Senior – only to discover that trouble often finds her first. Fiercely loyal Henri and her twin sister, Sahara, train relentlessly to become elite warriors, but soon learn that the Valian Way can be crueller than they ever thought. A young and ambitious Commander Swinton struggles to prove himself worthy of knighthood, but an encounter with a beautiful stranger shows him that there are things in life more important than titles. Join our three heroes as they embark on nail-biting sea voyages, daring jousting tournaments and terrifying mountain ascents. Delve into the secrets, the triumphs and the tragedies of Bleak, Henri and Swinton’s earlier years, and the defining moments that made these much-loved characters who they are.






Helen Scheuerer is a YA fantasy author from Sydney,  Australia. The Oremere Chronicles is her bestselling trilogy (2017- 2019). After writing literary fiction for a number of years, Helen was inspired toreturn to her childhood love of fantasy thanks to novels like Throne of Glass, The Queen’s Poisoner and The Queen of the Tearling.

Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / Website


We'd like to thank Helen for being awesome enough to reach out to us about this! We always love having her around on the blog, so go add this book to your TBR right now! 🤩💕

Review: LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff

Title: LIFEL1K3 (Lifelike #1)
Author: Jay Kristoff
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: May 29th 2018
Kindle Edition, 398 pages

Summary:
On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap. Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it. But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past. Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.

I am a huge Jay Kristoff fan, so imagine my dismay the first time I tried to read LIFEL1K3 and hated every second of it. I made it about 200 pages in and called it quits. I was quite dissapointed and questioned the fact I considered myself such a big fan. Fast forward to 2020 and I decided it was time to give LIFEL1K3 another chance and what would you know, I LOVED it this time around. Jay as usual is the master of world building and shattering his readers hearts.  

In what's left of the country after World War 4.0, Eve lives on a scrap of land of what used to be the West Coast. Living life looking over her shoulder, Eve isn't looking for trouble. She spends her time building bots and then fighting them in the dome, until one night the fight goes horribly wrong and she destroys the opposing bot with her mind and screaming. Now with the Brotherhood (A band of religious men who believe that people with abnormal abilities are abominations) Eve just wants to keep her head down, but all the changed when Ezekiel, a Lifelike (an robot that resembles as human, with the capability to make its own choices) literally crash lands at her feet, insisting that she is this mysterious "Ana." With her best friend Lemonfresh, her robot companion named Cricket and Ezekiel she is on a quest to save the ones she loves. But in the process, Eve uncovers secrets that change everything. 

I liked Eve's character a lot, I found her fearless and determined. She's rough around the edges and snarky and will do anything for the ones she loves and cares about. As the story unfolds you begin to see a change in Eve, it's subtle but it is there and the more you read the clearer it becomes. In the climax of the book everything is explained. 

I really loved all the secondary characters as well, we get to see some of the story from Lemonfresh's point of view and she is just as sassy and loyal as Eve is. Ezekiel is such a complicated character, in the sense as there is so much more of him that needs to be developed. He is one of the twelve Lifelike's that were created several years earlier and it is easy to tell that his understanding of the world and emotions aren't developed, which I've come to learn was purposely done. (I'm writing this review after having read the whole trilogy, so you will see more of this addressed and discussed in the upcoming novels.)

Jay will always be my favorite when it comes to world building, from Nevernight, Illuminae and Aurora Rising there wasn't one world that he built or helped build that I didn't like. LIFEL1K3 was unique and different and though I wished that the past of what is left of the "yousay" was explained it doesn't change the story. My only complaint was I wish there was a glossary of the slang that Jay has created, at some points it was a little hard to follow because I wasn't sure what the characters were actually meaning. But again, it is only a tiny thing and nothing more. 

Overall I really enjoyed LIFEL1K3 and I am glad I gave it another shot. Like I said above, this review is being written after I I have finished this series so all I have to say is this: Buckle up, because you aren't expected what is going to happen next. 



Amber's NetGalley Pile! 😅




Happy Thursday! 🤩 I haven't done a list post in a while and while I was drafting out some posts to do this one hit me like a bag of bricks. Why not do a post on the books that I have requested and been approved for on NetGalley? I'm not going to lie, I get request happy and start requesting anything that catches my eye. Which tends to get me in a lot of trouble. Luckily, I have a lot of free time at the moment, so I hope to blow through this list pretty quick! 

If you aren't similar with NetGalley or what it is, check out this post to learn more about here! 

I decided to break this list down into two parts, books that haven't been released yet and then books that haven't been published. Yes, that's how far behind I am.


Books Yet To Be Released: 

    

     

    

   

Books Already Released:

    

The funny story behind Gravemaidens and Spin the Dawn is that I already read them and loved them. I just never got around to writing their reviews and now it's been months and I need a refresher on them. The other books though? I have my work cut out for me. 24 books and 6 weeks before Lush opens back up and I get back to work. Let's see if I can do it! 

Have you read any of these yet or are you looking forward to them? What books have you  read from NetGalley recently? Let me know in the comments below! 

March 2020 Blogging Recap!



It's time for our March 2020 blogging recap! It's been a really chaotic month for everyone in the world, but we did our best and pulled through to get some quality content out to you all. So without further ado, let's take a peek into all of the things we accomplished on the blog this month:

In March...


....We reviewed tons of great books!
Check out our review archive to see what reviews we added this month!

....We interviewed more debut authors!
This month, we interviewed Suzanne Park, Prerna Pickett, Diana Urban, Sheena Boekweg, E. Latimer, and Olivia Smit!

....We reviewed P.S. I Still Love You!

What did you think of the movie? You can read Jessica's thoughts here!

What was your favorite thing that we did on the blog this month? What are your recommendations for future posts/reviews? Comment down below and let us know! :-)

Now it's time for April, so let's hope we can stay productive while working from home and social distancing this month! Stay healthy, everyone! 

happy good day GIF by Shalita Grant