Review: A Wicked Hunger by Kiersten Fay

Book Description

Her mysterious past could mean his doom…or his salvation.

Vampires run this city. Hell, they practically run the world. Despite her blurry past, Coraline knows just how dangerous they can be. All her life, she has strived to avoid them. But when her husband is murdered, and she finds herself targeted next, her survival suddenly depends on a devastatingly handsome vampire named Mason.

Assigned to investigate Coraline and her crooked husband, Mason has had to ignore his intense attraction to the little mortal female. When she bears witness to her husband’s brutal murder, and is placed under his protection, it is more imperative than ever to keep his distance, especially when he discovers she is more than just human.

My Review

Coraline had only been married to her husband for a few months but something just wasn't right between them anymore so she goes to him at work to find out if they can work things out, romantically. But she's stopped by the Vampire Enforcement Agency thinking she's another hooker for her husband. It's only after the vampires search her that they realize their mistake. 

Vampires are known to humans in this world but most humans are scared of them because of what they can do so Coraline is scared when she comes face to face with the vampires. While Coraline is being searched all hell breaks loose and her husband is killed. The vampires don't know if it's a coincidence that she showed up right before someone comes to kill him but they cuff her and take her back to their headquarters. She believes they'll kill her but she's actually safer with them than without when she finds out now she's also in danger and one of the vampire officers who cuffed her is now going to keep her safe. 

But they run into trouble right away, somehow the bad guys keep finding them. It's a good thing Mason is a vampire or he'd be dead already. It gets harder and harder to keep one step ahead of the bag guys who are after them but while they're on the run they start to get closer which is hard for Coraline to imagine since she doesn't trust vampires at all. But Mason shows her that all vampires aren't bad and she starts to believe him. 

I loved watching Coraline gets more confident and start to flirt with Mason. Their initial flirting was so much fun to watch because they are both slowly falling for each other even though Coraline is still a little afraid of him. 

When Mason and his sire find out that she's not completely human, all hell breaks loose. Trent doesn't trust Coraline at all and scares her almost to her breaking point. Mason does everything he can to explain everything to Trent but it takes a lot of time for him to believe anything, all the while poor Coraline is stuck in the middle. 

I was liking this story but it ended on a cliffhanger and I do hate cliffhangers. The story had no ending at all. Everything was left wide open and I really didn't like that at all. It's hard for me to give this a star rating since I don't feel like I got an entire story. 

I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given a free ARC via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Review: Sealed With A Curse by Cecy Robson

Book Description

Celia Wird and her three sisters are just like other twenty-something girls—with one tiny exception: They're the products of a curse that backfired and gave each of them unique powers that make them, well, a little weird…

The Wird sisters are content to avoid the local vampires, werebeasts, and witches of the Lake Tahoe region—until one of them blows up a vampire in self-defense. Everyone knows vampires aren't aggressive, and killing one is punishable by death. But soon more bloodlust-fueled attacks occur, and the community wonders if the vampires of Tahoe are plague-ridden.

Celia reluctantly agrees to help Misha, the handsome leader of an infected vampire family. But Aric, the head of the werewolf pack determined to destroy Misha's family to keep the area safe, warns Celia to stay out of the fight. Caught between two hot alphas, Celia must find a way to please everyone, save everyone, and—oh, yeah—not lose her heart to the wrong guy or die a miserable death. Because now that the evil behind the plague knows who Celia is, he's coming for her and her sisters. 

This Wird girl has never had it so tough. 

My Review

Celia and her three sisters all have supernatural powers but they have been trying to stay out of the supernatural world and they do a good job of it until they kill a vampire who was attacking one of their sisters. They figure it was self defense but they are called to vampire court to answer for what they did. After they're found to have done nothing wrong, the master vampire, Misha enlists their help to stop the vampires who have been infected with bloodlust and the person responsible for the bloodlust. Celia finds herself being pursued by not only Misha but also the leader of the werewolf pack, Aric. 

These sisters all have unique gifts, Celia can shift into a tigress but if she's touched by another animal she will shift into that animal as well. Part of that was hilarious because it happens to her a couple of times and it was too funny. One of the other sisters can heal others which was good since Celia cannot heal herself even though she's a shifter. There was a lot of action in this book. The vampires who are infected with bloodlust are lethal, scary and crazy. They have to be killed in order to stop them so there are several action packed fight scenes. 

There's some backstabbing, and a good twist that I didn't see coming towards the end. I loved this because not only do we have vampires who are not soft and cuddly, they are dark, formidable and scary. But we also have werewolves who are sexy, fun, fierce and protective. I love both vampires and werewolf shifters so this was a great surprise to find in the book. I had a great time with this one. I'll definitely be looking for the next books in this series.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Happy Raturday!

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #103

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 20 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 20 years here in a weekly blog post.

There's an old water valve cover that doesn't work anymore and the cover is all broken pieces of concrete. We've told the old manager a few times that it's an accident waiting to happen because that's my living room window right there and I've watched people trip over those broken pieces and almost fall right into my window. 

Here's a close up of it so you can see just how broken and dangerous this is. 

You have room to walk around it but you if aren't paying attention and trip over it, you could really get hurt. I would hate for someone to fall into my window and get cut up. The new manager says she's going to fill it in with concrete but we've already been waiting years for that to happen so we'll see. The water company won't come out and fix it (I already asked) because it's not a working valve anymore. They took the valve and pipes out and moved it out front years ago. 

****

She has plastic and tape in her passenger window right now. 

Here's a little update about last week's Apartment Life. The crazy woman who smashed in my neighbors window also smashed the neighbors car windshield and another neighbors side window. My daughter got pictures of both cars for me to post. I have no idea if the woman has been arrested or not for all the damage she did that day. 

****

This week another of my neighbors had his living room window smashed in. This one had nothing to do with the other one that happened last week, totally separate incident. 

My neighbor was walking by and told me he was looking for the new manager because she said his window was going to get replaced on the Monday after it was smashed but she had already left before it was fixed and he was pissed so I asked him what happened to his window. He told me that one of his brothers who is homeless and hangs around sometimes had come pounding on his door a few nights ago and demanded $20 and got mad when he wouldn't give it to him. So later that night the homeless brother came back and smashed his window in. He saw him running away when he looked out the door. The next day my neighbor went down to the courthouse and got a restraining order so the brother can't come within 500 feet of him now. So hopefully that takes care of the problem for now. 

I've seen the brother who's homeless behind the trash cans smoking meth a few times so I'm assuming that's why my neighbor doesn't have him living with him. 

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received:

Vichy Moisturizer
Heart Stickers
Kleenex Wipes sample
Codex eye cream
Nuria eye cream, moisturizer and serum

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review: Becoming Dragon by Eve Langlais

Book Description

Brandon started out life as a simple gator shifter in the swamp. Now he’s a monster. And beasts don’t get fairy tale endings.

Apparently someone needs to explain that to Aimi. The woman with silver hair, and attitude, has this ridiculous notion that Brandon is something else. Something impossible.

I am not a dragon.

But dragons do exist. They live among the humans and shifters, hidden for the moment. His uncle Theo wants to change that and doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. Even family.

Can Brandon stop him before it’s too late?

My Review

Brandon finds out that his rich uncle Theo has kidnapped his sister and in order to keep her safe, Brandon agree's to be experimented on in Theo's lab. Brandon starts out as a gator shifter but after the experiments he thinks he's just a monster when he's actually a Dragon shifter who is stuck half way between forms. He escapes the lab and his uncle in order to find his sister and save her from Theo after Theo tells the world that shifters are real and have been living among humans for a long time. Aimi finds Brandon on a rooftop and claims him as her mate. At first he thinks she crazy since he doesn't believe in Dragons or the fact that she thinks he's handsome in his hybrid form. But he slowly starts to believe her and her family after they help him. 

Aimi's family is super funny, they get in her business all the time and the remarks between them made me laugh out loud several times. Aimi's family also helps Brandon find his sister but things aren't exactly the way that he thought they'd be. Uncle Theo is crazy, even more crazy than I first thought and there's more going on than we see in this book so I hope we get more information about Brandon's sister and what she's up to in the next book. 

This was a great first book to this series and made me intrigued for the next book and more of the story. I love Brandon and Aimi, their romance was a wild, fun one that had me laughing. When the humans find out about shifters, it does make it hard for shifters to live peacefully among them because some humans are paranoid and afraid. It doesn't help that videos are being released showing the bad side of shifters either. 

I've always loved this author's books but this is now one of my favorites. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Review: Birchbox- October

I signed up for a Birchbox subscription box. It's only $15 a month and this month's box came with 6 products.

What was in the box?

Lipstick Queen lipstick. 

MAC mascara. 

Lancome Makeup Primer. 

Marcelle eyeliner. 

EYEKO Brow Liner. 

Makeup Eraser- sample towel. 

I've tried the Makeup Eraser towel before and think it's amazing that it will take off makeup even waterproof mascara with just water and the towel. 

The eyeliner, mascara, brow liner and lipstick are all great colors and work really nicely. I've only used the makeup primer once but am still on the fence about it. I usually use a silicone based primer and it dries down feeling powdery while this one feels a little tacky but my foundation still worked well with it. I'm just not sure I like the feel of it. 

Have you signed up for this box?

Review: Ipsy Glam Bag- October

Ipsy is a monthly subscription box that sends you 5 sample size makeup or beauty products. You can customize what they send you by filling out the personal surveys. I love the bright pink package they send it in. There's no mistaking who that's from when you see it in your mailbox. These bags are $10 each. I used my points from writing reviews on their site for the products I've received that I turned in for a 6th product. 

What did I get?

Benefit Cosmetics They're Real Mascara. 

Betty Boop Powder Blush. 

Crown Brush crease brush. 

Jumiso Have A Good Cream moisturizer- Snail and Centella. 

Kismet Buff Sugar Lip Scrub. 

Let's talk about the Jumiso Have A Good Cream, first. I went to the website and found it said, "With snail secretion filtrate to keep your skin moisturized and improve skin elasticity." The card that came with the bag said the star ingredient is Snail Mucin which fades acne scars and hypermigmentation and firms skin.

I don't know about you but I don't want to put snail slime on my face. I have to draw the line somewhere and snail slime seems like a good place to draw it. I don't really care how well it's supposed to work...nope, nope, nope. It's made in Korea so I guess they don't mind putting snail secretion on their face but I won't be doing that.

I really like the mascara and the crease brush though. The blush is a really cute light color so I liked that as well. 

Did you sign up and get this bag?

Happy Raturday!

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #102

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 20 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 20 years here in a weekly blog post.

This week we heard the fire truck drive by our window early in the morning and I got my camera and took a picture of it parked around the corner. We heard a lot of yelling coming from over there a little while later but no idea why the fire truck was there.

*****

On Wednesday a woman went to my neighbors door and started kicking the screen door in and smashed in the window all because the woman's brother was put in jail last week by the wife who lives here and the wife wouldn't help the sister get in touch with her brother or help her find out where her brother was. The sister then went out to the alley and busted out the windshield of the wife's car and later that night the sister came back and busted out the side window of the wife's friends car because she told the police when they showed up that she was a witness to her smashing the window and screen. I heard what the fight was about because they stood outside screaming at each other about it. 

The window was broken as well as the screen door but I didn't get a picture of the screen door. 

*****

This week another one of my neighbors was evicted. Evictions take a little while, they are given a 30 day notice, then a 5 day notice and then a 24 hour notice. When they are given a 24 hour notice, the Constable comes when the 24 hours are up and has the maintenance guy change the locks and they make the residents leave. Then the Constable puts a yellow sticker on the door that says no entry. That way if the residents are caught breaking back into the apartment, they can be arrested. The manager usually gives people who have been evicted 7 days to make arrangements to come back and get the rest of their belongings if they left anything in the apartment. After 7 days everything left in the apartment gets thrown in the trash or sometimes the manager will let other residents go in the apartment to see if there's anything they want. 

Oh and the manager got fired. The new manager came by on Friday while she was handing out a paper to everyone to fill out and bring to the office. Just regular info that should be on all our leases like name, apartment number, vehicle registration and license numbers, how many people n the apartment and emergency contact numbers. All of that info should already be on file so I'm confused as to why they want it again.

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.