Early Review: Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more; though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was; lovely and amazing and deeply flawed; can she begin to discover her own path.

~A copy was received from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) for review~

This book was f***ing amazing! I apologize for the language (sorry!) by I won't take it back because it's absolutely, 100% true. If any of you actually keep up with my twitter, you'll know I said this before, but after reading his novel my mind was literally blown. Literally. There was so much depth to this novel it was amazing. Those of you obsessed with TFIOS, come off it! That doesn't even hold a candle to this! Alright, fine, maybe it holds one candle, but no way does it hold two! Believe it or not, this book should really be made into a movie. I don't think I'll be watching the TFIOS one but this??! I'd be first in line.

At the beginning, I knew this book would keep me reading. I just connected with this book as soon as I saw it on Netgalley. I don't mean connected connected, because my life is perfect compared to Laurel's, but man! Okay, I think I better start making sense now.

When I first began reading, I felt a bit ripped off. Laurel is a freshman in high school, but she writes like a middle-schooler. Not only that, but she was incredibly stupid (keep in mind, these were my first thoughts). Yes May died, and even without reading countless other books I know that it's a very traumatic thing. It's a form of grief that never goes away, but you have to learn to live with it, and boy that's not easy, but come on, you'd expect Laurel to have some form of common sense. It's understandable now after I've read the book, but she honestly seemed crazy. She was determined to be exactly like her sister. To live exactly as she did, and to even wear her clothes. Kind of creepy. I knew it was a bad idea from the start. As the letters go on though, we learn more about Laurel and why she is the way she is. It's this part that's saddest. It's not even that Laurel totally shut down once her sister died. No. It's that she put her trust in the wrong person, in a person who couldn't even take care of herself.

So while I couldn't stay mad at Laurel, her mother and her sister May were a whole 'nother story. The mother, or should I say the ditcher, is someone I reeeeally didn't like. She represented everything I hate in the mothers of today. The mid-life crisis thing, it gets old. People like that don't deserve to be called mothers. What they do, it's basically equivalent to pretending you don't have kids and a husband just because you're too worried about yourself to care about how you're hurting them. Can you say selfish?! Some mothers come back. Some don't. Does it make a difference? Yes. Is it possible to pretend it never happened? No.

What was so interesting about this book, so addicting, was that no one, NO ONE in this book was perfect. You're probably thinking that that's true in every book, and even in life, but when I say no one was perfect, I mean everyone either had family problems, drug problems, or lesbian problems. It was kind of scary, and it definitely made me thank God for the life I have the privilege of living, though I may not always realize it. When it comes to these "problem children", I've come to realize that I never look beneath the surface. For example, if someone smoked pot - in a book or in real life, I wouldn't even bother with them except to immediately dislike them. But Laurel's letters forced me to get to know everyone; they forced me to look beneath the drug habits and the bad temper and the crazy flirting. I even took a peek beneath the homosexuality. And what I found underneath was so sad and painful that I couldn't even read the words on the pages through the tears in my eyes.

So yes, this book these letters were real and beautiful and alluring and heart-wrenching, but above it all, more than anything else, they show us the honest to goodness truth, the parts of life that not all of us witness (thank goodness!), and that, more than any tear or romantic scene or plea for pity, is what makes this book special, and yeah, much better than TFIOS could ever be.

Title: Love Letters to the Dead

Author: Ava Dellaira

Releases April 1, 2014

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Waiting on Wednesday (5)

Waiting on Wednesday is a wonderful weekly meme hosted by none other than Jill at 'Breaking the Spine.' This meme is pretty simple. We book bloggers just choose a book that we're crazy about, but hasn't been released yet, and then we stick it to this post. Then voilà, we get a WoW post:)

This week's book I cannot wait at all to read is:

It Happened One Wedding (FBI/US Attorney #5)
by Julie James
Expected Publication: May 6, 2014
Publisher: Jove
Genre: Contemporary Romance

SHE KNOWS BETTER THAN TO SAY “I DO”
After a humiliating end to her engagement, investment banker Sidney Sinclair is done with commitment-phobic men. But when her sister winds up engaged after a whirlwind courtship, she’s thrown in to close contact with exactly the kind of sexy playboy she wants to avoid—the gorgeous best man. She’s stuck with him, for better or worse, until her sister walks down the aisle, but that doesn’t mean she has to give in to his smooth advances, no matter how tempting they are…

BUT HE MAKES IT HARD TO SAY “I DON’T”
Special Agent Vaughn Roberts always gets his man on the job and his woman in bed. So Sidney’s refusal to fall for his charms only makes him more determined to win over the cool and confident redhead. Only what starts out as a battle of wills ends up as a serious play for her heart. Because the one woman who refuses to be caught may be the only one Vaughn can’t live without…

Julie James is by far one of the best contemporary romance authors of her time, and I have read every single one of her books that has already been released. I was surprised to find out that she was writing a fifth book, and so of course I immediately had to feature it on my next WoW post. This doesn't sound as FBI-ish as her other books, but I still know for a fact I'll be loving it. I can't wait to review this book with an astounding 5 stars (just like I did with all her other books)!

Review: Crazy for You by Juliet Rosetti

In the tradition of Janet Evanovich and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Juliet Rosetti ups the ante in her laugh-out-loud funny Escape Diaries series, as Mazie Maguire must use any means necessary to keep her main squeeze out of the slammer.

Once you escape from prison and ride off into the sunset with the gorgeous guy who helped you nail a killer, you live happily ever after, right? Well, not exactly—not if you’re Mazie Maguire, and the flow chart of your life looks like a pinball machine. Mazie has broken up with her guy, Ben Labeck, she can’t pay her rent, her car is infested with mice, and she’s working at a coffee shop where the dress code is teddies, thongs, and toe-cleavage heels. Now Ben is the chief suspect in a murder investigation, and Mazie’s tapping into her fugitive wiles to keep him out of jail. Strictly as friends, she vows. No kissing, no touching, no romance. But how is Mazie supposed to keep her thoughts platonic when her “buddy” is giving her erotic back rubs, and a make-believe-we’re-newlyweds charade puts her in the mood for a wedding night?

~A copy was received from Loveswept for review~

When I first saw the synopsis for this and it said that it was similar to Janet Evanovich's writing, I in no way believed it. After reading, though the writing styles weren't exactly the same, they were uncannily similar, as were the plots. However, this story focused more on the romance while Janet splits both the romance and plot pretty evenly, at least, she does in her One for the Money series. This novel is actually the second in a series, though it isn't specified on Goodreads. I knew I had to read this book, and though I tried to wait for the first book to get to me before reading this one, I failed and ended up finishing this the same night I started it. Luckily, Crazy for You can act as a stand-alone since everything the reader needs to know to read and enjoy this book is contained within.

The romance is what mainly made up the story since the beginning, but even then, it's hard to specify whether the love or the mystery was more abundant. The novel stays away from details and while I was reading, it was just a whirlwind of events that I probably won't remember in a few days. Though the mystery is reminiscent of Janet again, what caught and kept my attention was the romantic tension between Ben and Mazie. Ben was a purely original creation of Juliet's that for once, didn't have me thinking of Evanovich. He was strong and kind and really wanted to take care of and protect Mazie, something she hated. The romanticness (I know...not a word) was only amped up by the fact that Mazie hadn't seen Ben in about 6 weeks, and that was after a huge fight. Mazie, on the other hand, was a slightly more boring version of Stephanie from, you guessed it, One for the Money. She worked in a restaurant where the waitresses dressed up in corsets, super short skirts, and fuck-me pumps. Anyone thinking of Lula from OftM? And then there's the fact that Mazie's ex-boss was a sex-o-holic, kind of like Vinnie from...well, you know. But besides all those similarities, Mazie was a cute character who had some of her own independent aspects - like playing paintball - that I really liked.

Though the mystery was a unique one, once I learned the basic aspects of the mystery and got to know the main suspects, it was easy to guess (correctly!) who the "bad guy" was. That didn't take away from the appeal of the book though, and it only made me more interested to see how villain would reveal himself to the girl who trusted and was enamored with him. I didn't really get what Mazie saw in the guy, but I guess she was a bit crazy in the head. It was kind of obvious he'd be the type of guy to put people's heads in a refrigerator, not that he did that; he just had that psycho killer vibe to him that for some reason, the main character never picked up on until the end.

The prologue goes along with the very end of the story, and I think that at least one of its purposes was to give the reader a hint of the revelation at the end of the novel. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about my suspicions that Ben was younger than Mazie, and was none too pleased at the fact that I was right, even if the age difference was only by a few months. That was the most disappointing part of the story for me, and if that doesn't matter to you, then there's not much else wrong with this book.

I'd recommend Crazy for You to Janet Evanovich fans as well as any romance/mystery-lover looking for a quick, pleasing read. When looking back, the novel wasn't great, but neither was it even remotely bad. I can still remember how happy I felt while reading the book. Going off on a tangent, I want to mention the feeling I have that this would be a great book to read during the holidays. I don't know why, it may not even be true, but that's just a hunch I have. Who knows, maybe I'm psychic.

Title: Crazy for You

Author: Juliet Rosetti

Publisher: Loveswept

Releases December 9th, 2013

Genre: Mystery, Contemporary Romance