Monday, April 30, 2018

BLOG TOUR: Blood Type by K.A. Linde


Today, we celebrate the release of K.A. Linde's Blood Type, the first title in the Blood Type series!!! To celebrate, we have an exclusive excerpt to share!!!  So... check it out and grab your copy now!!! Pre-order Blood Match (book 2) and Blood Cure (book 3) now, too!!!

Genre:
New Adult
Paranormal/Fantasy Romance
Series:
Blood Type, #1
Publish Date:
April 24, 2018
Publisher:
Loveswept

Synopsis:
A startling new vision of paranormal romance: When a human ventures into the world of vampires—a decadent milieu of blood-bonds and betrayal—she discovers that not all is what it seems.

For Reyna Carpenter, giving up her body isn’t a choice. It’s survival.

In a civilization laid waste by poverty and desperation, Reyna accepts a high-paying position with the wealthy and hungry vampire elite. Her new job is as the live-in blood escort for the intimidating, demanding, and devilishly handsome Beckham Anderson. He’s everything she expected from a vampire, except for one thing—he won’t feed off her.

Reyna soon discovers that behind Beckham’s brooding, wicked façade lies a unique and complex man. And that, in a dark and divided world, she is more valuable than she ever would have believed.

For with each passing night, Reyna can’t shake the sensation that it’s Beckham who’s afraid of her.

Note: Reyna and Beckham’s story continues in Blood Match.


       


*Excerpt*
That was the moment Beckham appeared in the doorway like a storm cloud.
Reyna straightened in her seat at the expression on his face. He walked across the room like a tightly coiled spring ready to explode.
“Ah Beckham, there you are,” Harrington said.
“Excuse me, William. I need to speak with Reyna. Alone.”
She hastened out of her seat and followed him around the corner. He tugged her straight through the kitchens, out the back door, down a corridor, and into a dead end. Then her back was slammed against the brick wall. His fist connected with the wall behind her, and she felt the wall shudder. Debris floated onto her shoulders.
“You left,” he growled.
“I . . .”
“No.” He pressed his finger to her lips roughly. She stopped breathing and just stared up into his eyes as dark as night. Her body trembled under the feral stare. “You left without me.”
The silence was weighted. All she could do was sit with their bodies nearly touching. His finger on her mouth. Her mind wandering to hellacious places.
“You are my subject. Can you imagine what it was like when I found you missing? When you turned up with three of my kind?” She shook her head minutely. He bared his teeth to her, and she shrank back. “These are meant to drink your blood. To drink you dry until there is nothing left of your body but a dry corpse. We are killers. We don’t hesitate. Just because we’re wearing suits and seem more like you . . . does not mean we are like you. We are not like you. They especially are not like you. The only way you get to the top of Visage is to be fucking ruthless, Reyna. Do you understand?”
“You’re . . . scaring me,” she whispered.
“Good.”



~~~

Coming soon in the Blood Type series...
 
(covers link to Goodreads)

       

~~~~~

**About the Author**
K.A. Linde is the USA Today bestselling author of more than fifteen novels including the Avoiding series and the Record series. She has a Masters degree in political science from the University of Georgia, was the head campaign worker for the 2012 presidential campaign at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and served as the head coach of the Duke University dance team. She loves reading fantasy novels, geeking out over Star Wars, binge-watching Supernatural, and dancing in her spare time.

She lives in Lubbock, Texas with her husband and two super adorable puppies.

Stay connected with K.A. Linde
     
email: kalinde45@gmail.com

~~~~~

*My Thoughts*
Note: This review contains NO spoilers

I am still reeling after reading this!!! I am still thinking about these characters after I have finished reading. Blood Type is an intense read filled with political and government intrigue, with some intense romance.... a definite page-turner. The world building is imaginative and believable. And the characters... Wow, the characters! K.A. has created characters with intense and complex personalities.

The setting itself varied from place to place. The various locations of the city contrasted starkly against the decadent vampire community of the rich. The way K.A. described these locations created an atmosphere of desperation and hard.ship, and in other locations, hedonistic and ostentatious. It's pretty obvious throughout the book that which locations had these qualities. K.A.'s details of these locations even made me cringe... 😨

The story's pace flowed evenly, but of course, it had it's intense moments. I couldn't stop turning the pages, except when I fell asleep... Haha!! But, I got so wrapped up in Beckham and Reyna's story, I just couldn't stop reading. The interesting twist comes at the end... Yup, at the end!!! A freakin' cliffhanger! Well, it is to me, but this cliffhanger did reveal a lot where questions came up throughout the story. Blood Type had an espionage feel to it that created that suspesne/mystery feel. Gah!!! Now I have to wait for the next book... 😩

My rating:


Blog Tour Organized by

BLOG TOUR: Magnetic by Carissa Miller


Welcome to the Official Blog Tour for Carissa Miller's Magnetic. The tour will consist of various posts from participating blogs. Today, on our tour stop, we have an exclusive excerpt to share! Not only that, there's a cool tour-wide giveaway, too! Check out all the tour festivities and follow the tour, HERE... and grab your copy now!!!


Genre:
Young Adult
Contemporary Romance
Mystery
Publish Date:
September 10, 2017

Synopsis:
When Elle Christiansen’s rebellion leads to her father’s expulsion from a parsonage in small-town Ohio, the forlorn pair is forced to move to Oklahoma to live with an aunt neither of them has ever met. Here she encounters her aunt’s neighbor—Maverick Mason, the quietly confident son of a wealthy oil tycoon who infuriates her as much as he inexplicably draws her in…

Maverick slowly gains Elle’s trust and coaxes her out from the seemingly impenetrable walls of self-protection she erected around her heart when her mother was murdered. He convinces Elle to confide the secrets of her tortured past: that she saw her mother’s murder before it took place, and she was the one who found her, bleeding to death at the end of a lonely dirt road. Together the unlikely pair begins to unlock the secrets of not only Elle’s sordid past, but her mother’s and grandmother’s as well, to uncover decades of greed, corporate corruption, lies, and murder. Quickly, the sobering realization hits: if they do not solve her mother’s murder, Elle will undoubtedly suffer the same fate. As she continues her journey toward truth alongside the boy she is magnetically drawn to in a way both frightening and uncontrollable, Elle finds the road she is most afraid of going down—that one lane dirt road where her mother was murdered—just might be the only place she can truly find redemption.

Magnetic tells of the enduring pain of living with unsolved violent crime. Inspired by debut author Carissa Miller’s true-life events, it’s a haunting account of a young girl’s struggle in the aftermath of shattering loss. With an unraveling love story, puzzling mystery, unexpected twists and turns, and a gripping pace that will keep you turning pages, our heroine takes you on her journey as she learns one of life’s great lessons: facing your fears instead of running from them, is the only way to truly find freedom.



    

*Excerpt*
Within ten minutes the Tulsa city limits were behind me and I saw the sign for highway OK 11W. I drove into the darkness, away from the lights of the city. The stars in the sky burned brighter out here and I was all alone, except for a pair of headlights far off in the distance that I occasionally saw flashing behind me.
I began to pass old two-story houses that obviously had been beautiful once upon a time but now sat ravaged by time—paint chipping off the wood, sagging porches, and broken windows. Without looking at my directions, I pushed the turn signal and pulled onto a county road. The radio was on but oddly there was an eerie silence that deepened as I traveled further into darkness. I didn’t need to look up or check my directions; somehow I knew exactly where I was going. Something was drawing me into the darkness and at the end of the road, I knew I would find a yellow clapboard house.
The road narrowed then suddenly turned sharply to the right. I made the sharp turn, then found myself on a narrow gravel road. I drove on into the night, and although I had never been on the road before, I recognized it as the exact same path I had drawn from my dream. There was not a single street light. Only my headlights shined into the black of night. I could see nothing beyond a few feet in front of the van, but I knew that on either side of the road, flat Oklahoma prairies stretched on endlessly for miles. I knew that where the grass met the sky, oil wells dotted the horizon and pumped up and down without cease.
Finally, I came to a fence with a gate that was open, but not large enough for a car. I pulled over to the side of the road and parked the van. I should have been scared—a teenage girl, alone on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere—but I was at complete peace.
I pulled my backpack out, put on my black hoodie, then without hesitation, I shut the van door and turned my flashlight on. I saw the outline of a row of houses before me and I knew what would be waiting for me in the middle of them. I put one foot in front of the other and passed one house, two houses, then another. The houses were lined up perfectly on either side of the street, just as I remembered them from my dream. I passed three more houses then my flashlight met the form of a house in the distance. It was separated slightly from the others and though the darkness was all consuming and my flashlight lacked the power to show me the color of the house, I knew that it was yellow.
My legs moved forward, stepping purposefully, and as I climbed onto the threshold, I noticed a dreamcatcher blowing in the wind. Just as it did in my dream, the door cracked open as if welcoming me inside and a light orange hue emanated from a tiny, flickering candle. As the door continued to open of its own accord, the soft light from the candle illuminated the shape of a woman standing inside the tiny house—just as I knew she would be.
Unafraid and feeling an inexplicable calm despite the unknown, I walked through the door and stepped into the house that called me to it. The room was dim; a small fire burned in the fireplace. The modest kitchen could barely be seen off the living area and in between the kitchen and living room was a small corner for a table. Around the table sat four tiny wooden chairs.
I stepped further into the house and approached the woman. Our eyes met. They were black—the color of the charcoal that I used to help my mom pour into our grill on our back porch in Ohio—and as I stared into the blackness I knew that she had experienced immeasurable pain and loss, grief and suffering; but I could also see that she was strong and courageous. I saw her spirit, and I knew she was a fighter.
I longed to know her. I yearned to sit down and lose myself in her story. I ripped my eyes away from hers and took in her slight but sturdy frame; her long dark braids laced with silver-grey hair that shone in the candlelight like a halo; her white leather dress hanging to her knees where it split into tiny strands of leather that fell to the floor and ended with small blue and silver beads. I turned my eyes back toward hers but neither one of us broke the silence. Eventually she reached behind her and grabbed something off the table, never taking her dark eyes away from mine.
She slowly pulled a dark wooden box from behind her back, then she moved her weathered hands toward my chest in a gesture of offering. She still didn’t speak and I realized with sadness that perhaps she was not capable. As I looked at the object in her hands more closely—the dark, aged mahogany wood carved with intricate details—I knew that it was meant for me. In my hands, it felt at home.
As I took it from her, her eyes spoke of happiness, relief even. We stood there, both of our hands on the wooden object, our dark eyes peering into one another’s souls. A hundred questions passed through my mind, but as I found the courage to ask, I heard a noise outside. I turned quickly to look behind me. Headlights glazed through the open door.
The peace was gone, replaced instantly with fear. When I turned back to the woman, she had vanished. It was as if she had never been there but I looked down and saw in my hands a reminder that she had been—the dark wooden box she had given me.

~~~~~

**About the Author**
Carissa Miller writes a lifestyle and design blog called CC and Mike, where she and her husband blog about their experiences designing, building, and flipping houses in the Midwest. She was inspired to write her debut novel–Magnetic—because of her firsthand experience living with the trauma of an unsolved violent crime, her mother’s attempted murder. When she’s not writing, blogging, or designing, Carissa loves Oklahoma summers on the lake with her husband and three children, going to Oklahoma State sporting events and cheering on the Cowboys, and traveling cross country with her family in the RV she and her husband renovated. Carissa laughs loudly, loves with her whole heart, tells it how it is to a fault, and enjoys living life to the fullest, every moment of every day.

You can follow along with Carissa and her family on social media.

Stay connected with Carissa Miller
   

~~~~~

***The Giveaway***

Giveaway Open Internationally
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Blog Tour Organized by

COVER REVEAL: Tuck Me In Tight by Jennifer Rebecca


Today, we have the Cover Reveal for Jennifer Rebecca's Tuck Me In Tight, book 2 in the Claire Goodnite series! To celebrate this reveal, we have an exclusive excerpt and an author-hosted giveaway to share with you! So... Check it out and pre-order your copy now!!!

Genre:
Adult
Romantic Suspense
Series:
Claire Goodnite, #2
Publish Date:
May 28, 2018

Cover Designed by:
Alyssa Garcia at Uplifting Designs

Synopsis:
George Washington Township, New Jersey has been relatively quiet ever since it was turned upside down following a high profile kidnapping. During the lull in excitement Detective Claire Goodnite has enjoyed being in the love bubble with the sexy SAIC Wesley O’Connell.

Never fully believing that she was capable of a committed relationship—with Wes or with anyone—leaves Claire feeling undeserving of the elusive happily ever after. She has never let herself enjoy what was within her grasp . . .

Until a string of murdered women dressed and posed like sleeping dolls shakes the very foundation of everything Claire thought she knew. Particularly when the only connection to be found between the three victims is the man who finally stole her heart for keeps, Wes.

But it’s like she always said, she’s bad at love.


     

*Excerpt*

This is how my heart breaks

What. The. Fuck.
I had sat down at my desk and opened the manila envelope that was left on top of my stack of mail. It had seemed harmless enough.
But it wasn’t.
I blink my eyes over and over trying to make my brain process what it’s seeing but I can’t. I can’t unsee the images in the stack of pictures in my hand. Giant glossy eight by tens from different angles so there is absolutely no doubt that my heart is breaking.
And it is broken. It’s not just broken, it’s shattered.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I hear from over my shoulder and I have to grit my teeth to keep from screaming.
I shuffle the pictures sliding the top one to the back of the stack so that I can see the next in the row. This one is zoomed in. His head is tipped back and his face is distorted in both lust and passion as she straddles his lap. Her hands hold his to her breasts and I can see the play of tendons flex through them as he grips them tight. It was only two nights ago that his hands were on my own breasts much the same way as I rode his cock on the sofa.
“Claire, did you hear me?” he asks but I shuffle the stack again.
In this picture, he has his arms wrapped around her back and he’s pulling her close, her breasts mashed up against his strong chest. Her hands with long, red painted talons press in on either side of his face and as they kiss hungrily, their mouths open as their tongues tangle.
“Goddamnit, Claire! Did you hear me?” My spine turns to steal.
“I did. I’m just choosing to ignore you,” I respond coolly.
“Don’t do this, baby,” he pleads.
“I’m not the one who did anything,” I snap.
“I can explain.” But I’m not interested in listening to him plead a case where he is more than guilty.
“I’m going to need you to leave, Wes.”
“No.”
“This changes everything,” I say so softly even I struggle to hear the words that are coming out of my mouth.
“This changes nothing! Fuck that, Claire,” he yells. “You want to run away. You have always wanted to run away. And here is your fucking reason served up to you on a goddamn silver platter.” Everyone around us in the bullpen is doing everything they can to make it appear that they are not listening, not studying the tragic demise of Claire and Wes with rapt attention, but we all know that they are.
“No,” I shout back as I throw the stack of glossy betrayal down on top of my desk as I push my rolly chair back and stand. It slams into the desk behind mine. “You do not get to come in here, where I work, and tell me that I am to blame for your bullshit.”
“Okay,” he says quickly as he holds his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I can see you need time.”
“I need a lot of things. One of them is definitely distance.”
“I don’t know if I can give you that. I can’t lose you, baby.” His words burn hot behind my eyes and the last thing I want is for the other guys in the bullpen to see me cry.
“You should have thought about that before you fooled around with that stripper.”
“Claire—” he starts but I don’t let him finish.
“You need to go now,” I say softly.
I stand with my feet apart, my hands on my hips, and my head bowed as if I’m waiting for a blow. But I see him clearly even if only in my peripheral. He looks at me and opens his mouth as if he’s going to try to explain again. Something in my stance must have told him it was a losing battle because he snaps his mouth closed before moving towards the exit.

Wes pauses just before opening the door to turn and look back at me, I see him in my peripheral, but I’m looking at his lies and deceit spread across my desk for all to see. He pulls open the door and then slams it on his way out. I’m Detective Claire Goodnite and this is how my heart breaks.




~~~

Get started with the Claire Goodnite series with book 1, Tell Me A Story...
(cover links to Goodreads)

      


~~~~~

**About the Author**
Jennifer Rebecca is a thirty something lover of words, all words: the written, the spoken, the sung (even poorly), the sweet, the funny, and even the four letter variety. She is a native of San Diego, California where she grew up reading the Brownings and Rebecca with her mother and Clifford and the Dog who Glowed in the Dark with her dad, much to her mother’s dismay.
Jennifer is a graduate of California State University San Marcos where she studied Criminology and Justice Studies. She is also an Alpha Xi Delta.
10 years ago, she was swept off her feet by her very own sailor. Today, they are happily married and the parents of a 8 year old and 6 year old twins. She can often be found in East Texas on the soccer fields, drawing with her children, or reading. Jennifer is convinced that if she puts her fitbit on one of the dogs, she might finally make her step goals. She loves a great romance, an alpha hero, and lots and lots of laughter.
Stay connected with Jennifer Rebecca
     

~~~~~

***The Giveaway***


a Rafflecopter giveaway
Cover Reveal Organized by