Review – Keeping Her by Cora Carmack

Title: Keeping Her
Author: Cora Carmack
Series: Losing It #1.5
Previous Book: Losing It
Next Book: Faking It
Source: Personal Purchase

 Description from Goodreads:

Garrick Taylor and Bliss Edwards managed to find their happily-ever-after despite a rather . . . ahem . . . complicated start. By comparison, meeting the parents should be an absolute breeze, right?

But from the moment the pair lands in London, new snags just keep cropping up: a disapproving mother-in-law-to-be, more than one (mostly) minor mishap, and the realization that perhaps they aren’t quite as ready for their future as they thought.

As it turns out, the only thing harder than finding love is keeping it.

Review

I was actually pretty excited going into Keeping Her. I had really enjoyed Losing It, I was adding another letter to my A-Z Title Challenge, and I got more Garrick! Unfortunately, Keeping Her didn’t live up to the standard set by Losing It in my opinion.

Keeping Her picks up about 6 months after the end of Losing It. Bliss and Garrick are still living together in Philadelphia and are now engaged. They’re getting ready to fly to London to meet Garrick’s parents, and both are nervous.

What I did like a lot about Keeping Her was that it alternated perspectives between Garrick and Bliss. We did get a little bit of Garrick’s perspective at the very end of Losing It, but I’d say that Keeping Her is pretty close to 50/50, which was nice. I liked getting to know Garrick a little better. Unfortunately, Bliss just rubbed me the wrong way in this one. Even after over a year of being together and being engaged, she is still extremely insecure in herself and their relationship. It really got frustrating. Garrick assured her of his feelings several times, and she still let his mother intimidate her. It just annoyed me.

Also, I felt like things just took a really strange turn about halfway through, and suddenly I felt like I was reading a different book. I wasn’t sure I liked where it was heading. It ended up not being quite as bad as I thought, but I still felt like the story ended rather abruptly.

While I really enjoyed seeing more of Bliss and Garrick’s relationship, I wasn’t impressed with the way it was presented and felt like their story could have been continued in a better way. It wasn’t a horrible read, though, just not as good as the first book was.

Review – Losing It by Cora Carmack

Title: Losing It
Author: Cora Carmack
Series: Losing It #1
Next Book: Keeping Her (#1.5), Faking It
Source: Personal Purchase

 Description from Goodreads:

Sick of being the only virgin among her friends, Bliss Edwards decides the best way to deal with the problem is to lose it as quickly and simply as possible – a one-night stand. But her plan turns out to be anything but simple when she freaks out and leaves a gorgeous guy alone and naked in her bed with an excuse that no one with half-a-brain would ever believe. And as if that weren’t embarrassing enough, when she arrives for her first class of her last college semester, she recognizes her new theatre professor. She’d left him naked in her bed about 8 hours earlier.

Review

I picked up Losing It because I was looking for a K for my A to Z Title Challenge, and Keeping Her, the sequel novella, seemed like a good choice, but I obviously couldn’t read #1.5 without reading the first book, so I got Losing It as well. I really procrastinated on reading it because I really hate the cover. Honestly, this is one of those books that I’m glad I bought on my kindle because I would be embarrassed to be seen reading this cover! But I am so glad that I finally picked it up!

Losing It follows Bliss Edwards. She’s 22 and about to start her final semester of college when she admits to her best friend that she’s a virgin. She’s not holding onto her virginity for any particular reason, other than she just hasn’t found anyone worth giving it up to. The leads her friend to decide that she is taking Bliss out to a bar, where she will find a guy to lose it to.

I thought the premise of this book was kind of funny, but it turned into so much more than I expected while reading it. After freaking out during her almost-one-night-stand, Bliss walks in to class to find that same guy is now her teacher. Unfortunately, they seem to have developed feelings for each other, so they find it hard to stay away from each other, even though it could cost Garrick his job. I actually kind of enjoyed the back and forth. Garrick is just a hot character, especially with his British accent!

I loved Garrick, though I had a hard time reading him for a while. I couldn’t tell if he was really interested in Bliss or if he was just really attracted to her, but there was always something about him that appealed to me anyway. Bliss, on the other hand, annoyed me sometimes. She kept coming up with lame excuses rather than just admitting her virgin status to Garrick. Throw in some emotional tension from an admiring friend, and you pretty much have your classic romantic comedy.

Though Losing It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, I really enjoyed it. The conflict didn’t make me want to throw the book across my room, and the resolution was just great. It was a quick, fun read that I really enjoyed and would definitely recommend!

Review – Four Seconds to Lose by K.A. Tucker

Title: Four Seconds to Lose
Author: K.A. Tucker
Series: Ten Tiny Breaths #3
Previous Book: One Tiny Lie
Next Book: Five Ways to Fall(expected 2/10/14)
Source: Personal Purchase

Description from Goodreads:

When a gorgeous young dancer walks through his door, a strip club owner must decide whether to follow his rules or his heart in the third novel by the author of One Tiny Lie and Ten Tiny Breaths.Owning a strip club isn’t the fantasy most guys expect it to be. With long hours, a staff with enough issues to keep a psych ward in business, and the police regularly on his case, twenty-nine-year-old Cain is starting to second guess his unspoken mission to save the women he employs. And then blond, brown-eyed Charlie Rourke walks through his door, and things get really complicated. Cain abides by a strict “no sleeping with the staff” rule. But being around Charlie challenges Cain’s self-control…and it’s been a long time since any woman has done that.

Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Rourke needs a lot of money, really fast, in order to vanish before it’s too late. Taking her clothes off for men makes her stomach curl but Charlie tells herself that at least she’s putting her acting and dancing skills to good use. And though her fellow dancers seem eager to nab their sexy, sophisticated, and genuinely caring boss, she’s not interested. After all, Charlie Rourke doesn’t really exist—and the girl pretending to be her can’t get distracted by romance.

Unfortunately, Charlie soon discovers that developing feelings for Cain is inevitable, and that those feelings may not be unrequited—but losing him when he finds out what she’s involved with will be more painful than any other sentence awaiting her.

Review

After loving Ten Tiny Breaths and One Tiny Lie, I was extremely anxious for Four Seconds to Lose. I requested it on Edelweiss and checked my email like a madwoman. Unfortunately, I didn’t get approved. (I didn’t get declined either. My request is actually still pending!) So I preordered it and started it on release day.

I was so excited to start Four Seconds to Lose, and it started off with a bang. By the end of the prologue, which was only 1% of the total book, I was already heartbroken for Cain and liking the way the book was heading. I liked that we learned a little bit about Cain’s past right from the start.

My biggest complaint about Four Seconds to Lose was that it’s described as being Cain’s story, but it’s told in two perspectives: Cain’s and Charlie’s. And at times, I felt like we were spending a lot more time with Charlie than with Cain. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but it took me a very long time to actually care about Charlie, so I was getting a little frustrated with her portions.

There was also a part of the story where I just had my heart in my throat and was getting annoyed. You see, Charlie has a big secret, and as she connects with Cain, she knows that this secret is a big deal and starts feeling guilty about it. I was already thinking to myself that of course, she wasn’t just going to admit it, and it was just going to blow up in her face. Things didn’t actually pan out exactly as I was expecting, but it did frustrate me for a little bit.

However, for everything I disliked about Charlie’s story, I loved about Cain’s story. He’s such a great guy, though he doesn’t seem like he would be on the surface. I really liked him from Kacey’s story, but seeing more of him and learning more about his past, demons, and motivations, I just really fell in love with him. Even just thinking about him, he was such a great character.

The interactions between Cain and Charlie, even before anything romantic started to build were really interesting. There were definitely some funny scenes. I do like that Charlie gives Cain a good run for his money.

One thing I did notice, and I don’t know if it’s just because half the book is from a male perspective, is that Four Seconds to Lose seemed much steamier than Ten Tiny Breaths or One Tiny Lie. I mean, there were sex scenes in the previous two books, and at times they were more descriptive than I’m used to (reading mostly YA), but there weren’t a ton of them, and they didn’t feel quite so descriptive. There were several scenes in FStL that I felt like I needed a cold shower. This is not a good or bad thing, just an observation. It’s definitely steamy at times!

I wasn’t completely thrilled with the ending. After all the tension that I had built up while reading the story, I felt like the ending was just a little too easy. I mean, on one hand, I was nice that things weren’t overly dramatic, but it just felt a little anticlimactic.

Overall, I really enjoyed Four Seconds to Lose, but I felt like it was missing something from the other two novels. I’m not really sure what exactly it was that I felt was missing, but I just didn’t love it as much.

Review – One Tiny Lie by K.A. Tucker

Title: One Tiny Lie
Author: K.A. Tucker
Series: Ten Tiny Breaths #2
Previous Book: Ten Tiny Breaths
Next Book: Four Seconds to Lose (releasing 11/4/2013)
Source: Personal Purchase

Description from Goodreads:

Livie has always been the stable one of the two Cleary sisters, handling her parents’ tragic death and Kacey’s self-destructive phase with strength and maturity. But underneath that exterior is a little girl hanging onto the last words her father ever spoke to her. “Make me proud,” he had said. She promised she would…and she’s done her best over the past seven years with every choice, with every word, with every action.

Livie walks into Princeton with a solid plan, and she’s dead set on delivering on it: Rock her classes, set herself up for medical school, and meet a good, respectable guy that she’s going to someday marry. What isn’t part of her plan are Jell-O shots, a lovable, party animal roommate she can’t say ‘no’ to, and Ashton, the gorgeous captain of the men’s rowing team. Definitely him. He’s an arrogant ass who makes Livie’s usually non-existent temper flare and everything she doesn’t want in a guy. Worse, he’s best friends and roommates with Connor, who happens to fits Livie’s criteria perfectly. So why does she keep thinking about Ashton?

As Livie finds herself facing mediocre grades, career aspirations she no longer thinks she can handle, and feelings for Ashton that she shouldn’t have, she’s forced to let go of her last promise to her father and, with it, the only identity that she knows.

Review

When I finished Ten Tiny Breaths, I immediately wanted to read One Tiny Lie. I downloaded the sample to my kindle and was just about to start it when I got nervous. This was Livie’s story after all, not a continuation of Kacey’s. What if it wasn’t as good? So I put it on my TBR list and moved on to other books, planning to come back to it later. After my friend read and loved Ten Tiny Breaths, we decided to read One Tiny Lie together, and I am so glad that we did!

Right from the start, I knew that I was going to like this book. One of the biggest differences I noticed between Ten Tiny Breaths and One Tiny Lie was the humor. Though I loved how messed up Kacey was, it was nice to not have a completely dark, twisty story again. One Tiny Lie definitely delivered the laughs, and I was very thankful for it. It’s not often that a book can actually make me laugh out loud, but One Tiny Lie did just that.

At first, Livie is kind of annoying. She has a plan, and she’s going to stick to it. She’s inexperienced in almost every way, but she’s also a people pleaser. It made her into a very strange personality. However, she’s hilarious when she’s drunk or even embarrassed. She really struggles with things when she feels they aren’t going her way, and I really felt for her. She’s used to being right on track, always knowing what she wants and how to get it, but suddenly, everything in her life has changed.

Ashton, on the other hand, was amazing. He was an arrogant jerk for most of the book, but there was always something likable and softer lurking on the edges. There is one aspect of his personality that comes up fairly early on, and I hated it. It was really hard to reconcile it with the way I felt toward him most of the time. And it made it hard for me to decide how I felt about him in regards to Livie. Connor, on the other hand, I didn’t like from the start. He seems to be the perfect guy for Livie, and exactly what she’s looking for, and on the surface, he is, but there was just always something about him that rubbed me the wrong way, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Without going into too much detail, since this review is fairly long as it is, I also loved the other characters, except maybe Ty. He was just the token drunk, annoying guy. lol But Dr. Stayner, Reagan, and Grant were great additions to the story, and Eric and Derek: LOVED them!

One Tiny Lie was a very different story from Ten Tiny Breaths, with a very different feel. It did not rip my heart out and stomp on it or make me sob uncontrollably. But it was very emotional. I was sad, angry,  happy, excited, relieved, anxious, disappointed right along with Livie. Though completely different, it was equally as beautiful a story as its prequel, and I really, really enjoyed it.

I did feel that the ending was  bit rushed, and that there were certain scenes that could have been longer or shorter, but overall, I thought that One Tiny Lie was a great story. It did not disappoint me at all, even in comparison to Ten Tiny Breaths, and I would definitely recommend it!