Release Day Blitz: Inked Memories by Carrie Ann Ryan

 

NYT bestselling author Carrie Ann Ryan's INKED MEMORIES is available TODAY. Read a sneak peek below and pick up your copy now - you don't want to miss meeting the dirtiest Montgomery yet.

 

 About INKED MEMORIES

The Montgomery Ink series by NYT Bestselling Author Carrie Ann Ryan continues when the final Denver Montgomery sibling refuses to fall for his brother’s former flame—the company’s new plumber.

Wes Montgomery watched his entire family fall in love, and now finds himself ready to settle down. Except the one person he seems to find chemistry with is not only his twin’s ex, she also works for Montgomery Inc. But when the two find themselves in one compromising situation after another, Wes realizes he’s having second thoughts about the dynamic woman who’s burst her way into his life. Sure she sets off his temper, but she also makes him hot in every other way possible.

Jillian Reid never loved her best friend like everyone thought she should, so she pushed him away so he could have his future. Now, despite fighting it, she finds herself attracted to the one man she shouldn’t. When her father’s health takes a turn for the worse, and a danger no one saw coming show its face, she’s forced to turn to Wes for help. The two of them have fought off their attraction long enough, and each cave to the desire. But this enemies-to-lovers tale might have an ending no one ever dreamed of.

Get your hands on INKED MEMORIES now!

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Get a sneak peek of INKED MEMORIES:

  Jillian tore off her shirt right beside her truck. Thankfully, she’d thought to put on her normal tank underneath like usual, even though she hadn’t planned to work that day. She needed a shower, but the fact that she’d washed her face and hands to the point of reddening her skin and was now pulling on a new shirt would at least take care of most of the damage.
Almost all of the crew was gone for the day since it had taken her much longer to do her job than probably anyone had planned. But, hell, it had been a much larger piece of crap bathroom than even Storm figured. Now, she was ready to go home, drink a beer— after her shower—and watch a Harry Potter marathon.
And didn’t that just sound like the most interesting life ever.
She sighed and honestly didn’t care all too much what others thought of that. She’d had a long day she hadn’t planned for, and she just wanted to relax her way.
After tossing her dirty shirt into the garbage bag in her truck since she knew there was no saving that particular piece of clothing, she turned and let out a silent screech. Her foot slammed into the curb, and her ankle twisted slightly. Hands out and braced for an ugly fall, everything seemed to go in slow motion as she tried not to hurt herself any worse than necessary.
Strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her up so her back pressed firmly into a very hard chest. Her heart raced since she still felt like she was falling even though she wasn’t, and she let out a slow breath.
“You okay?”
Of course. Of course, it was him. It couldn’t be anyone else who witnessed her clumsiness and near accident. It had to be Wes fucking Montgomery.
Where was a crevice in the earth to swallow her up and take her away from this situation when she needed one?
“Jillian?”
“I’m fine,” she grumbled. “You can take your hands off me now.”
But he didn’t.
Instead, he turned her in his hold and looked her right in the eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She swallowed hard. Why hadn’t she noticed the brightness of his eyes before? Or the way his pupils dilated when he focused on something...namely her at the moment?
“I’m fine,” she repeated. And she was. Her ankle throbbed slightly, but it wasn’t even a sprain since she’d had enough of those to tell. She’d just tweaked it a bit in her clod-hopping way of walking.
He didn’t let go.
“Seriously, Wes. You need to stop trying to baby me, or whatever the hell you think you’re doing all the time. I’m not an idiot. I can handle myself. Why do you—?”
She didn’t even know what she was going to ask at that moment because her mind went blank at the first touch of Wes’s lips to hers. Her eyes closed of their own volition, and she leaned into him. That seemed to push him harder, and he deepened the kiss, his lips soft yet firm against hers as his tongue traced the seam of her mouth. She opened for him, tangling her tongue with his as she moaned.
The sound seemed to break them both out of whatever the hell they were doing, and they pulled apart as if struck, both left panting, their chests moving quickly up and down.
“No. Not going to happen.” She held out her hands, trying to catch her breath. “Nope. No way.”
Wes looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her before, his eyes a little wide. “It was...it was an accident.”
She didn’t even flinch at that, too numb from everything else hitting her all at once. “Fine.”
She turned on her heel, grateful she hadn’t actually hurt her ankle, and jumped into her truck before turning her engine and pulling away.
“Nope,” she muttered to herself again. “Not going to happen. I’m not going to do another Montgomery and fuck myself over. And I’m sure as hell not going to do a boss Montgomery. Nope. Nope. No. No. No.”
And if she kept repeating that to herself, she just might get the damn taste of Wes Montgomery out of her mouth.
 

See the INKED MEMORIES trailer:

 

About Carrie Ann Ryan

Carrie Ann Ryan is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary and paranormal romance. Her works include the Montgomery Ink, Redwood Pack, Talon Pack, and Gallagher Brothers series, which have sold over 2.0 million books worldwide. She started writing while in graduate school for her advanced degree in chemistry and hasn’t stopped since. Carrie Ann has written over fifty novels and novellas with more in the works. When she’s not writing about bearded tattooed men or alpha wolves that need to find their mates, she’s reading as much as she can and exploring the world of baking and gourmet cooking.

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Blog Tour Book Review: The Duke's Temptation by Raven McAllan

Author: Raven McAllan
Series: N/A
Audience: +18
Genre: Historical Romance, Erotic Romance
Publisher: Totally Bound
Release Date: October 31st 2017
My Rating: 5 Cups
Source: Neverland Blog Tours
Blurb (from Goodreads):

Tortured duke Gibb Alford has vowed never to love again...until a beautiful French knife thrower brings him to his knees.

When Gibb Alford, Duke of Menteith, saves a beautiful French knife thrower from the unwanted attentions of a fellow aristocrat he is ill-prepared for the immediate tug of attraction to the beautiful Evangeline. Widowed, he has sworn off love forever, so he can well do without this temptation.

Evangeline certainly doesn’t want the complication of being in the sights of one smoky-eyed Scottish duke. She’s a lady on a mission, with no time for love or dalliance.

However, fate and life have other plans and gradually Gibb and Evangeline become a couple.

As each struggle with the demons of their pasts, Evangeline finds life in the ton difficult. The spurned aristocrat Gibb saved her from is not prepared to give in and retire gracefully. And while Gibb fights the man, he also declares war on his own emotions. When Evangeline’s past is revealed to her, everything changes. She has a decision to make.

Fight for Gibb—or flee to a safe but unfulfilled future.

As for her duke… All is fair in love and war—right?

*Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book from Neverland Blog Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my rating or the content of my review

It's been a while since I last read a historical romance that I loved as much as I did this one.

I had so much fun reading this book. Gibb is a tortured hero, who has vowed never to love again after his wife died. Fortunately for him, emotions have a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it, and he is saved from his self-imposed solitude when he meets Evangeline. I quite liked Gibb. I loved how forward he was with his thinking, even though it is amazing how few people understood his quite reasonable ideas. I liked how he respected his staff, how he pushed them towards getting an education, and I liked how he defended Evangeline when she needed to be defended. I also liked how, towards the end of the book, he started fighting with his demons and tried to come to terms with how his late wife was like and with what she did.

Evangeline is an interesting heroine. She wasn't interested in anything other than what Gibb was willing to offer, but also nothing less than what she deserved. I liked how she stood up for herself, both when she needed to defend herself from Crowe, but also when she decided she deserved more from Gibb and had that conversation with him. I loved seeing her do that. I also loved how independent she was, how she wanted to earn her living. She's also a woman on a mission, trying to find out who her father is, and I liked that aspect of the story. In some ways, she reminded me of Elizabeth Bennet, which is one of my favorite heroines ever.

While reading this book I felt like reading a classic book. I was so immersed in the storytelling, that it took me a while to remember that this is a brand new book. Which is amazing, because it takes a special kind of author (or magician, however you want to put it) to manage to make the old English sound so new and not difficult to read or understand. I was truly amazed by McAllan's ability to write a story using words I've never heard before, without taking away from the story. It actually made the story more vibrant, more real, easier to get lost in, which I adored.

It's been a while since I last read a historical romance book, but this one reminded me why I fell in love with the genre in the first place. If you love the genre as much as I do, you must read this book. McAllan's writing took me on a wonderful journey and I cannot wait to read more of her stories.

Book Review: Cupid's Match by Lauren Palphreyman

Author: Lauren Palphreyman
Series: Cupid's Match #1
Audience: +16
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Paranormal
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date:
My Rating: 3.5 cups
Source: Wattpad
Blurb (from Goodreads):

In a world where everyone has a perfect match, what if you were matched with the dangerous, notoriously good looking, original bad boy....Cupid himself?

***
Dear Lila,
I am contacting you on behalf of The Cupids Matchmaking Service.

You will not have heard of us but we are an organisation that work behind the scenes of society, identifying each person's perfect match.

Usually we would not contact our clients. We prefer to work in secrecy - setting up the ideal environment for the two matches to have a chance encounter.

Recently, however, we ran your details through our system and...well....in your case...

We think you'd better come in.

Please respond at your earliest convenience.

Yours Urgently,

The Cupids Matchmaking Service

I think we all know by now I love books inspired by mythology. I probably said it so many times y'all are bored and annoyed already, but it's true. I love them. I read Cupid's Match on Wattpad when I hit a bit of a reading slump phase, and it was the perfect book to get me out of it.

The story focuses on the idea that each person has a destined partner, a so-called match. The Cupids Matchmaking Services organization is basically the name given to a group of cupids that have heen around since the beginning of time. As per the company rules, no cupid can find his or her match, it is forbidden. So what happens if this rule is broken and a cupid does find his match? Enter Lila, a regular teenager that finds herself matched to the Cupid, and all hell breaks loose.

I really enjoyed the idea of love being forbidden to the very creatures whose entire existence is dependent on love. It was an interesting aspect of the story, and it was a fun, new thing to do with the myth of love. I also liked how this was explained. For me it felt like a truly selfish reason from the organization's boss to have such a rule, because it meant that this person wasn't in the business of love for selfless reasons, but for the feeling of power that comes from playing with human emotions, but also from feeling loved by humans and served by cupids. The concept of love in this book is seen from many perspectives, from what some refer to as true love, to obsession, to adulation, all the way to envy and hate. So you get the positive and negative aspects of love, and I liked reading about that.

Lila was an enjoyable character to read about. At times she was a bit difficult to like though, probably because she was a bit too naive. And she was a bit undecided with what she wanted. I did like her spunk at the beginning of the story, when she refused to believe in the idea of an appointed, already decided-on match for her. While she had courage, I would have wanted to see her keep a bit more of that initial spark during the story. She kind of got it back towards the end of the story.

Cupid was depicted in an interesting way in this story. I got the idea of him more as a rebel here than a true bad boy, to be honest. He has a brother in this story, Cal, which I found insanely funny for some reason. There were moments when you could see a glimpse of Cupid's wild streak, but I didn't truly got a feeling of him as a full on bad boy.

There were a few details that I would have wanted to be more accurate in this story, at least from a mythological perspective. But all of that aside, as I said before, I really enjoyed seeing how the whole concept of love was depicted in this story. The villain in this story is pretty psychotic if you ask me. It's not that this particular villain is full on scary, just more deranged I'd say.

The plot was pretty evenly paced. One little technical thing that kept me from reading this story faster was the way it was put into pages. I don't know how this story translates to printed page or if a true ebook version of it is the same, but at least on Wattpad it felt as if the chapters were too short. I would have wanted longer, and therefore fewer chapters, just because the sudden breaks in reading with getting past the in-between posts kind of pulled me out of the story more than I liked.

All of that aside, I quite enjoyed this story. There were a few things that were left open-ended, and I hope this will be resolved in the other stories from this series. I am planning on reading the sequels, just because I am curious to see what happens to the secondary characters from this story. All in all, a pretty enjoyable read.