Top Ten Tuesday #10: Books On My Fall TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

Fall is here, and I am going to be honest with you, I am confused. Should I be happy? Should I be sad? I'm happy because all of the bugs are slowly going away, but I'm sad because that means no more lazy days at the beach. Unless I want to become a human popsicle, and I am so not in the mood for that! I'm still recovering from my first cold of the season. Yep, I'm that pathetic, guys, that the first hint of colder weather did me in. *long sigh*

Anyway, this also means I get to be my old lazy self on weekends and surround myself with fluffy pillows, a cozy blanket, a hot cup of tea and read. And since I'm starting to get to the bottom of my ARC TBR (never thought I'd see the day, honestly), I've decided to start reading some of the books I have lying around on my shelves. Here are 10 books I can't wait to read this fall:

• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - The more people talk about this book and the TV show, the more excited I am to read it. Which is weird, considering I'm not a fan of time travel stories, but I am hoping this one is as good as people make it to be. Plus, the Romanian cover is super gorgeous:

I absolutely adore this cover of Outlander, the Romanian edition. And I recently saw the cover for the second book, and it is just as gorgeous. I just hope the publishing house keeps this theme for the rest of the series <3 #outlander #coverlove #covergasm #bookstagram #booknerd #bookworm

A photo posted by Ruby Jo (@rubys.books) on May 13, 2016 at 11:31am PDT

• Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella - I'm a huge fan of Kinsella's stand alone books, and I'm curious to see what funny adventures she's writing about in this book.
• Unfinished Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien - Every time there's a new book full of stories about Middle Earth, I get all giddy and excited. I'm super excited about reading this one.
• Legacy by Hannah Fielding - I just got this book in the mail and I'm so excited about it. Although it's the third book in the series, and I haven't yet read the previous two books, I will definitely be reading this one pretty soon.
• The Becoming by Jeanne C. Stein - A book about vampires, by an author I haven't heard of before. I'm in the mood for more vampires.
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• Unrivaled by Alyson Noel
• Ruin & Rising by Leigh Bardugo - I want to know if any of my crazy theories that have Meredith (Pandora's Books) laughing like a loon are true of it they're complete nonsense.
• The Pelican Brief by John Grisham - One of my favorite movie thrillers ever is based on this book. And everyone seems to love his books, so I'm curious. I also borrowed The Firm and A Time To Kill from my grandmother, and I plan on reading them too, soon.

What about you guys? What are you planning on reading this fall?

Book Review: The Men With The Golden Cuffs by Lexi Blake

Author: Lexi Blake
Series: Masters and Mercenaries #2
Audience: +18
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Erotic Romance
Publisher: Dlz Entertainment
Release Date: May 26th 2012
My Rating: 5 cups
Source: InkSlinger PR
Blurb (from Goodreads):

A woman in danger…

Serena Blake is a bestselling author of erotic fiction. She knows how to write a happy ending but hasn’t managed to find one of her own. Divorced and alone, she has no one to turn to when a stalker begins to threaten her life. The cops don’t believe her. Her ex-husband thinks she’s making the whole story up. She has no one left to turn to except a pair of hired bodyguards. They promise to guard her body, but no one can protect her heart.

Two men in search of love…

Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are halves of a whole. They’ve spent their entire adult lives searching for the one woman who can handle them both. Adam is the playful, indulgent lover, while Jacob is the possessive, loving Dom. When Serena comes into their lives, Adam is certain that she’s the one. But Jacob’s past comes back to haunt them all. He is suspicious of Serena’s story, and his concerns are driving a wedge between him and Adam. But when the stalker strikes, they will have to come together or lose each other forever…

*Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book from InkSlinger PR in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my opinion or my rating of the book in any way.

The Men With The Golden Cuffs picks up right where the previous book in the series left off. I love that, because it reminds me of a TV show, with each book being a new "season" in the series. It also kind of helps tie the books together really well, as well as keep you on your toes, because that means you know that at the end of the book, you'll get a tiny hint of what's to come in the next book.

I loved Serena. She's really strong, and she found it in herself to follow a dream she had, despite her asshole of a husband. I would love it if the disdain she encounters for being an erotic romance author was pure fiction, but I fear it's really real. So it was really interesting, as a reader, to read about what some authors might go through. Because most people focus on the prejudice and mean comments that romance readers receive, but not on what authors have to face. So I really loved that aspect of her story, even though it made me really angry for her too. So I think she's really strong for following her dream, but also for keeping her head high and not letting jealous, petty people get her down, or make her feel inferior.

Adam and Jake are awesome. They complete each other in such a great way, like only really good friends can. Adam is the fun, easy-going one, while Jake is the more serious one. At the same time, Adam is the wait-and-see kind of guy, while Jake sometimes lets his emotions influence his judgement, especially when he's angry or he feels betrayed. I love Adam's fashion sense.  And I love his humor, his sarcasm. I would, honestly, fall for the two of them as well, because they each bring the best out in the other one. Jake kind of helps Adam reign in his impulses, while Adam helps Jake be more playful and more daring. They're also really loyal, but where Adam is a guy full of hope, no matter what happens to him, Jake seems a bit jaded, which made me sad.

As with the previous book in the series, the pacing is really good. I enjoyed the villain in this book. I kind of saw it coming, not every single detail about this particular villain, but about half of it. What I most enjoyed about it is the twisted, perverse nature that this villain had. It takes dedication for doing what poor Serena had to go through, and I really liked reading about it. It all felt very real, the escalating nature of this person's evilness.

I also liked finding out who's next in the series to get his story told, especially after certain scenes from this book. Like I said in my review for the first book in the series, I'm hooked on this series, and each book that I read makes me love the series more and more.

Book Review: The Dom Who Loved Me by Lexi Blake

Author: Lexi Blake
Series: Masters and Mercenaries #1
Audience: +18
Genre: Erotic Romance, Contemporary Romance
Publisher: DLZ Entertainment LLC
Release Date: September 25th 2011
My Rating: 4 cups
Source: InkSlinger PR
Blurb (from Goodreads):

A routine mission…

Sean Taggart is hunting a deadly terrorist, and his only lead is the lovely Grace Hawthorne. She's the executive assistant for an employment agency Sean suspects is a front for illegal activities. To get the truth, he is going to have to get very close to Grace, a task he is all too eager to undertake when he discovers her deliciously submissive nature.

…turns into a dangerous seduction.

Soon, Grace Hawthorne is living a double life. By day, she is the widowed mother of two college-aged sons. By night, she submits to Sean's every dark desire. She's living out her wildest fantasies of pleasure—intimate acts of trust she's only read about. As passion engulfs her, a murderer strikes, and Grace learns that Sean has a deeply hidden agenda. Will Sean choose his mission and break her heart or be the Master of her dreams?

*Disclaimer: I received an ecopy of this book from Inkslinger PR in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my opinion or my rating of the book in any way

I've had the Masters & Mercenaries series on my TBR for about 3 years or so. I was curious about it, and then a few months ago I got to read a novella in this world, that appeared in a 1001 Dark Nights bundle, and I've been even more determined to read this series ever since.

The first thing that comes to mind about this book is that it's not just about BDSM. I loved that there's a thriller side to the story, a more complex story line than just simple erotic romance. I also love that the focus was on how to capture the bad guy more than on who the bad guy was. There is a question whether Grace is involved or not, but other than that we know who the target is. Or so I thought, because at the end my certainty was basically destroyed.

Grace was a heroine that at times I loved, and at times frustrated me. I loved her because she seemed like a strong woman, one that is trying to live her life after the loss of her husband. But she frustrated me because I wanted her to get mad at Sean. I kept waiting for that moment when she'd yell, kick, curse, fight, anything that showed her anger. I wanted her to punch him. He kind of deserved it, so I fear that I felt more outraged than she did.

At the same time, the entire situation has a different meaning if seen from Sean's POV. He was doing a job, a job that he had to do, so I can't really fault him for following orders. It's probably one of the things that hooked me on this series, the fact that it shows the struggle of the men and women who, at one point or another, decide to join the Army or to become police officers and go undercover, in whatever country, and who receive certain orders that maybe is in a really gray area of what the rest of the people see as "moral". So I struggled with accepting the D/s aspect of their relationship just because of that very reason, because he was being dishonest, but at the same time he was the most honest version of himself as he could, without betraying his mission. The one thing that I didn't like was that he had this moment in the beginning of their relationship when he expected Grace to know what a submissive should and shouldn't do, just based on the books she read, even though she had no prior experience with this culture before. I felt like he exaggerated a little there, because just because you read about something, that doesn't make you an expert on that subject or on the rules of the game, so to speak. But other than that, I liked Sean.

The ending was pretty great, actually. I like that it leaves the door open for future mischief and struggles, and it's not a case of "the big bad of the book" only. Sure, there might be books where that is the case, as we'll see in the future, but with a few of the books there's a link that goes beyond some characters that pop in to remind the reader that they're in the picture too and that they had their stories told in the previous books.

I'm super happy I got to read this book and I'm definitely going to keep reading this series.