Real by Katy Evans

Sunday, July 28, 2013

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Summary from Goodreads



A fallen boxer.

A woman with a broken dream.

A competition…

He even makes me forget my name. One night was all it took, and I forgot everything and anything except the sexy fighter in the ring who sets my mind ablaze and my body on fire with wanting…

Remington Tate is the strongest, most confusing man I’ve ever met in my life.

He’s the star of the dangerous underground fighting circuit, and I’m drawn to him as I’ve never been drawn to anything in my life. I forget who I am, what I want, with just one look from him. When he’s near, I need to remind myself that I am strong–but he is stronger. And now it’s my job to keep his body working like a perfect machine, his taut muscles primed and ready to break the bones of his next opponents . . .

But the one he’s most threatening to, now, is me.

I want him. I want him without fear. Without reservations.
If only I knew for sure what it is that he wants from me?



My Review



When I saw Remington's name in the final list of the 3rd Annual YA Crush Tournament, I was really curious who the is this Remington is. i have heard most of the names in the final list, so how come I don't know who he is. i heard he is a fighter and he is super sweet. So, I have to know which book he came from.., so tahda! I'm done reading Real by Katy Evans.

M first impression was this is so much like Beautiful Disaster. Brooke first met Remington during Remy's fight, where he is "quite" popular. "Quite" is an understatement actually. Which is so much like he first scenes of Beautiful Disaster. But though there are lot of similarities from the two books, Real still has it's own uniqueness. Even though I find Remy's character a cliche, Brooke is a new character to me. She never mentioned herself as someone everybody admired, nor every guys love to have. She was a former star who lost the only thing she aimed for, but never stopped doing what could make her happy. I just wish I find the back story there. I never heard her cry over her Olympic dreams. I guess the story started at the time where Brooke has already moved on from her tragedy. 

What I love about this story is the combination of drama, action and music in the story. There's also sports but I'm not that much familiar with the double punch and everything. And to be honest, I did not feel much on the intensity of the fights since It's on Brooke's POV and all I can hear about is how much she's being turned on by Remy's fights. Hes, Remy is superduper sweet, I now understand why he's a finalist. and Brooke is an extraordinary woman and their love story is worth writing about but for me, it lacks the it factor, compared to other YA stories. 

All in all, I find the story direct and simple, you-get-what-you-read kind of book.

One Week Girlfriend by Monica Murphy

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Summary from Goodreads


Temporary. That one single word best describes my life these last few years. I’m working at a temporary job until I can finally break free. I’m my little brother’s temporary mother since our mom doesn’t give a crap about either of us. And I’m that temporary girl all the guys want to get with because I give it up so easily. According to the rumors, at least.


But now I’m the temporary girlfriend of Drew Callahan, college football legend and all around golden guy. He’s beautiful, sweet—and he’s hiding way more secrets than I am. He’s brought me into this fake life where everyone seems to hate me. And everyone seems to want something from him. The only thing he seems to want though is…
Me.

I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is, I think Drew needs me. And I want to be there for him. 




My Review


A cliche story, but not really. Looking in the plot, I was like... "here I go again with this type of story." But I honestly love this kind of stories, maybe because of the extreme sweetness of the male character and me being a frustrated romantic. :p


What makes this different from other stories? This is not love at first sight. The girl is not sweet, actually she's known tobe a slut who smokes. The guys is freakingly gorgeous and famous but hates to hooks up with girls. As we go on to the story, I might say this is an unusual story with an unusual lead characters which you'll only realize if you're almost done reading the whole book. To start, Drew is the jock, a famous one but doesn't like hooking up with girls much. That's why she ended up asking Fable, the famous slut to pretend as her girlfriend for one week, thus the title. Right from the start, a lot of familiar scenarios are being presented, but I guess the saving grace of this book is that it downright admitted how cliche the story is. Then, the story became very confusing, with all Drew's dark mystery I can't decipher and I'm finding too much drama... The reason for all of these better be butterflying reasonable. The gradual development of the story made me impatient to know what's really going on, but I guess it's really good, because even though the story seems to be just a simple love story, it turned out to tackle a very serious matter. 

The alternating POV suits perfectly well with the story, with all the secrets Drew is hiding and Fable's unusual character, hearing both their minds really helped to develop the story deeper than the story itself. I also love the quotes at the beginning of every chapter, it helped me in guessing on what to expect in that chapter. Simple words were use that made the whole story easy to understand, not that much detail but enough for reader to envision what's going on inside the story.

Dirty Little Secrets by Jennifer Echols

Friday, July 19, 2013

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Summary from Goodreads


Bailey wasn’t always a wild child and the black sheep of her family. She used to play fiddle and tour the music circuit with her sister, Julie, who sang and played guitar. That ended when country music execs swooped in and signed Julie to a solo deal. Never mind that Julie and Bailey were a duet, or that Bailey was their songwriter. The music scouts wanted only Julie, and their parents were content to sit by and let her fulfill her dreams while Bailey’s were hushed away.



Bailey has tried to numb the pain and disappointment over what could have been. And as Julie’s debut album is set to hit the charts, her parents get fed up with Bailey’s antics and ship her off to granddad’s house in Nashville. Playing fiddle in washed-up tribute groups at the mall, Bailey meets Sam, a handsome and oh-so-persuasive guitarist with his own band. He knows Bailey’s fiddle playing is just the thing his band needs to break into the industry. 
But this life has broken Bailey’s heart once before. She isn’t sure she’s ready to let Sam take her there again…  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16058488-dirty-little-secret


My Review 


I could never put fiddle and love story in one sentence. That is until I've read this book. I wasn't expecting much from this story since I'm not that good with music, let alone play a fiddle. Honestly speaking, I'm not familiar with this string instrument, until google helped me out. All I wanted is a feel good story that will save my boredom for the day. This book had successfully done that, and more than that. I was entertained beyond my expectation and quite enjoy the complicated, annoying but adorable love story of Sam and Bailey.
It's all about music for this two, and family troubles in the sideline. At times, it feels like Bailey's problem is too shallow for the story. There are also a lot of background stories that they were not much elaborated. Though the background stories tells a lot about the characters, I didn't get enough emotional investment from them.
I was a bit disappointed since I prefer the story to focus on their family problems rather than their big dream, which is so wrong of me since this a music book. (That's what I'm calling it) Another disappointment for me is that I wasn't able to have a glimpse of any of Bailey's composition.It would be so much better if I did, then maybe the emotions Bailey is trying to say for her family and Sam would reach to me.
But what I love most in this story is when they introduced Dancin' away with my heart" by Lady Antebellum. I must admit that I don't know all of the songs mentioned in this book, except that one. Which is one of my favorite, thus this book notched up in my list. :)