January 29, 2016

Book Review: Smart Girl

Katie January 29, 2016 0Comment

Smart Girl is the 3rd book in a series.  I have not read the other two but didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything, though I may go back to read them later. Smart Girl is about Miko Jin. (The previous 2 books are Party Girl about her friend Landon and Sweet Girl about her friend Max.)

I liked this book because it was about a girl who reads too many romance novels and that gives her a skewed view of romance. It reminded me of me, a bit.  Miko has had a crush on Max’s brother Liam since she first laid eyes on him.  She knows that they are absolutely meant to be but she has to figure out how to make Liam believe that too.

Liam seems to be with a new girl every time she sees him and he says he doesn’t do commitment. Miko ends up creating a list of how all the girls get the guy in her favorite romance novels and ends up going in to a work meeting with him and totally reading him the questions from 50 Shades of Grey!

Her plan seems to be working and she ends up at Liam’s house almost every night – which angers Landon because they are trying to run a business and Miko keeps slacking off her responsibilities – which is SO not like her.  Liam also acts like he doesn’t even know her when all their friends are out in a group even though Miko seems convinced they are “dating”.

Max ends up finding out about the two in a rather startling way and has a heart to heart with Miko about how Liam is not dating her and is keeping her a secret and she deserves more than that. Miko finally realizes what is going on she is forced to stop what she has going on with Liam, even though it breaks her heart.

However – every great romance novel has to have a grand gesture, right?  Well, you’ll have to read it to see if Liam just moves on with his life or does something big to win back Miko’s affection…

I really liked this book, it was a quick read and Miko was just “weird” enough that I felt connected to her.  She’s quirky, dresses kind of fun and colorful and is pretty smart when it comes to designing spaces. We certainly have our similarities and I was I was as successful and confident as she is!  All the characters were really great and while there were quite a few of them, they all brought their special pieces to the puzzle and their personalities were fun to see interact.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review,  I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Brilliant designer Miko Jin is a hopeless romantic. She’s spent most of her life falling in love over and over again…with the men she finds in the pages of her favorite novels.

When Miko meets Liam Ashton, it’s love at first sight. At least, for her. Sure, the two of them are polar opposites, and yes, he seems to be dating someone new each week. But Miko knows what true love is and that you can’t rush it—after all, what she lacks in real-world experience, she makes up for in book smarts. With novels as her guide, and her best friends by her side, she knows she can get Liam to love her back. But just like any good romance novel, fate has a few plot twists in store. Will Miko get her own happy ending? Will she find the strength to stand up for what she deserves even if it means breaking her own heart?

Book Review: Destination Thailand

Katie January 29, 2016 0Comment

I was looking for a good book to read while I was traveling and came across Destination Thailand. It is the first book in the Lonely Hearts Travel Club series and I have to say, I am hooked.  The main character is Georgia. She is supposed to be getting married to Alex, but he has called the wedding off.  To get her mind off things, Georgia and her best friend Marie take off to Turkey for a bit.  While there, Georgia makes a travel bucket list.  After getting fired from her job (what else can go wrong for this poor girl?) she makes the decision to go to Thailand on a 6 week tour.

A newbie to traveling on her own, she is easily targeted by scammers.  When things aren’t going like she had thought they would she leaves the tour and heads to the Blue Butterfly that her travel agent had recommended for her. While there she meets up with a few other travelers who are more like her.

After being forced to come home early, she needs to find a job.  But what is it that she really wants to do?  Create The Lonely Hearts Travel Club, of course!

While the book tied up most of the story line nicely, it did leave a bit of an opening for book #2 – but not a crazy cliffhanger where you’re dying for March to get here and the 2nd book.  I will certainly be looking into reading Destination India to see what happens with Georgia and her new job!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

What if you had a second chance… to find yourself?

Instead of slipping on her something borrowed and tripping up the aisle to wedded bliss, Georgia spends her big day crying into a warm Sex-on-the-Beach, wondering where it all went wrong.

Forced to make a bucket list of her new life goals by her best friend Marie, it’s not long before travel-virgin Georgia is packing her bags for a long-haul adventure to Thailand.

Yet, Georgia’s big adventure doesn’t seem to be going to plan. There’s strange sights, smells, and eating bugs. Plus she seems to fall for every traveller scam there is. Maybe her family is right and she really is too naive to do this alone.

But the good thing about falling apart is that you can put yourself back together any way you please. And new Georgia might just be someone she can finally be proud of…

The new favourite series for fans of The Curvy Girls Club, the Shopaholic series and Eat, Pray, Love.

This year it is time to find the place where you truly belong…

Book Review: Choose Your Own Misery: The Office Adventure

Katie January 29, 2016 0Comment

As I think I’ve mentioned before, as a kid I loved the choose your own adventure books. I think because you could read them over and over with different outcomes and it seemed almost as if I was writing my own book even though someone else already had because I could pick the outcomes for myself.  When I saw there was a new series called “Choose Your Own Misery” and the first was “The Office Adventure” I knew I just had to check it out.  I wasn’t sure how it was going to work as an e-book since you couldn’t easily flip to the pages for the next part of your misery, but I quickly found out that the end of each chapter had links. So rather than flipping to page 94 or 32 depending on your scenario, you simply “click here”.

In our misery story we are a guy who is hung over and wants to sleep through his alarm.  Do you call in sick and use your LAST vacation day (and it’s only March) or figure out a way to get in to work late with no one noticing?  I ended up reading this I think 5 times – all reads went very, very quickly but each story had very different results – meetings with the boss, trying to set up the IT guy with a co-worker to get some of your vacation time back, catching a coworker having sex in a bathroom stall, a fight with a cabby… and basically if you think your life at the office is bad – you’ll feel a lot better about yourself and your situation after seeing the kind of scenarios the guy in this book gets himself into!

I hope that there will be more Choose Your Own Misery stories to read because reading this one was a lot of fun!

I received a free e-copy in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the book

Hungover and stuck at a job you hate, will you show up for your big presentation, or duck out with Debby, the HR rep with an FDR fetish? Play the weird lump on your back for office-wide sympathy, or dive into an internet spiral that can only end in “ten kinds of cancer”? Tell someone about the weird genital-fondling that’s happening at the crystal healer’s, or just accept that this is the best substitute you’ll find for love, today…or maybe ever?

From two comedy writers and past contributors to The Onion comes a modern-day tale of woe: the story of your soul-crushing existence. Choosing your own adventure is great when you’re a kid, but in the adult world, the only options on offer are endless varieties of misery. In your office adventure there are countless “options,” but they rarely end well. It’s okay, though. A life of adventure would require so many uncomfortable sleeping situations. Besides, you have dental. Keep reminding yourself about the dental.

Book Review: My DisOrganised Life

Katie January 29, 2016 0Comment

My DisOrganised Life is about Eve.  We first meet Eve when she is getting arrested and trying to get out of it by dancing all up on a police officer after starting a fight with her cheating ex and his new girlfriend.  Of course, someone in the bar records the incident on video and she becomes a viral sensation on her college campus.

Eve is all about lists and ends up putting together a list of things to do in her twenties.  She has a new boyfriend, they are living together and she is on her way to working the things off of her list one by one.  When the TV show she is working on doesn’t do proper background checks on a couple that is supposed to be participating, somehow it ends up as Eve’s fault.  She thinks that her boyfriend, Adam (yes, Adam and Eve) is close to proposing and in an effort to save her job agrees that they will go on the show as the final pair of contestants. But when the proposal goes horribly wrong, Eve gives Adam the space he says he wants but then decides that she never really loved him.

The rest of the book kind of goes back and forth between the ridiculous reality TV show that Eve is working on and her personal life.  She seems to be crushing on one of her coworkers but isn’t sure if he is into her too or if she is just imagining it.

Eve is a fun character and I loved reading all her ridiculous lists and all the expectations she had for herself, as well as cheering her on when she was able to cross some items off the list.  This was a fun book to read because Eve got herself in some interesting predicaments.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

A viral video of drunkenness and vomiting over a policeman is the stuff of nightmares, and so is living back home with your religious, nutty parents. Fed up with life not going her way and turning quietly insane, Eve Poots comes up with a plan. Well more of a list of “things to do while she’s still twenty-something”.

Six months later, and the list is working its power: she is now living with her new boyfriend, junior doctor Adam, and working as an assistant to TV producer Alastair on a reality show – life really is on the up.

But then it all starts to crumble and she soon realises that what the list should have really said was:

1. An awful colleague hell-bent in making her life agonising – check
2. An unplanned engagement – check
3. Lusting for dashing TV director when she has a perfectly decent boyfriend at home – check
4. Seeking help from a sex therapist – check
5. Growing a back-bone – pending

Has her life suddenly turned into a TV melodrama of its own?