RECOMMENDED: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is $1.99, and seriously, this is completely over the top campy satire that's hilarious, pointed, and powerful. I loved this book, and I hope you'll grab it while it's $1.99. Seriously. Just buy it already. From my GR review:
My particular favorite part is that one of the heroines, Adina, to the last moment stands up for herself and how she ought to be treated by people, even when she has to admit she was wrong about how she may have treated others. And I still think about the commentary about leadership, motivation, and female relationships.
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.
What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program – or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan – or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up? Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide?
None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.
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Taking Chances by Molly McAdams is $1.99 digitally right now. This is a love triangle story with a mixture of diverse reviews on GR. Some readers adored it, and savored every painful and exquisite emotion they found in the text, and others hated the heroine and the prose. The companion novel told from one of the hero's perspectives, Stealing Harper, is also $1.99.
My half-joke about the New Adult sub-genre is that “no one makes it out of adolescence alive!” If you've never tried New Adult, expect contemporary settings with a lot of angst, emotional trauma, and intensity, with a 60-70% chance of ugly-cry.
Her first year away is turning out to be nearly perfect, but one weekend of giving in to heated passion will change everything. Eighteen-year-old Harper has grown up under the thumb of her career marine father. Ready to live life her own way and to experience things she's only ever heard of from the jarheads in her father's unit, she's on her way to college at San Diego State University.
Thanks to her new roommate, Harper is introduced to a world of parties, gorgeous guys, family, and emotions. She finds herself being torn in two as she quickly falls in love with both her new boyfriend, Brandon, and her roommate's brother, Chase.
Despite their dangerous looks and histories, both men adore Harper and would do anything for her, including taking a step back if it would mean she'd be happy.
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With my Body is $1.99. This is a contemporary erotic romance written in the second person (e.g. “You” instead of “I” or “she.”) with mixed reviews. Much like ballet positions, second can be awkward and weird. Some felt the use of the second person was inviting and powerful, while it bugged the crap out of other readers. Have you read this book? (I confess to being confused why the cover copy is in third person if the text is in second.)
A wife, a mother of three, she has everything a woman should want—and yet she has gone numb inside. Locked in a never-ending cycle of chores, errands, and mealtimes, she cannot find a way to live her life with the honesty and passion that once drove her. Even her husband, whom she loves, has never truly touched the core of her being.
Only one person has ever come close. In desperation, she returns to the memory of an old love affair—a transformative relationship with consequences she has never fully resolved. Revisiting her past, she will begin an exhilarating journey into her sexuality while finally confronting the hidden truths of her heart.
Exquisitely lyrical, bold, and seductive, With My Body is a thought-provoking exploration of family, sex, marriage, and love—the love we give, withhold, and surrender to.
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Losing It by Cora Carmack is $1.99. This book has been discounted a few times since it's its (oops) release – have you read it?
Virginity.
Bliss Edwards is about to graduate from college and still has hers. Sick of being the only virgin among her friends, she 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.
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Strangely enough, I finished Beauty Queens yesterday, and it is hilarious; I loved it.
And, do you notice something wrong here:
Losing It by Cora Carmack is $1.99. This book has been discounted a few times since
it’s release
– have you read it?
I’m sorry, I can’t help it, but love you guys!
“Losing It” was an AMAZING book! I devoured it in two days flat. It’s humorous, sexy, and the hero has…a British…accent….aw, yeah.
Shit. Bad apostrophe. My bad!
Taking Chances was not a terrible book, but it somehow contained a ton of tropes that I hate.* I felt that while there was a lot of painting with broad strokes in terms of characterization, the heroine wasn’t as fleshed out as the male characters in this novel. She existed to react to everybody, but wasn’t much of an agent of change in her own life. She was a little too bland for me to see why several dynamic, interesting men would fight to win her affections. When I thought too much about it (like right now, for instance), I ended up thinking worse of these guys for chasing after a Suzie Creamcheese when they could have held out for women as well-rounded as themselves. i know that naive, aimless, and cute is somebody’s type, but there were a lot of things about this novel’s setup that just gave me a case of the squicks. I know, I know; I get way too invested in these books.
Spoilers below
* Guys who carry a diminutive heroine around like she’s a child; a heroine with no interests or hobbies outside of her lovers; and the thunderdome approach to love triangles (beware the heroine who loves two guys equally; unless it’s a ménage story, one of those dudes is toast); line-crossing masculine high-handedness breezed over in a page or two (because love…NO).
I freaking loved Beauty Queens. So laugh-out-loud funny and weird and feminist and pointed and delicious. Just gave it to my almost-12-year-old, who had to read Lord of the Flies (which from now on I’m just going to call “the boy version of Beauty Queens”) for school. She loved it too. Yay, bonding!