Can't Wait for Brave

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released as well. It's based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous Jill at Breaking the Spine. Find out more here.

Brave (Contours of the Heart, # 4)

By: Tammara Webber

Expected Publication: December 19th 2017

300 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--Courage means rising up to defend your beliefs... or daring to question them.

Erin McIntyre was captivating, but forbidden
His professional subordinate
The embodiment of unearned privilege
The daughter of his sworn enemy

Isaac Maat was impossible to read
Smart, ambitious, and emotionally detached
Hotter than anyone's boss should ever be
And definitely hiding something...

He told himself that getting to know her would help him take down her father.
She told herself that getting under his skin would distract her wrecked heart from its misery.

Neither predicted their private war would lead to an intimate battle in which the victor would be the first one to SURRENDER.

What are you guys waiting on this week? Let me know!

Top Ten Books Set At the Beach

Top 10 Tuesday is a post hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is Top Ten Books Set At the Beach.

I haven't gotten to visit the beach in the last two years so this is wishful thinking on my part. But I'll have to admit, this was challenging. Either I haven't read many books set at the beach or the beach was just a small part of the setting that I couldn't remember enough to be sure to list the book. But I did finally come up with ten. Here they are.

1. That One Summer (Summer, # 3) by CJ Duggan
2. The Lies About Truth by Courtney C Stevens
3. Breathe (Sea Breeze, # 1) by Abbi Glines
4. Things We Know By Heart by Jessi Kirby
5. Out of Breath (Breathing, # 3) by Rebecca Donovan
6. We Were Liars by E Lockhart
7. Breakable (Contours of the Heart, # 2) by Tammara Webber
8. Through the Ever Night (Under the Never Sky, # 2) by Veronica Rossi
9. The Dead-Tossed Waves (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, # 2) by Carrie Ryan
10. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

So obviously I need some good beach setting recommendations guys! Hit me! What are you favorite books set at the beach? Let me know!

Sweet - Review

Sweet (Contours of the Heart, # 3)

By: Tammara Webber

Published: April 27th 2015

340 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Personal Kindle Library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--He’s the love of her life, but he doesn’t know it.
She’s his one moment of sacrifice in a lifetime of survival.

He was damaged and wild, but resilient.
She’s always been obedient. Now she’s restless.

Home for the summer between college and med school, Pearl Torres Frank knows two things: Boyce Wynn is the embodiment of everything she should run from, and everything she wants to run to. Rebellious and loud. Unconcerned with society’s opinion of him. Passionate. Strong. Dangerous.

And one more trait he hides from everyone but her:
Sweet.

This is another book where the description isn't necessarily wrong, but does give the book a completely different impression than what it really is. I don't think Pearl thinks that Boyce is everything she should run from, and I don't think she's restless either. And I really don't even think Boyce is dangerous. I don't know. The description just doesn't fit. Boyce and Pearl go way back. I'm talking...all the way to when she was 5 and he was 7. After they meet at that age, the two have many more experiences together throughout their childhood and teenage years. The thing is, no one else really knows that the two have any connection to each other.

Sweet is told in alternating points of view (Boyce and Pearl) and between memories of the past and moments of the present. I was somewhat frustrated in the beginning because it truly seemed like the majority of the beginning was focused more on the events of the past rather than what was going on with Boyce and Pearl in the present, but it's all to set the stage.

Pearl is anything but restless. She finally feels good about her life decisions and where she's going in her career. She's even standing up to her mother, who she thought would always have her back. One person who does have her back...Boyce. He seems to know her better than anyone else.

Boyce is doing pretty well for himself compared to where we last saw him in Breakable. Even though he grew up with an abusive father, his mother left him and his brother when they were young, and his brother died in the military, Boyce is making something of himself. He's taken lemons and made lemonade. He's taken over the garage that his father owned and has really turned it into a profitable business. He's become responsible. Not dangerous.

Pearl and Boyce have had a connection since they were 5 and 7. They've shared looks, a few kisses, and more in their past. Yet the two don't seem to have a clue what the other wants. It's clear that they both find the other attractive, but neither knows how deep the other's feelings go. I liked watching this relationship build as they had so much history.

The language was much more...colorful...and full of f-bombs than I would have thought. I don't remember the prior books being as bad about this, but it has been a while since I read them. The physical scenes were...well some were fairly tame and others more graphic. Sweet bordered on being a bit much for my preferences.

Favorite quotes:

-Nothing like a high school friend to drag you back to high school behavior.

-"...sometimes what seems like a gut feeling is just pride pretending to be instinct."

-"Nothing makes me feel how small and insignificant I am, how fleeting life is, like the sky and the ocean."..."You want to feel insignificant?" "I want to feel what's true."

I enjoyed the story of Sweet, and I'm glad that Boyce and Pearl got to have their story explored. Some conflict was visible to me from early on, but nothing happened that really had me rolling my eyes at the obvious. And I liked how these two were intertwined and connected from their childhoods yet still so distant until now. Sweet gets 4 Stars. Have you read Sweet? What did you think? Let me know!

Side note: I really hate the name Boyce.

Waiting on Sweet

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Sweet (Contours of the Heart, # 3)

By: Tammara Webber

Expected Publication: April 27th 2015

Genre: Young Adult, New Adult, Contemporary

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--He’s the love of her life, but he doesn’t know it.
She’s his one moment of sacrifice in a lifetime of survival.

He was damaged and wild, but resilient.
She’s always been obedient. Now she’s restless.

Home for the summer between college and med school, Pearl Torres Frank knows two things: Boyce Wynn is the embodiment of everything she should run from, and everything she wants to run to. Rebellious and loud. Unconcerned with society’s opinion of him. Passionate. Strong. Dangerous.

And one more trait he hides from everyone but her:
Sweet.

I had no, no, no clue Tammara Webber was writing another Contours of the Heart book, but I am so stoked about this. What are you waiting on this week? Let me know!

Breakable - Review

Breakable (Contours of the Heart, # 2)

By: Tammara Webber

Published: May 6th 2014 by Penguin Berkley

368 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Birthday Present

( Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository )

*Note: The above links to Amazon and Book Depository are affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--He was lost and alone. Then he found her.
And the future seemed more fragile than ever.

As a child, Landon Lucas Maxfield believed his life was perfect and looked forward to a future filled with promise — until tragedy tore his family apart and made him doubt everything he ever believed.

All he wanted was to leave the past behind. When he met Jacqueline Wallace, his desire to be everything she needed came so easy…

As easy as it could be for a man who learned that the soul is breakable and that everything you hoped for could be ripped away in a heartbeat.

I loved Easy. It’s one of the few books that have gotten 5 Stars from me so far this year. I wasn’t sure after reading Easy if Breakable would be a retelling or something totally different. Having now read Breakable I can tell you that it’s both, but I guess I would essentially classify it as a re-telling. I don’t normally mention this because I usually think it’s stupid to tell you that I might ruin book 1 for you while I’m reviewing book 2, but because Breakable is a retelling but could also be read as a standalone I feel like I should tell you that this review WILL spoil some things from Easy. While Breakable could be read as a standalone, I definitely wouldn’t suggest reading it and then going back and reading Easy. So it’s probably just best that you read these books in the order they were intended.

Ok…the meaty stuff….

As I said, Breakable is a re-telling and not at the same time. The book alternates between sections narrated by Landon from after the death of his mother and lead up until he heads off to college and then sections narrated by Lucas that pick up slightly before the events of Easy to the end of Easy. Obviously those of us who have read Easy know that Landon and Lucas are the same person. Yet it’s because the flashbacks take up such a significant portion of Breakable that helps it feel less like a retelling. Landon and Lucas feel like two totally separate people. I suppose that’s kind of the purpose. Landon/Lucas has changed so much over the years that this book covers. The events of his life necessitating growth and changing for the good or for the bad. That being said I didn’t always enjoy reading “Landon” sections.

Obviously, Landon is in a much darker place than Lucas. Landon is the version of himself prior to and immediately following his mother’s death. We know from Easy that he blames himself for not being able to save his mother. And so obviously he’s not in the best headspace during this time period. He skips school, drinks, does drugs, has meaningless sex—though I was impressed with his desire for a deeper relationship--, and does all the typical worldly attempts of numbing his pain. While, I felt the pain this version of Landon/Lucas was going through, I also found that I didn’t like him too entirely much during this phase. I didn’t hate his character or anything like that, but it just felt so far from where I knew he would end up. Typically I’m a huge fan of character growth, and when a character is in such a dark place that they have SO MUCH growing that’s needed, I need the hope that they will grow and overcome. But because I already knew where he would end up, this growing process wasn’t as enjoyable for me as I originally hoped. At the same time, I did enjoy being able to see into his head and the events of his past that shaped him into the man he would become.

Landon is also a HORNBALL! I was both impressed with how real to life this was and annoyed with how frequently his thoughts wandered to sex. Truth be told, Lucas wasn’t much better either. While reading Easy I was so impressed with his need to go slow with their relationship for Jacqueline considering everything she’d been through. He was always willing to stop when she wasn’t ready to move farther. Yet Breakable shows how much more difficult that was for him than he let on in Easy. Again…this is both something I admired with Tammara Webber’s writing choices and found frustrating.

Lucas’s sections were my favorite. I enjoyed both the scenes that we didn’t get to experience in Easy and the scenes being retold from his POV. I was more emotionally invested in the later scenes I suppose. And I did find myself wondering if Tammara Webber was afraid of the reader getting annoyed or bored with the retelling because Lucas’s POV skips over a good bit of dialogue. He summarizes for us, but not really retells in as much detail as I wanted. Pieces I thought I knew without a doubt what Lucas was thinking when reading Easy were more different than I expected, and not always in a good way. One of the biggest things I can think of off the top of my head is why Lucas is participating in the self-defense classes. Maybe it was too much for me to hope that he volunteered of his own will to help women who had been through similar things to what his mother and Jacqueline faced learn to empower and defend themselves. But I was a little let down with why he ended up there. Another letdown for me was that when Lucas goes to Jacqueline’s dorm for the first time to sketch her. In Easy Jacqueline’s email dings and she wonders briefly if Landon (the tutor) is replying to her email. That's not possible, because he's there in the room with her. Lucas asks her if she needs to check her message, and I could only imagine that he would want to know whether she was more interested in being with him in the present or checking her email to see if it’s him as in tutor-Landon. But Breakable doesn’t even mention her email alert at all. I thought that was a huge wasted opportunity.

While I don't remember Easy being too graphic, Breakable definitely felt more heavy on the graphic scale to me. Breakable wasn't TOO graphic (perhaps on my personal scale of 1 to 10—one being nothing and ten being too much—Breakable would get a 5 or 6) and Easy may have been more detailed than I remember (it has been several months since I read that one afterall). Either way Breakable was enough for me to note it as being heavier on this than Easy. Possibly, that’s due to the male perspective.

I also noted that despite Breakable having the easy and smooth, flowing sentences and writing style that I’ve come to expect from Tammara Webber, I liked her writing in Easy better as well. I still enjoyed it but just not as much. My favorite Breakable quotes:

-“You think this is about Melody?” … “Of course it’s about Melody,” he said. … “I don’t [care] about her”… “But you touch my truck again and I will end you.”

-“I have a proposition, and you’re free to take it or not,” he began. “What I’m about to offer you isn’t a gift. It’s a challenge.”

-Love is not the absence of logic
but logic examined and recalculated
heated and cured to fit
inside the contours of the heart

-Mine, I thought. Yours, her body answered.

-He tried to circle around, as if I was going to let him anywhere near her ever again. I moved with him, facing him, aware of Jacqueline and her exact location. I felt her behind me as if she was part of my body. Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood.

Breakable was an easy read. It hooked me, and I read it in a day or two. Comparatively speaking, I enjoyed Easy more all around, but Breakable still gets 4 stars from me. Have you read Breakable? What did you think? Let me know!

Easy - Review

Easy (Contours of the Heart, # 1)

By: Tammara Webber

Published: November 6th 2012 by Penguin Berkley (first published May 25th 2012)

336 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Personal Library (Anniversary Present)

( Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository )

*Note: The above links to Amazon and Book Depository are affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--Rescued by a stranger.
Haunted by a secret
Sometimes, love isn’t easy…

He watched her, but never knew her. Until thanks to a chance encounter, he became her savior…

The attraction between them was undeniable. Yet the past he’d worked so hard to overcome, and the future she’d put so much faith in, threatened to tear them apart.

Only together could they fight the pain and guilt, face the truth—and find the unexpected power of love.

A groundbreaking novel in the New Adult genre, Easy faces one girl's struggle to regain the trust she's lost, find the inner strength to fight back against an attacker, and accept the peace she finds in the arms of a secretive boy.

I’ve had Easy on my TBR list for a while now. Everyone I’ve ever seen mention it would rave about how much they loved it, so reading Easy was a no-brainer for me. I’ve read Between the Lines by Tammara Webber, and I really enjoyed it. So when Husband told me he was buying me some books for our anniversary and Easy was on sale for under $4, I had to pick it up. And I’m so glad I did. Easy was the perfect book for the mood I’ve been in lately. And it’s extremely rare that I finish a book and immediately want to turn around and re-read it. I didn’t. But only because I have so many others that I need to get to. Easy will definitely be one that I come back to for a re-read in the future though.

Jacqueline was recently dumped by her longtime boyfriend of three years. He decided that he wanted to play the field a bit and not be tied down to one person. Jacqueline was heartbroken. Not just over losing Kennedy, but over losing everything that came along with their relationship—having a boyfriend, the friends that came along with him, not being alone, always having a date to the parties, going to school together, the future they had planned. She lost all of that. During her mourning period she missed about two weeks of school and while she’s normally a really good student, Jacqueline has found herself struggling with economics. Lucky for her, her professor is lenient with her, assigns her a project to do to make up her midterm grade that she missed, and gives her the contact information for a tutor who can help her get caught up in the class.

In the meantime, Jacqueline tries to carry on with life as usual. She goes out to a party trying to pretend like everything is normal. But it’s just not. So she leaves the party early to head back to her dorm. Instead she finds herself in a situation in which so many other women have found themselves. She’s being attacked with no real way to defend herself. Fortunate for her, this guy shows up and beats the crap out of her attacker. She doesn’t know the guy, but after that she sees him all over the place. He tried to talk her into going to the hospital or the police station to report what happened, but she refuses. This puts him in a situation where he’s the only person who knows about what happened—besides her attacker—and thus they’re bonded.

There’s much I feel like I can’t share about Easy because I don’t want to give too much away. This is a book that needs to be experienced. I don’t even feel like I can discuss the characters in too much detail without giving too much away, but I’ll try.

Jacqueline could be any girl out there. I felt what she felt. From the heartbreak of her breakup, to her fear from the attack, to her guilt and anger, etc. Everything. Just about every step she made I could see myself making. I loved her character, her story, her feelings. All of it.

Erin is a great best friend and sidekick. When she finds out what happened to Jacqueline, she immediately signs the two of them up for self-defense classes. I love that about her. She makes sure that she and Jacqueline will both be empowered. They will be able to handle themselves if a situation should arise again in the future. And she has Jacqueline’s back in all things.

Lucas has it all. Every aspect a girl could want in a guy just about. I thought when he showed up to rescue Jacqueline that he would be a bad boy, but that’s not exactly the case. He’s smart, he’s capable of handling himself in a fight, he’s not afraid of his feelings for Jacqueline. He’s talented—an artist. He has a past that has shaped him, and while he still holds onto that past, he’s used it to help himself and to help others. Loved me some Lucas.

Oh you guys...I'm telling you too much. I won't discuss any more the characters. Just read this book, okay? Okay!

Book 2, Breakable, is told from the leading male's POV. *I can’t tell from the book description if Breakable is intended to be a retelling of Easy but from the other POV or if Breakable takes place after the events of Easy. Either way, I know Breakable is a book I want to read. Tammara Webber’s flowing writing style makes her books easy picks for me, but I can tell that even if Breakable is a re-telling of Easy (something I’m getting a little tired of), it’s possible that Breakable might be another Losing Hope where it’s more emotional than the original book. The history of this story makes everything magnified. So either way, I’m in.

Easy was a quick read. I blew through it in a little over 24 hours. I was hooked emotionally. And I loved every minute of it. Easy gets 5 Stars from me. Have you read Easy? What did you think? Let me know!

*Since writing this review, I've read Breakable...and it is a retelling, but more. It also includes flashbacks from the past. Review of Breakable to come.