Deep - Review

Deep (Stage Dive, # 4)

By: Kylie Scott

Published: March 31st 2015 by St. Martin's Griffin

288 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

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

Goodreads description--Don't miss a beat with the fourth and final novel in the USA Today bestselling Stage Dive series from Kylie Scott.

Positive. With two little lines on a pregnancy test, everything in Lizzy Rollins' ordinary life is about to change forever. And all because of one big mistake in Vegas with Ben Nicholson, the irresistibly sexy bass player for Stage Dive. So what if Ben's the only man she's ever met who can make her feel completely safe, cherished, and out of control with desire at the same time? Lizzy knows the gorgeous rock star isn't looking for anything more permanent than a good time, no matter how much she wishes differently.

Ben knows Lizzy is off limits. Completely and utterly. She's his best friend's little sister now, and no matter how hot the chemistry is between them, no matter how sweet and sexy she is, he's not going to go there. But when Ben is forced to keep the one girl he's always had a weakness for out of trouble in Sin City, he quickly learns that what happens in Vegas, doesn't always stay there. Now he and Lizzie are connected in the deepest way possible...but will it lead to a connection of the heart?

I have to admit that I’m a little frustrated and disappointed with Deep. I can’t say I loved Lead, and I’d definitely say that the first two books in the Stage Dive series were the best of the series yet they still had issues. I might not have been as critical about Deep if I’d given more time in between Lead and Deep but that’s just not the case. Both of these books had leading female characters that developed an unrequited insta-lust attraction to the leading male characters. These males have no intentions of being in a relationship and don’t seem the least bit inclined toward these particular females in any specific way. Let me get more specific to Deep only.

Lizzy is Anne’s little sister. I barely remember her being present some in Play, but her interest in Ben was obvious in Lead. Either way, when Deep starts Lizzy is all about some Ben. He’s attractive and she basically goes into stalker, crazy, needy girl mode immediately. Despite the numerous times Ben tries to steer her in another direction she continues to come back for more. More ending up being a night in Las Vegas. Surprised at Ben’s casualness toward their moment together Lizzy tries to move on, but she really doesn’t try too hard. Especially after she finds out that she’s pregnant.

Ben is up front from the very beginning with Lizzy about not wanting a relationship or a commitment and even specifically saying that he can’t date her. Granted his excuses usually revolved around Mal not being happy about it. But still. At some point, I was like “take a hint child!” And of course, Ben is thrown for a loop when he finds out that Lizzy is pregnant. Even then he doesn’t try to pursue a relationship with her. Yet Lizzy continuously gets her hopes up for more.

Deep is the classic story about a needy girl developing an attraction for the player guy. They sleep together one time with no intentions of moving forward and bam needy girl gets pregnant. Player guy freaks and runs for the hills, all the while being pursued by needy girl. Yet in this series player guy does a turn around and becomes “you had me from day one.” Yeah. I don’t buy it. I’m not a huge feminist and I don’t get my panties in a wad over a guy going caveman, but I really did feel like Lizzy was taking our gender back a good 50 years in this book with her behavior. I wanted to jump inside her head and force her to stop being so ridiculous. Aside from the neediness of chasing Ben around, Lizzy also seemed to have no willpower over her body and thought with her physical needs well above her emotional ones which is typically much more common to men than to women. The f-bombs abound and there were more than necessary sexual scenes considering the relationship that these two characters had.

I had no favorite quotes. As a matter of fact, the only highlights I had were for errors—misspellings, missing words, etc. But since I was reading a galley, I don't hold that against the book. I do think I can officially say that Mal is my favorite guy from the series. He’s funny and I actually did enjoy his bits in both Deep and Lead recently. If there was anything I’d want to quote, it probably would have come from Mal.

Deep was my least favorite story in the Stage Dive series. The characters annoyed me. I found a lot of it either unbelievable or what was believable was still annoying as all get out. Deep for me was a bit on the cliché side of things which is always a letdown for me. I understand that writing something completely original is beyond difficult though. Deep gets 2.5 Stars from me. I didn’t hate it. But I didn’t find much that I really enjoyed about it either. Have you read Deep? What did you think? Let me know!

Lead - Review

Lead (Stage Dive, # 3)

By: Kylie Scott

Published: July 29th 2014 by St. Martin's Griffin

288 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source:

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Goodreads description--The lead singer of Stage Dive, Jimmy is used to getting whatever he wants, whenever he wants it whether it's booze or women. However, when a PR disaster serves as a wake-up call about his life and lands him in rehab, he finds himself stuck with a new assistant hired by the record company to keep him out of trouble. He doesn't need or want a babysitter. Especially one that looks like Lena.

Lena's not willing to take any shit from the sexy rocker she's been hired to assist and is determined to keep their relationship completely professional, despite the sizzling chemistry that sparks between them every time they're in the same room. But when Jimmy pushes her too far and Lena leaves, he realizes that he may just have lost the best thing to ever happen to him. Readers won't want to miss the third book in this New Adult series about ordinary young women who fall in love with rock stars.

I’ve enjoyed the Stage Dive series so far. Yet I was expecting for Jimmy’s story to be my favorite so far due to his troubled background. We know that Jimmy has a history with addiction—drugs and alcohol. He’s done multiple stints in rehab, and keeping him sober is essential to keeping the band alive. He hasn’t taken to any of the assistants or sober companions that he’s been assigned in the past, but maybe just maybe Lena will be different. Lena has an almost instant physical attraction to Jimmy. And overtime she feels as if Jimmy is misunderstood. His good qualities aren’t always seen by others. But as with most people in Jimmy’s shoes, the worst part is that he doesn’t see his good qualities either.

Lena and Jimmy have a relationship that’s semi-antagonistic. It’s not so much that they set out to argue and banter back and forth so much as Jimmy is just really hard to deal with. I liked that their relationship really took a lot of effort and they didn’t just jump into anything, even after Lena threatens to leave. I appreciated her thought process there. She knows she has feelings for Jimmy and her personal feelings can and likely will influence their professional relationship and so she needs to do what’s best for her and remove herself from a situation where it seems like she can only lose. Yet it didn’t take too terribly much to persuade her to stay.

Most of the book was free from any graphic situations. Although, language was definitely present and heavy. The graphic scenes picked up about the 70% mark and were fairly frequent throughout the rest of the book.

As the book progressed, I wasn’t seeing the progress in Jimmy and Lena’s relationship that I was expecting. He still fought it and her up until the bitter end. I found the ending to be way too quick and pretty. *highlight for spoiler* Jimmy tells Lena that he can’t love her, that he doesn’t know how. But then he proceeds to tell her how he does feel about her. Lena in turn tells him that’s exactly what love is, and Jimmy’s basically “oh well then I guess I do love you.” I just didn’t buy it. I think it would have been more fitting for Lena to accept within herself that the way Jimmy describes his feelings for her as being love but realizes that convincing him of that will take longer than the work of a few sentences and decided to fight that battle another day confident that he does actually feel the way he says. *end spoiler* I don’t think you have to have a cookie cutter ending for it to still be a happy one.

Another small complaint was that I found at least two grammatical errors/typos. This was in the completed edition that I actually bought for my kindle and not an advanced reader copy. One is too many, but sometimes happens, two is just not cool for a traditionally published book. I really don’t blame this on the author at this point. It’s more of an editor issue. But an annoyance nonetheless.

And as usual, Lead provided the set up for Deep (Ben & Lizzy’s sotry). I have to say that I’m not sure how I feel about what direction that seemed to be heading based off the clues dropped. We shall see.

Lead was a book that I read quickly. I had been looking forward to Jimmy’s story because of his troubled past, but I didn’t love how cookie cutter and rushed the very end happened to be. You can have a happily ever after without it being a “perfect” ending. As a matter of fact, too much perfection leads to unbelievability. I liked that Jimmy and Lena didn’t have a physical relationship for a large part of the book, but when they did things got graphic and combined with the language wasn’t my personal preference, but you come to expect that with this genre as well. Lead gets 3 Stars. Have you read Lead? What did you think? Let me know!

Last Ten Books I Received

Top 10 Tuesday is a post hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is Last Ten Books I Received.

1. Lead (Stage Dive, # 3) by Kylie Scott
2. Chasing Impossible (Pushing the Limits, # 5) by Katie McGarry
3. The Selection (The Selection, # 1) by Kiera Cass
4. Beautiful Sacrifice (The Maddox Brothers, # 3) by Jamie McGuire
5. PS I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, # 2) by Jenny Han
6. Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between by Jennifer E Smith
7. Stealing Third by Marta Brown
8. The Elite (The Selection, # 2) by Kiera Cass
9. Velvet Undercover by Teri Brown
10. The Lies About Truth by Courtney C Stevens

What about you? What are the last ten books that you received? Let me know!

Mayhem - Review

Mayhem (Mayhem, # 1)

By: Jamie Shaw

Expected Publication: January 20th 2015 by Avon Impulse

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via Edelweiss (Thank you!!)

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

Goodreads description--When college freshman Rowan Michaels meets gorgeous, up-and-coming rock star Adam Everest, she knows a player like him is the last thing she needs after her ex-boyfriend shattered her heart. But she can't stop thinking about the kiss they shared on his tour bus.

On the first day of school, Rowan is stunned when Adam saunters into her French class. He's soon failing miserably, and, on a whim, she offers to tutor him. But Adam doesn't recognize her as a makeup-free, glasses-clad college student—a far cry from the beautiful, mysterious "Peach" he met at his concert.

During a wild weekend on tour with the band, Rowan can't help falling for the sweet guy buried beneath Adam's rocker persona. Yet she knows she could never compete with the girls constantly throwing themselves at his feet. She'd just end up hurt … again.

Peach is all Adam thinks about, though, and when Rowan realizes this, she has a decision to make: stay just friends to protect her fragile heart … or reveal the truth about the night they met and admit she's fallen completely, hopelessly in love with him.

Mayhem is another book that I took a risk on. There weren’t many Goodreads reviews when I requested it, but the description pulled me in. I was reading Red Rising more out of obligation than being in the mood for it, and I was feeling bogged down with all the description of the dystopian setting, so I wanted something that I could read quickly. Contemporaries usually fall into that category for me because I get sucked in and don’t come up for air until they are over. And that’s exactly what happened. Husband took a three hour nap one Sunday afternoon (he had a bad headache), and so I sat in the bed with him reading the whole time. Next thing I knew I was 60% finished with Mayhem.

Mayhem doesn’t feel entirely original to me. It reminds me of a combination of the Marked Men series by Jay Crownover and the Stage Dive series by Kylie Scott. But I guess more Stage Dive than Marked Men.

Rowan is in a long-term relationship with a guy who doesn’t deserve her. He breaks her heart and Adam from this rock band shows some concern for the girl crying outside of one of his shows on the curb. I never really quite understood why Rowan wanted to keep it a secret that she’s the girl Adam affectionately nicknamed Peach. Well I can understand her keeping it from Dee (at first), but only because Dee seems a bit over-the-top and Rowan doesn’t seem the type to like a big deal being made out of anything. I can definitely understand Rowan’s resistance to letting her guard down with Adam though. He shows very little indication that he wants anything more from her than a physical relationship, so she works hard to keep their relationship in the friend-zone.

Adam is easily likeable. He has a laidback vibe to everything he does. You can tell that he obviously treats Rowan differently than any of the other females he’s around, but I wish he were a little more obvious about his intentions. However, that makes sense since Adam doesn’t even understand his own intentions. I had been hoping to have a dual narrative, but Adam only has one narration—the epilogue.

The side characters were all fun even if some were a bit cliché. Dee should be interesting to read about as she’s more of a partier, she’s more casual in her relationships, and she has some baggage with her mom that Rowan conveniently set up in Mayhem. (The next book, Riot, is supposed to be about her.) I started to say that Shawn is probably the other character that I’m most interested in getting a story about. While I definitely want his story, I remembered Mike about halfway through typing that statement. Mike isn’t like the other guys. He doesn’t seem to care one lick about the groupies that follow the band around and that I respect.

Obviously, there are some sexual situations and there is language. Just throwing that out there as always.

Favorite quotes:

-“Say something to me in French.” “Adam thinks about it for a moment, and then with a big smile, he looks up at her and says, “Tu parles trop.”” [translation- “You talk too much.”]

-“Promise?” He shakes his head. “I don’t make promises. But I’ll show you.”

-“You’re my favorite…That’s why.”

-I thought I had loved Brady, but that was the love of a girl who barely knew herself.

Mayhem was a pleasant surprise. It sucked me in. Despite not being an entirely original concept for my reading life, I enjoyed almost every minute of it. There were a few small things that made me roll my eyes, but nothing that had me too frustrated. More than anything, I was trying to keep the smile off my face so that I didn’t look like a lunatic. I told Husband that Mayhem was cheesy….BUT the GOOD kind of cheesy—as in, I can’t stop smiling cheesy. Mayhem gets 4 Stars from me. Have you read Mayhem? What did you think? Let me know!

Top Books I'm Excited About in 2015

Top 10 Tuesday is a post hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is Top Ten Books I'm Excited About in 2015.

But you guys know that I have a hard time keeping my lists down to ten. So...I'm not even calling this a "Top Ten" post.

1. The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles, # 2) by Mary E Pearson
2. Winter (Lunar Chronicles, # 4) by Marissa Meyer (no cover yet)
3. Never Never by Colleen Hoover & Tarryn Fisher
4. Confess by Colleen Hoover
5. Forever Summer (Summer, # 4) by CJ Duggan
6. Becoming Rain (Burying Water, # 2) by KA Tucker
7. The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West
8. All the Rage by Courtney Summers
9. Six of Crows (The Dregs, # 1) by Leigh Bardugo (no cover yet)
10. Nowhere But Here (Thunder Road, # 1) by Katie McGarry (no cover yet)
11. P. S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, # 2) by Jenny Han (no cover yet)
12. Deep (Stage Dive, # 4) by Kylie Scott
13. Unrequited (Woodlands, # 4) by Jen Frederick (no cover yet)
14. Asa (Marked Men, # 6) by Jay Crownover (no cover yet)
15. Untitled (The Fifth Wave, # 3) by Rick Yancey (no cover yet)
16. Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices, # 1) by Cassandra Clare (no cover yet)
17. The Ruby Circle (Bloodlines, # 6) by Richelle Mead

You guys, I’m sure I’m not even touching the surface of the amazing books set to publish in 2015. But this is quite an impressive list isn’t it? I’m so excited to get my hands on each and every one of these! Which books are you looking forward to most in 2015? Let me know!

Lick - Review

Lick (Stage Dive, # 1)

By: Kylie Scott

Published: October 11th 2013 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published July 1st 2013)

286 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Borrowed from my Holly @ Words Fueled by Love

( 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--Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.

Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man in her room, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.

One thing is certain, being married to one of the hottest rock stars on the planet is sure to be a wild ride.

With a title like Lick, I can’t say I was expecting much out of this book. I looked like the typical new adult book. And there were definitely aspects of Lick that were cliché and lived up to the typical new adult patterns. I’ve discussed multiple times that my expectations play into my overall experience of a book. If my expectations are high sometimes I feel even more letdown by the book than I would under other circumstances. Expectations certainly played a part in my overall experience of Lick but because those expectations were on the low end of the scale this ended up being a good thing for the book. I wanted a book that would hook me and that I could read quickly without getting too bogged down, and Lick was a nice fit for that.

The “oh crap we got married while I was drunk in Vegas” concept isn’t original, but I liked that while David had been drinking, he knew exactly what he was doing when he signed up to marry Evelyn. I’ve never been a drinker and so the concept of completely losing an entire night’s worth of memories is so foreign to me. Obviously that has to be possible or there wouldn’t be so many books and movies about it, but because I’ve never experienced it, I find the whole thing a little far-fetched. But this entire story isn’t exactly supposed to be realistic.

Evelyn, obviously, freaks out to wake up and find out that she’s married. This is compounded by the fact that David is the lead guitarist in an extremely popular band. Because David is famous, the paparazzi begin to follow Evelyn wherever she goes. Evelyn is whisked off to be with David until they can get the marriage annulled and until the paparazzi find another story upon which to focus their attention. Since David went into the marriage with eyes-open he’s not exactly thrilled with Evelyn’s desire to dissolve it. Evelyn can’t really understand why, but the thought of never seeing David again leaves her cold. So they decide to try to figure things out and not make any additional rash decision.

Evelyn is described as being curvy—not a size 0. I liked that she was more average in body shape and that David was attracted to her anyway. She’s borderline with her self-esteem, but while she’s with David focusing on her body-image issues is difficult. David wants this relationship. He is prone to throwing mini-temper tantrums though. And the two in combination have a relationship that crossed into the unhealthy, potentially abusive zone—yet this didn’t bother me too much. *shrugs* Evelyn impressed me with her ability to remain fairly objective despite David’s temper tantrums, but of course she appropriately jumps to her own conclusions when we hit the 70% conflict mark that so often happens.

Said conflict is clichéd and a bit too easy. It was like there had to be something bad happen so let’s just make this particular event occur and then we’ll call it a day. **Spoiler alert** The fact that David’s ex-girlfriend kisses him, Evelyn happens to walk in at the exact moment it happens and assumes that David must have something going on with Martha was just too easy. I think the better, and even more realistic conflict choice, would have been David’s inability to let go. He still holds onto the house that he bought with Martha in mind. He still wears the earring that’s paired with hers. There’s a deeper issue there. However, for book purposes I guess that would be too simple to fix. Not that offering up a “she kissed me” explanation isn’t simple as well. **End spoiler**

As I said, there were some clichéd moments that offered some frustration. David and Evelyn have a borderline unhealthy relationship. And the conflict and resolution was too easy. But overall, I actually got sucked into this entire story. I was rooting for these two. And I found myself liking all of the characters for the most part (minus Martha and maybe Ben). I wanted to go back to Lick when I had to put it down, and I’ve been wondering about the other characters since finishing it. All this leaves me feeling like Lick deserves a 4 star rating. Have you read Lick? What did you think? Let me know!