Blog Tour: The Legend by Donna Grant

 

The Legend, an all-new sexy standalone from Donna Grant is available now!

The Legend by Donna Grant 

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press 

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

A LONE STAR LOVER

They live to protect. They live to fight for honor and justice. They live to love the women who have captured their souls. These are the Sons of Texas, from New York Times bestselling author Donna Grant.

In The Legend, Callie Reed doesn’t need a man to protect her. An expert sharpshooter and renegade hacker, this Texas-born spitfire’s got the skills and the courage to stand up to any danger―no matter how deadly. But when she becomes the target of a shadowy organization known as the Saints, Callie is forced to team up with the one man she can’t outshoot: the gorgeous, and infuriating, Lone Star legend named Wyatt Loughman…

A Delta Force Colonel with a rock-hard body and stone-cold heart, Wyatt has been teasing and tormenting Callie since they were playmates on his family’s ranch. Of course, he’s wildly attracted to the fiery, strong-willed Callie. But he’s always hidden his feelings behind a wall of Texas tough and military cool, even as he’s burning up with desire. Can Wyatt save Callie’s life―without putting her love in the line of fire?

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Start the series of STANDALONES today with The Hero

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About Donna:

Donna Grant is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the sizzling Dark King series featuring dragons, immortal Highlanders, and the Fae. She was born and raised in Texas but loves to travel. Her adventures have taken her throughout the United States as well as to Jamaica, Mexico, and Scotland. Growing up on the Texas/Louisiana border, Donna’s Cajun side of the family taught her the “spicy” side of life while her Texas roots gave her two-steppin’ and bareback riding. Despite deadlines and voracious reading, Donna still manages to keep up with her two children, four cats, and one long haired Chihuahua. 

 

 

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Website: http://www.donnagrant.com

Review: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

First, thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me to read an egalley of this.  The cover was beautiful, and I'd heard some good things about it, so I was very excited when I was able to fit it into my reading schedule.  Towards the end of the book I just got so sucked in that I didn't want to do anything but finish it, because I needed to know how it would end.  And I'm glad it is supposed to be a series, because I need to know what happens next! 

The  main character is Maya. She is a daughter of the Raja, and while everyone there thinks she is cursed because of when she was born, it turns out that her father is going to marry her off to try to save their kingdom from all the threats of war there are.  But when his plan turns out to be that she is going to die, to kill herself rather than marry any of them, things change.  While she knows it is her duty, chaos breaks out at the time it is to happen, and she is taken away by Amar, who wants her to be his queen. She agrees to it, in order to be safe, and she hopes to save her family. Amar takes her to his kingdom of Akaran.  As they travel there, she learns that many of the stories and myths that she grew up learning are real.  Kingdoms of creatures, and the stars being able to be touched. 

But her new husband is keeping secrets from her.  He promises to tell her all at a certain point, a certain moon.  But Maya can't wait.  There are so many things happening all over the palace, whispering voices, other worlds or times in the mirrors.  And there is something about what Amar wants her to do, and the things he says that bring up memories or feelings.  And she hears Amar and his servant talking, and begins to wonder just what the secrets are.  And inside one of the mirrors there is a woman who says she used to be Maya's friend, and that she can't trust Amar, and only she can help Maya. 

Now Maya must choose who to trust.  Her husband, who is more than he seems, and does really seem to love her though.  Or this person who says she used to be her best friend, and also uses the secretive way Amar is to prove her point that he can't be trusted.  Whatever her decision, it will affect many things, not only her own life, but the lives of the world around her. 

The world was beautiful, and while Maya's choice makes me so mad, it also led to a great new aspect of the story, and I need to know what will happen to Maya and Amar's relationship.  I look forward to reading on in this story.

Review: Ice Kissed (Kanin Chronicles #2) by Amanda Hocking

First of all, thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me to read an egalley of this.  For some reason I didn't get to it before it was published, but then when I knew the third book in the series, Crystal Kingdom, was coming out, I had to hurry up and read this so that I could read my egalley of that as well.  And I have to say, just like the first book in this series, Frostfire, I was once again blown away by how much I love this world and these characters.  And even though it has been since December that I'd read the first book, I was able to jump right back in and not feel like I'd forgotten anything.  In fact, there were little details sprinkled throughout the beginning that totally filled in any gaps of things forgotten, without being a total information dump.  Now, if you haven't read the first book, then I can't promise you no spoilers, so you might want to click on my link for the first book above and read that review to decide if the series sounds good to you.

Bryn and Ridley have come back to their home after trying and failing to find the queen of Skojare.  And with the news of both Konstantin and Viktor both being out there, their own king has decided to prepare for war.  But Bryn doesn't believe the queen is dead like others are saying.  Especially after the queen comes to her in a dream.  She take Ridley to a fairy tale place that her mother knows about and they find the Queen Linnae.  She tells them that she didn't feel safe, and that she'd been warned by Konstantin that she was in danger.  Ridley doesn't believe that Konstantin would help her, although Bryn does, since he seems to have helped her as well.  So Bryn gets sent back to Skojare to help them figure out their own guard and try to fix it so the queen will feel safe.  But while there they find not only tons of issues with how the guard is run, but there is also lots of suspicious behavior by all parties.  When a suspect is finally arrested for a murder, Bryn and Kaspar head back home.  Only to find that the problem has come to them. And when they try to bring it to light, Bryn will find herself on the other side of the investigation.

Of course there is still the romance or the steamy feelings between Ridley and Bryn, and they will have to decide if they should act on them.  And then there is Prince Kennet, who seems to be flirting with Bryn every time she sees him.  But she can't flirt back, as it wouldn't be appropriate the way their society works.  And then there is still the attraction she always had to Konstantin from when she was a child.  She still wants to know why  he tried to kill her father, but still knows he is attractive, and seems to be a good guy.

After reading, I'm so glad I have the egalley of the third book ready to go, and I started it this morning.  I need to know what happens next.  I love that these books have been released just months apart instead of years in between each one.  They could probably have been one big book, but this works as well for me.  I understand the publishers wanting money and all of that. But this is the way to split it up so that we don't have so long to wait in between.  I'm still a huge fan of this author, the writing style is easy to read and definitely grabs you and keeps your attention.  Stay tuned for my review of the third book later this week as I'm reading it right now!

Review and Giveaway: Bones and All by Camille DeAngelis

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for sending me an ARC of this title and letting me sign up for the Street Team!  This was a very unique read.  I actually went through several thoughts about this story as  I read it.  I started out very excited, followed by wondering if I was going to really get into it, then I figured out what was kind of going on, then I felt the love, then I was sad about the love, and at the end I was pleased with the story over all.

The main character is Maren.  Maren has a deep, dark secret.  Basically you'd call her a cannibal.  But not one that cooks and eats the meat of a human like you'd think.  No, once she starts, it is only mere  minutes before there is no trace of the person left, other than any blood that might get on her clothes or the person's clothes.  Bones and all are gone.  It happened first when her mother left her with a babysitter as an infant.  Of course she has no memory of that.  The next time was a boy at summer camp.  Every time it happens her mother has to move them. While there really isn't any evidence left to prove that Maren did what she did, it is just safer.  When the story really begins, Maren is 16, and she has woken up to find a note from her  mother, who has left her on her own.  The note also includes a copy of her birth certificate.  Maren knows her mother has gone to her parents, grandparents she's never met.  But she also wants to meet her dad.  Her mom  has left her money, and she used the money to buy a bus ticket to where she knows her grandparents are.  She finds her way to the house and looks in the window. She sees her mother crying, and knows that she is the reason.  At the grocery store a little old lady sees Maren and wants to help her out.  Asks Maren to help her home with her groceries and she'll fix her a nice lunch.  On the bus trip to the woman's house, Maren first sees the creepy old man she will come to know as Sully.

Sully will soon meet up with Maren, and she will find out she is not the only one of her kind.  Only Sully eats dead people.  He offers for her to come and stay with him.  But next she just wants to find her dad.  So she heads that way.  Only now she's kind of short on money.  So she tries hitchhiking, which only works so far.  She gets to a Walmart where she meets another of her kind, Lee.  Lee is a 19 year old boy.  And the people he eats are all "bad people".  And he helps Maren out even when she can't help herself and eats another boy that is trying to help her.  For some reason she attracts boys who just want to help her, and then she can't help herself.  She and Lee are able to get along and he promises to help her get to see her father.  They run into Sully along the way.  And while Maren still feels like he is trying to mentor her and be her friend, Lee doesn't trust Sully.

Maren will find her father, and of course her daydreams of getting to live with him are only that, dreams.  She and Lee will have a disagreement about what she should do, about Sully, about her dad, with her life.  She will fall in love, she will meet her father, and that will be a touching moment, even if it's not all she dreamed of.  There will be young love, and there will be heartbreak.  And in the end, it of course can't really be happily ever after, not for someone who eats people.

A very unique story as I said.  We don't really get much of a glimpse into the actual eating of people.  We don't know for sure just why they do it.  We only know that it isn't just Maren, that there are other people in the world, maybe more than ever would be imagined.  And in the end, we will root for Maren, knowing she can't help what she does, and that for the most part she is trying to stop herself.  You'll root for young love, and hate when the heartache comes.  At least I did.

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Wake (Watersong #1) by Amanda Hocking

As always I'd like to thank the people who made it possible for me to read an advanced copy of this.  I was fortunate enough to walk into work at Barnes and Noble and see this sitting on the break room table.  As I had fallen in love with the Trylle series by Amanda Hocking, I immediately grabbed it and stuffed it into my locker to take home.  Thank you to St. Martin's Press for sending a copy to my store for me to get!
Okay, first I have to say that this is my first foray into the "mermaid" genre.  Although, technically, they aren't mermaids per se, but sirens.  I do have to say that I was not disappointed in the story though.  Again I can see that Hocking has really built her own mythological story with all the details to make the story work.  And even though we don't know quite everything, I mean, if we did, why would we read on, you can see that there is thought behind what all is happening, and a reason for it.
The main character is Gemma, she's 16 years old, and loves swimming, in fact she's so good, that she's working towards the next Olympics.  And she's starting to notice the boy next door.  And he's noticing her right back.  She lives with her father and her older sister Harper.  Their mother was in a car accident a while back, and hasn't quite been right since then.  So she had to go live in a  home where there would be people to keep an eye on her.  It doesn't sound like a nursing home type of place, though, so not bad.  So since that, Harper has felt that she must fill in for Gemma as her mother.  Something that Gemma sometimes feels is a bit annoying, as any teenager would for an older sister acting that way.  Recently there have been 4 new girls in town, although one has not been around as much.  These girls are Penn, Thea, and Lexi.  Harper gets an uneasy feeling around them.  They're beautiful and popular, but there is something dangerous or menacing about them.  Gemma likes to go each night to the sea and swim when no one is around, even though she notices the 3 girls in one of the coves each night, but she stays away, because she wants to swim in solitude.  One night, the girls call to her, and it's like she can't resist, even though she wants to, and so she goes up and hangs out with them in the cove.  They give her a drink, after which she gets really out of it, and wakes up on the beach the next morning, unable to remember what happened the night before.  But now she's grounded for staying out all night when her father and sister wake up to find her missing.  The truth is that Gemma can now really swim, and she feels even more beautiful.  In fact she seems to have a bit more of a mesmerizing effect on the boy next door, Alex.  But as you would assume, there is a price to her new powers.  And the mysterious girls are the reason, and hold all the answers.
As I said before, the story did not disappoint.  My only issues, first, I don't like that the parents are called by their first names.  It confuses me.  I don't remember what other book I read that in recently, but it just is weird to me.  Second, when I first talked about how much I liked the Trylle books, someone commented that they'd heard Hocking's e-books had lots of grammar mistakes.  I didn't notice any in the Trylle books, but I do have to say that I did in this one.  Yes, it is an ARC, so I'm sure they'll all be fixed before it is published.  I hope.  And when I say grammar mistakes, just really things that probably came from writing quickly to get the story out, thinking ahead of the line she was one, etc.  I do that too sometimes.  Thank goodness for editors and friends who check things!
To wrap up, I am eager to read on in the story.  One funny thing, as I was reading this, I watched the Animal Planet's show about "real" mermaids.  It was funny to me that I just happened to watch that as I was reading a book about the topic.  And this gives me a bit of a nudge to go ahead and maybe dive into some other mermaid types of stories.