Heaven vs. Hell or Promo Post and Giveaway for Lifeblood (Everlife #2) by Gena Showalter

Book info:

Title:  Lifeblood  
Author:  Gena Showalter
Series:  Everlife #2  
Genre:  YA Fantasy
Published:  February 28th, 2017

Synopsis:

"My Firstlife is over, but my Everlife is only now beginning."
With her last living breath, Tenley "Ten" Lockwood made her choice and picked her realm in the Everlife. Now, as the war between Troika and Myriad rages, she must face the consequences.
 
Because Ten possesses a rare supernatural ability to absorb and share light, the Powers That Be have the highest expectations for her future—and the enemy wants her neutralized. Fighting to save her Secondlife, she must learn about her realm from the ground up while launching her first mission: convincing a select group of humans to join her side before they die. No pressure, right? 
 
But Ten's competition is Killian, the boy she can't forget—the one who gave up everything for her happiness. He has only one shot at redemption: beating Ten at a game she's never even played. As their throw-downs heat up, so do their undeniable feelings, and soon, Ten will have to make another choice. Love…or victory. 

Buy Links:
Amazon
Indie Bound
Barnes and Noble

Heaven vs. Hell:
So, if you've read this series, which I have, and I've loved, then you know that technically, the two places people have to choose between when they die aren't exactly heaven or hell.  There is Troika - which is the light, and Myriad - which is the dark.  So in a way, they kind of fit our ideas of heaven vs. hell.  Troika follows the rules and are "good" and live for others.  Myriad believes in enjoying things for yourself just because they are enjoyable.  So you can see the similarities between the two.  My post today is five reasons you might pick heaven based on the literary or tv/movie character vs. five examples of why you might pick hell.  


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Heaven	Hell
Castiel from Supernatural	Crowley from Supernatural  (Okay, maybe not "hot," but he makes me laugh)
Loki and Bartleby from Dogma	Roth from The Dark Elements series by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Jace from Shadowhunters - The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare	Dante Walker from the Dante Walker series by Victoria Scott
Daniel from Fallen series by Lauren Kate	Cam from Fallen series by Lauren Kate (although I don't know that I find this actor attractive or what I pictured when I read the books)
Patch from Hush, Hush series by Becca Fitzpatrick	Death/Aric from The Arcana Chronicles by Kresley Cole (I love Jackson too, but Death, sigh)

  So, all of those are my top 5 reasons I would be swayed to either side.  Now, in this Everlife series, I love Killian.  I love, love, love him!  I'm not quite finished with the book, should be finished in the next day or so, so look for my review of Lifeblood soon, but you can check out my review of the first book, Firstlife HERE.  

Author Bio:

Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the Intertwined Novels, the White Rabbit Chronicles, and the Everlife novels, among numerous novels for an adult audience as well. Her stories have been praised as “unputdownable.” Gena lives in Oklahoma with her family and a menagerie of dogs. Follow her on twitter @genashowalter and visit her website at genashowalter.com.

 
Author Twitter

Author website 
  





Giveaway:

• 2 signed sets of FIRSTLIFE and LIFEBLOOD (US Only) 

   a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:
Week 1:
3/6: Brittany's Book Rambles - Q&A
3/7: In Wonderland - Review
3/8: Reading Is Better With Cupcakes - Guest Post
3/9: Take Me Away To A Great Read - Review
3/10: Swoony Boys Podcast - Character Interview

Week 2:
3/13: Two Chicks On Books - Guest Post
3/14: Books Are Love - Review
3/15: Resch Reads and Reviews - Makeup Board
3/16: Here's to Happy Endings - Review
3/17: Lisa Loves Literature - Heaven vs. Hell - You are here!

Week 3:
3/20: Quite the Novel Idea - Review
3/21: The Irish Banana Review - Fast 5
3/22: Mundie Moms - Review
3/23: Megnificent Boks - Top 10
3/24: Owl Always Be Reading - Review

 

Review: Every Last Breath (The Dark Elements #3) by Jennifer L. Armentrout (Series Ender Challenge #6)

This book I had to buy as soon as it came out, even though I just now got around to reading it!  I finally went ahead and picked it up over some other books I was thinking about reading, so that I could go ahead and add another book to my series ender challenge total.  As always, I just loved the book, and loved getting more time with my one of my favorite book boyfriends, Roth.  If you haven't read the first two, White Hot Kiss and Stone Cold Touch, then you should probably click on the titles in this sentence and read those reviews first, because this will have spoilers for the first books.

Well, as we left off in the last one, we found out who the Lilin was.  And it had taken over the body of someone so close to Layla, Sam.  They were able to get away from it in the meetup at the beginning, partly because they found out that hurting the Lilin also hurt Layla.  Layla learns that the souls that the Lilin takes don't just go where they should, like Sam's should go to heaven, they go to hell.  Layla's new mission, until she can figure out a way to fight the Lilin, is to save Sam's soul from hell.  To do that, she finds out she needs to talk to Death.  Roth's friend/co-hort Cayman, helps her figure out how to do it.  At the same time, Cayman tells Layla that she needs to hurry up and decide who she wants to be with, who she truly loves, Roth, or Zayne.  If you know me, I've been team Roth the whole time.  And I was not disappointed.  Sorry, a bit of a spoiler, but it happens early on in the story, so even as I read, I was always wondering if something would happen to take Roth away, he is on the in trouble list with his boss, you know who.  And in that case, would she be able to return to Zayne? 

Layla also decides to get her first tattooed familiar, and it is a fox.  Her plan to go to see Death is one that she knows she has to keep a secret from Roth, because there is no way he would let her go.  And she doesn't want him going to hell because of the whole being in trouble thing.  So she and Cayman devise a plan for her to get there.  Now, in the meetup with the Lilin, Layla finds that she has wings with feathers.  She soon learns there is more to the story of her mother, Lillith.  While Zayne is not happy with Layla's decision, he knows that she is still not evil, like the rest of the Wardens may think. And so he does his best to try to keep the "good" guys fighting with her.  Of course those that she knew and was friends with before have never doubted her.  And Zayne's father, who was like a father to Layla himself, also will see the error in his judgement from before. 

There will be more good guys lost, but in the end, Layla and Roth, and Zayne and the others will get to what needs to be done in order to save the human race from an apocalypse and hell on earth. 

A wonderful, fitting end to this story.  So many sexy scenes with Roth and Layla.  I love seeing just what Roth's familiars are like when they're in hell, and what they can change into, especially the kittens!  As always, I'm just led to want to read more of Armentrout's stories, and I will be certain to continue stocking up on them as I can!

Review: Unforgiven (Fallen #5) by Lauren Kate (Series Ender Challenge #3)

First, thanks to Delacorte Publishing and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an egalley of this book.  I just listened to books 2-4 in this series over the past month or so.  And then I saw this pop up on Edelweiss and I was very excited to read it.  I really have to say that I wasn't disappointed, it was a good story, and definitely a good addition to this world.  I did have one issue, that kind of kept it from being a 5 star review on Goodreads, but I'll mention that at the end of my review. 

So Luce and Daniel had their ending in Book 4.  And I really like the way we pretty much got to know how the rest of their story would go.  But how many people kind of wondered about Cam?  Cam, the bad boy, the one who started trying to seduce Luce in the first book.  In book 3, we got a glimpse of a romance that may have led to Cam being the angel he is when we first get to know him. A girl named Lilith, who he had been going to marry a long, long time ago, bibilical days I would guess.  They ended up not getting married because she would only get married in a church as that is what her family would expect. But see we learned in book 4 that the fallen angels could not go into churches.  So since he couldn't do that, they fought, because he wouldn't tell her why he didn't want to get married in the church, and they split up.  Now the story Cam had always told, isn't quite what happened, and we learn the true story in this book.

Cam finds out that Lilith is in hell, because of a deal she made with Lucifer.  And her hell is basically growing up over and over in the worst lives, and never being able to realize her dream, and then once that is over, she starts all over again.  I think that her different hells never last much longer than the amount of time Luce would get before she would die.  Cam decides after all that happened with Luce and Daniel, that maybe he wants to try again with the girl that he's never forgotten.  And so he makes another deal with the devil. That if he can get her to fall in love with him before the current hell she is in ends, he will save her from ever having to go through that again, and also get to be with her.  But if he loses, then he has to go to hell, never to leave, and to be Lucifer's right hand man.

Of course Lilith is in high school, and she is an outcast, no friends, a family with no father, a mother who is not very nice, and a younger brother with life-threatening health issues.  Cam remembers how much music was a part of Lilith before, and as her sees her here, she still loves music.  And so he enters high school, and tries to get her to start a band and perform.  Deep inside Lilith though, is the hate that she doesn't remember, but whenever she sees Cam, there is something in the back of her mind bringing it up.  And just when it seems like things might be going well, Lucifer drops in, and starts setting more obstacles in Cam's way.  Like for one thing, Cam starts aging, pot belly, losing his hair, wrinkles, and even worse, he starts getting goat/demon hooves.  Fortunately he is able to hide his feet in boots.

Cam must overcome all the obstacles and still win Lilith, basically by the prom in this hell she is in.  So many ups and downs, every time Cam seems to be ahead, some new obstacle pops up, usually put into motion by Lucifer.

As I said, a great story, a great way to spend more time with Cam.  While I always rooted for Daniel in the other books, you definitely are rooting for Cam to get the girl this time.  And after what we learned about Lucifer in the last two books, I so wanted to be able to step in and punch him every time he caused problems.

Okay, the one thing I didn't like, well I don't feel like I got a good closure, don't know what happens to the two at the end of the book like we did with Luce and Daniel.  Will they get to be together?  On Earth?  In hell?  In heaven?  I need to know!  I would love another book, although I'm not quite sure that it would take a full novel to finish the things I want to know.  Not a cliffhanger ending, just not all the things I want to know.  This is a great series, and I can't wait until next fall when the movie for the first book comes out in theaters.

The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff

The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed the first book I read by this author, The Replacement. So I knew I would enjoy this one right away, and was so excited when I won an ARC from Goodreads.com. I was a little disappointed at first that it wouldn't be a sequel to the first book, as I feel that one left open for a sequel. But the premise to this story was really good as well. I was fortunate in that I picked this book up at a time when I actually had some time to read, and I got it all read within about 3 days time, the majority of it yesterday. Once I picked it up and started reading, I was just sucked in and had to know where it was going. What I love about this author's books is that she is so descriptive, and the storyline, background, history of the world, etc., they are all so involved. Even with all the fallen angel stories that are out, and even some now about demons as not so bad of people, this has it's own originality.

The main character is Daphne. She lives in Pandemonium, which is a city in Hell. The interesting thing about this city is that when they open the furnaces of hell, everything burns. They must close doors and windows and cabinets to protect things that are not from that city. Daphne is the daugher of Lillith, a demon, and Lucifer, the devil. She has many half brothers and sisters, most are demons like her mohter, but one is her brother Obie. Obie has gone to earth, but he chooses to save lost souls, whereas her sisters choose to take from the men.

We begin with a boy showing up in Pandemonimum bleeding and lost. Obie helps to save him, and then afterwards, Obie chooses to go live on Earth to stay, as he has fallen in love. When Daphne's mother sees that Obie disappears, she sends Daphne to earth to find him, as Lillith cannot go herself. Daphne still feels a connection to the boy who her brother saved, his name is Truman. And she feels that he may have an idea to where her brother might have disappeared. So she goes to Truman (I love that this is the character's name), for help. But it is not safe for Daphne on earth, there is the archangel Azriel who wants to kill and destroy all demons who come to earth, in order to save the humans. Together they must pass through several obstacles and dangers to find Obie, and it is possible that they may not all survive. But who will give their life for love?



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