Note: This is an adult book, but it is appropriate for the New Adult or YA audience. The characters are around 30, but there is nothing racy in the book. (Actually all the New Adult books I have read so far, were much more explicit than Once Upon A Second Chance)

I enjoyed Once Upon A Second Chance. It kind of reminded me of Austentatious, which I loved. It is a total contemporary, but there are glimpses of something that could be magic. When I say glimpses, I mean maybe two or three times in the book. I loved seeing a little bit of a "fairy godmother". Once Upon A Second Chance is just such a cute love story.

Normally, I like the two main characters pretty much equally. But this book was the exception. I liked Nick way more than I liked Julia. I wanted so badly to love Julia, but she just kept doing things to sabatoge her own life. But she is just so nice and helpful to everyone that it is hard to dislike her for that. I was also disappointed that she hadn't done more in her life career-wise. She was all set to take on the world, and then nothing. Once Upon a Second Chance was a journey for Julia, and the reason that I ended up liking her as much as I did was because she started to wisen up in the second half of the book. Plus, I think anyone would pale in comparison to Nick. I swear, the guy didn't have a single flaw. He was a total sweetheart, smart, and just an all around good guy. He reminded me of a sad puppy when he was hurt. Who could be mean to a puppy?? Nick just totally melted my heart. I loved reading their story.

I loved how the story was laid out in Once Upon A Second Chance. They start off in present day, right before Julia is about to meet Nick again after not seeing him for 8 years. And then throughout the book you get flashbacks of moments in their relationship so you can see the progression of it and find out what happened between the two of them. I really liked this style and I thought Marian Vere transitioned seamlessly from flashback to present day. The writing was great. If you like cute, contemporary romances, and if you have a little patience with your main character, I think you will really enjoy Once Upon A Second Chance.

The Warlock's Curse is the third book in the Venificas Americas series, but it is set at a different time than the first two and it has a new set of characters. I love reading series in order so I can get the full effect of the books, but I wasn't lost or confused by starting with this book. I loved the Warlock's Curse and I will be getting the first two books in the series to read as well, because if they are like this one I know I will love them too.

I am a major history nerd. I was a history major in undergrad and I just get all giddy when history is incorporated into stories or movies. I loved the history in The Warlock's Curse. M.K. Hobson did an amazing job weaving history throughout the story. And the coolest part is that it was like history class and science class with magic and some steampunkiness interspersed throughout it. Umm, yes please- those are all awesome things. And the effect when putting them all together was great.

The writing is the real deal. I love a fluffy book just like anyone else. Something you can pick up and just zone out and read. The Warlock's Curse is not that book. I was more of an active participant while reading this story because the writing is awesome but more dense and complex than some of the fluffier books I read. It was a nice change of pace for me, and I really loved M.K. Hobson's writing style.

Will and Jenny were so full of energy and enthusiasm that it was hard not to love them. Plus, I love a guys point of view so that was a big plus in my book. But the world building was the star of the show for me. I think this has to be some of the best world building that I have seen in a book in a long time. Everything is just so well developed and presented that it makes reading a real pleasure. This book was an emotional journey. More than once I was sad about something that happened, but ultimately everything works for the story. I think The Warlock's Curse is a book that has something for everyone, and you should check it out.

Undeadly is unlike anything that I thought it would be. I was expecting another reaper book, with the main character collecting souls, but it is so much more than that. It is mainly mythology, which is such a nice twist because I love mythology books. And what is even cooler is that it is Egyptian mythology! The Egyptian view of the underworld is one of the most fascinating takes on death and the afterlife, in my opinion. I loved how Michele Vail laid everything out and explained it. Undeadly is a great book and I know The Reaper Diaries is going to be one of my auto buy and auto read series.

I read a recent review of Undeadly right after I finished reading the book myself and the blogger was saying that she didn't enjoy the language that the characters used. It was very much teenage slang and sarcasm. And for the exact reasons that she didn't like it, I loved it! The writing is one of my favorite parts of Undeadly. I loved the voice of the main character, Molly. She is sarcastic and the way she explains things is hilarious. I caught myself chuckling throughout the whole book. It reminded me of some of the smart ass heroines and writing of Meg Cabot, and she is one of my favorite authors because of her writing style. Michele Vail shares this awesome style.

Molly is a great mixture of curiosity, kindness and spunk. She is not afraid to speak her mind and she is inquisitive. I loved watching her interact with the various people in the book, mostly because there were so many different reactions towards her. In this world, there are all sorts of things- Zombies, SEERs (which are creepy ghost slaves, that sounds so awful) spirits, ghouls, and even more. Some people are freaked out by these creations but most people seem to accept this as normal. I loved the description of all of this at the start, plus I loved the originalness of the idea.

Undeadly is such a great read. And hello! How beautiful is that cover? I love it! It lagged a few spots in the middle, but never more than a few pages so it wasn't bad at all. And then it picked right up again in the second half of the book and I didn't set it down at all. I needed to know what was going to happen. There is a lot packed into this one book. I do wish we saw a little bit more of Rath and that the situation with Rick was explained a little better, but I am sure we will be seeing more of Rath in the next book and that makes me really happy. Undeadly is a must read for fans of mythology, zombie, and paranormal books.

A murder mystery, a cambion and a gang of other paranormals. Sign me up. RIGHT AWAY! I loved the mixture of creatures present in Touching Evil. It was such a cool little group, I wanted to join in. I don't know what I liked more- getting to know the different characters in the scooby gang or trying to figure out the mystery. Either way, I am totally hooked on Touching Evil and I think Leila Marx may be my favorite new Urban Fantasy.

Leila is such an easy character to fall in love with. She has such a tough past, but she doesn't complain, she doesn't get all poor me over and over again. She has her sad moments (because HELLO she is human after all) but she has such admirable strength. I do wish I saw a little bit more development between her and Conner, but that is just me being curious about his cambion side. It seems like we saw the anger aspect to being half demon. Conner seemed to almost relish in torture and crime, but we didn't see too much of the more seductive, or should I say fun aspects of his cambion nature. I hope that is explored more in the next book. But I do know that what I saw of him I really liked. I just wish I got a little more insight from him. I feel like we got to know Garrick a little more, but maybe that is because he is an easier person to explain.

The rest of the gang of characters were cool, but they played a more secondary role so they didn't have nearly as much dialogue. They were still pretty well fleshed out though, which made them nice additions to the story. My favorite is King. I love the little protective streak he had towards Leila. It was too cute.

I really like the cover of the book and I think it fits the story so well. There is this darkness surrounding Leila a lot of the time. I really want her to be happy because she seems to be the center of a lot of very intense situations. I just want her to be able to smile once in a while. He sense of touch was delved into multiple times in the story but I want to explore Leila's reactions to it and see more of what she goes through in the next book. I am totally fascinated by everything in Touching Evil and I want more.

Owlet was a refreshing read. It wasn't about the same ole, same ole. No vampires, no werewolves or even shifters. The birds in Owlet are more parts of the soul, which I thought was a cool take on the idea. Plus no love triangle! I couldn't help but feel bad for Iris though. She was kept in the dark for so long and because of that Owlet has many more questions than answers for a while. Iris was in the dark about her own memories as well as her heritage. And she has to deal with so much, poor Iris.

I hope that Iris stays her sweet and good self. She is going through a lot of changes, but I am confident that Falcon will keep her on track. Falcon, by the way is such a cool guy. I can't wait to find out more about him and Iris' past because we only got glimpses of it in this book.

There is a lot of information to intake in Owlet. I felt like the information could have been spread out a little more. Even though I would have liked a bit of a slower pace, I understood why everything was happening very quickly. There was a sense of urgency throughout the whole story. Iris was kept in the dark about so many things for so long, so it made sense to me that she would be trying to find out as much as she could all at once. One thing I was kind of confused about was the memory loss that she experienced. I wish it was explained a little better, I kind of feel like I missed the explanation of it all in the book.

Owlet was a very quick read. It intrigued me and got me interested in following the rest of the series. I saw it as a set up for the feather society series really. It laid all the background and kind of prepped Iris for what I am sure is going to be a really cool adventure for her. It left some things unanswered that couldn't really fit into this book. I'm glad we didn't get to meet all of the players yet, and I am pretty excited to see what Emma Michaels is going to do with the next book.

Ember was one of those amazing books that I just could not put down. I was completely engrossed in the story from start to finish. It kind of made me an instant fan of Jessica Sorensen. I have the first book in her falling stars series, and now I want to read it ASAP!

Ember has an isolating gift. She can tell when someone is going to die. And the only person who knows is her best friend. So understandably, she kept her distance from other people. And then the guys** show up and her whole keep to herself plan goes out the window. I really enjoyed Ember. I was rooting for her right from the start. And Ember placed her secret in the hands of her best friend, Raven. I have to say, I kind of wish Raven was a better friend. There was a lot of fishy things going on in this book, character wise. I wanted to believe the best in people, but some of their actions made it kind of hard to trust them. And I thought Ember was a little too naive and trusting, but overall I thought she was a great character and I can easily see myself wanting to read more about her and her story.

I don't want to give away spoilers for the book, because I thoroughly enjoyed reading Ember without knowing any of this, but it is a "love it" or "hate it" thing in YA books so I want to give you a heads up, that there are two guys in this series. The Summary makes it sound like there is just Asher, but we are in love triangle territory here. Most of the mystery in the book actually surrounds the two guys. We don't know what their real deal is for most of the book, leaving you to make your own conclusions on who you like and who you didn't like. I think book 2 is going to be the final decider for me. I am about 90% decided but I am going to hold off until book 2 until I join a team.

The guys** have the whole "light" look v. "dark" look thing going for them. There is the blond hair preppy guy v. the misunderstood goth, black hair guy. It was a little cliche but I really enjoyed the story. I thought the characters were all there for a reason, no one was added just to fill space. Everyone had a role. The mystery surrounding the characters was just enough to make me need to keep reading. I had to know what was going to happen. I didn't want to put this book down for anything.

Even though there are a few cliche moments in Ember, I didn't even really notice or think about them until after I read the book and I was preparing to write my review. While I was reading, I was too engrossed in the story and too busy loving the book to have it bother me. I don't think it will bother the average reader either, because Jessica Sorensen has this awesome ability to weave a beautiful story together with her writing. Ember was one of my favorite books of the year. The Death Collectors series is going on my MUST READ list. I fell in love with this book!

**I am purposely being vague and not giving names to avoid spoilers because the summary only names Asher.

Warning: Swell deals with issues like attempted rape, teenage drinking, and alcoholism.

Wow! You don't come across a book like Swell too often. It is pretty different than what I normally read. It deals with some very dark issues, and things get ugly at times, but I was in awe of Swell. Julie Rieman Duck is a powerful writer. She wrote characters that made mistakes, were flawed, did things I didn't agree with and she made me love them anyways. That is what had me in awe. Both Julie and Swell really impressed me.

Right away, I identified with Rebecca. Starting high school can be a scary experience and the fact that this book starts out when she is just a freshman made it even more of a statement. Rebecca was just 15 years old. And she liked a boy. And she wanted to impress that boy. The alcohol starts flowing pretty early on, and it was easy for me to see that Rebecca was going to have a problem with it. Actually, a lot of the characters in Swell had a problem with alcohol it seemed like. It was a recurring theme. I wasn't around a huge party scene in high school, so it was kind of scary to see how many people came in regular/daily contact with booze.

I loved, loved, loved Rebecca's best friend. She is the kind of friend everyone should have. She stood up for Rebecca when people were hurting or embarrassing her but most importantly she was observant and she made her opinions known of what she thought of Rebecca's drinking.

I loved Julie Rieman Duck's writing style. About the first third of the book starts each chapter out with a flash forward of glimpses of a horrible thing happening to someone, and with each chapter we found out a little more and got a little closer to said act actually happening. I thought it was a really unique and effective technique. Even though, I didn't agree with the choices that Rebecca made, this was very much her own journey. I was sad that she was taken down this road so early in life, but she made her own choices. Normally, if I don't agree with a character, that means that I won't like them. And if I don't like a character, that normally means that I won't like a book. But the awesome thing about Swell is that it didn't matter that I didn't agree with Rebecca's choices all the time. I still connected with her and I completely connected with the story. It sucked me in and I am still thinking about it long after I finished reading. Swell is a great book.

Rouge will really appeal to fans of theater and Moulin Rouge. (and to people who didn't like Moulin Rouge- if there is anyone else out there besides me. I think I am the only person on the planet to not have enjoyed that movie. Someone pointed out to me on twitter that this book reminded her of Moulin Rouge, and I hadn't even thought of it at that point. I like Rouge way more than I liked Moulin Rouge)

There were a bunch of really great characters in Rouge. I loved Beau and Roland. (and no, they are not both love interests) I also really liked Hale. She seemed so practical and focused. She really wanted her plan to work so she could get herself and Teeny out of the corrupt theater. I respected her trying to get out of that life, but Teeny seemed so ungrateful all the time and like a little brat, so it hurt me to see Hale continuously putting so much on the line to try and help a little girl who didn't even seem to care. Hale took Teeny in from the street and shared everything she had with the girl. I know Teeny loves Hale but she was a petulant child throughout so much of the book. I also enjoyed Evie, but I wish we had seen more of her. I also wished we saw a little bit more of Gavin. I need to figure that guy out, he is still kinda a mystery to me. There are even more characters in Rouge. I loved that there was a complete cast of very different characters in this theater family. It was really cool to see how close most of them were.

Hale seems so practical all the time, that I really did think that she thought she would be immune to love. Sure, she thought that she could grow fond or even love Freddie, her rich suitor. But other than that, I think she thought that no other guy would be able to sweep her off her feet. But sweet ole Beau threw a wrench in her perfect plan. I loved him. He was so open about how he felt, it was nice.

I won't lie, I hated the ending! It seemed so final and it just made me sad. But then I saw it was a series, and I brightened up so much. Now I just see this ending as a roadblock, and it makes me want to start reading the second book asap. I need to see what is going to happen next with Hale. Knowing her, there will be some sort of situation going on. She always seems to find herself in some kind of trouble. I enjoyed Rouge. It set the stage for what appears to be a very promising series!

Melissa Pearl is an author that I have read a few books from now, and I am happy to say that I think I like each one of her books more and more. If you have not read anything from her yet, you need to check her out because she is an awesome writer. I absolutely loved Betwixt. I wish it was a series or that we would get a little novella to check in on the characters because I wasn't ready to leave them when I finished the book. I had already fallen in love with them by that point.

I think my secret to really enjoying a book is not knowing exactly what is going on. I read the summary for Betwixt months and months ago when I was signing up for the blog tour, but I didn't re-read the summary when I went to pick up this book last week to read it. So I didn't remember what it was about really. It made the whole book seem more mysterious to me, and I was glad that I didn't read the summary right before picking it up because well, it does summarize the book pretty well. (that sounds silly, doesn't it? ok...moving on)

Nicole keeps a buffer between herself and almost everyone else. Even though only Dale could hear her, I loved that throughout the book we really got to know Nicole through everyone's eyes. I loved the journey that she went on. And man, oh man did I love Dale. He was just beyond cute. I want to read more about him. We got explanations and peeks inside of his past, but the book was more focused on Nicole, which made total sense.

Melissa Pearl has this incredible ability to suck you right into the story and make you so absorbed in it that you just cannot put the book down. I think I have read ALL of her books in one sitting. I couldn't put Betwixt down and I didn't want it to end. I love Melissa's writing, it brings everything to life. Melissa just made my shortlist of favorite YA authors. She consistently turns out quality books that I always love, what more could I ask for? Betwixt was one of my favorites of 2012.

Before I started my blog, I hadn't read a single angel book. Flash forward two years, and I have read quite a few of angel books. Personally, I enjoy the angel books that are heavier on the romance and lighter (or free of) religious elements. If you are like me, then you will LOVE Mystery Falls. It is a love story through and through and the angel elements are surprising fresh and different. I really enjoyed Mystery Falls.

My favorite thing about Sam was how inquisitive she was. Plus, she was an awful liar, which I found really endearing for some reason. She always wanted to understand why. She didn't take things at face value, and when Shadow wasn't giving her the answers she wanted, she found out the answers on her own. A lot of people may think that she is stubborn, but I thought she was persistent and I absolutely loved her.

Shadow was probably the most interesting version of an angel that I have ever read. He is innately good and really cares about Sam, but he seemed edgier than your average angel, which I really loved. And I love him with Sam. The idea of them together, and I am trying to anticipate any and all roadblocks they may encounter because I am super intrigued to see what the next book is going to hold.

The story of Mystery Falls was deeper and more involved than I initially thought it would be. I loved some of the twists and turns Marilyn Phillips threw at us. The writing is great, the romance is the once in a lifetime, true love, soul mates stuff, and I just couldn't get enough of Mystery Falls. It didn't end as a cliffhanger either! But it did end making me really, really want to read the next book.