Hi everyone!
It's time for something a little new today as I take part in my first ever Book Blitz to promote Upside Down by N.R. Walker. So, for those of you who don't know, with a book blitz, I haven't actually read the book, I'm just helping to promote it. I'm not sure how many of this sort of post I'll be doing but since I've been lacking in the blog department lately I figured you might enjoy this. This book certainly sounds like a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to reading it when it's released! Keep reading to find out more (and for your chance to win a $40 Amazon Gift Card (open internationally)!
Genre: LGBTQ+/Romance
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Jordan O’Neill isn’t a fan of labels, considering he has a few. Gay, geek, a librarian, socially awkward, a nervous rambler, an introvert, an outsider. The last thing he needs is one more. But he when he realises adding the label ‘asexual’ might explain a lot, it turns his world upside down.
Hennessy Lang moved to Surry Hills after splitting with his boyfriend. His being asexual had seen the end of a lot of his romances, but he’s determined to stay true to himself. Leaving his North Shore support group behind, he starts his own in Surry Hills, where he meets first-time-attendee Jordan. A little bewildered and scared, but completely adorable, Hennessy is struck by this guy who’s trying to find where he belongs. Maybe Hennessy can convince Jordan that his world hasn’t been turned upside down at all, but maybe it’s now—for the first time in his life—the right way up.
Sound good? Now, check out the excerpt below!
As always, you can add the book to your Goodreads TBR by clicking on the book cover above and feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below!
Now, enter here for your chance to win a $40 Amazon gift card. This competition is open internationally!
Rating: 4.5 STARS! Genre: NA/LGBT/Romance Series/Standalone: Standalone How I got this book: Bought via Audible It’s not easy for a young gay artist like Jordan Carson to grow up in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where all anyone seems to care about in middle school and high school are the sports teams. But Jordan was lucky. He met Owen Nelson in the second grade, and they’ve been BFFs ever since. Owen is a big, beautiful blond and their school’s champion wrestler. No one messes with Owen, or with anyone close to him, and he bucks popular opinion by keeping Jordan as his wingman even after Jordan comes out at school. Their friendship survives, but Jordan’s worst enemy may be himself: he can’t seem to help the fact that he is head-over-heels in love with a hopeless case—his straight friend, Owen. Owen won’t let anything take Jordan’s friendship away, but he never counted on Jordan running off to find a life of his own. Owen will have to face the nature of their relationship if he’s to win Jordan back. TW: Homophobia, suicide, consent.
I just want to start by saying how much I LOVED the narrator! Eli Easton is a fantastic author and Tristan Wright truly bought this book to life and injected so much emotion that I could not put it down and ended up starting the book before bed and finishing it at around 1:30am (oops!) I love Jordan (Jordi) - he is so, so sweet and relatable and adorable and I just felt my heart breaking for him throughout the entire book. Owen is a pure soul and so incredibly naive that I often found myself wishing I could wake him to the truth. The friendship between these characters is just beautiful, made even more so by the pain and turmoil they each face. Eli Easton writes drama, tragedy and pain incredibly well, none more so (for me at least) than in Boy Shattered but there are sections of this book that are equally moving and heart wrenching. There was so much drama, emotion, humour and friendship in this book and it was just fantastic! Rating: 4 STARS Genre: LGBT/Paranormal/Romance/YA Series/Standalone: Standalone How I got this book: Read for free on Wattpad.com They were naturally disposed to hate each other. And for a while, they did. Bite Me is a YA, m/m paranormal romance that's currently available for free on Wattpad.com (just click the image to read!) If you read my last blog post, you'll know that I've been spending a fair amount of my time discovering Wattpad. For those of you that don't know, Wattpad is a social storytelling community made up of readers and writers. Writers post stories for free on Wattpad for anyone to enjoy, vote and comment on - and it's completely free to join!
Bite Me is the first story that I've read via Wattpad and I truly enjoyed it! It's full of vampires, werewolves, teen angst, insta-hate and an enemies-to-lovers style slow-burn romance that's packed to the brim with drama and lust. There were a few problematic things about the book in terms of editing (i.e spelling and grammar and a couple of sections that were a little confusing) and there was a fairly big issue with the way that one character described another (that a lot of readers picked up) so (as is the beauty of Wattpad's edit functionality), I'm hoping the author will change this in future. Other than that, I truly enjoyed my first Wattpad read. There were moments of humour, tension and plenty of chemistry between the two main characters. I enjoyed the author's new take on Vampires even though I felt that the concept of 'trading your immortality' could have benefited from a little more development and backstory. ' I particularly liked Kieran who, despite being a grade A jerk from the offset is likeable, relatable and witty. Mason is a sweet, puppy dog with the best intentions even if he comes across a little strong and makes so many bad, impulsive decisions. The book contains a nice mixture of contemporary/paranormal and, whilst I would have liked to see a little more paranormal 'stuff', the romance was sweet and kept the story moving. Have you read any stories on Wattpad? What would you recommend? I'm sorry! I can't believe it's been a full month since I last blogged! To give you the short version, my family and I had a pretty rocky start to the year with family stuff and illnesses. On top of that my business is currently the busiest it's ever been, which is a really good thing and something I'm so happy and proud of, but it does often mean that I'm working longer hours and haven't been able to read/blog as much especially because I've been spending more quality time with my family on weekends. This does mean that I've been neglecting My Endless Shelf and you wonderful readers. I am hoping to get back into a more regular blogging schedule now and also to catch up on the many unread emails in the My Endless Shelf inbox. The other reason brings me to my first bit of 'news' - I'm writing again (YAY!) What I'm WritingSome of you might know that I wrote my first novel in 2017 and then after finishing the first draft I sort of put it to one side and just left it, not intentionally but, you know, life... Well, my number one goal this year is to finally publish some of my writing. My lifelong dream has always been to be a full-time author, writing (and reading) are my two passions and I'm so sick and tired of making excuses and of life just getting in the way of me trying to realise my dream, which is why, since the beginning of February, I've been spending as much time as I can outside of work and family time to write and to edit my novel. Editing is sooo hard! I thought that writing, actually getting those ideas and characters out of my head and onto paper, would be the hardest part but I couldn't have been more wrong. Editing just takes so much more time than writing because there are just so many editing 'passes' that need to be done and I'm a complete beginner with the whole process. I'm getting there, very very slowly, but still making progress which I'm really happy about. I'm also writing more because sometimes I just need a break away from the soul-crushing reality of editing and it also helps to keep me creative. There's only so much I can take of various ideas and voices ringing in my head before I just have to start writing them down. I mentioned on Twitter recently that I'd written a short story. What started as a 'quick' creative writing exercise based on a prompt somehow turned into a several hour writing sprint where I could not stop typing and that resulted in a 4,000+ word short story. After a bit of research, I decided to publish the story on Wattpad because I like the simplicity of the platform and also because editing 4,000+ words is a hell of a lot easier than editing 100,000+ words and so I'm working through the story chapter by chapter, editing it and uploading it to Wattpad. So far, I've had a small number of readers and a positive response but I'm hoping for more readers & feedback once the full story is live. If you're interested, it's a contemporary romance with a hint of magic. It is LGBT and centers around a f/f relationship with both bi and lesbian rep. If you'd like to read the first 3 chapters, of The Midnight Cab which are now live, you can do so over on Wattpad by clicking the link above - I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to know what you think. I'm releasing a new chapter every few days (hopefully with another this weekend) and so the full story will be available very soon for those of you who prefer not to start an unfinished story. Depending on the response, I might also post the story up on the blog. What I'm Reading/Reading Slump!In the gap since my last blog post I attempted to read at least 4/5 different books in various genres but none really stuck, even though I know that at least two of them are amazing and I do want to read them. I've found myself in a pretty big reading slump, I haven't had one like this for such a long time where I just haven't felt motivated to read at all. I'm guessing it has a direct link with my mental health because over the past month I've been so mentally exhausted and all I've wanted to do is sleep. Fingers crossed, I think that I'm slowly coming out of the slump now, I re-read one of my favourite romance novels (Checkmate by R.L. Mathewson) and I've also been doing quite a lot of reading on Wattpad. I ventured into poetry which is an odd one for me as I'm not usually taken by poetry and I'm currently reading Bite Me by Alicia Wallace which is a paranormal (vampire x werewolf) m/m romance and I'm really enjoying it so far. Next up, I'm hoping to finish one of the books I started last month and will do my best to have some reviews posted as soon as possible. NYALitFest 2019In other news, the NYALitFest is taking place in two weeks and I'm so excited!! After the incredible time I had at their Supernatural and Fantastical in YA event last year, I cannot wait to attend their main festival on March 16th! I've booked tickets for pretty much every panel, and it's not too late if you want to come along. You can book your free tickets here! The theme this year is Mental Health & Inclusiveness in YA and the author line-up is just fantastic including; Melinda Salisbury, Alice Broadway, Samantha Shannon, Bali Rai and Alexandra Sheppard. There will be panels and workshops covering; Creative Writing, YA Thrillers, Inclusiveness in YA, Mental Health and Feminism in Fantasy. There will also be author signings throughout the day and stalls filled with bookish goodies and run by several fantastic publishing houses including Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Walker and, of course, the organisers of the event, UCLan Publishing (I have everything crossed that I can grab some beautiful books for review and/or to giveaway on the blog!) There's loads more going on in the day too - click here for the full programme! I'll be updating Instagram and Twitter throughout the day if you want to follow along with what's happening and I will do a blog recap after the event. I can't wait to meet everyone and catch up with the fantastic people I met last year (although I will try not to turn up 4 hours early this time!!) Other Stuff...In other news, thanks to the lovely folks at Penguin Random House, I'll be hosting a giveaway very shortly for a paperback copy of Jack of Hearts by L.C. Rosen. This unapologetically honest LGBT YA is a great read and you can find out exactly what I thought of it in my review. Stay tuned for the giveaway coming soon! I think that's all for now - this turned out to be a much longer post than I'd intended!
So, over to you! What are you reading at the moment? I'd love to know your recommendations! As always, happy reading! |
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About Kay (She/Her)
Book addict, film mad, music lover, business owner, writer and mum (not necessarily in that order), living in the UK. About Sophie (She/Her)
Sophie loves books (obviously). She has a passion for photography and spotting wildlife, and is interested in anything made with passion and creativity. THIS BLOG IS SPOILER FREE!
Rating system: 5 Stars - AMAZING!! 4.5 Stars - Almost perfect! 4 Stars - I really loved it 3.5 Stars - I liked it alot 3 Stars - I liked it (I don't typically review books that I rate below 3 stars)
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