Once Upon A Time

Love is a Secret by Sophie King Giveaway!

Wednesday 19th June, 2013 by Hannah Leave a Comment

Hey guys! I have a week long giveaway for a Kindle copy of Love is a Secret by Sophie King for you. This is a chick lit you may have missed so pay attention and pop your answers in the Rafflecopter for your chance to win. And that’s it! No hoops, just a good book with a simple competition. Good luck, and hope you like the sound of Love is a Secret! Do spread the word if you think you know anybody who’d enjoy it too.

Love is a Secret by Sophie King

Love is a Secret is about four very different people who meet online through What Mums Know, a new website for mums. But none of them is quite who they seem, and little do they realise that when they start to share relationship and parenting secrets, their lives will never be the same again. Here’s some more information about the main characters:

Caroline is finding it difficult to trust her husband Roger. Can a marriage really survive an affair? Then a chance meeting makes her wonder if it’s time for a fresh start…

Susan is struggling to bring up her disabled daughter Tabitha on her own, and dreams of a better life for them both. But just when it seems things can’t get any worse, aknock at the door changes everything.

Mark is learning how to be a single dad while his wife Hilary is away. But as he wrestles with the secrets he is keeping from his family, he’s blissfully unaware of thesecrets they’re keeping from him.

Lisa is looking forward to the birth of her child. Will a new baby help her get over the past? Whatever that is…

Sometimes you have to keep a secret from the one you love - and sometimes you have to keep the one you love a secret.

Love is a secret is an updated version of Sophie’s much loved novel Mums@Home, which now has a new title for this revised 2013 edition.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: chick lit, giveaway, Love is a Secret, Sophie King

Top Ten Books At The Top Of My Summer TBR List

Tuesday 18th June, 2013 by Hannah 19 Comments

This is a difficult topic for me as I’m constantly changing my TBR lists! I mean last week I was all about the chick lit, now I don’t really care for it at all and want to stick to my beloved fantasy. But likely that will change again soon. It’s mad, I tell you. So. Rather than a bunch of Summery books, here are 10 books I am hoping to get to soon.

1. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch – My god people keep telling me off for having not read this book. Did you know it was a must read? Because I did and still haven’t gotten around to it. Hopefully soon..

2. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin – I’m determined to read the books before the tv show.. at the moment I’ve read one book per year this show has been on tv, and now I’d like to read this so I can watch series three. Then the other two in the series as well.

3. The Mammoth Book of Steampunk – Aaaand steampunk feature reading. This is the anthology of choice for Clockwork Summer, and there were many to choose from, but I already own this one so that’s a bonus.

4. Rescue or, Royer Goldhawk’s Remarkable Journal by Amy Leigh Strickland – An indie steampunk fantasy that was sent to me for review in Clockwork Summer and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s involved.

5. The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia – Had this one for a while, I hear Ekaterina Sedia is a phenomenal author so I shall start with the one I own and simultaneously add another review to Clockwork Summer.

6. Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker – One for the Richard and Judy challenge. I’m not sure right now how active I’ll be in the challenge after all but I’d like to still try to get around to reading this one as it features just enough quirk.

7. Never Mind the Botox: Meredith by Joanna & Penny – I’ve read one book in this series and I love what they’re trying to do. Chick lit based around ladies in high profile careers, each book in the series focuses on four different women involved in a plastic surgery case. I forget exactly what’s going on but I love it. So here’s another in that series.

8. One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern – One that came through for review. I think this one was unsolicited, I actually can’t remember at this point but it is a book I really want to read and it sounds like a really good read so, in the pile it goes.

9. The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne – Well Kev loves it, so what more do I need? Honestly, for review, and thinking about it.. sounds a little like Pretty Woman without the prostitution? I literally just finished watching that movie for the first time!

10. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas – My Kindle file from NetGalley was messed up but at some point this Summer I’m really hoping to get a hold of this novel as I adored book one something silly. More fantasy!!

Well those are my top ten but there are many others. If only it could have been a top 30! What are some of the books on your Summer TBR list? Gonna tell me off for not starting any of the above yet? Planning to catch up or relax over the Summer months?

Filed Under: Features, Literature Tagged With: lists, Top Ten Tuesday

Incoming: The Return of the Lion King (Quilt)

Sunday 16th June, 2013 by Hannah 7 Comments

And this week is the polar opposite to last week in which I was opening myself up to more chick lit: I suddenly got back into a fantasy mood and realised I had way too much chick lit. When will I learn, guys?

Physical Pile

This week came the last trickle of the chick lit requests and a couple other surprises. Dan bought me my own copy of Me Before You when I wouldn’t shut up about it ♥. Second Last Woman in England was unsolicited but sounds quite interesting, it’s set during our Queen’s coronation and I believe it’s about a woman going up for execution at the same kind of time. The Peter Jones books, well I accepted How to Eat Loads a few weeks back as I am on a diet and I’m curious to see what these two have to say, he included How to Do Everything as well. The rest are the chick lits, all books I really want to read, just need to satiate my fantasy craving first, but I think I’ll start with Midsummer Magic, a book greatly influenced by Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Another one I should really mention this week: I GOT A NEW PHONE! You may notice from the quality of the picture. My dad still has my contract bill, so when he asked if I wanted an iphone (we’re on Virgin so can’t get iphones, I did explain this to him) I jumped at the chance. It’s a HTC Desire X and is already amazingly helpful, plus Candy Crush is bloody addictive isn’t it?

Ebooks For Review

The French For Love by Fiona Valpy

See? I’m getting better. The Returned I saw in one of NetGalley’s newsletters and it sounded fantastic so I went and requested.. it appears to be on NetGalley with one of the publishers I have auto accept with so here it is. I assume Harlequin. There’s a French show on Channel 4 at the moment with the same name and a very very similar premise which is unrelated. Very odd coincedence.. However! There is an adaptation of the book in production with ABC and some big names so that’s a cause for excitement. The French For Love came from Bookoutre earlier in the week, a chick lit set in France. Sounds lovely! Fade is one I’d been accepted for months ago on NetGalley from Curiosity Quills but for some reason never downloaded it, I don’t think they have a ‘send to Kindle’ button. I said as much in my feedback and they sent a Kindle copy over. And Rescue is one for ‘Clockwork Summer’ of which I’ll have details for very soon!

And Freebies

I didn’t look too hard this week because last week frightened me! Cupidity I am counting as a review copy technically, but it was a freebie and I think it might still be for today.

Anything here you’ve read and loved or picked up recently? Any of them particularly catch your eye? Do you have the number for a freebie addicts help center? Let me know in the comments!

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: incoming, Showcase Sunday

I Ponder: How to Read More Epic Fantasy?

Friday 14th June, 2013 by Hannah 25 Comments

I think a culmination of reading Ravven’s most excellent middle grade fantasy and then spending a large amount of time on Wednesday falling in love with the Kingkiller Chronicles deck of cards has done the job of getting me pretty firmly back in a fantasy mood. Except there’s a slight problem with indulging in it this time..

The Tower of Chick Lit

Not that I’m complaining! These all sound like fantabulous books but I really can’t spend time reading epic fantasy doorstoppers when I have all of these to gobble up. So, fair enough, I don’t have to read all of them right away, but there’s a large amount I really should squeeze in asap and there’s a few on my Kindle as well.

The thing that I find myself somewhat wondering is how do I market a blog when one month I’ll be reading a chick lit tower like that, and the next I’ll be looking at all of the wonderful speculative fiction I have yet to read. Sure, there are folk like me who have a large appetite for fiction of all sorts of genres and are happy to read almost anything I put out there because hey, you can always expect something different from Once Upon A Time, you can’t deny me that. But generally speaking, genre lovers have zero interest in chick lit, and chick lit readers don’t care much about the 700 page epic fantasies. (Yes, there are exceptions, but 9 times out of 10 this statement is true.)

There was a point when I had a good middle ground but that was also the time when I filled up on meaningless memes and blog tours and guest posts that nobody wanted to read. I wasn’t necessarily being true to myself, whereas now I am and I know I should be happy enough with that but I’ve once again got to a point where I feel I have to read certain books before others else the publishers will be cross with me. Would they? I expect they would if I never sent in reviews of any of the books I have come through the door. And then there’s NetGalley which expects there to be a 20% difference between accepted and feedback and at some point I just went nuts and now I don’t think I can reach that point as currently I’m closer to 80%. Is that okay? I mean.. it doesn’t necessarily cost them anything but they have still sent you a free book at the end of the day so I’d say not.

But at the beginning of the year, I made a promise to myself. I would be focusing more on what I want to read and less on what I felt I needed to read, and first and foremost I wanted to focus on epic fantasy more because after all, it is my first love. Epic fantasy is where I started my book blogging adventures and I’m not happy at how far from an epic fantasy blog this has become! I want to focus more on genre fiction than I do, though I don’t want to drop chick lit from my reading completely because I do love the genre. It makes me happy reading about these heroines who find their way in life and perhaps find a guy that’s worth loving. But I also don’t want to simply revert to YA fiction again like I always seem to when I’m not sure which direction to take. What I need is to find a balance.

Edit: Okay, from your comments I feel I haven’t put my point across very well. I’m not trying to put myself into a box, and I’m not necessarily struggling with not reading any other genre but chick lit. I’ve been there, done that last year with YA. I learned my lesson. What I apparently haven’t learned despite setting myself a New Year’s Resolution is that when I request and accept review books, I feel obligated to read those and guilty reading anything else before I’ve caught up, and having recently received a fair bit of chick lit for review I therefore don’t feel I can indulge my epic fantasy love, which is what I always wanted this blog to focus on. But I’m also worried about the idea of yo-yoing between genres putting people off if I’m not putting out the kind of content they want to read. I do like to put forward discussion, response, and rambly posts where I can so hopefully this is enough to hold people. I particularly like the ideas of balancing review books with my own books from Angie, only allowing myself to request a NetGalley book after reading 2 or 3 from Ciska, and balancing content in other ways with opinion pieces to appeal to all from Ellie. Thanks so much for your advice so far! Getting some lovely ideas on how to balance things a bit better and have a bit more fantasy with my dragons!

So what do you say? Obviously I need to put some time in to read the books I’ve had through for review recently which means putting aside a lot of time for some serious reading. But how would you suggest I make the change and by how much? What is it you read Once Upon A Time for?

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: chick lit, epic fantasy, ramble

[Review] Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Thursday 13th June, 2013 by Hannah 6 Comments

Series: Standalone
Genre: Contemporary
Size: 482 pages
Availability: Paperback, Hardcover Large Print, Ebook, Audiobook
Borrowed from the local library.

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

Let’s get the genre debate out of the way, as it seems to be in most reviews of this book. Me Before You is a contemporary fiction novel. It features romance, and it certainly could come under the chick lit bracket, but the focus of this novel puts it firmly in the contemporary bracket, for me, anyway, and I believe that was the author’s intended genre.

Many people have been telling me to read Me Before You since its’ January 2012 release, and when we got to 2013 and I still hadn’t got myself a copy, they started telling me off! Then when my GP told me to read it I finally went ahead and picked up a copy from the library and found myself wishing I’d bought a copy at some point instead because I desperately want to reread it. In fact, apparently I was going on about it so much that my fiancé bought me a copy.

Louisa is a girl with a whacky dress sense (glittery green tights, anyone?) who works in a café. Only the café closes up and Louisa finds herself at the Job Centre looking at vacancies in the chicken factory, pole dancing, and care work. As an unemployed person, I can tell you that if it’s not your chosen field of work, they can’t force you to go for something in the way that they try to with poor Lou but thankfully she isn’t there for long as she’s shoved in the direction of a 6 month position caring for a young adult quadriplegic male who already has a nurse to deal with the bum wiping bits (as Lou puts it). So she goes for the job and finds herself hating it when Will is cold and nasty, yet she keeps at it because it pays very well and her family need the money.

Her sister pretty much guilts her into it because she wants to go back to college – I can’t say I was her sister’s biggest fan, overall, but she had her decent moments as well. Lou is still living with her mum and dad, her grandad who needs her mum to look after him because of his stroke, her sister and nephew. With her dad’s job in jeopardy, that only leaves her and her sister earning any money for the family. Despite this, they have the tendency to make her feel a bit useless. And her only escape is her boyfriend Patrick who spends so much time training and hanging out with his athletic friends that even on the very very rare occasions they do get alone, there’s no intimacy and Patrick bores poor Lou to tears. So perhaps working for Will Traynor could be just the thing to liven up her days. Lou takes it upon herself to try and show Will that there are still things to live for, and he turns out to be a pretty great guy once he lets her in. You actually feel Lou starting to care for Will and watch their friendship building.

A lot of people talk about how romantic Me Before You is, and sure, it is romantic, but I would be lying if I didn’t tell you what the book is really about at its’ heart. I feel it’s important to know going into the book that the euthanasia debate features quite heavily but I also firmly believe that whether you are for or against, you need to read this book. It looks at the debate from the angle of a person who cares deeply about the person who wants it to be over. Morever, though, Me Before You is a book about living your life to the fullest. Not necessarily about going all out with the extreme sports, but in going for things you might be afraid of and it really opened my eyes. It’s not often a book comes along and makes you rethink the way you live your life but this is one of the rare few.

Me Before You is a beautiful novel about a girl who just feels a bit lost in life, and a guy who found his life was cruelly snatched out from beneath his feet. It features romance and life and the need for tissues. It is immersive, funny, and heartbreaking. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go reread this magnificent novel and start telling people off for having not read it yet because it truly is a must read.

Purchase: Amazon Paperback – Amazon Kindle – Book Depository

Other reviews of Me Before You can be found on The Aussie Zombie and Curiosity Killed the Bookworm.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: contemporary, Jojo Moyes, Me Before You, review, romance

Kasadya: Hellhound Awakened Blog Tour

Wednesday 12th June, 2013 by Hannah 1 Comment

I had seen this book around before I was invited to be a part of the blog tour and thought it sounded like quite a fun read about hellhounds protecting the earth and mankind. Except the hellhounds are more like demons than dogs. Anyway, so, yeah. I agreed to be a part of the blog tour. I’ve got a little guest post for you about how Karen’s hellhounds came to be, and then there’s some information about the author and the book at the end, along with a tour-wide Rafflecopter.

For a very long time I had this demon like girl running around in my head. I always had a crazy imagination but never had the guts to bring life to it. But finally I caved and decided to write a novel about this crazy girl.

Although she looked like demon, Kasadya fights demons. When I think about the term fight fire with fire this gives a great example of the hellhound. I needed something that was as hard as a demon yet different. So I gave life to the hellhound. They have huge bat wings that is used for many things. They are strong and can be used as weapons to push away demons coming from her back. Further into the series she also learns how to control magic with them.

Then we have her horns. Not on top of her head, but in front these also comes in handy when she needs to head-butt a demon or two. Finally I wanted to give them some edge over demons so I gave her excellent aim and strength. Together all of these makes is possible for hellhounds to fight and concur demons. But of course every great thing needs it downfalls, so I also added in some exciting twist for the hellhounds.

They become super crazed and go into what I called the born version. This is when they really go out and destroy anything in their path. But don’t worry they have a safety button in the version of a charm. Their charms are their destined mates, and these mates are able to control their emotions and calm them down. But they are also able to release them when needed. And in Hellhound Born this is just what we are going to see. Crazed out hellhounds battling against thousands of demons.

Karen lives in a small town in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. She shares her live with her husband, two sons and daughter. If she isn’t reading she is writing.

Her preferred genres are Paranormal and Urban fantasy. Karen specializes in payroll and HRIS systems analysis and development. At the age of 21 Karen’s professional success reached it highest platform, an outstanding achievement at such a young age.

You can find Karen on:
Blog – Goodreads – Facebook – Twitter

Kasadya: Hellhound Awakened

In a constant battle between good and evil, evil is dominating the battlefield and leading mankind to its destruction. With our Creator’s intervention a creature destined to concur and destroy is created. He gives mankind hellhounds to fight back and reclaim freedom. Join seventeen year old Kasadya Levourne as she fights against evil to protect us. With each step she faces destruction, and yet she has the talent to give it back tenfold. Stubborn and hardheaded she makes her mark in the fallen world and starts a battle none can escape. Not even her trainer, the very attractive Chax de Luca, was prepared for her presence. Will evil prevail? Or will Kas and her fallen friends succeed in protecting us against it? Hold on to your seats, this is going to be one hell of a ride.