Review: Frisk Me (New York's Finest #1) by Lauren Layne

(★★★★★ - 5/5 stars)

Official Moretti, yummi! 

There’s no other way to start this review than this one - even if the description of the book it has anything to do with the front image of the book, Luca Moretti is every girl’s hot (and wet) dream! Dark hair, blue eyes, strong body and a hero - what else can we ask???

Sorry if my initial outburst is kind of a spoiler, since I’m letting you know things you can only figure out if you read the book, but it was inevitable! In the constant comparison to Clark Kent only adds to my attraction to this character <3

But in the serious side, this is a pretty good book for a romance! Lauren Layne always does it for me thou - ever since her Redemption Series and Stilleto Series, I was looking forward to read Frisk Me, the first book of the New York’s Finest Series. And it didn’t disappoint me.

Long story short, the struggle of a NYPD cop that got caught into a social media fame based on rescue a little girl from drowning on the East River and the ambition of a journalist with high expectations on her shoulders to make the mayor break in her career at the Big City. Their path collide when she scoop the story of certain cop who’s becoming a celebrity around the media, while this cop is desperately trying to keep his secrets at secret.

That’s how Luca Moretti and Ava Sims get in each other’s lives - well at list the second time around...

Here’s where I start to spill my guts about this book, so if you haven’t read it, STOP right here - there might be some SPOILER in the next lines.

Maybe is the stereotype around it, but just to think of man like Luc in uniform it does strange things to me! hahahaha... But also, the fact that he’s such a good guy makes it even better. He’s committed to his job, to the point where he blames himself for make things right - even when the outcome is definitely not his fault.  This is surely the kind of guy that, if you find, you marry right away, no questions asked. 

And beside the incident with his partner and Shayna (the little girl who died the same day), his a values guy, with a big family that supports him and takes care of him - that makes him a very driven and confident man.

In the opposite side, we have Ava Sims - a reporter who has struggled her own life to achieve some dreams, even if the dreams are not hers. She wants to prove to her family (a very shitty one, if I must say) that she can have everything they want for themselves, but couldn’t get at their time. With nightmare family, we still can see that she’s a girl with her own personality that is a little confused by stereotypes in the media of this days - you have to be beautiful, stylish, confident and ALWAYS put together in order to nailed a job a anchor. And she’s trying her best to achieve this, even if all she wants to do is sit around in yoga pants, a T-shirt and her beloved flip-flops.

Moretti and Sims get to know each other three years before the East River video, when Luc gave Ava’s van a ticket for parking in a restricted area - the sparks flying since the beginning, even if they are arguing about the ticket - and when they see each other again, the sparks return in full force, putting them in a complicated position since their now kind of like enemies. But as events go by, they start to blurred the lines between their careers and their actual selves:

“I think the woman behind the reporter is pulled to me. Just like the man behind the cop is drawn to you.”

Chapter 16

Is safe to say that the constant hot-cold routing around the main characters got us attached to know how and when they’re gonna to connect - the level of attraction mixed with their constant fights really built the anticipations over the outcome of their relationship.

At the end, two loners end up falling for each other and realizing that nobody is perfect - not even Superman and Lois Lane (hahahaha). Everyone makes mistake and can be forgiven. And even what you thought you want your entire life and change in a blink of an eye.

So bravo Lauren Layne - with this one you had my entire five amazing stars!!!! Looking forward to the next book of this series Steal Me, Anthony Moretti’s turn to find love - the second book of New York’s Finest is going to be published on November 24th, 2015...

So I hope you had enjoy my post! 

Feel free to comment anything that cross your mind and as always...

...See you between the pages!

Trish ❥

Review: Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3) - Tessa Bailey

(⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 5/5 stars)

Finally we have here the last novel of the Broke and Beautiful Series - Make Me.

The story of rough Russell Hart and posh Abby Sullivan, after we witnessed how their best friends fell in love with each other.

Again, Bravo to Tessa Bailey’s light and easy way of writing her books! I enjoyed this one the most!!!!! So uncomplicated and funny, we fall in love with the characters pretty easily.

The plot goes like this: Russell, the tough guy of the Supergroup is madly in love with Abby, the multimillionaire virgin that rents really expensive apartments to the other two broke girls of the series at a affordable amount for them, all because she thinks she’s unable to make any friends. So, Russell spends all his time in the friend-zone and fantasizing about Abby, because he thinks he’s not good enough for her - everything changes after Abby one day realize that he’s really good looking and that they have some sort of connection.

I have to say this is my favorite couple of the Supergroup! Totally opposites but son in sync at the same time - they really fulfill the needs of the other one and the way Russell loves Abby is really sweet and surreal. I enjoyed their conversations about love and their sexual interactions the most.

Great way to close a series!! So if you haven’t read it and you’re in the market for lite, uncomplicated, nothing-box reading, this is your thing!

From HERE on be aware that I might drop some SPOILERS over the lines.

Let’s get juicy on the details! Russell (OMG!!!) is amazing as a main character - is like a man-man! Handy, DIY, brave and really hard on the outside, we can see how sensible he actually is in the inside. Not only because he’s always caring for Abby, his family and friends, but also because he has his family issues to cope with. Finding his mother dead by depression made him a little rough on the edges, but not incapable to love - in fact, from all three male characters of the series, he’s the most emotional one - and that contrast with he’s outside is what makes even more interesting.

Then, there’s Abby - a rich girl who seems to have it all, except real relationships and experience in her life. Raised in a family where there was no allow to make mistakes because you ended dealing with them alone, she always felt like an outcast. Up until she decided to “buy” herself some friends by renting the rooms of her how at a cheap price. But even then, who really made her feel like she belong to someone was the cranky friend of Roxy’s boyfriend who was always there, no matter what she said to him. Being inexperience emotionally and sexually, it takes time for her to realize that what she had been sharing with Russell is not a normal friendship but something different.

Mix all that with a sexual chemistry accompanied by kind of dominant sex and the result is great! Because, beside from the fact that Russell wants to protect Abby from EVERYTHING so she doesn’t end like his mother, the kind of rough and direct way he treats her in that heated moments makes this book even more fun.

So I’m giving it five shining stars and I’m really looking forward to read new things from Tessa Bailey!

Hope you had enjoyed my review - feel free to add anything that you want down there.

As always, see you between the pages...

Trish ❥

Review: Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

(⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3/5 stars)

Ready Player One….

>Enter

Welcome to the OASIS… Or should I said The Matrix or Room 13 or Second Life or World of Warcraft in the future. So yes, you guys get the idea. This is a story about a future society that lives online (At least the majority) in a virtual reality world called The Oasis. The author is Ernest Cline and he has another book called Armada (similar stuff). 

It follows the story of Wade, a 18 year old dude that even study in the Oasis and it is obsessed with 80´s pop culture (As everyone else) in the 2040´s. Wade is a Gunter, part of a massive group that spend every little single second outside of school looking to play the ultimate game: a quest all over The Oasis to find an egg the founder of this virtual reality (An 80´s geek called Halladay) put somewhere – the winner will take billions of dollars and the control of the Oasis. 

It is said that Steven Spielberg is looking forward to do a Film about this book. That could mean really good news (Jaws) or not so good ones (A.I). If it´s true, it won’t happen for a while know. I think it´s the future´s Elder Scroll (ehww).

I´m a 90`s kid: so you should take this review with a pinch of salt.. I you lived the 80´s in your prime or if you are obsess with the decade, especially if you play D&D and all kind of classic video-games, please go ahead and read this book – you will have a blast! For the rest of us, let´s see how this unfolds: 

THIS is the place where you STOP if haven't read the book, because I can get some SPOILERS over the lines!

Things that I liked about RP1:

✔︎ It was fun. For sure, light and fast reading that will entertain you. It does not matter if you do not get every little reference. The story unfolds quite fast and everything happens in a straight fashion. There is some romance, but mainly adventure and action.

✔︎ 80's pop culture. It is amusing. Pacman, D&D, everything  Matthew Broderick did, War Games and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Plus, the song about The Piña Colada (who would love that! c´mon!). There is a first plane where the 80´s references habit and all makes for a great background.

✔︎ The futuristic failed society is a great one. I think there is a nice message there: we, as a society, think we are facing huge perils in the near future because of recent global financial problems and global warming. If things follow the path news portrayed the world everyday it looks like we will, sooner or later, reach a point of extreme depression. I loved the “real world” where Wade and everyone else lives in – a group of trailer stacked one over the other (20-30 high) in order to create an improvise building – fascinating background. It is that world of depression. 

✔︎ The idea of avatars as a mean to do things you would not do in real life…. But wait, what it´s real life? (Is this the real world, or is just fantasy… you can go on in your head). This is a thing we already see all over the internet, please visit the comment section in youtube or any sub-reddit and you will find human nature without any restraint. It is a nice touch and theme present in the book. There is some gender issues and people looking for themselves. 

✔︎ The research: astonishing the amount of detail – particularly with the 80`s references.

Things that I did not liked about RP1:

✘ It was fun. But it wasn't good. At least was not perfectly written, too much flaws and predictable outcomes. Do not get me wrong, this is a fun book, but it is not as intelligent as it could be. I did had a good time, it was not cerebrally challenging – think Elder Scroll and not Dune/Foundation. 

✘ 80's pop culture. Too much for me. Again, if you lived the decade and loved it, no problem. But do we really have to listen to every single obscure little easter egg about the 80`s. I know that you are thinking: but Andrew, isn´t that the main reason of the book. Well, yes; and it does add some nice texture to everything in the story; but I do not think the 80´s was as memorable as Ernest Cline thinks it is…. 90`s kid here, I told you.

✘ It's full of laughable impossibilities: like a 18 year old having seen every episode of every 80s TV show somehow, and being an expert in Pacman and a great player of Joust, Tempest, and the 1000's of other games that you think may be important in the quest including knowing the script of every movie and all Japanese anime references… too much. I understand that he is obsesses over all of this, but there is no time to know all that in a life time. Sorry.

✘ Finally, towards the end of the book I did not fear for one second for Wade and his friends. He seemed to experience almost no actual barriers to success and the bad guys were very incompetent (a Google like multi-billion enterprise) vs a bunch of 18 year olds. Aha, not believable and too easy for our heroes. 

This a 3/5 for me. A good read for a casual reader and a great read for a 80`s kids. Overall: good nice book. You can pass on it if you are not intrigued. 

As always… thanks for reading.

Andrew ♆