Asylum II - 13 More Tales of Terror
By Matt Drabble

Synopsis
After a breakout and a devastating fire, the private hospital is finally refurbished and opening its doors for business again.

But the evil that has blighted this place runs deeper than the concrete foundations. Its very nature attracts darkness and now another storm is brewing.

Some of the most disturbed minds sit within the padded walls of Blackwater Heights. Each has a tale to tell and each is more shocking than the last.

Dr Hilary Meeker is about to take up her position on the staff. An ambitious woman looking to make her mark and climb the professional ladder with little regard to those she steps upon.

Dr Elgon Perrin runs the hospital, an unusual man with a unique style. But is he all that he seems, are his methods too extreme and is he more dangerous than the inmates that he stands watch over.


Review
Welcome back to Blackwater Heights! Didn't you miss it?? It's easy to say that Matt Drabble doesn't disappoint when it comes to horror. There is unrelenting suspense throughout this story. Fans of Drabble's first collection, Asylum, will want to continue the terror in this collection. Any horror fan will want to take the time out to read this book. Each story is filled with terror and the macabre as the reader visits the disturbed minds of those who inhabit the hospital. I do t like to spoil any story, but especially horror stories - take some time to sit for awhile, hopefully on a dark and stormy night, as you devour the stories.

About the Author
Born in Bath, England in 1974, a self-professed "funny onion", equal parts sport loving jock and comic book geek. I am a lover of horror and character driven stories. I am also an A.S sufferer who took to writing full time two years ago after being forced to give up the day job.

I have a career high position of 5th on Amazon's Horror Author Rank of which I am immensely proud. I am also been accepted as a full member of the Horror Writers Association.

"GATED" is the 2015 Readers Favorite Gold Medal Winner for Horror. It is also a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year.
"ASYLUM - 13 TALES OF TERROR" is a US Horror Chart #5 It was also voted #5 on The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & is a Readers Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner. Both "THE TRAVELLING MAN" and "ABRA-CADAVER" won Indie Book of the Day awards.

Follow Matt

On Twiter: https://twitter.com/MattDrabble01
On Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1FV8UH4
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matt.drabble.3
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/1hoQGSM

Rock Hard
Rock Kiss #2
By Nalini Singh

Synopsis
In New York Times Bestselling author Nalini Singh’s newest contemporary romance, passion ignites between a gorgeous, sinfully sexy man who built himself up from nothing and a shy woman who has a terrible secret in her past… 

Wealthy businessman Gabriel Bishop rules the boardroom with the same determination and ruthlessness that made him a rock star on the rugby field. He knows what he wants, and he’ll go after it no-holds-barred.

And what he wants is Charlotte Baird.

Charlotte knows she’s a mouse. Emotionally scarred and painfully shy, she just wants to do her job and remain as invisible as possible. But the new CEO—a brilliant, broad-shouldered T-Rex of a man who growls and storms through the office, leaving carnage in his wake—clearly has other plans. Plans that may be equal parts business and bedroom.

If Charlotte intends to survive this battle of wits and hearts, the mouse will have to learn to wrangle the T-Rex. Game on.

Review
​First of all, welcome to my first Romantic Reads Thursday! I have had a love of romance books for the past year and I no longer consider it a "guilty pleasure" - just a pleasure. So, I am happy to share that love with the my fellow readers. And if you don't already read the romance genre, maybe I can encourage you to try it out, yeah?

This was my first time reading a Nalini Singh book and I am definitely going to search out more of her titles. I'm usually a stickler for going in order with series books, but it didn't take long for me to not care that I was actually reading the second book in the Rock Kiss series. In Rock Hard, Charlotte is a seemingly mousy assistant to the office T-Rex, Gabriel. Charlotte has a tortuous background that makes it difficult for her really live her life. Gabriel is storm of a man who sees that there is strength and something more beneath what she shows. 

What I really enjoyed about Rock Hard was that the serious issues that Charlotte faces are not glossed over or minimized by Gabriel. I appreciated that issues like dating violence are taken seriously. I've read other romance books where the issues the female protagonist is dealing with is all of a sudden solved by the love of "a good man." Gabriel, by all means, is a really good male character - patient, kind, sweet while also being infuriatingly (and sexily) impatient (I hope that makes sense lol). 

My only gripe about the story is the ending. It seemed too rushed - I enjoyed the ebb and flow of Charlotte and Gabriel and I feel like the rush at the end took away the growing perfection of  their story. Regardless - a great story.

I haven't thought about required reading in a very long time (I graduated with my Masters in 2011). So, when I came across this topic in  Vivatramp's 100 More Book Blog Post Ideas it brought back a wave of book memories - some wonderful, some not so much. 

I've always been quite a "rebel" when it came to my reading. I have read what I've wanted (even if it was "inappropriate") since I can remember liking to read. My parents didn't dictate what I could read and I felt that school shouldn't have to either. I would do as much as I could to do well in the class - which often meant not reading the assigned book.

I know, I know.

So, I rebelled against titles like The Great Gatsby, and Frankenstein without knowing what they were about. I have yet to fully read The Great Gatsby *gasp*, but Frankenstein actually came back to haunt me when my freshman level English literature class assigned it. I wanted to start off well, so I read it - and I LOVED IT. I still love it. I look back and kind of wish I could apologize to my high school senior level English teacher - even though I did get an A in the class...

Then there were other books assigned during high school: The House on Mango Street, Rebecca, and Of Mice and Men. For some reason, these books I read cover to cover. Maybe because The House on Mango Street, and Of Mice and Men are super short stories? That would be appealing to high school me. Rebecca, however, was not a short read. It did, however, intrigue me. It seemed scary - thrilling. But, why Rebecca, and not Frankenstein? Was it because Rebecca had a female at the center of the story? That is a connection I am just now realizing. I love a "good" female protagonist. It didn't hurt that we also got to watch the movie in class. 
Then there are the books I was told to read in college. Friday Night Lights is probably the one I most disliked having to read. Football in Texas. I know I know there's some importance to it, but Freshman me did not care...and I doubt I'd care as much as that now. But I read it for my HISTORY class, and I wrote about it, and I passed. 

Then...then the wonderful happened. My last semester I had one class that I had  to take to graduate, but I was on financial aid so I had to fill up my schedule with 3 more classes. I took an extra psychology (my major) course, decided to treat myself (because it is a treat) with two literature courses, Intro to American Fiction and Native American Literature. I had them both with the same professor, Dr. Deane Mansfield-Kelly and they were glorious. 

I remember reading (yes, actually reading) Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy (a mother daughter writing duo), and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (we watched the movie too!) the most, I enjoyed both books, especially Monkeewrench. In fact, I still read books by P.J. Tracy because of this class. Dr. Kelly was so enthusiastic about, not just reading, but the genre she was teaching. She specialized in detective fiction and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. She had a framed cover of Hound of the Baskervilles in her office. The lady rocked. 

I have always been interested in the Native American culture, so naturally the decision to take her other course was a no brainer. I got to read books like Love Medicine, Ceremony, Blue Dawn Red Earth, and so many others. But the books that stood the test of time with me were Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen and Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues. Both gorgeous in their own tragic ways. Alexie's works in particular have come to hold a special place in my soul. I recommend everyone read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian because it is one of the few books that can have me laughing one second and sobbing the next. His words are easy to read, but so difficult to digest. Beautifully tragic. One of my deepest wants is to one day meet Mr. Alexie, but I'm afraid to as well because how does one speak words to someone so eloquent? 

But I digress. 

Every book, whether I read it or not has affected me in one way or another. Positively and negatively. The important part is that if it weren't for assigned reading, I wouldn't know what I love and what I dislike. I never would have found Sherman Alexie if it weren't for wonderful Dr. Kelly assigning it to the class. 

It's never too late to meet a good book. 

​

Darkfever (Fever Series #1)
by Karen Marie Moning

Synopsis
MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands….

Review
I'm always up for trying out genres and one I had been hoping to really get into is urban fantasy - also classified as paranormal romance, I guess? The only other book that I've read that fits these genres is Richelle Mead's Succubus series - which I love so much (I still need to complete the series...I don't even know if new books are coming out for it still? Must research...). So, I was very happy to try out this series. This book is basically (in the best of ways) an adult version of the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. Darkfever deals with Mac finding out her sister, who is also her best friend, has been killed while studying abroad in Ireland. What Mac soon finds out is that her sister's death only the tip of the iceberg. Deciding to travel to Ireland in search of avenging her sister and learning something of what had happened to her, Mac finds out all about the Fae world. Little does Mac know, however, that she plays a much bigger picture in the Fae world than she is ready to realize. 
I definitely loved the first book in this series and finished it rather quickly - even for a paperback! Mac has a fantastic sarcastic and real sense of humor and self. Barrons makes for a great and grumpy (and handsome?) frenemy to Mac (with the hint of something more??). The book also follows in line with other fae books - the fae are tricky, scary, and are a force not to be reckoned with. I cannot wait to read the second book!

Books Can Be Deceiving
{A Library Lover's Mystery}
by Jen McKinlay

Synopsis
Lindsey is getting into her groove as the director of the Briar Creek Public Library when a New York editor visits town, creating quite a buzz. Lindsey's friend Beth wants to sell the editor her children's book, but Beth's boyfriend, a famous author, gets in the way. When they go to confront him, he's found murdered-and Beth is the prime suspect. Lindsey has to act fast before they throw the book at the wrong person.

​Review
Okay - confession time: I have always been curious about those mystery books that have covers with cats, pies, or puns (or all of the above). Apparently, they have their own "genre" - "cozy mysteries." I don't know if it's because I needed some comfort or something short, but I found myself picking up Books Can Be Deceiving from my local library's bookstore. I thought, for $1.50 - why not? It is possibly one of the best things I've ever done! This particular title caught my eye because it is a Library Lover's Mystery.​ I adore the library, so I figured this would be the perfect title for me! The story is about Lindsey who is the new director of the public library in a small town. This book totally made me want to live in a small town out east, by the way. She has a book club going on, friends in almost all places in town, and even a "lemon" of an enemy in her own library. Then one of her close friend Beth's boyfriend is found murdered and guess who is suspect #1? Lindsey, with the help of some townsfolk, makes it her mission to prove her friend's innocence. It is a smart mystery and I love how the love of books is woven into every crevice of this book! Lindsey tends to remember what most of the townspeople like to read and what they put on hold at the library which makes for a really fun sidenote to the story. If you like mysteries, definitely look into the cozy mystery genre if you don't already. Everyone else - most readers like books about books - definitely give this series a try (I already bought the second book!).