Mark This Book Monday: The Return by Jennifer L Armentrout!!

Hello there!

Happy Monday guys! This week I'm quite excited because I'm finally seeing my apartment for the first time! And to start the week right I'm having the first entry for this week's Mark This Book Monday!

This first book is counted towards two of my challenges, its the very first book counted towards my 2015 Mythology Reading Challenge (finally!!) and also counted towards my 2015 Releases category in the 105 Challenge!

The Return by Jennifer L. Armentrout

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Covenant series was my first forey into the JLA books and given that they deal with Greek mythology and have great humour, amazing chemistry and romance and plenty of action and political intrigue!

Alex was a great main character and I was a Team Aiden through and through, so when I heard that we were getting a spin-off with Seth as a main character, I was both very excited to go back to the Covenant world and a bit wary wondering about what Seth we'll get to see.

We meet Seth still on a bit of a self-hate spiral, focusing only on doing what the Gods tell him and seem to revel on the bloodbath. Then he gets a different mission from our favourite and most irritating god, Apollo. He needs to protect a human and bring them to safety. And that becomes the biggest challenge he could have ever imagined!

I wasn't Seth's biggest fan on Covenant but I really become to appreciate him now that we get to see his POV. How broken he is after all his actions and how he feels like he deserves whatever torture comes his way and he fights and kills to ignore the pain. And his journey is quite an unexpected one!

We meet Josie in college, where she is trying to keep up with her school work while dealing with the news of her mother's relapse into her mental health issues, and then she's thrown head first into a world she never knew about, fighting for her life and getting her head to wrap around the fact that she really isn't going nuts and her mum really was not crazy.

Seth is not the only character we meet again, because of course Apollo is back, and I must confess I have a big soft post for him! Every interaction between Seth and Apollo ends up being hilarious one way or another, and Apollo always manages to make me smile/snort/giggle. We also meet Deacon and Luke again, and I'm so happy that they're there for both Seth and Josie, even if they might have not been Seth's biggest fans at some point.

Josie is such a trooper! She understandably freaks about her new life and does a few stupid things here and there, but nothing difficult to understand while she's still wrapping her head around about her new situation, and I love how she wants to take some control back into her own hands, and she decides to train and learn how to fit.

The interactions between Seth and Josie have a fantastic back and forth and amazing banter and oh boy, the chemistry those two have... scorching!! JLA knows how to write romp scenes for sure because oh boy!! *fans self*

This was a fantastic first book for the new series, and I'm quite looking forward to see what will come next, and hoping we'll meet a few more old friends along the way. Very well deserved 4 stars for this one!



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The Return by Jennifer L Armentrout Release Day Launch!!

Hey there guys!!

This Monday was release day for The Return, the spin-off series for the Covenant series, by Jennifer L Armentrout!!

As soon as it downloaded to my Kindle, I just had to read it, and you guys need to read it! Even if you haven't read the Covenant series, that I highly recommend!, you need to give this one a try! Seth is quite a character, he's both swoony, cocky and a bit annoying (or quite a bit, depending on who you ask!)!

The Return by Jennifer L Armentrout

The Fates are cackling their bony asses off...

It's been a year since Seth made the deal with the gods that pledged his life to them. And so far, the jobs they've given him have been violent and bloody--which is kind of all right with him. But now Apollo has something else in mind for Seth. He's got to play protector while keeping his hands and fingers off, and for someone who really has a problem with restraint, this new assignment might be the most challenging yet.

Josie has no idea what this crazy hot guy's deal might be, but it's a good bet that his arrival means the new life she started after leaving home is about to be thrown into an Olympian-sized blender turned up to puree. Either Josie is going insane or a nightmare straight out of ancient myth is gunning for her.

But it might be the unlikely attraction simmering between her and the golden-eyed, secret-keeping Seth that may prove to be the most dangerous thing of all.

Because history has once again been flipped to repeat.

  

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Excerpt

 And just in case you guys need some help deciding if you want to get it, or if you ought to start it already and ignore the rest of the TBR pile as I did... I have an excerpt to share with you all!!


"Shaking my head, I pivoted around and walked down the long hall to my dorm room. As I reached the door, the shiver was at the base of my spine again, dancing its way up until it traveled across my shoulders. My heart turned over heavily and I closed my eyes.

Twice in one day.
Oh God.
I’d never felt this more than once in any span of several days.

Swallowing hard, I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob, battling the urge to turn and scan the hall, because I knew no one would be there.

Dragging in a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped inside the room. My brows flew up, and I forgot about the feeling as I closed the door behind me.

Erin was sprawled on the floor, palms pressed down on a mat, her spandex-covered behind jutting up toward the sky. She turned her head, peering at me from under her armpit.

Her armpit.

“How in the world do you get your neck to bend like that without killing yourself?” I asked.

“Skills, yo.”

Erin did yoga and meditation religiously, saying it helped merge her yin and yang together or something. She’d once told me she had a hell of a mean streak, and contorting herself into painful-looking positions helped keep “good vibrations” around her. Which was strange, because I’d never seen Erin lose her temper in the two years I’d known her.

Erin unfolded herself from some kind of downward dog or upward pony and grinned at me. “Check under the bed.”

Curious, I dropped my bag and stepped over her legs. Bending down, I lifted the bedspread and my eyes grew to the size of saucers when I spotted the bottle. I snatched it up and clutched it to my chest as I whipped toward her. “José!”

Her grin spread into a smile. “The best boyfriend ever.”"

About the Author:

# 1 NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, working out, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, and hanging out with her husband and her Jack Russell Loki.

Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent most of her time writing short stories….which explains her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes young adult paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary romance. She is published with Spencer Hill Press, Entangled Teen and Brazen, Disney/Hyperion and Harlequin Teen. Her book Obsidian has been optioned for a major motion picture and her Covenant Series has been optioned for TV.

She also writes adult and New Adult romance under the name J. Lynn. She is published by Entangled Brazen and HarperCollins.

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Giveaway

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ARC Review of The Iron Traitor by Julie Kagawa!

The final entry for this Saturday edition of Friday Reads is for the second book of The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten series, The Iron Traitor that was released on October 29th.


The Iron Traitor by Julie Kagawa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


First of all, I have to say a big thank you to Harlequin Teen for approving my request for an eARC of this via NetGalley!

The Iron Traitor is a sequel and though I'm not sure if it's just a second book or a middle book (is it a series or a trilogy?) it had to keep up to quite high standards for me and thankfully, it did that and then some!

I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, but there might be some spoilers for book 1, even if I'll try to avoid those too. What I'm gonna say from the very beginning... you need to be warned about something, yes THAT cliffhanger ending! I feel like going into the book forewarned about it doesn't take away from the enjoyment of it, but does help a bit dealing with the shock and emotional misery! So thank you, Sam, for the warning about this cliffhanger, I will join your petition for banning them!

Ethan now is still getting used to the fact that he's not alone in his fight against the Fey, and he's not even sure he's so against them anymore. He has Kenzie to fight for and he has found some allies in the Nevernever, Keirran and Annwyl, Razor, even Grimalkin and Puck. When the Lost Prince was mostly about Ethan and his own path and fight, here Keirran has a growing role since Ethan and Kenzie are mostly dragged along trying to help him on his quest to save Annwyl.

The biggest strenght of this book is that it takes everything that was good from book 1 and takes it up a notch. Our quartet has to go into the Nevernever and not just for a short trip, they have to face Titania and her whims and cruelty, they have to fight old beasts and they will probably start something worse than a war, all of that in the name of love. All the characters grown and progress and Keirran in a very disquieting way, and you start not being sure what is really going on with him. There seems to be quite a deal of information we're not privy to and I'm hoping we'll get some more answers in the next book.

The ending... well, you have been warned about the massive emotional cliffhanger from the start, and trust me, it's the kinda cliffhanger that makes you want to be for the next book to come out like yesterday, but we still have a year to wait!!

All in all, a great read very much deserving of 4.5 stars!





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Review of The Lost Prince (The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten) by Julie Kawaga!

As the next Friday-Reads-but-not-really  review, here is the pleasant surprise for me of a book about the Fae that I actually loved and that made me want to read another series about the Fae!


The Lost Prince by Julie Kagawa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Let me start this review stating that I am not a big fan of books about the Fae. If you were to ask me why, I might have a bit of trouble putting into words exactly what is that I dislike, but I am not drawn about books with them as a focus. That is the reason that I still find myself so surprised that I loved this one and even more than after reading it, now I find myself adding the previous series to my TBR list.

The Lost Prince is the first book in a spin-off series of the Iron Fey series and it was one of those welcome surprises for me. Well, a book about the Fae that I like? That's always a surprise for me!

Ethan is the main character in this book and with his dislike of the Fae I think we connected great right from the start! He is a teenager and his perspective was written so well. He's full of angst and prejudiced against the Fae due to his experiences in the past and how he feels he has lost her sister to Them. He has the Sight, but has become an expert on ignoring Them and protecting himself and his family, or so he thought. He is angry at the Fae and at the world and has built a persona that keeps everyone at arm's lenght so they can't get tangled with the Fae.

At the start of the book he is starting in a new school and things start going south very early on. With a reputation partly undeserved and his own desire to push people away, things aren't easy for him. And despite all his precautions, he finds himself in the middle of Fae affairs, and not only that but someone has decided that they want to get to know him. That someone is none other than Kenzie, a girl that won't take no for an answer and that manages to push all the right buttons for him.

Ethan and Kenzie end up in the Nevernever, the Fae world, trying to hide from a new and nasty kind of faeries and there we encounter quite a few new characters (old friends for those that have read The Iron Fey books, of course) like the encounter with Grimalkin. He is a talking cat that reminded me so much of the Chesire Cat in Alice in Wonderland! Elusive, irritating and so very cat-like! Meghan as the Iron Queen and still being very much Ethan's sister, Ash, Puck... it was a pleasure meeting them all for the first time, and I felt quite drawn to read their stories. I guess for fans of the original series it must feel different and they might want more from their fave characters, but I'm quite happy I jumped into this spin-off as I did, cause I can appreciate all the new characters more.

Keirran was quite a shock for Ethan, since despite being his same age, he's Meghan & Ash's son and so his nephew. He also became an ally even if he had his own agenda. There seems to be more to Keirran than we see at first, and despite his good guy presence, there's something disquieting about him.

There's adventure, there's romance and it's the slow burning one and so it is quite a great first book that not only introduce us to a new world but also stands well on its own with plenty of action and an incomplete resolution to the problem of the Forgotten Fey.

A great first book and very much deserving of 4 stars!





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