A Peek In The BiblioBin #73

Welcome to our Stacking the Shelves post! Stacking the Shelves (or as we like to call it, A Peek in the BiblioBin) has been created by the lovely ladies at Tynga's Reviews.

Stacking the Shelves is a way for bloggers to share what books they have won, received for review, bought from the bookstore, borrowed from the library or friend, etc.  

As you can see, we've been on quite the shopping spree. This week's selection features old and new favorites.

For Review:

Popping The Cherry by Aurelia B Rowl (via NetGalley)




Purchased:

Witches of East End (The Beauchamp Family #1) by Melissa de la Cruz

Antigoddess (Goddess War #1) by Kendare Blake

United We Spy (Gallagher Girls #6) by Ally Carter

Between The Lines (BTL #1) by Tammara Webber

Where You Are (BTL #2) by Tammara Webber

Good For You (BTL #3) by Tammara Webber

Here Without You (BTL #4) by Tammara Webber 

Good For You (Between the Lines #3) by Tammara Webber

* * * *

SPOILER ALERT!!!  Due to the nature of this trilogy, it is impossible to review this book (or even read the synopsis) without giving away the ending to the previous book.  So stop now if you haven’t read Between the Lines and/or Where You Are and don’t want to know how it ends.

Reid Alexander's life is an open book. His Hollywood celebrity means that everything he does plays out in the public eye. Every relationship, every error in judgment is analyzed by strangers. His latest mistake totaled his car, destroyed a house and landed him in the hospital. Now his PR team is working overtime to salvage his image. One thing is clear—this is one predicament he won’t escape without paying for it.

Dori Cantrell is a genuine humanitarian—the outward opposite of everything Reid is about. When his DUI plea bargain lands him under her community service supervision, she proves unimpressed with his status and indifferent to his proximity, and he soon wants nothing more than to knock her off of her pedestal and prove she's human.

Counting the days until his month of service is over, Dori struggles to ignore his wicked magnetic pull while shocking him with her ability to see past his celebrity and challenging him to see his own wasted potential. But Dori has secrets of her own, safely locked away until one night turns her entire world upside down. Suddenly their only hope for connection and redemption hinges on one choice: whether or not to have faith in each other. (GoodReads)


Review:

Remember how I wanted Reid to take a long walk off a short pier?  And then at the end of Where You Are I thought there might be a slight bit of hope for him after all?  Well, Good For You (Between the Lines #3), was Tammara Webber’s chance to make me like Reid Alexander.  Maybe even love him.

Reid is quickly falling into a life of regular binge drinking and blackouts.  When one of those blackouts results in him driving his car into a house, his life can’t possibly get any lower.  One of the terms of his plea bargain is that he must help rebuild the home that he destroyed.

Dori is unimpressed with his forced community service and expects the minimum from him.  What she learns is that for all his publicized carelessness, Reid is a hard worker and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.  A friendship slowly develops between these two but quickly ends once Dori shows no interest in continuing their friendship after Reid’s community service is done.  Then something terrible happens in Dori’s life and somehow Reid Alexander is the one person she can turn to with all her doubts and fears.  Their friendship starts off where it left off and slowly develops into more.

All I have to say is this.  Congratulations Tammara Webber.  You managed to make me accept and love a character that I have up until now despised.  I mean, I can’t tell you how much I disliked Reid Alexander in the last two books.  And even though he showed some hope at the end of the last book, it wasn’t enough to make me like him.  But in the end?  Well, I almost loved him.

Ms. Webber managed to set a perfect pace for this story.  Nothing happens quickly but at the same time I couldn’t stop turning the pages.  Dori’s character is rather uptight and pretentious but I couldn’t help liking her anyway.  Part of that might be because of how quickly she deduced Reid’s jerk-like qualities.  And then there was Reid.  He was every bit the ass that he was in the previous two books.  But the author took that fragility that only the reader caught glimpses of and made it slowly blossom through out the book so that, by the end, we had a hero that had believably redeemed himself.

This was indeed my favorite book in the series.  I would recommend the whole series for this story alone. If you like a page turning teen romance, I can’t recommend this one enough.

Nat

Where You Are (Between the Lines #2) by Tammara Webber

* * * 1/2

 SPOILER ALERT!!!  Due to the nature of this trilogy, it is impossible to review this book (or even read the synopsis) without giving away the ending to the previous book.  So stop now if you haven’t read Between the Lines and don’t want to know how it ends. 

Graham Douglas doesn’t do romantic relationships, but he was knocked for a loop when he met Emma Pierce on the set of his last film. As they grew closer, he did everything in his power to keep from falling for a girl being pursued by superstar Reid Alexander. Now home in New York, his life is once again under control, until Emma appears and shows him how not over her he is.

Emma Pierce is forsaking an up-and-coming Hollywood career to embark on a life she’s only dreamed of—the life of a regular girl. After spending months burying her feelings for the two night-and-day guys who vied for her heart while filming her last movie, a twist of fate puts her in a coffee shop in the middle of Manhattan with the one she still misses.

Brooke Cameron was a fresh-faced Texas girl when she arrived in LA. Now she’s a beach sitcom star turned conceited heiress on the big screen. Having just survived three months on location with her ex—Hollywood’s reigning golden boy—she’s older and wiser and has set her sights on her close friend Graham. The only thing standing in her way is the girl he can’t forget.

Reid Alexander can sum up his life in one word: boring. Between film projects, there’s little going on outside of interviews, photo shoots, and the premiere of the film he finished last fall. The next-to-last thing he expects is to get a second chance with Emma, the girl who rejected him. The last thing he expects is for his still-bitter-ex to be the one to offer it to him on a platter. (GoodReads)

Review:

Remember how I suggested that if you like the show Gossip Girl, you MIGHT like Between the Lines?  Well, if you like Gossip Girl, you will DEFINITELY like Where You Are.

Where You Are alternates between 4 different points of view – Emma, Graham, Reid and Brooke.  I think that might be the most POV’s I have ever read in a single book but it definitely works.  Emma and Graham are trying to make their very new relationship work while living on opposite coasts and dealing with publicists that want Emma to maintain the façade of a relationship with Reid during the publicity spree of their new movie.  Brooke, Graham’s long time friend (and Reid’s ex-girlfriend), has decided that Graham is THE guy she wants to spend forever with and will stop at nothing to make that happen.  She enlists the help of Reid to ruin the relationship between Graham and Emma and in turn send Graham running into Brooke’s arms.

I enjoyed this story much more than Between the Lines.  In Between the Lines I was unsure who I should be rooting for.  Should Emma be with Reid even though I couldn’t stand him?  Or would she end up with Graham even though he had no voice in the novel?  I had no such dilemma in Where You Are.  I knew from the start that I wanted Emma and Graham to stay together.  I also knew that I would be thrilled if both Brooke and Reid took a long walk off a short pier. 

I won’t tell you what happens.  All I can say is that are three books in this series (and possibly a fourth in the works).  What I WILL tell you is that the end left me with hope (just a little bit) that Reid Alexander just might grow into a decent human being.

Between the Lines wasn’t my favorite of stories but I am so glad I enjoyed it enough to move on the next book in the series because I definitely enjoyed Where You Are and would highly recommend it if you are looking for mature teen romance.

Nat