Monthly Archives:: January 2016

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Fresh Batch (Jan 31st – Feb 6th)

Posted by 6 Comments

FreshBatchBanner637
Fresh Batch, posted weekly, keeps you up to date on the hottest releases of the upcoming week.

Flavor of the week:

Starflight
Melissa Landers
Series: Starflight #1
Publication date: February 2nd 2016
by Disney-Hyperion

Goodreads Purchase

Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She’s so desperate to reach the realm that she’s willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith.

When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he’s been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest. Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world–and each other–the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe…


Other releases this week:
* In no particular order *




Low (Low #1) by Mary Elizabeth [Purchase]
The Moonlit Garden by Corina Bomann [Purchase]
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys [Purchase]
Wicked Sexy Liar (Wild Seasons #4) by Christina Lauren [Purchase]


Almost Midnight (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3,5) by C.C. Hunter [Purchase]
Assassin’s Heart (Assassin’s Heart #1) by Sarah Ahiers [Purchase]
Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4) by Kalayna Price [Purchase]
Remembrance (The Mediator #7) by Meg Cabot [Purchase]


Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell [Purchase]
Revenge and the Wild by Michelle Modesto [Purchase]
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee [Purchase]
Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin [Purchase]


Fighting Solitude (On the Ropes #3) by Aly Martinez [Purchase]
Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf [Purchase]
Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42) by J.D. Robb [Purchase]
Sweetgirl by Travis Mulhauser [Purchase]


Games Wizards Play (Young Wizards #10) by Diane Duane [Purchase]
Pax by Sara Pennypacker [Purchase]
The Truth by Jeffry W. Johnston [Purchase]
Dare to Run (The Sons of Steel Row #1) by Jen McLaughlin [Purchase]


Simon Thorn and the Wolf’s Den (Simon Thorn #1) by Aimee Carter [Purchase]
Banished (Forbidden #2) by Kimberley Griffiths Little [Purchase]
I Wish You Were Mine (Oxford #2) by Lauren Layne [Purchase]
He Will Be My Ruin by K.A. Tucker [Purchase]


A Criminal Magic by Lee Kelly [Purchase]
Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh [Purchase]
Harmony Black (Harmony Black #1) by Craig Schaefer [Purchase]
Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles 0.5, 0.6, 1.5, 3.1, 3.6) by Marissa Meyer [Purchase]


Raging Sea (Undertow #2) by Michael Buckley [Purchase]
Spirit Level by Sarah N. Harvey [Purchase]
The Sapphire Cutlass (The Diamond Thief #3) by Sharon Gosling [Purchase]
The V-Word: True Stories About First-Time Sex [Purchase]


Jockey Girl by Shelley Peterson [Purchase]
Of Better Blood by Susan Moger [Purchase]
Trace Evidence: A Virals Short Story Collection (Virals 0.5-2.5-3.5-5.5) by Kathy Reichs and Brendan Reichs [Purchase]
Hope Girl (River #2) by Wendy Dunham [Purchase]


What’s catching your eye this week?

 

You can support Xpresso Reads by using this link (also found on sidebar) to shop at TBD

Find previous Fresh Batch posts here!

 

Blog Tour: Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum – Review

Posted by on 01/30/2016 • 4 Comments

Hello and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Tell Me Three Things!! I adored this book. It was just one of those books that makes you feel good. It’s not all fluff and rainbows and all that cute stuff though. There is a lot of depth to it, and things that aren’t quite so easy for the characters, but in the end it’s a book that just made me happy. I loved Jessie getting to know Somebody Nobody. I had a pretty good idea of who it was from the start, but I did keep wondering throughout if I was right. And man did it throw me for a loop at times. Anyways, I liked the honesty in the messages that they sent to each other and…

Diverse Picture Books

Posted by on 01/25/2016 • 5 Comments

So, picture books. A lot of you might not read them yourselves but if I might say so, there are some fabulous picture books out there and yes, picture books that are ‘diverse.’ I am currently taking a Queer Lit class at my college and one of my classmates mentioned that she wished picture books weren’t so generic. She mentioned how nice it would be if she could read some pictures books aloud to her kids that weren’t based on heteronormative ideals and I wanted to shout that there ARE some amazing pictures books out there. AND HERE WE ARE. With me recommending some diverse picture books to you guys. ENJOY.

 

Goodreads Links

My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis

Last Stop On Market Street by…

Fresh Batch (January 24th – 30th)

Fresh Batch (January 24th – 30th)

Posted by on 01/23/2016 • 4 Comments

Fresh Batch, posted weekly, keeps you up to date on the hottest releases of the upcoming week.

Flavor of the week:

The Dark Days Club Alison Goodman Series: Lady Helen #1 Publication date: January 26th 2016by Viking Books for Young Readers

Goodreads Purchase

New York Times bestseller Alison Goodman’s eagerly awaited new project: a Regency adventure starring a stylish and intrepid demon-hunter!

London, April 1812. On the eve of eighteen-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall’s presentation to the queen, one of her family’s housemaids disappears-and Helen is drawn into the shadows of Regency London. There, she meets Lord Carlston, one of the few who can stop the perpetrators: a cabal of demons infiltrating every level of society. Dare she ask for his help, when his reputation…

Interview with Laurie Elizabeth Flynn + Giveaway!

Posted by on 01/22/2016 • 2 Comments

I’m happy to have the Firsts blog tour stop by today for an author interview plus a chance to win! Let’s see what this book is all about first:

Interview with Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Hi Laurie! Thanks so much for visiting this little blog of mine! Let’s start with telling us a little something about your book that might surprise us:

Hi Giselle! Thank you so much for having me on your blog. That’s a great question! I think readers may be surprised to find out the reasons behind why Mercedes tries to help the boys. While she puts on a tough front and can be even cruel at times in her incisiveness, Mercedes is soft and vulnerable in a lot of ways, and things that happened…

Review: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Posted by on 01/20/2016 • 9 Comments

Passenger AKA the much awaited, highly anticipated time travel romance. I had hoped it would be everything I wanted, I had hoped I would swoon and die because cuteness, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Passenger was by no means a bad book, I just had a hard time relating to the character and getting behind the romance (which is kind of a big deal given that it is a time-travel romance.)

Etta is really my biggest problem with the book. It isn’t that she is fundamentally flawed, I just couldn’t get behind her as a character. Her privilege, growing up the way she did and in the century she did, is so blatant and her ignorance of it really bothered me. Being with Nicholas did make her realize that she was…

Blog Tour: Teen Frankenstein by Chandler Baker (High School Horror #1) Review and Guest Post

Posted by on 01/18/2016 • 3 Comments

Hello everyone!! I am happy to be participating in the blog tour for this book. Right when I read the synopsis, I knew that I had to read the book. So I will be doing my review and I have a great guest post with a real life high school horror story from Charlotte Huang, a friend of the author who is also an author.

To start, I really liked the characters. They were great. Especially Tor and her best friend Owen. They really were what pulled me into the story. I did enjoy this book, but had to ignore all of the things that just didn’t make sense to me. As with all things fiction, not everything has to make sense or be logical right? I can’t go into…

Fresh Batch (January 17th – 23rd)

Fresh Batch (January 17th – 23rd)

Posted by on 01/16/2016 • 4 Comments

Fresh Batch, posted weekly, keeps you up to date on the hottest releases of the upcoming week.

Flavor of the week:

Up to This Pointe Jennifer Longo Publication date: January 19th 2016by Random House Books for Young Readers

Goodreads Purchase

A refreshingly original contemporary YA, unlike anything readers have seen before. Perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson, John Corey Whaley, and Libba Bray.   She had a plan. It went south.

Harper is a dancer. She and her best friend, Kate, have one goal: becoming professional ballerinas. And Harper won’t let anything—or anyone—get in the way of The Plan, not even the boy she and Kate are both drawn to.

Harper is a Scott. She’s related to Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer who…