Articles

Chelsea Fine’s BEST KIND OF BROKEN (Finding Fate #1)

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Synopsis

 

SOMETIMES MOVING ON MEANS MOVING IN
Pixie Marshall wishes every day she could turn back time and fix the past. But she can’t. And the damage is done. She’s hoping that a summer of free room and board working with her aunt at the Willow Inn will help her forget. Except there’s a problem: the resident handyman is none other than Levi Andrews. The handsome quarterback was once her friend-and maybe more-until everything changed in a life-shattering instant. She was hoping to avoid him, possibly forever. Now he’s right down the hall and stirring up feelings Pixie thought she’d long buried . . . 
Levi can’t believe he’s living with the one person who holds all his painful memories. More than anything he wants to make things right, but a simple “sorry” won’t suffice-not when the tragedy that scarred them was his fault. Levi knows Pixie’s better off without him, but every part of him screams to touch her, protect her, wrap her in his arms, and kiss away the pain. Yet even though she’s so close, Pixie’s heart seems more unreachable than ever. Seeing those stunning green eyes again has made one thing perfectly clear-he can’t live without her.  
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Excerpt 

The door to the dining room swings open again and this time Levi walks through, a box of tools in his hand.

Cougar Mable immediately lights up. “Morning, Levi!”

“Morning, Mable.” He smiles at her. He scowls at me.

I notice his face is now clean-shaven and a part of me misses his scruff—what? No. NO. I do not miss his scruff. Missing scruff is for weirdos.

I scowl back at him and start grating Swiss cheese.

“Where’s the fire alarm in here?” he asks in his work voice. It’s a very different voice than his get-out-of-my-way voice or his if-you-want-hot-water-wake-up-earlier voice.

Mable points to the wall, looking far too happy to be of service, and I keep my eyes down as he moves past me. As I sprinkle cheese over the quiche, I can’t help but notice how grated Swiss kind of looks like white scruff.

I’m not a weirdo.

Quiche finished, I turn to start sautéing vegetables and my gaze automatically darts to Levi. He’s so distracting. His arms are all raised, and his shoulders are all broad, and he’s fixing crap, and it’s just… it’s just… annoying.

You know what else is annoying? The fact that the freaking fire alarm is right by the stove.

With a huff and a puff and some choice words in my head, I grab my sliced bell peppers and force my feet to the stove. I throw the vegetables into a frying pan, grab a wooden spoon, and ignore Levi’s close proximity.

My body hums.

I ignore that too.

I steal a glance in his direction and watch as the corded muscles in his forearm flex as he unscrews something on the alarm box. Why does he have so many muscles in his forearm? That can’t be healthy.

I drop my eyes to the frying pan and focus on bell peppers, because bell peppers are interesting and they don’t have backs the size of Alaska or copious amounts of forearm muscles.

The forearm muscles that I’m not thinking about lightly brush my shoulder, and the humming inside my body knots together and zips around like a bumblebee on crack.

I casually turn down the heat on the stove, like that’s the reason I’m suddenly a human vibrator, and go back to stirring. Levi goes back to screwing.

Bell peppers.

I’m thinking about bell peppers.

Levi brushes against me again, except this time his forearm grazes my breast and my body immediately goes wild, like I’m some love-starved teenager, and the humming dives low in my belly and the stove gets hotter and my breaths get shallow and suddenly bell peppers are the sexiest vegetable on earth.

Welcome to Hotel Horny Women, home of scruffy cheese and sensual produce.

From the corner of my eye, I catch his Adam’s apple bobbing with a nervous swallow, which can mean only one thing. The boob brush was an accident.

Well, crap.

If he had been trying to cop a feel with his Hulk-ish forearm, I could have responded with some kind of snarky “you’re a pervert” comment. But it wasn’t on purpose and somehow that makes it sexier, and now the cracked-out bumblebee is buzzing in my nether regions and my hands are starting to tingle and why the HELL is this stove so hot?

I turn the burner down another notch and take a slow, deep breath. I have a boyfriend. A great boyfriend. So this sexual frustration I feel around Levi is nothing to get my bee-loving panties in a bunch about. I just need to calm down.

Levi lowers his arm for a moment, his eyes still on the alarm, and stretches his neck.

Ah, the neck stretch. The universal sign of stress. Well, at least I’m not alone in my frustration. My hot, distracting, pants-are-so-inconvenient frustration.

Wait, what?

Who said anything about pants? I am NOT thinking about pants—or lack thereof. Damn you, bell peppers!

I toss the wooden spoon to the side and move back to the counter, where the threat of being turned on by a handyman or, you know, a sautéed vegetable is much less severe.

I stare at the scruffy quiche and bite back a groan. What was I thinking, living under the same roof as Levi? There’s no way I’ll survive the summer.

Hell, I can barely survive breakfast.

Purchase:

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Chelsea Fine Headshot 2About Chelsea Fine:
Chelsea lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she spends most of her time writing stories, painting murals, and avoiding housework at all costs. She’s ridiculously bad at doing dishes and claims to be allergic to laundry. Her obsessions include: superheroes, coffee, sleeping-in, and crazy socks. She lives with her husband and two children, who graciously tolerate her inability to resist teenage drama on TV and her complete 
lack of skill in the kitchen. 
 
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads

 

 

 

Giveaway

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November BOTM

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November Book of the Month Synopsis 

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view .. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Tomboy Scout Finch comes of age in a small Alabama town during a crisis in 1935. She admires her father Atticus, how he deals with issues of racism, injustice, intolerance and bigotry, his courage and his love. 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South ― and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. 

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

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August BOTM

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

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August Book of the Month Synopsis
When Astrid’s mother, a beautiful, headstrong poet, murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, Astrid becomes one of the thousands of foster children in Los Angeles. As she navigates this new reality, Astrid finds strength in her unshakable certainty of her own worth and her unfettered sense of the absurd.

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Me Before You Book Review

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Synopsis

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

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“This book was….WOW.”

That is the extent of my goodreads review. I thought I’d expand on that and discuss what I loved and disliked about this book. I actually loved everything about this book. It was powerful, emotional, deeply moving and something about it stuck with me. The love, the loss, the growth, all make this a beautiful yet complex novel. I cried like a baby but I seriously recommend the hell out of it.

This was a book club read for my friends and I. Yes, somehow between all my blog reads and life I make time for a book club haha…don’t judge me! I roped my sister into giving her input for this review. She begrudgingly agreed. LOL. These are our shared opinions…

What’s it about?

Me Before You is a tragic yet heartfelt journey of self discovery. It will most certainly make you shed a tear…or a thousand. I certainly did. My sis says, “Me too!”

Lou Clark lived a simple, run of the mill life. She is a girl who doesn’t know what she wants when the book begins. For much of the story she is still trying to figure her life out. She can’t fathom having any sort of definitive life plan. She is an eccentric girl with a very unique sense of style. This made me laugh for much of the book because her quirky sense of style was something that stuck with me. It doesn’t seem like a very important fact but when you read this story there will be moments like this that stick with you. I think you will also understand why it stuck out to me after reading.

When Will Traynor enters her life…or rather, when Lou enters Will’s life the things she accepted as the status quo she now begins to question. He makes her question her entire life, starting with the reason why she remains in a loveless relationship. He challenges her and makes her challenge herself. Will had his entire life planned out. He can’t understand how someone can live their life without a plan. Even after his life-altering accident he creates a plan; one that many disagree with but a plan nonetheless.

This oddball combination brings out the very best and worse in one another. I really liked the dynamic character development and the story overall.

I will give you one spoiler…this is not a typical love story, in fact it isn’t so much about love as it is focusing on finding your own path in life and making decisions that are right for you. This is a must read.

My rating – 5 star
My sister’s rating – 5 star

We firmly stand by our ratings and highly recommend it.

*Note – If you are a Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks fan this is a book you will appreciate.

Purchase Me Before You for   Kindle  |  Paperback

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