Book Haul: Assorted Books April Book Haul

Here are some books that I bought on Amazon, which came in the mail this past Tuesday.

My copy of @wendyspinale’s new book, Ozland, @lauraksebastian’s new book, Ash Princess, and @laurenblakelybooks’ book, The Knocked Up Plan, came in the mail today! I was introduced to the Everland series when I received the first book in the series, Everland, in an @owlcrate box. Given my love of fairytales and fairytale retellings, it quickly became a series that I wanted to continue reading after that. I’m definitely looking forward to reading Ozland. 😀 Ash Princess sounds really interesting, so I’m really looking forward to reading it. 😀 While Lauren Blakely has written a lot of books that I want to read, out of all the books that Blakely has published since I read her book Big Rock back in 2016, The Knocked Up Plan is definitely the one that I’m the most excited to read. For that reason, the next time I read and review one of Blakely’s books for my blog, I’m definitely planning to review The Knocked Up Plan. 😀 I’m definitely really excited to read all of these books, though. 😀#bookstagram #bookhaul #bookaholic #bookaddict #bookworm #bookblogger #bookblog #everlandseries #everland #ozland #wendyspinale #owlcrate #ashprincess #ashprincesstrilogy #laurasebastian #theknockedupplan #laurenblakely

A post shared by Taylor Madison Street (@tmswriter6) on Apr 24, 2018 at 10:40am PDT

Books Featured in this Post

Ozland (Book #3 in the Everland series) by Wendy Spinale

Ash Princess (Book #1 in the Ash Princess trilogy) by Laura Sebastian

The Knocked Up Plan by Lauren Blakely

You can read my review for Big Rock by Lauren Blakely here.

Book Haul: Romance Genre March Book Haul

Here are two books within the romance genre that I ordered on Amazon, which were both released in March.

Here are two books that I ordered on Amazon. My copy of @laurenblakelybooks’ new book, Wanderlust, came in the mail today, and my copy of the @harlequinbooks Presents novel, Consequence of His Revenge by Dani Collins, came in the mail earlier this week. I reviewed Lauren Blakely’s book Big Rock for my blog back in 2016, and I’ve been wanting to read and review more of Blakely’s books for my blog ever since then, so I’m definitely very excited to read Wanderlust. It definitely sounds really interesting. 😀 (Side note: Mister O and The Knocked Up Plan are two of Blakely’s other more recent releases that I definitely want to review for my blog in hopefully near future. 😀) #bookhaul #bookstagram #bookaholic #bookaddict #bookblogger #bookblog #wanderlust #laurenblakely #consequenceofhisrevenge #danicollins #onenightwithconsequences

A post shared by Taylor Madison Street (@tmswriter6) on Mar 22, 2018 at 10:03pm PDT

Books Featured in this Post 

Wanderlust by Lauren Blakely

Consequence of His Revenge (One Night with Consequences) by Dani Collins


If you're interested in learning more about these books, here are links to Amazon's pages for these books:

Wanderlust by Lauren Blakely

Consequence of His Revenge (One Night with Consequences) by Dani Collins

Book Review: Beautiful (Book #5 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren

Right off the bat, I have to say that much like reading Beautiful Bitch was a somewhat weird experience for me, because I backtracked and read it after I had read Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger, reading Beautiful was also a somewhat weird, yet interesting, experience for me due to the fact that I’ve only read three of the books in the Beautiful series (Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger) at this point in time. However, I decided to jump ahead and read Beautiful now, so I could review it fairly soon after its release. Admittedly, I finished reading this book a little over a month ago, but I got so busy reading other books, working on other book reviews, and I’ve just been busy with life in general, so I’m only now finishing this review and getting it posted. I definitely feel bad about not finishing this review and getting it posted weeks ago. I should also probably mention that when I write a review for the last book in a series, I usually like to devote a part of the review to briefly discussing my overall thoughts on the series as a whole. However, since I’m jumping ahead and reviewing Beautiful before I read the rest of the series, I’m planning to read Beautiful again and write a follow-up review for the book where I discuss my overall thoughts on the Beautiful series once I’ve read all of the books in the series; that being said, here are my thoughts on Beautiful.

Having read three books by Christina Lauren prior to reading this one, I can honestly say that Christina Lauren have yet to disappoint me, and this book is no exception. I absolutely loved Beautiful, and I thought it was a phenomenal ending to the Beautiful series. As weird as this may sound, something that I used to do a lot whenever I was starting a new book, is that I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book after reading the first two or three chapters of the book. I was pretty much always very confused about what was going on whenever I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book, but I still loved doing that; because I found that it got me even more excited about reading the book whenever I did that. Reading Beautiful at this point in time definitely had the same effect. It definitely got me really excited to go back and read the rest of the series. For the record, the reason I don’t do that very often now is because I mostly listen to audiobooks instead of actually reading physical copies of books these days.

When it comes to what I thought about Beautiful, one thing about Beautiful that really stood out to me as I was reading it was the overall tone of the book felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies; much like I thought Lauren Blakely’s book, Big Rock, felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies due to its plot. The overall tone of the book didn’t feel all that dramatic and full of angst compared to the tone of Christina Lauren’s writing for Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger. For the record, I haven’t had any problems with the amount of angst and drama that the other Christina Lauren books that I’ve read so far have had. The overall tone of Beautiful simply felt much lighter compared to their other books. While there were definitely times where Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger made me laugh, this book definitely made me laugh the most, and that’s something that I really enjoyed about it.

Book Review: Beautiful Stranger (Book #2 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren

I’d like to start out this review by saying that while I’ve been planning to read and review the entire Beautiful series, as well as Christina Lauren’s other series, Wild Seasons, ever since I read and reviewed Beautiful Bastard back in May, the decision to read and review Beautiful Stranger at this particular point in time was very random and spontaneous on my part. That being said, I’m so glad that I decided on whim to read Beautiful Stranger now, because I absolutely loved this book, even more than I loved Beautiful Bastard.

When it comes to what motivated me to read Beautiful Bastard, the main thing that originally made me want to read it was that I had heard that much like E.L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy, Beautiful Bastard also originally started out as a Twilight fan fic. Because the similarities to Twilight are very obvious at times in Fifty Shades of Grey, a big part of me wanted to read Beautiful Bastard to see if its Twilight fan fic origins were at all obvious in the book. I’ll admit that while I was genuinely interested in reading Beautiful Bastard, I definitely went into reading it with a certain amount of cynicism when it came to my expectations regarding Christina Lauren’s writing ability and the book as a whole.

Ultimately, I ended up absolutely loving Beautiful Bastard, and I really hope I made that clear in my review of the book. I also realized that it was definitely unfair of me to project my thoughts regarding the fact that I personally think that E.L. James is a terrible writer onto Christina Lauren in any way, simply because both Fifty Shades of Grey and Beautiful Bastard originally started out as Twilight fan fiction before I even actually read Beautiful Bastard. After reading Beautiful Bastard, I came to the conclusion that regardless of the book’s fan fiction origins, Christina Lauren are legitimately talented writers who definitely deserve to have the success that they’ve achieved with their books. While I haven’t read the original fan fic version of Beautiful Bastard, I’d say that they did a really great job of making Beautiful Bastard its own thing that’s completely separate from Twilight.

Honestly, I was very surprised by the overall quality of Christina Lauren’s writing when I read Beautiful Bastard, and Beautiful Stranger also proved to be a wonderful surprise in some very different ways. The thing that probably surprised me the most about Beautiful Stranger is the fact that while the plot of the book is pretty much about Max and Sara being in a sex with no strings attached relationship, it’s a surprisingly sweet and romantic story. I was also really surprised by the emotional depth that Max and Sara’s relationship ultimately had, which I’d say is a real testament to Christina Lauren’s talent as writers. I don’t think a writer whose writing is either rather mediocre, or just plain bad could write a book about two people who’re in a sex with no strings attached type of relationship in such a way that the relationship and the book as a whole actually has a lot of genuine emotional depth to it. Christina Lauren, on the other hand, really did a fantastic job in terms of the way the relationship between Max and Sara was written, writing them as individual characters, and the writing for the book as a whole.

Nothing says “romance” quite like two people pretending to be engaged to each other (My thoughts on Big Rock by Lauren Blakely)

At the risk of starting this review on a bit of a tangent, I have to say that my overall experience with reading the book Big Rock by Lauren Blakely was radically different from my experience with reading Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling’s Career of Evil. What made my experience with reading Big Rock so different from my experience with reading Career of Evil is the fact that as I talked about in my review for Career of Evil, I started out absolutely loving the book and thinking that it was perhaps the best book yet in the Cormoran Strike series, only to eventually become very frustrated with the book at times the more I read it, and eventually I came to the conclusion that it’s my least favorite book in the series. When it comes to Big Rock on the other hand, I instantly fell in love with the book as soon as I started reading it, and I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. I actually loved Big Rock so much that I ended up listening to the entire audiobook version of the book in less than a day. I just couldn’t bring myself to stop listening to it until I finished the book.

That being said, as much as I loved Big Rock, it’s definitely far from perfect, if you ask me. As far as I’m concerned, this book’s single greatest flaw is that it definitely felt rather cliché and lacking in originality in a lot of ways. The entire time I was reading this book, I kept thinking that Lauren Blakely isn’t really offering anybody anything truly new with this book. As I was reading Big Rock, I kept thinking that this book is very similar to a lot romantic comedies that I’ve watched over the years, namely Just Friends and The Proposal, as well as numerous romance novels that I’ve read over the years, namely Emma Chase’s Tangled series and the first book in her Legal Briefs series, Overruled.

For the record, I love both of those movies, and I’m a huge fan of Emma Chase’s books, so it’s not like this book was reminding me of movies and books that I don’t like. This book actually reminded me of a lot of different things that I really love, which definitely made Big Rock a real feel good book for me personally. I simply feel like I do need to acknowledge that this book is rather cliché in some ways. That being said, I imagine that it’s probably very challenging for writers to write books that are a part the romance genre, since the romance genre as a whole is definitely a genre that’s full of clichés that numerous writers use for their books. It’s also a genre that in my opinion is rather lacking in originality when it comes to the premise of the majority of the romance novels that are currently out there, which is why I can’t entirely fault Lauren Blakely for Big Rock being rather cliché in some ways.

Speaking of Emma Chase’s books, one of the main things that convinced me to buy the audiobook version of Big Rock and read it is the fact that it’s narrated by Sebastian York, who narrated the audiobook versions of Tangled, the epilogue of Twisted, Tied, and the short stories “Holy Frigging Matrimony” and “It’s a Wonderful Tangled Christmas Carol”. He also narrated the second book in Emma Chase’s Legal Briefs series, Sustained, which is the next book I’ll be reviewing.