Instagram TBR Post: August 2017

Here's my TBR (To Be Read) post of all the books that I want to read in August, which I originally posted on Instagram. Much like my July reading wrap up post, I've been posting monthly TBR posts of all the books that I want to read each month on Instagram (A.K.A. Bookstagram) for a while now, and I've decided to start posting them here as well.

Here are almost all of the books that are in my August T.B.R. Two books that are high on my list of priorities to read are J.R. Ward's new book Devil's Cut, and @authoremmachase's Royally Endowed, which comes out August 14th. Unfortunately, the copy of Devil's Cut that I got in the mail yesterday was missing approximately the first 20 pages of the book, so Amazon is sending me a new copy of the book, which should come in the mail tomorrow. I'm determined to finish @chessiezappia's Eliza and Her Monsters by the end of the month. Royally Matched, Heart of the Matter, and The Angels' Share are all books that I'm re-reading for various reasons. My blog will be hitting the 2 million page views milestone in the next month or so, and one of the very first blog posts that I did was a post on my initial thoughts on Heart of the Matter. I want to read the book again so I can write a full review of the book in honor of my blog's upcoming viewership milestone. One of my main reading goals now is to read some of the @owlcrate books that I've received, but haven't read yet. Reading @themackenzilee's The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue really got me in the mood to finally read My Lady Jane, especially since I've always been a fan of historical fiction. I'm really excited to finally read Strange the Dreamer. I think it's pretty safe to say that I won't be able to read all of the these books by the end of August, so I'll most likely end up including some of these books in my September T.B.R. Please, wish me luck on my reading this month, Everybody! #bookstagram #owlcrate #strangethedreamer #lainitaylor @kasiewest @lainit @emilygiffinauthor @kendareblake @authorjenniferprobst @authorkaylaolson

A post shared by Taylor Glissman (@tmswriter6) on Aug 2, 2017 at 10:02am PDT

Here's the list of all the books that are in my TBR for August in case anybody has trouble reading the titles of the books or the names of the authors' of the books that are featured in this picture:

Royally Matched by Emma Chase (Book #2 of the Royally series)

Royally Endowed by Emma Chase (Book #3 of the Royally series)

All or Nothing at All by Jennifer Probst (Book #3 of the Royally series)

The Sandcastle Empire by Kayla Olson

Lucky in Love by Kasie West

My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake (Book #1 of the Three Dark Crowns series)

Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin

The Angels' Share by J.R. Ward (Book #2 of the Bourbon Kings series)

Devil's Cut by J.R. Ward (Book #3 of the Bourbon Kings series)

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (Book #1 of the Strange the Dreamer series)

Book Review: Hard Rules (Book #1 in the Dirty Money series) by Lisa Renee Jones

Given the fact that the romance genre is one of my top favorite genres of books to read, and it’s my #1 favorite genre of books to review for my blog; I’m always looking for new authors who write books that are a part of the romance genre to check out. Hard Rules is the first book by Lisa Renee Jones that I’ve ever read, and I’m thrilled to say that I absolutely loved it. While the romance genre is one of my top favorite genres of books to read, I definitely can’t deny that the romance genre is a genre that tends to be full of clichés, and can oftentimes be rather lacking in originality. That being said, Hard Rules is in many ways unlike any romance novel that I’ve ever read.

The one thing that really sets Hard Rules apart from all of the other books in the romance genre that I’ve read over the years more than anything else is definitely the overall tone of Jones’ writing. The overall tone of Hard Rules is definitely darker than any book in the romance genre that I’ve ever read, and the tone of the book also has a certain level of mystery and intrigue to it that I’m not used to seeing when it comes to books within the romance genre. That definitely made reading Hard Rules a rather refreshing and enjoyable experience for me. While I’ve never watched Sons of Anarchy before, based on what I’ve heard about the show, I’m guessing that people are comparing Hard Rules to that show because of the somewhat dark and mysterious tone of Jones’ writing. Regardless of whether or not I’m right about why people have compared Hard Rules to Sons of Anarchy, reading this book definitely made me want to watch Sons of Anarchy. One thing that I think Jones handled very well throughout the entire book is the way that she maintained the darker, more mysterious tone of the book without ever letting it ruin the romance and steaminess between Shane Brandon and Emily Stevens.

The other thing that makes Hard Rules so unique compared to all of the other books in the romance genre that I’ve read over the years is the fact that the element of mystery and intrigue that’s present throughout the book pretty much revolved entirely around Emily. In the past, whenever I’ve read a book in the romance genre where one of the characters is portrayed as being at least somewhat of a mysterious person who has a secret, it has always been the guy who has filled that role. By having Emily be the one who’s filling that role in this book, I feel like Jones is offering people something new and fresh with Hard Rules.

Jones definitely excels at writing Emily in such a way that she’s a very likable character, despite the fact that she apparently has a dark secret that instead of finally revealing it to the reader at the end of the book; Jones reveals a whole new plot twist that further added to the mystery that surrounds Emily. While I spent pretty much the entire book feeling very anxious and excited to learn what exactly Emily’s secret and actual backstory is, I’m honestly not the least bit upset that Jones doesn’t reveal any of that information in this book. If anything, the way Jones ends the book got me even more excited to read the second book in the Dirty Money series, Damage Control, than I already was before I even finished reading this book.

Book Review: The Angels' Share (Book #2 in the Bourbon Kings series) by J.R. Ward

Right off the bat, I have to say that despite the fact that I think The Angels' Share has a lot of the same problems that The Bourbon Kings had, I actually liked The Angels' Share even more than I ultimately liked The Bourbon Kings. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure exactly why that is. In many ways, this book didn’t really introduce any new storylines; it pretty much just continued the storylines that were featured in The Bourbon Kings. The main storyline that J.R. Ward continued to focus on in this book was the aftermath of William Baldwine’s death, and the family having to deal with all of the debt that they’re in. While my thoughts on Ward not really introducing more subplots into the series as it continues with future books may change, I honestly really liked that Ward pretty much just continued the storylines from the first book. I think that really helped add to the soap opera quality that this series has, which is what drew me to The Bourbon Kings, and made me want to read it when I discovered that book. Plus, it makes a lot of sense to me that Ward didn’t just completely move on from the subplots and the various conflicts that were featured heavily in The Bourbon Kings, since it was established early on in this book that it had only been about a week since Lane had returned to his family’s estate in order to check on the family’s cook, Miss Aurora Toms, who had had a health scare at the beginning of The Bourbon Kings.

One of the things that I definitely loved the most about The Angels' Share is that I felt like J.R. Ward did a much better job of writing this book in such a way that it felt like much more of an ensemble story compared to The Bourbon Kings. The Bourbon Kings really focused primarily Lane, and Lizzie to a certain extent, since she’s the woman he loves and wants to be with, and while they are two of my favorite characters from the series, as I was reading The Bourbon Kings the first time that I read it; I just found myself wishing that Ward had been better about giving all of the other characters more “screen time” in that book. When it comes to The Angels' Share, Ward really seemed to do more with the character Sutton Smythe by having chapters where Sutton was interacting with people outside of the Bradford family, such as her father and various people that she does business with. I really liked seeing Sutton get some more character development beyond her relationship with the Bradford family in this book, but it did feel rather random to me that out of all the characters in the series that Ward could have focused on some more in this book, she chose to focus on Sutton a little bit more. That being said, I’m not complaining about Sutton getting a little bit more character development in this book. It just seemed rather odd to me that Sutton was one of the characters that Ward chose to develop a little bit further in this book.

The Bourbon Kings: Oh, my! This book sure is one giant soap opera (My thoughts on book #1 in the Bourbon Kings book series by J.R. Ward)

Let me start out by saying that originally I was planning to wait a while to read and review The Bourbon Kings. However, I decided to go ahead and read it now because I’ve wanted to read it for months, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how excited I was to read The Bourbon Kings. Right off the bat, I have to say that I absolutely loved this book. That being said, I’m just going to come right out and say that while I loved this book, there’s no denying that it also has a lot of problems, which I’ll get to later.

The main thing that I love about this book is the fact that it’s basically a soap opera in the form of a book. I’m a huge fan of soap operas, and I typically love just about anything that has a soap opera vibe to it. As soon as I read the plot description of the book that’s on jacket of book the first time that I saw The Bourbon Kings at Barnes & Noble, I immediately thought that the book sounded a lot like a soap opera, and most of the reviews for the book on Amazon also compared the book to Dallas and Dynasty. Reading so many reviews that compared the book to soap operas was definitely the thing that drew me to The Bourbon Kings the most. One thing that really helps this book to feel like a soap opera is fact that the story has a big ensemble of characters and a variety of storylines that the characters are involved in. While The Bourbon Kings is definitely an ensemble piece, at the end of the day, it’s very much Lane’s story. He’s definitely the character that gets the most focus and development throughout the book. I should probably also mention that technically Lane’s name is Tulane. Yeah, I would definitely go by the name Lane, too. Tulane sounds like an extremely ridiculous name that would most likely cause the bullies at school to tease anybody with that name every day of their life and maybe even beat them up, too.

The Bourbon Kings’ ensemble nature is one of the things that really helped the book to feel like a soap opera. However, it also definitely leads to one of this book’s biggest problems, which is that it was often times kind of challenging to keep track of all the characters and subplots in book. You almost need to make a very complicated chart to keep track of all the one trillion characters in this book, the numerous subplots and which characters are involved in each of the subplots. While the book doesn’t actually have a trillion characters in it, this book does have a lot of characters to keep track of, and unfortunately too many of the characters were woefully neglected and left underdeveloped, if you ask me.