Melpomene’s Top 25 of 2014

What a year!!!! Seriously!!! I have read so many great books, that trying to pick only 25 nearly gave me an ulcer. Stressful. While many of these weren’t released in 2014, I didn’t read them until this year. But here it is:

01 top25

10482195_849029548470181_8349805909394693507_n

1. Flat-Out Celeste by Jessica Park
2. Archer’s Voice by Mia Sheridan
3. Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover
4. The Collectors’ Society by Heather Lyons
5. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
6. The Deep End of the Sea by Heather Lyons
7. Bright Side by Kim Holden
8. The Law of Moses by Amy Harmon
9. Elicit by Rachel Van Dyken
10. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

The rest are in no particular order
11. Even the Moon has Scars by Steph Campbell
12. Becoming Calder and Finding Eden by Mia Sheridan Those two go together. They’re a combo pack.
13. Jacked by Tina Reber
14. Hope at Dawn by Stacy Henrie
15. Red at Night by Katie McGarry
16. The King by JR Ward
17. Vain by Fisher Amelie
18. Greed by Fisher Amelie
19. Maybe Not by Colleen Hoover
20. Until the End by Abbi Glines
21. Burying Water by KA Tucker
22. Infinity + One by Amy Harmon
23. Until We Fly by Courtney Cole
24. Hate: A Love Story by Laurel Ulen Curtis
25. Letting Go by Molly McAdams

What are some of yours??

Review: Jacked by Tina Reber

01jack Holy suspense and romance, Batman!! My goodness!! Tina Reber has done it again. Truly. Let me calm my nerves, after that ending, and perhaps I can put my thoughts down.

SYNOPSIS

We all have skeletons in our closets.

Doctor Erin Novak was only sixteen when she was accused of a crime she didn’t commit. Since that moment, she has made it her life goal to pursue emergency medicine, pouring her heart and soul into assuring another innocent life isn’t lost to the hands of the wicked.

We all have secrets we’ve never shared.

Detective Adam Trent has lost control of everything, starting with losing his partner to a punk with a gun and then everything else to the crushing guilt. Now a member of the elite Auto Theft Task Force in Philadelphia, it’s his job to be one step ahead of the criminals stealing expensive cars in the city. Too bad the television cameras keep getting in the way of his investigation.

We all have pasts that we can never escape.

A stolen car, a tragic chase, and a traffic stop crosses the fates of these two, tying them together in ways that are unimaginable. As their love and trust grows, so do the enemies that threaten their survival, testing the strength of their commitment. Can true love endure half-truths, past pains, and secrets never meant to be shared?

Some things are just out of our control.

This story was a breath of fresh air. I gotta tell ya, I was not expecting this at all. After reading Love Unscripted and Love Unrehearsed, part of me wondered how Adam Trent was going to be. I mean, I loved Ryan, don’t get me wrong. But we met Adam’s brother, Kyle, and he was kind of a jerk. But Adam was far from that. No guy is perfect, but he is trying the best he can.

Adam is the face of a new show about auto theft. He’s a bad ass cop, who just wants to do his job and go home. But having cameras in his face, make his life a bit more difficult. And one evening, a decision was made that caused a chain reaction, that would change his life forever.

Erin is a spunky ER nurse, with a secret she’s kept for many years. It’s a part of her that gives her the drive, and has shaped her goals in life. She’s happy with her friends and content with her life, until one evening it was completely flipped upside down.

Adam, is all man. He likes what he likes and he when he meets Erin, he is determined to get close to her. She is weary of getting close, after a string of bad luck with guys. But Adam isn’t taking no for an answer. He’ll woo her slowly.

Just standing next to her seemed to calm me, as if she were coated in some sort of magical aura that made me feel as though I wasn’t so lost and alone in the ugliness of life.

Adam has seem his share of ugly. The loss of his partner was the breaking point for him. But when he meets Erin, it’s like everything just clicked. He describes her as, an angel sent to heal my broken soul. I like that Adam is real. If he’s hurt, he’s not afraid to show his pain, whether by tears or words.

As they grow closer, past insecurities start to creep up and they have to work even harder to earn each other’s trust. But once that trust is there, losing it makes earning it back twice as hard. But Adam has his ways, and let me tell you, his are very very hot.

I just loved these characters. They’re not perfect, but together, they are. They just fit. All it takes it that one person, who truly knows you, then BAM!

Tina Reber knows how to twist my gut and my heart. She knows how to make me cry and make me laugh. I have a feeling that the Trent Brothers are going to destroy me one by one.

The best thing about this book, besides the suspense and romance, is that portions of the proceeds goes to The Sweeney Alliance, which provides support to those who are “first responders” and who deal with unimaginable stress and horror daily – Fire, Police, EMTs, etc. As a firewife myself, I hear some of the stories and I can’t imagine experiencing them first hand. To have an organization that helps with them deal with those stresses, I want to support that. So I will definitely be grabbing a few paperbacks, when they’re available, and gifting them to some of my girls. Helping our men by buying books, sounds like a perfect combination!

~Melpomene

Buy Jacked (Trent Brothers Book 1)