laural27's reviews
706 reviews

I make no secret of the fact I adore the Carrington’s series by the lovely Alexandra so, as always, I got majorly excited when I heard Ice Creams At Carrington’s was coming!
I was extremely lucky to be invited to the book launch at the swanky Ice Cream Parlour in Fortnum & Mason!
It was so lovely to meet Alex, her editor and Jaime from Harper whilst we all ate the most sumptuous ice creams topped with colourful sprinkles, marshmallows and a deliciously moreish warm chocolate sauce. It was also so lovely to meet other bloggers too and all talk about how much we loved the book and how we can’t wait for Alex’s new series!
So, onto the book!
Ice Creams invites us, with open arms, back into Georgie and Tom’s world where things couldn’t be sweeter. I mean, what’s better than being able to wake up next to TOM CARRINGTON every single morning?! But, unfortunately, things start to get a little tricky as the summer regatta is fast approaching and whilst Georgie wants to ensure the regatta goes without a hitch, she’s also offered the opportunity of a life time that she just can’t turn down. She begins to stretch herself to try and do a little bit of everything and as the regatta gets closer, Georgie finds herself having to question where her loyalties lie. Her best friend Sam needs her more than ever, Tom wants his girlfriend back and Eddie just wants to have some fun…can she keep everyone happy as well as keeping her head above water?
WHERE DO I START?! I can’t even begin to coherently express how much I loved this book.
The thing I relished most about this book is how real Alex made this one – whilst the other two in this series touch on more serious issues, this book was a really in depth look at a myriad of sensitive issues, which, whilst dealt with perfectly, added a really lovely new layer to the plot. Instead of the love story dominating, we were able to learn more about the characters’ lives – especially Sam and Georgie’s dad.
Having said that, there is still the perfect balance of romance and humour stuffed into the pages and I found myself laughing loudly one minute and close to tears in the next! I love a book that can take you to two different emotional extremes in such a short space of time, whilst still keeping you addicted to the plot.
As always, the characters were TOTAL joys to read about. Especially my beloved Eddie and the delectable Tom! There were also plenty of cake references and ice cream ones too which made my tummy rumble as I read…make sure you have ice cream to eat whilst you read this book!
Alex writes with such warmth and as you read page after page you can’t help but feel the love seeping out of the pages which makes every single sentence richer and more enjoyable – when you can feel how much love and time the author has put into making the characters seem real, you can’t help but get sucked right into the story.
I cannot recommend this book enough and, I think, it might just be my favourite Carrington’s book so far! Also, the ending of this book is PERFECT and I am determined to get Alex to write another Carrington’s book one day! Even if it’s just a novella – I want to know what happens next!
A beautiful story with love, laughter and family at the heart.
Alex will be back sooner than we all anticipated with a new novel in November called The Great Christmas Knit Off which will focus on a whole new cast of characters which is so exciting! Roll on November!!

I find it so hard to write reviews for books that I adore because I never feel that my words can do it justice in the way it deserves. But, I promised Holly I’d try and form my thoughts into coherent sentences so here is my attempt…

I must start of this review by saying whilst Holly is quite possibly one of my favourite people on the planet, I have reviewed this book objectively and she has not paid me in hugs and/or snogs for me to write this review.

One Hundred Proposals is Holly’s second chick-lit title and I was pretty scared about starting it if I’m honest! After reading The Guestbook, I was quite certain this one wouldn’t live up to it but my god did it! It blew The Guestbook out of the water and now Holly is going to have to write something phenomenal to beat One Hundred Proposals!

One Hundred Proposals has the most ingenious and unique premise which sold the book to me straight away. Suzie and her friend Harry run a fictitious website called theperfectproposal.com where they aim to help hapless men prepare the perfect proposal for their other halves. Whilst they have an impressive repertoire of engagement ideas, Suzie is not really taken by any of them and makes a throwaway comment that it would take more than hot air balloon ride to get her to say ‘yes’. After Suzie’s ex-boyfriend proposed to her over a greasy kebab, she’s lost all hope that she’ll ever get the perfect proposal herself.

Harry decides to take matters into his own hands and sets up a blog where he makes his mission to propose to Suzie one hundred different times to try and find the most perfect proposal whilst blogging about each one. This would be perfect fun if it wasn’t for the fact Suzie is desperately in love with Harry. With every new proposal and every new way Harry finds to say, ‘Suzie, will you marry me?’, Suzie finds her heart breaking all over again because, the one question she wants to say ‘yes’ to, is the one question she can’t.

Holly has got this genre down to a fine art. She writes with such wit, experience and love which translates into addictive and humorous prose that you can’t help but fall head first in love with.

The characters in this novel were fantastically well written and I fell in love with Harry and Suzie instantly. I loved how relatable Suzie’s dilemma was – I’m sure we’ve all had that one person who we’ve fancied so bloody much but kept it quiet through fear of destroying a brilliant friendship. That part makes her ‘struggle’ real and means everyone will be able to empathise with her as she embarks on the most perilous journey of her life. Harry, on the other hand, is a total cheeky chappy and whilst he has his sensitive side, he tends to display his ‘ladies’ man’ persona instead which adds to the frustration we feel on behalf of Suzie, but still makes us all fall desperately in love with him!

The plot was perfectly paced and while I could easily predict where the story would end up, I kept getting worried that it wouldn’t as obstacle after obstacle was presented to the characters and I started to feel frightened that actually, the ending I had pictured might not happen. I was genuinely frustrated in places and my poor pillow took the odd punch as I tried to regain my composure and remember that they were only fictional characters. I was just desperate for them to tell each other the truth and found myself hanging on every single word, willing Suzie to just spit it out before she ran out of time.

I just can’t put into words how much I loved this book. Sometimes you read a book and you enjoy it but then can quite happily move onto the next book but sometimes you read a book and you get so drawn into the characters’ world that you find it hard to give them up. As I turned the final few pages of this book I shed a few tears, almost bereft at having to leave Harry and Suzie in the book. I wanted them to be real so I could hug them! And that, to me, speaks volumes. When you become so immersed in a book it that it becomes more than just a book you can enjoy now and again – it becomes a firm favourite and a book that you return to time after time to catch up with old friends.

I challenge anyone to read this book and not enjoy it.

Holly Martin is already becoming a name in the chick-lit world and I have no doubt in my mind that she will soon be one of the biggest stars of the genre. She constantly goes from strength to strength and with an Amazon Bestseller title under her belt already, I think she’s on track for very big things.

The perfect holiday companion – get yourself a sangria, lie back in your deck chair and savour every last word of this beautiful novel.

So, if you haven’t heard of Gavin Blake then I fear you have either a) been living under a rock for the past month or b) don’t follow total book whores on twitter.
I mean that in the kindest sense.
There are always a few fictional men that get more than one woman hot under the collar and when I started to hear the whispers of Gavin Blake start across Twitter I was slightly intrigued. Then everyone started talking about this man and I was JEALOUS. I wanted to meet this total hunk and find out just why he was so perfect.
The AMAZING Hot Bed team were so kind to send me a copy to review and I was so excited to start reading about Mr Blake.
Collide is a book unlike a lot of other new adult titles. It had a REALLY strong storyline. Now, don’t get me wrong – a lot of new adult titles I’ve read have had fantastic storylines but Collide took it that one bit further and had the most addictive and teasing plot of them all. I was hanging on to every word.
Emily loves her boyfriend Dillon – he’s helped her through a whole heap of shitty situations and has stuck by her side the whole time. What more could you want? He’s Mr Perfect.
When Emily moves to New York to be close to Dillon she craves a fresh start and hopes she can find that in a new city with the love of her life. It seems to be the perfect new start until she bumps into notorious playboy Gavin Blake who she can’t help but feel an instant connection to. He’s hot, my god is he hot, and more importantly he feels the same connection.
Emily knows it’s too dangerous to get close to Mr Tall Dark and Handsome but she constantly finds herself colliding with him and soon the attraction becomes so intense that she finds herself questioning everything. And, with Dillon becoming a person Emily no longer recognises, Emily becomes caught up in a whole host of messy feelings.
Ok wow.
This book was just AMAZING.
Emily was just the most intense protagonist who went through such a plethora of complex emotions that had me wanting to hug her one minute and then shake her the next! She was blind to Dillon’s nastiness and was quick to bat away her feelings for Gavin. I just wanted her to grow the balls to leap into the arms of Mr Blake and stay there forever. I loved feeling so caught up in the feelings of the characters though – it made it a much more tactile experience.
The tension between Emily and Gavin was almost unbearable. I was desperate for them to climb into bed with each other and was frustrated each time they refused to have it off with each other – Emily had better self-control than I would have done! Every time they stole a quick kiss or a sultry stare, I was flicking the pages in total irritation, wanting them to just tell each other how much they needed each other.
That’s another huge point about this novel – the characters don’t just ‘want’ each other – they ‘need’ each other which made the whole thing even tenser. It was palpable how much they needed to be with each other and every time something got in the way I was so frustrated on their behalf!
McHugh has really nailed this genre and has got the perfect mix of believable characters with the right dose of sexual tension, drama and pure passionate sex which was SO well written. I am often a little fussy when it comes to sex scenes but McHugh had them SPOT ON. I had to fan myself a few too many times whilst reading…!
I loved how the characters developed perfectly over the course of the novel and the plot had a really beautiful pace to it which kept me glued to the pages, not wanting to put it down. I also found myself totally able to envisage everything that was going on – Gail has such a perfect way with words.
And of course, Gavin Blake was just a total bundle of hotness and he certainly can find himself high up on the list of book boyfriends. He was DIVINE - and a total gentleman which just that perfect amount of naughtiness.
I am so excited to know that there is a sequel called PULSE which I cannot wait to get my hands on! I know I will love it as much, if not more than this one!

A fantastically written book with believable characters, hot sex and one very hot man who will have you needing a cold shower…or two.

Review to follow

This is the most beautiful love story ever. Hazel and Gus are two characters who feel more real than any others. I don't just know their story, I feel like I know them. John Green, you've given us the chance to fall in love and have given us each a small infinity. It was a pleasure to have my heart broken by you.

Massive thanks to The Hot Bed for being so ace and sending me a copy of this DIVINE book.
Beautiful Bastard is an apt title for this novel by Christina Lauren.
We really are introduced to the world’s most beautiful bastard. Bennett Ryan.
Imagine being an intern and having the hottest boss in the actual universe. Heaven right? No, not for Chloe Mills because she HATES her boss with every single inch of her being. Hates him. He’s a total asshole. And, what’s more, her boss, Bennett, hates her too. Snide remarks, evil glares and insults are thrown between the pair until Bennett does something completely unfathomable and places his hand on Chloe’s ass in an empty boardroom. Within minutes they are engaged in some pretty damn hot sex on the boardroom table and the boundaries that once dictated the nature of their relationship are destroyed. What are they now? Friends? Fuck buddies? Lovers? Or are they just a boss and his intern craving the touch of each other?
The pair find it almost impossible to keep their hands off of each other and even though they still can’t stand one another, they just can’t deny that they have the best sex ever. Sex in a stairwell, in a changing room and in a car is just the start of the pair’s sexual escapades. But can you have unemotional sex with someone or will feelings slowly creep in and change the dynamic of the relationship once more?
Beautiful Bastard is told through a dual narrative with chapters from Chloe and then Bennett’s perspective. I relished being able to see this ‘relationship’ from both viewpoints, mainly because it was just SO interesting to get inside Bennett’s head and see things from a male perspective. Often in erotic novels we are seeing everything from the female perspective so this was a really unique and interesting experience to see it from a male perspective – I think the authors nailed it.
(Note: Christina Lauren is a writing duo!)
The sex in this book was the hottest. I was fanning myself with a bookmark as I read and there were plenty of moments I just wanted to step into the book and be Chloe. It’s not a whole host of violent/crazy sexual experiences, it’s more two people who have the most electric chemistry unable to resist each other and, because of that, the sex is just as beautiful as it is erotic.
Chloe was a fantastic lead female – she was feisty, took no shit but was also brutally real and totally down to earth. She wanted to work hard, make her own way in life and wasn’t willing to settle for second best. She didn’t want to rely on a man and I adored that about her. In a lot of novels of this vein you often find weak-ish women who rely on a man to help them discover who they really are. In this novel that idea is almost completely flipped and it takes a strong woman like Chloe to help Bennett work out what he really is and what he really wants.
Bennett Ryan. Oh, Mr Ryan, how I wish you could be my boyfriend/husband/lover. I often proclaim fictional men are my preferred book boyfriends but this man, oh my, this man is a cut above the rest. There is something just so very sexy about a slightly rude, bad boy who just crumbles when he meets a feisty woman. I’d like to think I’d be able to give Mr Ryan a run for his money but I think I’d probably just collapse at his feet and beg him to take me to bed.
Whilst this book is very much centred on a hugely addictive sexual relationship between two people, there is also a fantastic storyline that brings it all together perfectly and makes this book a MUST READ. This is the kind of new adult/sexy book that young women should be reading. Forget 50 Shades of Grey – Christian Grey has got NOTHING on Bennett Fucking Ryan.
I cannot recommend this book enough. Honestly, it is out of this world.
Christina Lauren have written a lot of other books (two others in the ‘Beautiful’ series) which I think I’m going to have to be keeping my eyes peeled for! They have managed to make themselves a force to be reckoned with and I cannot wait to get back into another one of their fictional worlds.
A slick, sexy, sensual book that will have you wanting a sexy boss to have his way with you on a boardroom desk…

Review to follow

I am a massive Rainbow Rowell fan so got a little bit (a lot) excited when I was asked to take part in the blog tour for her latest novel, Landline. This is an adult novel (like Attachments) which appeals to a slightly different audience to her YA titles – Fangirl and Eleanor and Park – but is still Rainbow’s trademark style and totally and utterly unputdownable.

Landline follows the story of Georgie McCool (yes, that is her real name) and her husband Neal. For a long time their marriage hasn’t been working and despite the fact they still love each other, they can’t seem to make the marriage work.

When, days before Christmas, Georgie is given a once in a lifetime job opportunity with her best friend Seth to pen a new comedy TV show, she makes the decision to miss Christmas with her family. Neal, as predicted, isn’t entirely happy with the idea of Georgie not being involved in Christmas but packs up their two daughters and heads to his mums house for the Christmas period anyway.

With Georgie left alone in LA and her husband never answering his phone, she begins to wonder if she might have just ruined everything.

However, she stumbles across something that allows her to communicate with Neal in the past. A way to fix everything before it even began?

Has Georgie now got the power to change things for the better?

Right, this book was a challenge for me. It started off well and I was finding myself really quite involved in the plot and then it kind of fizzled out a little bit for me and I don’t know why.

The characters were lacking a tiny bit of oomph for me, they felt a little two dimensional and formulaic in places which meant I found it hard to sympathise with either of them. Neal was too passive aggressive for my liking and Georgie felt a bit selfish. However, Georgie does go on a huge learning curve throughout the book and changes her outlook drastically although the same can’t be said for Neal!

The whole premise of this ‘landline’ phone being able to connect Georgie in the present with Neal in the past was a bit fantastical and I felt as though it wasn’t explored as well as it could have been. I was left with a lot of questions about ‘how?’ and ‘if that happened, wouldn’t that have happened?’ and I don’t like having to come away from a book with unresolved questions about the plot.

Yet, whilst I did struggle with certain aspects of this novel, I really did enjoy others. Rowell has such a fantastic way with words and her observations about love and being in love were just totally spot on. One of my most favourite quotes I’ve ever read about love is as follows:

“How'd you know he was the one?"
"I didn't know. I don't think either of us knew."
Heather rolled her eyes. "Neal knew — he proposed to you."
"It's not like that," Georgie said. "You'll see. It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the one — and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you're right.”

Rowell has such a fantastic grasp of the whole idea of what it’s like to be a human! She writes with such warmth and intelligence that everything around you just starts to feel like it makes more sense. I spent a long time ruminating over some of the passages in this book, realising how deep and meaningful they were – that’s a sign of a bloody good writer!

So regardless of the fact I found the plot a little tricky to deal with in places and I didn’t warm to the characters as much as I wanted to have done, I still found this book to be incredibly moving and would certainly find myself re-reading this in the future.

A book that details the struggles of being in love in the most intelligent and elegant of ways. This book will stay with you long after you have finished.

Review to folllooooooow

What can I say about this book?
Hmm, that is a very good question.
I cried at this book, I laughed at this book, I melted at this book and I fell head over heels in love with this book.
Coleen Hoover is a TOTAL genius. I’ve only read one of her previous novellas called ‘Finding Cinderella’ and was totally blown away by that one. Ugly Love, on the other hand, just takes it to a whole new level of FLAWLESS. And don’t even get me started on Miles – one of the most perfect fictional men to ever have existed…
When Tate moves in with her brother Corbin and finds a drunken stranger lying outside of his apartment door, her whole world is turned on its head. For the stranger, Miles, turns out to be her brother’s neighbour and the one person Tate shouldn’t fall in love with. Miles is damaged goods – he has been through a tough time and can’t and won’t love anyone again. Can Tate help Miles to deal with his past and look to a future or will she have to accept that no one can come close to his first true love?
Told through alternating chapters, Ugly Love is narrated by our two main characters with Tate discussing the present and Miles stuck in the past. As their stories intertwine and their bond becomes stronger, you cannot help but become immersed in their love story.
Colleen writes with such incredible skill that you are immediately sucked into the world of the characters and are reluctant to leave them. Every turn of a page draws you deeper into the story and each emotion the characters go through becomes tangible to you as a reader.
The character development over the course of this novel was astounding and I kept wanting to applaud the characters for making such an incredible journey from beginning to end – especially Miles – his story was incredibly moving.
I can’t really say all that much more about this book without giving too many plot details away or just talking nonstop about Miles’ perfection and the fact he seems to be one of the sexiest pilots EVER. The sex in this book was also spot on and I just wanted to have Miles for myself!
A flawless novel from an author who just continues to blow everyone away. A MUST read for this year and an author who I cannot wait to read more from.