Review - Origin - Jennifer L. Armentrout

Title: Origin
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Release Date:August 27th, 2013
Series: Lux #4
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Synopsis via Goodreads

Daemon will do anything to get Katy back.

After the successful but disastrous raid on Mount Weather, he’s facing the impossible. Katy is gone. Taken. Everything becomes about finding her. Taking out anyone who stands in his way? Done. Burning down the whole world to save her? Gladly. Exposing his alien race to the world? With pleasure.

All Katy can do is survive.

Surrounded by enemies, the only way she can come out of this is to adapt. After all, there are sides of Daedalus that don’t seem entirely crazy, but the group’s goals are frightening and the truths they speak even more disturbing. Who are the real bad guys? Daedalus? Mankind? Or the Luxen?

Together, they can face anything.

But the most dangerous foe has been there all along, and when the truths are exposed and the lies come crumbling down, which side will Daemon and Katy be standing on?

And will they even be together?

My rating:

WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead, depending on what you count as spoilers. Also contains multiple, annoying uses of the word “badass” and “badassery”, a bunch of unnecessary totally necessary exclamations, and some angsty gifs.

Jennifer L. Armentrout has reached a whole new level of awesome epicness. I’m 100% sure epicness isn’t even a word, but that’s the only thing that describes this fast-paced, swoony, hilarious, action-freaking-packed installment of the Lux series. She’s outdone herself. No book in the series has ever compared. Origin was good. Foam at the mouth good. Fangirl like there's no tomorrow good.

Everything about it was badass. Katy was badass. In the previous book, Opal, it ended abruptly with her being captured by Daedalus. And I was all “Oh noooooooooo!” But then Origin came out and we see that Katy handled things like a pro. And by “like a pro” I mean, after the initial suckiness of her situation wore off, she was all enraged and determined and righteous. She endured ass-kickings and threats and faced the possibility that she’d never be free of Daedalus’s evil little clutches.

“The words that came out of my mouth were my own. I felt them. I believed them.
        ‘I’m going to kill you one day,’ I promised.”

See? Badassery!

Daemon was, like always, rocking his own kind of constant badassery. Like anyone could guess, he goes after Katy. He turns himself in to Daedalus (Not exactly a spoiler. If you hadn’t inferred what he’d do from the beginning, it lets on pretty quickly.) Mother of alpha males, Daemon’s unrelenting resolve to get Katy back was out of this world! (Hehe, it’s funny ‘cause he’s an alien!) He didn’t care who he had to mow down or steal from or lie to in order to get to her. And he did it all with his usual sarcastic, cocky flair that I just love so much! (Shout out to JLA for doing dual perspectives!)

“Going down on one knee, they leveled a dozen or so semiautomatic rifles on me. Stopping so many bullets would prove tricky.
      People were going to die.
     That sucked, but it wouldn’t stop me.” 

                                                                          ***

“’I’ve been waiting a long time to run tests on someone like you,’ he said to Daemon, voice high-pitched.
      Daemon arched a brow. ‘Another fanboy. I have them everywhere.’”

Swoony batches of badassery!

Also, the romance! Despite Kat & Daemon’s circumstances, their romance was the fiercest it’s ever been! Gah, their love jumped off the page and squeezed my heart to pieces! Plus something very, very big with their relationship happens towards the later half that you would not believe! So if you haven’t read this book yet, do it!

“I caught the tear with a kiss. ‘And I’m not going to let you do this by yourself. You’re my—you’re my everything, Kat.’ At the sound of her soft inhale, I smiled again. ‘Come on, Kitten, did you really expect anything less from me? I love you.” 

And Kat was all like:

  

 Oh, yeah, and there’s a bunch of sexytimes, too!

“Daemon squared his shoulders and cracked the door open. I couldn’t see anything beyond his bare back, which, if I had to be stuck staring at something, at least it was that.”

Like I’ve been coming to expect from any JLA book nowadays, the ending was…was…badass! OMG was it all kinds of badass! There was a huuuuuuuuge awesome, catastrophic, unbelievable, devastating battle of epic proportions that fully displayed the amounts of badassery that Luxen can bring to the table! And not only was it was filled with the Luxen but also the hybrids and some other types of things that I can’t really give away, but the title “Origin” had something to do with it! There’s a ton of new players entering the game now! There are also a few plot twists at the end, some I did see coming and some I didn’t. And holy freaking cow, the one at the end with the conversation between Dawson and Daemon about Beth!! And also the betrayal by someone important!!!! (For once, it isn’t Blake, but there’s a reason for that.)

I can’t! I just can’t anymore! I’m about to explode with the feels that this book has brought. Plus, I feel like if I use the word badass one more time, I’ll have irritated the hell out of everyone, including myself. So just suffice it to say that this book was a big game-changer. The best book in the series yet. And it didn’t end with a gigantic cliffhanger, so I’m good with that.

Anywho, let’s end things with a quote from the book that actually had me laughing out loud at the imagery:

“Man, it was so quiet you could hear a grasshopper karate chop a fly.”

Read this book! The karate-chopping grasshopper demands it!

Review - Real - Katy Evans

Title: Real
Author: Katy Evans
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release Date: May 28th, 2013
Series: Real, Raw & Ripped #1
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Synopsis

Remington Tate has a bad-boy rep in and out of the ring, a granite-hard body, and a raw, animal power that sends his female fans into a frenzy. But from the moment their eyes lock, the only woman he wants is Brooke Dumas. His desire is pure, all-consuming, and REAL.

Hired to keep his perfect body working like a machine, Brooke finally has the lucrative sports therapy job she’s been dreaming of. But as she tours the dangerous underground fighting circuit with Remy and his team, Brooke’s own body becomes alive with the most primal of hungers. If what happens between Brooke and Remy is ever as light as a flirtation, it quickly becomes an erotic obsession for them both, and promises so much more.

But their white-hot lust has a dark side—and when Remy’s deepest secret comes to light and Brooke’s familial duties demand action, will the pair be able to hang on, or will everything that once seemed so real suddenly fade away like an illusion?

My rating:

This book was a train wreck. One giant, full-blown, explosive catastrophe filled with twisted piles of sexual tension, fragments of intense lust, and the shattered remains of angsty, heated arguments. A train wreck, indeed. So now, if you’re wondering why I gave it four stars it’s because…I enjoyed the vast majority of it.

Not once was I ever bored with this book. Its fast pace and the electric way Katy Evans wrote it kept me with my Nook practically glued to my fingers. I stayed up the entire night reading it, the glow maybe hurting my eyes a little, but I’d be lying if I said I wished I could have those hours back. And, yeah, electric is probably a weird word to describe K.E.’s writing, but it’s the only thing that fits. I could try to explain it, but I feel like direct quotes would be the only thing to do it any significant amount of justice:

“He looks into my face again, his eyes seething with desire. I think I just nodded in agreement, but I’m too shaky to know for sure. A sweltering fever runs unleashed through me. My legs won’t stop trembling as every one of my cells screams in lust because I want him now. I want him now.”

And then there’s…

“Holding me protectively in his strong arms, he brushes my hair back as his lips buzz along the bare curve between my neck and collar, his fingers sliding up my neck as he once again, like a chant, nuzzles my ear and tells me, ‘Mine. Tonight.’”

So, yeah, sexual tension galore. I’d say about 95% of the entire book was sexual tension. And that’s great if you’re into that sort of thing, but at times it read like pure smut. I’m no prude, and I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never read an erotica book before, but at times I found myself cringing at some of the word choice.

“Even though he’s wearing sweatpants and an easy T-shirt, there’s no way you can miss the clench of the muscles of his upper body through the damp cotton fabric, and the way his sweatpants hang low on his narrow hips make my breasts feel so heavy and painful I swear to god I can’t imagine how it will feel when I’m lactating one day.”

Now, outside of the context of the novel, nothing's wrong with lactating boobs. It's natural. But in direct contrast with Remy's hotness, it's just so out of place.

Those quotes are just few of many of the lusty thoughts our narrator, Brooke Dumas, has for Remington “Remy” Tate, the hero. There’s about a billon more where they came from, too. While I did like the intensity, I wished it had been toned down a bit to allow more room for the romance. Halfway through the book, I was already aware of how much Brooke and Remy wanted to bang. I got it. Cool. But where was the swoony romance? The meaningful conversation, expressed outside of song lyrics? (Though I will admit that the lyric communication was my favorite part.) A connection that didn’t involve sex, for once? The love between them, I feel, wasn’t as clear as it could’ve been. (Until the end, at least.) I didn’t experience them falling in love like I would’ve wanted to. Mostly, I just felt Brooke’s sex muscles clenching every time she even thought of Remy.

Another thing that kind of got squashed in Brooke’s sex-starved narrative was the characterization. I got no sense of character until I was almost done with the book. Remy was supposed to be this super hot, cocky, amazing, powerful, troubled guy. And I wanted to see those things more than I wanted to hear about how much Brooke wanted to jump his bones. The same with Brooke. I actually liked her, once I got past her smutty inner thoughts. She was cool and sensible. It wasn’t until the issue with her sister that I began to see some depth.

Despite the things I said above, I fell for Brooke and Remy’s relationship. It may have taken some time, but it got there, so I’m glad I read until the end. I really liked that things weren’t so happy-happy-joy-joy between them all the time. The way that they Remy fought to keep Brooke at a distance first, and then fought to keep her close. The way that Brooke’s emotions teetered a few times because of how much she wanted him.

“He must have wanted a different reaction to his gesture. He must have wanted me to be all gushy and tell him, ‘Oh my stars, you’re so amazing!’ But I won’t. Because I hate what he does to me. I hate that I want him like this, hate that I feel so volatile I want to tear his eyes out and then go cry about it.”

I’m such a sucker for angsty love affairs, I couldn’t help but give this surprisingly thrilling train wreck of a romance four stars.

 ***A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review***