April 1, 2016 – My Tiny Obsessions

IYDReviewTour

inyourdreams

Casey Coffield has a growing list of personal flaws he keeps locked away in his head:
He’s never on time.
His list of IOUs to his best friend is endless.
Money is always short.
Goals are never in reach.

Oh, and he’s decided to add college drop-out to that list, too. He doesn’t really think that last one’s such a bad thing, but his family insists it is, so it stays on the list.

On paper, he’s a zero. But in person, when he’s mixing tracks for a sea of bodies at the hottest clubs and parties, he’s downright irresistible. Just-right stubble on his chin, body of a boxer and a smirk that stimulates all the right nerves—women have never been a problem. They flock to his swagger and fall for his charm…fast.

All except for this one.

Purple hair, gray eyes, a raspy voice and sass, Murphy Sullivan is a little bit country and a little bit rock-n-roll. And her and Casey? They have history. He can’t remember it, but she wrote a song about him—and it’s not exactly a love song. But it is good. Damn good. And uncovering her inspiration just might be the key to solving a few of his shortcomings—not to mention open doors to his own big break in the music industry.

But sometimes dreams get messy when they collide. Sometimes life changes patterns. A past paints the wrong picture and futures get cloudy. The only question that remains is who will you choose when the dust settles—you? Or the girl of your dreams?

** This book is a Falling Series spin-off. It can be read as a standalone. **

OMG!!!! I think I have to add Ginger Scott to my growing list of favorite NA authors, because this book blew my mind.

The writing was so smooth and engaging! Loved it!!!

The two main characters were adorable, and they were beyond adorkable together. Casey was seriously damaged, poor thing, he thought so little of himself that it hurt, because he was so good. I was happy that although this was a cocky guy, he never acted that way towards Murphy, and he knew exactly what his friends were worth, even if he didn’t acknowledge that often enough. Murphy was the sweetest thing! I loved how strong she was, when faced with situations that she was not OK with. Even with her fears, she stood up for herself, and that’s brilliant.

The relationship between Murphy and Casey was beyond adorable. I really liked that it wasn’t instalove or anything like that, and that we could see how their relationship grew, and how they took their time to actually get together.

I was also happy about how things fell apart – not that I was happy that they fell apart, my heart was breaking! But I did like the motivations and the amount of love behind Casey’s decision, and I respected his way of doing thing. I think most authors would have opted for a more “douche” route, and I was so glad it was not the case here.

All in all, I really loved this book, and how awesome Casey and Murphy were together, even if my heart was breaking for a good portion of the book. I will definitly be reading more of Ginger Scott, mainly Houston’s story, because it has to be so good!

About the Author:

GS photo Ginger Scott is an Amazon-bestselling author of eight young and new adult romances, including Waiting on the Sidelines, Going Long, Blindness, How We Deal With Gravity, This Is Falling, You and Everything After, Wild Reckless and The Girl I Was Before.

A sucker for a good romance, Ginger’s other passion is sports, and she often blends the two in her stories. (She’s also a sucker for a hot quarterback, catcher, pitcher, point guard…the list goes on.) Ginger has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and blogs for more than 15 years. She has told the stories of Olympians, politicians, actors, scientists, cowboys, criminals and towns. For more on her and her work, visit her website at http://www.littlemisswrite.com.

When she’s not writing, the odds are high that she’s somewhere near a baseball diamond, either watching her son field pop flies like Bryce Harper or cheering on her favorite baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Ginger lives in Arizona and is married to her college sweetheart whom she met at ASU (fork ’em, Devils).

Giveaway:

1 signed copy of In Your Dreams/ necklace (INT)

Blog Tour:

Hello guys! I haven’t really been in the mood to write discussion posts these last few weeks, but I’ve been meaning to talk with you about something that I think it’s important and that it’s different for all of us, book readers, reviewers and book bloggers, and that is: How do I rate my books.

This is a deeply personal thing, no matter how analytical a person can be about what we read, the truth is that the material will always affect us in different ways, and this is true from everything, from the writing, to the characters, to the plot.

The same rating from two different persons can mean two totally different things, and even the same rating from the same person might not mean that the books are comparable.

Most of us rate on a system of stars, usually from 0 to 5. Websites such as Goodreads, Amazon or Netgalley don’t allow for anything less than full stars, which I always found quite limitative, because a book can not be a 3 stars book, but also not quite reach the 4 stars, for instance.

So, since I started reviewing books a year ago or so, I decided to use all the decimal points allowed. This brought another problem for me, how to separate some books with such a fine colm. And at the end of the day, does it really matter if a book is a 4.2 or 4.3?

I decided to change to an slightly easier system, but not as limitative as the full stars, and that is simply using the half-stars. I rate books from 0 to 5 stars, using the half stars quite often.

But how does it translates to the rating on site such as goodreads?

Well, I’ve always learned in math that a .5 rounds up, so that’s what I do. If I rate a book 3.5 stars, its rating on goodreads will be 4 stars, and so on. It’s not the fairest thing ever, but I rather round up than down.

Now, a lot of you have the ability to rate individual aspects of the book, such as characters, pacing, plot, world building and so on, and then do a final rating based on the individual aspects.

While I do take all these things into account, I’m an emotional rater. I rate more on how the book made me feel, than how intricate things really were. The deeper a book affects me, the better the chances that it will get a 5 stars rating.

While some people think that 5 Stars are almost a myth, because for them a 5 stars rating means a perfect book, and no such thing exists, I do not think like that. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are no perfect things, but a lot of books come really close, and I have no issues doting them with all the stars I can.

If a book makes me feel things, has a kick ass story, characters, plot, and at the end of the read I can’t find a single thing that I would change? Yeah, I’m giving it 5 Stars.

If you follow my blog at all for a while, you’ll also find that I give 4.5 to 5 stars ratings to a lot of contemporary romances. I love the genre, first of all, and then I think it’s easier to slip up a bit on fantasy or sci-fi…

Another thing I have no problems with is rating a book 0 or 1 star. It might pain me, because it’s someone’s work, but I am always honest in the way I rate books. So if a book is not for me, or if I feel it deserves a bad rating, that’s what it will get.

I do! But because I like to read books that I think I’ll enjoy! With this in mind, all of my Netgalley requests and buys, and therefore the books I read, are books that I think I’ll like, or that have been recommended to me by people with similar tastes.

Just because someone has a good average on GR, doesn’t mean that they’re lenient on the way they rate. It means that they know what they like!