Month: October 2026

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – Wrecked (Bree L. Mina)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

Okay, so with Wrecked, I am going to give a brief intro and then going to spoil a lot of it because I have a lot to say when it comes to this book. Also, there is a second one that will actually be coming out in November, so I do plan on reading that one as well.

I did get recommended for this one as well. When I first heard her telling me all about it, I was skeptical because the plot seemed a little screwed up, but she did say it was a good read, so I gave it a shot. Plus, once she told me that the second one would be out in November, I was really excited since I’m counting out until Locked In: Season Two is released.

Anyway, before even starting the book, the author makes it very clear that this is NOT a happily ever after kind of book. Which, if you are like me and like reading about happily ever afters, this was a good heads-up. Although the second book is supposed to be a happily ever after, which makes up for it.

The book focuses on Ellie and Nate, who were high school sweethearts who don’t end up together because of Nate’s father, he thinks Ellie is just a distraction as he wants Nate to end up being a lawyer like himself and ends up making Nate end the relationship or he would ruin Ellie’s life.

Then, 8 years later, Nate ends up engaged to Ellie’s sister, Katie. Of course, both of them still have feelings for each other and this connection that they still have, but Katie has no idea that her fiance and sister had any type of connection since Katie was sent off to a private school, while Ellie and Nate attended public school.

Katie, not realizing this, she ends up having Nate and Ellie fly out to Brazil to pick up her wedding dress and hopes that they will end up getting to know each other better since Ellie has been avoiding Nate since she still has feelings for him.

Nate, is trying really hard to get Ellie to listen as he wants to explain why he did what he did and that he wants to be with her and not Katie since he was forced to do so by his father, however, his father passed away while in the middle of wedding planning and Nate wanted to end the engagement and explain everything to Katie and Ellie.

However, while on the plane to Brazil, Nate and Ellie’s plane crashes and they are stuck on an abandon island. Which forces them to not only work together to survive, but also gives Nate time to explain what had happened and that he still loves Ellie.

The book also happens to go back and forth and explains how Nate and Ellie fell in love, as well as going back on what’s happening on the island they are stuck on, as well as going back to Katie’s POV.

So, as you can guess, Nate and Ellie end up hooking up while on the island. Oh, and there are spicy scenes for it, but I could’ve cared less because this all could’ve been resolved if Nate called off the wedding BEFORE they left to the airport. Or even better, Ellie could’ve explained her past relationship to her sister when Katie introduced Nate to the family.

That’s what really pissed me off. It’s hard to root for Nate and Ellie when they couldn’t come clean to Katie about the entire thing, especially if they still had feelings for each other this entire time. Not to mention, Nate was only with Katie and lied to her about why he was even dating her.

Now, before I go further, I’m going to put a spoiler alert in now, since I’m going to spoil the ended of the book.

Nate and Ellie on the island end up stuck for almost a year and right before they get recused, Nate saves Ellie from being attacked by a jaguar and gets scratched really bad on the back, which ends up getting infected.

Ellie tries to save him, she is also a nurse, so she tries to look for something on the island that can help save him, ends up seeing a ship and flags them down to resuce them, but Nate dies before the ship comes.

Ellie gets recused and when she is brought to the hospital, they tell her she is pregnant. I had a feeling she might be because there wasn’t much for them to do other than survive and talk about how much time they wasted in the past 8 years they weren’t together.

Now, do you think Ellie even tells her sister what happened on the island?

NOPE!

Ellie goes forward with the pregnancy, since its a piece of Nate that she has left. She ends up having a baby girl, Luna. Go figure, another book that I have read with the name Luna. Which she only names her that because Nate mentioned if they ever had kids, he loved the name Luna for a girl because of Harry Potter.

You want to know what really set a fire on this book for me? After everything Ellie went through, surviving on an island for a year, watching the love of her life die in her arms, being recused and returned home, and having the love of her lifes child, Ellie kills herself and leaves her sister a note like a coward.

Yes, you read that right, she kills herself, abandons her daughter, and leaves custody to her sister to have her raise.

You’d think that Ellie would want to live for her daughters sake, but no, she was selfish and can’t live anymore because Nate is dead and she’d rather be dead with him. I was so pissed. As a mother, even if I lost the love of my life, I wouldn’t end my life knowing that they wouldn’t want me to do that.

When Katie reads that letter, she is upset and pissed. I don’t blame her either, she blamed herself for sending them to Brazil on that plane that crashed, thinking they were dead, then almost a year later, her sister is recused and finds out Nate is dead. Then, find out her sister and fiance were in love this entire time and is stuck raising their lovechild.

Which with the way the first one ended, I really wanted to know how the second one ends because its supposed to be about Katie struggling to process all this information and raising her niece, however, she gets a happily ever after. Which she deserves after all the crap they put her through.

Overall, it was an okay book, but it’s not something I’d read again anytime soon. Nate and Ellie are both cowards who should’ve told Katie their past as soon as Nate was introduced. I’m sorry, but they both got their Karma. I heard people were crying about the end because of how it all ends, but I didn’t shed a tear at all.

What did you think of this book? Did it piss you off like it did for me? Or was this something that actually made you cry? Let me know in the comments if you attempted to read this or not.

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – Tethered (Elayna R. Gallea)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

I wanted to take a break from the thrillers I had been reading and actually found this one instead. Normally, I’m a fantasy or romance reader, and since I had read one of Elayna’s books before, this one caught my eye since it was a romance between a human and a vampire.

I know a lot of people who, when they think of vampire and human romances, immediately think of the Twilight Saga. Which is nothing like that, thank god. Nothing against the Twilight Saga, but when I think of vampires, they don’t sparkle in the sun.

Anyway, another thing to note from this book is that this entire series is also connected to the other series that I started with her, which I found was interesting! That was the Of Earth and Flame; I did do a review on that, which had elves and dragon shifters. I read that one because it was recommended on Pinterest, as it was a close retelling of Barbie as Rapunzel.

I did do a review on that one as well, but I haven’t decided if I was going to continue the series, and when I thought about doing so, I ended up going down a long spiral of different thrillers. Tethered is also another series, and it did end on a cliffhanger, so I’ll let you know at the end of the review if I will take a look at the second one or not.

The book starts out in both Luna’s POV and Sebastian’s POV. Luna talks about how she is arranged to be married to Sebastian to reunite two kingdoms in the current war that has been going on.

Luna isn’t thrilled about this arrangement, as she didn’t want to be married to a vampire, but she only does as she is told because her father told her to do so. She also didn’t want to leave her kingdom, knowing her brother needs a cure, which they go into a little bit of detail about.

Sebastian, on the other hand, is only doing this arrangement for his mother’s sake; although she’s not his biological mother, she sort of adopted him and changed him into a powerful vampire. I’m still confused about that whole can of worms too.

However, they aren’t only getting married; the vampire Queen Marguerite insists on having a Binding Ceremony. This will bind them together, but instead, they end up becoming Tethered, which is even stronger than the Binding. They literally can’t be apart more than 30 feet from each other without being in a lot of pain.

Since being Tethered wasn’t the plan, both Luna and Sebastian start looking into how to become untethered from each other. Over time, they start to realize that they are getting feelings for each other and try to deny them because of the fact that they think it’s the Tethered bond that is causing them to want to be more intimate with each other.

I will say, the author does take her time building up the relationship between the two, but there was a point where I’m like:

Plus, with them struggling to figure out their feelings and chemistry, they also are dealing with other things that are happening in the castle, such as someone trying to murder Luna and instead murdering her handmaid.

I also did have a really hard time relating to the main characters because of her name being Luna; if you haven’t read my reviews on the I Want Your Family series, that explains why I have a hard time rooting for anyone who names their characters Luna.

It was also a hard slow to get into; it took me a little bit just to get into it, which I was kind of bummed out about, but it was also the same for her other book that I read before. Then again, it could just be me in general because I’ve been so sucked into fast thrillers that I expected the pace of all my books to be like that.

Overall, the book did end on a cliffhanger, and honestly, I’m up in the air about whether I want to read the second one, just because the first one was slow and took so long to get into, but it made me want to read this sequel more than the last book of hers I’ve read.

The only thing that would suck is that, for me to read the sequel, I would have to buy it since Tethered was already available on Kindle Unlimited. To me, if I didn’t absolutely love the first book, it makes no sense for me to get the second book unless I needed to know what happened.

Sequels are a hit or miss for me; it really has to make me want to finish the series or saga. I’ll use the Twilight Saga as an example. I liked Twilight; granted, I didn’t like the vampires that sparkle crpa, but I liked it enough to read the second one, New Moon. I really had to power through New Moon just to get to Eclipse.

I even fell asleep at the theater when New Moon came out. The only thing I liked about New Moon was finding out about the werewolves, and Jacob turning into one was pretty cool. In order to get through it, you had to endure Bella’s teenage “my life is over” crap.

As a reader, you’ll find out which books you were able to get right into and others that you had to either push yourself to get through or you weren’t able to finish. That’s okay! I’ve got a couple of books that I had tried and tried to get myself to go through and really couldn’t do.

Anyway, what did you think of Tethered? Are you a sucker when it comes to vampire love stories? Or are you like me and jump around to ones to keep it interesting? Let me know down below!

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The Last to Drown (Noelle West Ihli)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

This one, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get into it, just because the main thing was about water rafting, which I have never done before. After reading this, I don’t think it has piqued my interest to attempt it. However, the thriller part of the book was what kept me interested.

So, the book starts out explaining that 7 years ago, in one of the campers POV, one of the camp leaders went crazy and started slaughtering all the people at the site. Only one person was able to survive and later reported what had happened.

Then we go to the present: Kaia, who the POV is on, goes on this white-water rafting adventure because it was going to be a trip for both her and her husband, Parker, but Parker passed away before they could experience it. She ends up going with another group that is mainly female, with the exception of two male guides.

You also meet a few different characters, as well. One of them, Allie, was one that I actually liked because she was completely into the whole conspiracy theory and knew so much about the Camas Creek tragedy. This also made reading the book more interesting since she was knowledgeable about it.

Everything in the beginning sounded like it was going to go smoothly until the next night they realized their satellite phone was missing. That’s when some of the campers woke up to screaming as one of the guides was stabbed, so the remaining campers and guides tried to get everyone else in the rafts to get away from the situation.

After that, it’s all downhill and racing time to get away from one of the guides, Bryan, who is trying to kill the rest of them. Which I honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be him who caused all that started to happen, but then you find out that Bryan was getting picked on because, during the training that the guides have to go through, he was the only one wearing flip-flops.

Which would make sense as to why he would want to take his revenge on the guides, but not the campers; however, without me spoiling it, you find out that he has a deeper connection with the tragedy that happened 7 years ago.

Throughout the book, even though it is told from Kaia’s POV, she talks about hearing her husband’s voice in her mind, which helps save her and the others still alive. As well, having Macy, one of the last guides, helps them get through the rafting part since they are trying to get away from Bryan.

I will say, this doesn’t make me want to do any type of water rafting at all after reading this book. I know my experience wouldn’t be the same, but I would always have this book in the back of my mind if I ever planned to do so.

I also liked the ending of it too, because overall, the remaining survivors all still stayed connected, even with everything that happened to them. Not to mention, Kaia also gets closure about her husband, since she really didn’t know how he felt about her on a more emotional level.

I also don’t want to spoil the book for everyone because the beginning was a little slow to get into, and then once they start missing that phone and you’re told more information about the tragedy, it starts to pick up faster than I expected. It was almost like flying through a Freida McFadden book!

Overall, it was a good book. I don’t think it would be something that I would pick up and read again, but it does keep you on your toes for sure! It was also a different read for sure since I’m not a super outdoors persona and white-water rafting isn’t something I would jump to go and do, but it was interesting to know a little bit of what to expect.

What did you think about this thriller? Was this something you’d read, or would you be like me and give it a try? Let me know down in the comments what you thought of it and the ending!

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The Worst Best Man (Lucy Score)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

This is my birthday today! I figured that with my birthday being here, I wanted to do a review of my new favorite author, Lucy Score! Since I’m waiting for her third book in the last series, I’ve been checking out some of her other books to see if they are just as rom-com cheesy as I like!

So, before I begin this review, I have a question to ask you. Which do you prefer, 1st person or 3rd person?

For me, 1st person will always be my favorite to read, just because I love reading like I’m in the point of view of the main character. I also prefer books that use different points of view for each of the characters (when necessary).

The only reason why I’m asking this question is that the first book I read by Lucy was in 1st person, and when I started reading this one, it was in 3rd person. However, I wanted to give it a try because she already won me over with her 1st person, so 3rd person might be just the same, right?

Well, let’s talk about it.

First, the story is based on the maid of honor, Franchesca, or Frankie for short, and the best man, Aiden. Also, each chapter is in their POV, but in 3rd person, which I found interesting. Anyway, they meet at their friend’s wedding for Pru and Chip.

At first, they want nothing to do with each other because Frankie is loud and Aiden is a judgmental asshole. Which, to be fair, I agree with Frankie, since he did accuse her of being a stripper, which she ended up overhearing, and that doesn’t start off well.

Anyway, they both have to work together because Chip gets kidnapped the day before his wedding, and they are trying to find out why and who did it. Come to find out, it was Aiden’s stepbrother, who was holding Chip against him because he wanted Aiden to cave on a business deal.

While that is all happening, they have this sexual chemistry that they just can’t resist each other, so yes, there are some very spicy scenes while they are trying to find Chip. Kind of like an enemies-to-lovers vibe that it starts out with, and then once they finally do it, Frankie leaves Aidan’s room and hops back on her flight to New York, thinking that was the last time she would see him.

Aidan, on the other hand, wants to see her again and is pissed that she left him without saying goodbye or anything. He not only can’t stop thinking about Frankie, but wants her and only her to himself. So, he does what every billionaire does and tracks her down to find out where she is and why she left him.

Of course, Frankie was shocked that he would even show up at her apartment, as she thought he just wanted sex and would leave her alone. However, she is stubborn and isn’t sure she wants to be another one girlfriends that only last a month or so. Plus, he also happened to meet one of her brothers and told him they were dating.

The best part of their relationship is that Aiden is giving his all to this relationship, and Frankie is having a difficult time giving herself to it, as she thinks this will be just a fling and it will be over in a flash. Plus, I can get why she doesn’t want to fully commit to his entire lifestyle because he is a billionaire; it also comes with fame and not having privacy.

Of course, as do all of Lucy Score’s books, there is a conflict that causes Frankie to call the whole thing off and want nothing to do with Aidan in general, which I honestly don’t blame her for, but I think the whole thing could’ve been resolved if he told her before she was told by his stepbrother.

I won’t tell you what it is, since I don’t want to spoil the book for you, but it wasn’t a bad read. I also forgot how many pages her books are, and this one did take me the longest to finish, the 3rd person kind of threw me off, but she does an okay job with it.

Overall, it was a really good book, not as good as her “Story of My Life” series, but it’s right under there. I also think the amount of comedy in the book is what helped me get through the 3rd person POV because it’s hilarious! Especially when Aiden is having lunch with Frankie’s family, that whole thing was entertaining.

So, what do you think about this book? Do you prefer her 1st person POV or 3rd person POV? Honestly, I don’t mind her 3rd person, but I loved her 1st person way better. I know she has a few other books that are in 3rd person that I’ll have to try it out and see which I like better. Let me know what you think below!