Stake Out (Lily Luchesi)

Hello everyone and I hope you've been enjoying the month of June so far; I know I've been! I started my new co-op job last week and it's been quite interesting. I've been working outside almost every day for 8 hours, which is way more time than I would usually spend. But one good thing comes from being in the heat all day: being tired in the evening and curling up with a good book.

Stake Out by Lily Luchesi is a paranormal mystery novel that follows detective Danny Mancini as he tries to catch the murderer of the case he's been working on. But this case turns out to be quite unusual when the man he's chasing has been playing this game for 200 years: the guy is a vampire. With this revelation, Danny teams up with FBI agent Angelica Cross, from a secret paranormal division, to take this vampire down. But is there more to this case than meets the eye and what is it about Angelica that sparks something in Danny?

I read Stake Out fairly quickly and it was a pretty decent novel. It's the first in a selection of "Paranormal Detective" novels by Lily Luchesi. I've never really been drawn into the paranormal - mystery crossover genre before so this was a pretty good book to start with. The two elements were cohesive and didn't seem to be too extreme to the point of clashing. The plot was easy to follow but at times felt a little too predictable for a mystery novel; I think without the paranormal element, this book would have fallen quite low on the scale for me.

The characters were well written, but at times I wished the surface would have been scratched a little deeper; I didn't quite connect as much as I hoped I would. They were very stereotypical characters and almost always acted as I expected them to. I only wish that there was some more spunk or spontaneity to them. Overall, it was a good, light read which can be perfect for a low-key evening.

Rating: 3.5/5

Reason: It was a cohesive story that just lacked some more punch.

Find a copy here

Until next time,
Happy Reading Fellow Bookworms :)

 As always comment your thoughts and follow all of the associated pages (listed in the sidebar). I am not currently accepting requests as my list is quite long!

A copy of the book was provided to me for honest review purposes.

Rebellion Project (Sara Schoen)

Welcome to an extra special review! It's almost the middle of the week, which isn't my normal posting day, but this is part of a book tour. I was provided an ARC of today's book through Rock Your World Promotions in exchange for an honest review, and hopefully to get some more readers hyped about the book which is out today!

The Rebellion Project by Sara Schoen is a YA fiction novel that follows Lauren Scott's journey to find the person she has always wanted to be, and what better time than high school to do just that! Lauren is the stereotyped "geek" who skipped a couple grades and always follows the rules, no matter the cost to her social stature. However, the name calling begins to rub her the wrong way, especially when she catches her father - the king of rules - breaking everything he tells her to do. With this revelation, Lauren turns to her best friend Parker who tells her to seek the help of the one person who knows how to break the rules and bring her from drool to cool: Kayden Daniels. But is fraternizing with the enemy a good idea, or does it have bad written all over it? Perhaps it could be both?

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After reading this book in under two days I was left with only a few words: WOW, HOLY SMOKES, and AMAZING! It's been quite some time since I've read a YA fiction that wasn't science fiction or mystery and it made an incredible change. I don't even know where to start with this one, so I'm going to break it down a little bit:

Plot

There is definitely something for everyone in this and I have to say, I related to this more than I thought I would! There is romance, high school drama, rebellion (duh!), family values, heartache, and so much more. I definitely think most young readers will look at this plot and honestly say, "that's me" at some point.

Characters

It's funny how an author can create characters that each have a unique personality, but are recognizable in such a way that you can put someone you know into each one. The archetypes are familiar, yet also new. I fell in love with Kayden from the beginning and sometimes found myself internally shouting at my book for some of his stupidity. A+ work on characters!

Writing

This is the only part where the novel falters in my mind. I recognize I had an ARC but there were several typos or grammatical errors, which at times were distracting. That's just the type of reader I am. In addition, there were some passages of non-dialogue text that seemed to drag or become repetitive; it's hard to explain (perhaps personal taste?).

Overall, the book was pretty incredible and I definitely struggled to put it down to complete other things I needed to do in the day. To be honest, I didn't do too well with putting it down - I think I may have binged-read the novel. Good job Sara Schoen! As mentioned at the start, this review was part of a book tour so check out some of the other reviews.

Rating: 4.5/5

Reason: Both the plot and the characters were incredible! 

You can pick up a copy here

Until next time,
Happy Reading Fellow Bookworms :)

 As always comment your thoughts and follow all of the associated pages (listed in the sidebar). I am not currently accepting requests as my list is quite long!

A copy of the book was provided to me for honest review purposes.