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INCADESCENCE

Elena Leman

This book was provided to me for free by the author in exchange for an honest review. 

When I got the e-mail from the book’s author, saying that she’d have the feeling that I could enjoy her book I was kind of dubious about it. Could someone really know my taste in books just because of reading through my reviews? Yes, obviously she could. This book totally hit me. Although I had some difficulties at the beginning finding into the story. The main problem was that I somehow couldn’t imagine the surroundings and the looks of the characters, but after the third chapter the story totally had me and I could see everything right in front of me. 

Sweet little Orobella is a crystal collector aka Crystellian, who travels from planet to planet to collect different crystals. Crystals are collected through sharing with another being – of course the opponent doesn’t know about the crystal sharing since he or she doesn’t see them. But he or she feels the joy of sharing. Since this is Orobella’s main gift, she gets what the other has to offer – mostly good feelings like hope or passion.

One important thing for Orobella is to never change crystals more than once with a person and to never get attached to anyone since her time on each planet is limited.

Arriving at a new planet is like being born. She never knows what or whose body she is into – the only thing that counts is that the body was free and available. 

This time Orobella arrives on the planet Instaar in the body of Ruskala – a water nymph. She starts her journey with her given companion Smoku – a lizard only she can see.

Soon she crosses path with Sambor, the leader of the Lasota tribe and a spiritual tattoo artist, whose tattoos turn into spiritual animals once he has finished his work on someone’s body. Somehow Orobella feels drawn to Sambor and asks him for a tattoo which he eventually agrees to. In exchange she promises teaching his babysitter how to sing and so the love story begins. 

Two beings that are used to going through life on their own – one of them because of the species she is, the other because things he had experienced through life had made him like that – meet each other and have to admit their feelings. 

Orobella is full of joy and goes through life light-hearted, has her own point of view, cares about others, wants ‘people’ (beings) to be happy and seems to be fearless. But so far bonding with someone or having a partner for life has been unimaginable for her due to her way of life to exchange as many crystals as possible and therefore changing locations and acquaintances a lot.

Sambor is a worrier and the leader of the Laosta tribe. He was born into a society that believes in the one and only sole mate for everyone. Sambor saw his father going crazy after his mother had left him. Therefore he promised himself to stay on his own.

Can two beings with such stories really find their way together?

I really loved the book and how Orobella and Sambor started to feel for each other – although Orobella tried to deny it for a long time – Maybe because she didn’t have any experience with the feeling ‘love’ before.

I also loved the side characters – especially Smoku, Orobella’s companion, and Sambor’s little sister ‘Child’ aka ‘Damdamin’.

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Blue Skies (T.L. Martin)

This book was provided to me for free by the author in exchange for an honest review. And I’m really grateful because this book was simply amazing although I wished for some more chapters at the end… 🙂

Do you know the feeling when you read a book and you can’t stop reading but at the same time you want to stop because you don’t want it to end?
Well this book definitely got me into this conflict and as you may guess the ‘couldn’t stop reading’ part won. This book was simply amazing.
I read a lot of books in the last time and they were good, had good characters and you could somehow imagine the scenery. But with this book I could really get myself into the characters. I could totally get their decisions – although at one point I wished for a different one. I could get why Blue did what she did but I could also get Joshua and I felt so badly with and for both of them.
I’m definitely not someone who starts crying easily when reading a book but with this one I cried through the last chapters. I even cried when I tried telling my mum and husband about Blue and Joshua.
I’m pretty sure now you want me to tell you some of the plot, so let’s do it in some sentences. But just really briefly because I think you should read this book on your own if you are into drama.
First of all let me state that although it’s about two teenagers the book is definitely an 18+ one because of all the stuff those guys have to go through.
The book is told out of two perspectives – Blue’s one and Joshua’s one.
Let’s start with Blue. She is 18 years old, grew up in the middle of California, was homeschooled and had one and ergo best friend called Benji. She has just gotten to know her Dad to whom she is moving for a while at the beginning of the book.
Joshua is 18 too, lives in the pool house of Blue’s dad and is a kind of closed guy. Blue is the only one who he lets into his life. And they both fall deeply into each other.
During the story we get to know both of their lives and how they became the people they are. They have to deal with a parent who turns his back to his child and wife, with addiction, dementia, depression, suicide and struggling through life. Both of them have to find their way through their problems and have to learn standing on their own feet before they can finally find their HEA. The question is: Will they make it?
Spoiler alert: Course the do 🙂
And here’s the one point I’d criticize – I’d wished for at least two more chapters about their happy life together after they finally got each other – about their first evening together (I’m sure Blue took Joshua with her to her family’s movie night…) about their first time making love – like real making love and them just being them again.

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The Boy Next Door

 

The Boy Next Door

If it was just for the plot I’d given five stars because I really liked it.

The book is told out of two perspectives… Amelia’s and Dash’s and I loved both.

It starts with Amelia meeting Dash and then you get to see what past the two now grown-ups share. They have loved each other since Dash saved Amelia when she was a little girl – the day they first met. But since Dash is three years older than Amelia neither of them confessed the true feelings to the other. But then Dash leaves for college and although he has promised to write he rarely ever does. When he comes back in summer as a sophomore and meets Amelia, they finally confess their love to each other but the next day Dash disappears and leaves a heartbroken Amelia.

6 years later they meet again… And that’s the point where both characters start telling the story alternately. Both still love each other but Dash thinks he isn’t worth being loved by Amelia because of the thing he did. But he can’t resist her or walk away from her again. And Amelia is fighting for him. She loves him and she knows that he still cares for her so she wants to know why he’d left her all these years ago. But that’s Dash’s secret he has to take to the grave. Eventually, however, Amelia finds out and so does the reader….

So the plot is not bad.

When Dash’s secret is revealed I first thought that Dash is kind of overacting by leaving Amelia all the years ago and by telling that he hasn’t earned Amelia’s love or being happy at all. But then I started to think about it and changed my point of view. Because Dash didn’t know Amelia’s thoughts and real feelings for her then. So I as the reader am quite sure that Amelia would have never let Dash down not even as a teenager but how could have Dash known about that? For him his deeds are unforgivable and besides that he was afraid. So I think I do understand him now. And I think it’s kind of comprehensible why he left and things turned out to be like they are now.

What I didn’t quite like were the small things like Amelia’s fighting for Dash… She is giving him orgasms with BJs or finger-jobs. And I don’t know but I think those scenes don’t quite fit into the plot. I mean Amelia is a person who thinks about feelings and she tells she is having sex with Dash because she wants to be near him but there are no more thoughts about it. I mean these scenes are told like a shopping list for food or something similar. I totally miss the feelings in those scenes. I somehow had the feeling that these scenes were told by another person. And this really, really disturbed me and is the reason why I rated the book with 3,5 stars only.