Audiobook: All Is Calm/All Is Bright

During the holidays, I like to read winter reads that focus on Christmas. However, my mood lately has been gearing towards suspenseful and spooky books. Well, might as well combine the two: Suspenseful Christmas stories.

Read by Pam Turlow
Duration: 4 hours and 19 minutes

All is Calm
Brendan Waddell needs a place to recuperate. Lauren Everman needs a place to hide. It’s going to be an unexpectedly romantic Christmas at Bluebird Ranch.
All is Bright
A romantic, Christmas wedding at her seaside hotel gives Delilah a chance to shine with her unique gifts. But will her light be snuffed out before the bride and groom say “I do”?

Overdrive  *  Goodreads

#ShelfLove: Dark Water by Koji Suzuky

A haunting collection of short stories from Koji Suzuki, author of the smash thriller, Ring, which spawned the hit film and sequels. The first story in this collection has been adapted to film.

Goodreads

My Thoughts: This book had been in my TBR pile for over ten years, so I was glad to finally scratch it off my list. I really loved the Japanese movie, Dark Water. It was creepy and heartbreaking. The American movie adaptation was not as great. Having the Japanese movie in mind, I was hoping this book would have the same emotions that I felt when I watched the film. Unfortunately, I was not expecting it to be a collection of short stories (I did not read the synopsis) so I was a little disappointed. 

Audiobook: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Read by: Elizabeth Knowelden
 Audio Length: 10.25 hours

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom—all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she’s ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

Mini Reviews: Lover Eternal and Lover Awakened

I listened to these audios around September time but I never got to share my thoughts on them. They are re-reads as I prepare myself to continue reading the rest of the series. :)

Lover Eternal

Read by Jim Frangione
Duration: 14 hours and 18 minutes

Goodreads

The second book in the Blackdagger Brotherhood was about Rhage. Rhage was known as "Hollywood." He looked like a god and was able to get any woman he wanted. He also had a dragon tattoo on his back that controlled him (he actually turned into a dragon *gasp*). Though he was a "tortured" being, he cannot help but fall in love with Mary. Unfortunately, Mary was dying and there was nothing Rhage could have done to save her.

Hello! ~Update~

Hello, peeps! It has been a while since I've been around the book blogging world. If any one of you are still visiting my blog and wondering what has happened to me, well here's an update:

I've been super busy trying to balance my new career life as a resource specialist. I knew this job was not easy but I was not expecting how much it was going to affect me mentally. Do I enjoy my new job? Yes and no. I love my students but I dislike the paperwork. In fact, I am head over heels with paperwork that I don't have that much time to teach. I rely heavily on my substitute and my instructional aide to hold the fort for me, especially when I go to meetings. 

#ShelfLove: A Kiss to Remember by Lisa Medeiros

Review contains spoilers 

AWAKENED BY A KISSLaura Fairleigh needs a husband. If she is to keep a roof over her siblings heads, the prim rectors daughter must wed by her twenty-first birthday. When she finds a mysterious stranger with the face of an angel and the body of Adonis unconscious in the forest and with no memory of his name or his past, she decides to claim him for her own. Little does she know that her fallen angel is really the devil in disguise.

Sterling Harlow, the notorious rake known as the Devil of Devonbrooke, awakens to the enchanting kiss of a lovely young woman who informs him he is her long-lost betrothed. With her sun-kissed cheeks and smattering of freckles, she looks every inch the innocent, but her curves possess a womans allure. When she assures him he is the perfect gentleman, he wonders if hes lost his wits as well as his memory. He would have sworn he was not a man to be satisfied with mere kisses especially from lips as sweet and luscious as Laura's. As he attempts to uncover the truth before their wedding night, A Kiss To Remember ignites a passion neither of them will ever be able to forget....

 Goodreads

Audiobook: The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict

Read by Mozhan Marno
Duration: 8 hours and 40 minutes

In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.

Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most twenty-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.

Goodreads