Krissy Mullins, an overworked, obsessive-compulsive publicist has been giving it her best shot for the past ten years. Throwing herself into her work and devoting all her time to her teenage starlet client, Krissy finds little time for anything else. But as fate would have it, her world is turned upside down when she falls in love with laid-back California native, Ben Torres. Unfortunately, her only frame of reference on love and marriage is her parents and they weren’t exactly the poster children for a happy relationship.
As Krissy attempts to navigate the precarious world of love, acceptance, and compromise, her past comes flooding back like she never expected. An ex-boyfriend returns from a life she has tried to forget, stirring up feelings in Krissy she had thought were long gone. Pulled in opposite directions as her past and present collide, she makes a rash decision that will forever change her life.
About the Author:
Nikki Young was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago where she still currently lives with her husband, two boys and their pug, Beeker. She is a third grade teacher and spends her days forcing her love of reading and writing onto a group of poor unsuspecting eight year olds. After all is quiet, late in the evenings she can be found writing with her pug asleep at her feet.
Rolling onto my side, I slide my body closer to him. He slips his arm under my head, cradling me against him and pressing his lips to my forehead. I sigh deeply. I finally feel myself relax, as I grow used to being this close to someone. I giggle as I recall my first meeting with Ben.
“What?” he asks, pulling back and glancing down at me.
“I was just thinking about when I first met you on the beach. Remember? Roxy followed me.” Hearing her name causes Roxy to feel like it’s an invitation to join us on the bed. She spins at the foot of the bed and lies down quietly.
“Of course I remember.” He pauses and kisses my head again. “I have to admit something to you.” I giggle because I can only imagine what he has to say. “When you dissed me that day, it only made me want you more, sort of that wanting what you can’t have mentality.”
“Thanks for not stalking me and just so you know, I kind of wanted you too. You were all wet and shirtless and looking like you do. I thought about you a lot after that.”
“See and I thought you were a good girl. But I did stalk you. I just did it in secret. Did you really think it was a coincidence that I met up with you every morning at the beach?”
“I am a good girl, obviously, I had no idea you were stalking me. I’m glad you did, I wouldn’t have pursued you.”
“There’s something about you that I can’t ignore,” he says and his voice turns to a whisper. “I’m drawn to you.”
I close my eyes and a shudder runs over my body. I knew this day would come, but I’m still not prepared for it. His words terrify me, but I don’t say it out loud.
I want to read the 3rd book; I need to read the 3rd book…probably for closure. But, after everything my gut has endured from reading Rock Star, I don’t know if I can take it! Groupie was awesome, but like everyone before me said, Rock Star was even better. This series is so awesome. If you are a fan of Thoughtless and Effortless by S.C. Stephens, this is a must read.
My stomach is in knots, my head is spinning and my heart beat has finally slowed back down to normal. I could not put Rock Star down! I read faster and faster until I hit that wall that almost sent me to my knees. I am so in love with this series, I just don’t understand why more people have not read it. I finished the book literally 10 minutes ago and had to write about it immediately. I need more people to read it simply because I think I need a support group, lol.
The lies and betrayal of book 1 continue in book 2. The whirlwind of feelings tumbled down on me in a spiraling fashion. I just can’t seem to get over the emotions this book had in it, I haven’t been this blown away in a long time.
So, remember the choice that Andy had to make at the end of Groupie? She has stood by it 100%. She is happy, but then sad all at the same time. She struggles with guilt and followes what she thinks she is supposed to do.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,”
I understand what she is going through. You love 2 men, one protected you when you needed to be protected and now you feel it’s your responsibility to take care of him and be there for him…..but on the other hand the one that has your heart is grieving and going about it all the wrong way.
Vanni is throwing away everything to the bottle. He is lost and doesn’t know how to handle the emotions that come with this heartache. All he can think about is her.
Andy was the first…the last…and the only.
That isn’t the only issue going on. Once Vanni kind of gets a handle on his emotions with a little help from his liquid courage he becomes crazy, distant and angry. Andy doesn’t know who the man is that she once loved. Not to mention the new manager Leo who only talks down about Andy and keeps feeding Vanni drinks.
After one of the band members quit (I won’t tell you who, lol) in walks a new member and his sister. The new characters in the book seem to have good intentions but I felt something was off about all of them from the moment they walked in.
While all of this is going on Graham is back in LA with a live in nurse trying to learn how to walk again. I felt so bad for Graham, I like him so much and I want him to have happiness, but it seems that he is always giving and can never receive in return.
With Graham being paralyzed and Vanni going down a very destructive path, Andy is forced again to make a decision that she should not have to make….and if she doesn’t make the right decision there is always someone willing to step up to the plate and take her place.
This book made me want to blow something up. There was a time when I think I felt more hate then the hate I felt toward Kiera in Thoughtless, lol (is that even possible). I wanted to hit something and get the frustration out. Now that I have talked a little, I feel much better. But seriously, someone else read this! I need a support group now…..oh wait, I do have the 3rd book….I hope I make it out alive, lol.
GROUPIE WAS AMAZING!! I love my Rockstar books. This has been on the Rock Star Love- the EPIC list of Rock Star Books for some time and I finally got a chance to read it. LOVED IT! If you ever fantasize about what it would be like to actually be with a Rockstar, you need to read this. It not only goes into details about the steamy situations you can get in with a Rockstar but also goes from before the band ever really hits it big and how they can change and manipulate when they hit that rock stardom point. You will find out exactly why you should never fall in love with a rock star, lol. I couldn’t put it down; I wanted more and more…..and now I’m getting more. I’m currently reading book 2, Rockstar and book 3 was released yesterday, Mogul.
The emotional frenzy I was sent into was intense. I had to hide away in my room all day just so my family would stop talking. Normally, they leave me alone to read, but they were in a VERY chatty mood today (or maybe I was just being insensitive, lol). This book made my stomach upset. Just when I though, whew, okay, we are safe now….something else would happen….and that happened A LOT! I don’t know if my guts can take reading Book 2, but my heart says I have to. Everyone says book 2 is more intense and even better than book1, I’m almost scared…the intense part heeds warning, lol.
The book starts off fast and intense, I was in 1%, maybe page 2 or 3 and read:
All I wanted in that moment was to forget. To go back in time and erase an unbalanced relationship that had been doomed from the start. For his sake, and for mine.
I know I was in for a crazy ride.
Andy is a freelance writer. She has a few friends in high places and lands a job writing for an up and coming rock band. Awesome, right? WRONG! At first it is pretty awesome, Andy gets to go to parties and concerts and even bump elbows with a few celebrities. She is warned by all of her friends not to fall for Vanni (the front man for DIB), he is not a relationship kind of guy and can’t give her what she needs. Does anyone ever listen to their friends warning…hell no!
I had just been hit by lightning- and his name was Giovanni Carnevale.
Vanni and Andy become closer and closer during the months after they first met. They have late night conversations, text and emails. She is hooked. She needs Vanni more after each time they talk. When she finally gets to see him again and HUGE issue is dropped in her lap. She hates him after this. She doesn’t want to be used as a toy and lead on for his game. But in Hollywood, nothing is ever as it seems…. right?
It was photo after photo, press clipping after press clipping, of Vanni with a beautiful, lithe brunette who looked like a South American supermodel.
Andy gets tangled in a web of lies. Everyone is fake and like Vanni’s warning, nothing is ever as it seems. Andy tries to find a balance between the fake and her reality but the lines keep getting crossed. She is a whirlwind of mess and the drama that Vanni puts her through makes it worse. Over the course of 3 years Vanni and Andy become almost as close as 2 people can become, only to be ripped apart again by Vanni’s selfishness and lies.
The ending will fuck your mind. After a stalker issue gone wrong, leaving 2 people injured and one dead Andy is forced to make a life changing decision.
This book was so much fun. It was filled with ups and towns and twists and turns; many happy moments, and many, many angry moments. I can’t wait to continue the story with Rock Star. I hope the lies and betrayal continue….it probably wouldn’t be much fun without it, lol.
She is desperate to remember. He is aching to forget. Together, they are not broken. But together, one may not survive.
Jade wakes up with no memory of her past and blood on her hands.
Plagued by wicked thoughts, she searches for answers. Instead, she finds a boy who doesn't offer her answers, but hope. But sometimes, when nightmares turn into reality and death follows you everywhere, hope is not enough.
LUST. LOVE. LOSS. Sometimes, all that is left are Ashes and Ice
About the Author:
Rochelle grew up dreaming up stories. When she entered high school, she tucked away her creative side and jumped head-first into academics, work, and service projects. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Political Science and Communication when she was twenty years old. After years away from her writing, Rochelle picked up a pen and started fleshing out a character sketch that she outlined when she was twelve. That sketch was the start of the Ashes and Ice story. Rochelle lives in the DC metro area with her husband and daughter. By day she works as a behavioral therapist. By night, she is a dreamer and is busy tapping out new stories on her keyboard.
The girl’s glassy, dead eyes stare into me, through me, pierce me with a fierce urgency, with a wicked accusation. The blood is still on my hands.
Red hair, blue eyes, a constellation of freckles on pale skin. She was fragile and innocent, a lovely thing. That is what I think until I see the gashes on her wrists and throat. With her blood spilling out, she looks delicious. She’s mine. Possessiveness shocks me, stabs into me. I run, tearing away from a craving I don't understand.
Breathless, I grit my teeth and run harder, faster.
My feet pound against the earth, away from the lifeless body and toward the lights of the city lingering on the horizon. Rot and death linger in my nostrils. Unscarred skin stretches taut over my freezing bones. Echoes of an empty memory reverberate in my mind, taunting me. The ice chases me, clutches me, and bites at my heels, sending shivers up my spine. The ice wants me back, but I run forward, toward the lights, toward the heat, toward a world that burns me, because I have no other choice.
The lights are so close. Heat scalds my skin.
Images race through my mind, paralyzing me. I skid to a stop, my boots digging into the mud. The vision’s blurred edges materialize into solid shapes.
I gasp.
A new horror rakes my insides. Desperation propels me forward; the pictures nagging at my seams threaten to tear me apart.
Scorching fire licks over my skin. In my vision, I contort like a vile, ugly creature, eyes as black as decay. My frame hunches over the small, dead girl, like a demon looming over a defenseless child. Her blood drips from my mouth.
I lick my lips and taste only salty sweat.
I run, desperate to trample the vision under my feet, to crush it deep into the ground.
I refuse to believe the image, refuse to acknowledge the monster within me demanding to be unleashed—and the possibility it has already been unbound. An unrelenting tide of fear washes over me. Past the denial, the fear, and the hope, I think I can still taste her.
The cold stillness inside me cracks open just as the lights of the city slam into me.
Excerpt #2
Connor
Tears burn. I never realized it before, but they do. Tears reach down my throat and settle in my gut until the pain cripples me. I clutch my stomach as I look into the casket. His face doesn’t even look the same. Bloated like a Mardi Gras float, discolored like a mannequin. This isn’t my father.
But it is.
If I have learned anything in my short life, it is this: funerals are bullshit. People dress in carefully pressed black suits. Parents give me “meaningful” nods as if that could ease the grief. It doesn’t.
Then there are the kids from school, the ones dragged along by their parents. People drag their kids along as if filling the church was a necessary thing. As if the more pews filled somehow expedite the dead’s trip to heaven. I doubt it does. Maybe some of the girls went shopping to buy just the right outfit so their cleavage to respectability ratio was just right, or their ass to waist ratio was cinched properly.
People sit in the pews dressed in their finest let’s-go-pay-our-respects-to-the-dead-guy-we-never-knew wear, smacking the gum in their mouths, cupping cellphones so they can LOL any comment buzzing in, and drumming their fingers because the pastor is going on too long. All they want to do is go home, sneak in a make-out session with their girlfriends, eat their dinners, and maybe catch a 7 o’clock movie.
I hate these kids. The ones who stare at me, roll their eyes, and yawn. The ones who trip me at school and slam me into lockers. The ones who sit in a pew, contributing to the headcount, while I sit up here in front, holding back the tears fighting to make their appearance. I swallow them down. I won’t cry. Not here. Not with these people.
Dad’s funeral should be an empty church with mom, his three brothers, and me. It should be the five of us having a messy, sloppy, sobbing affair where we cling to each other because we are all we have left. The marble floors should be slick with our tears. It isn’t. We sit here, straight backed, completely composed as if death is just a passing expiration date and our small, insignificant world has not been split open and left gaping.
***
I’m in my room, staring at the ceiling. The funeral service was hours ago.
The house feels empty and cold. I hear a stifled whimper from down the hall.
Mom.
Probably crying into a pillow so the house can’t hear, but it can. It seems unfair she can’t wail aloud, so loud the house’s hundred-year-old studs tremble.
She doesn’t. I don’t either. We cry in our own rooms, remembering a man who will never be here again.
The house creaks. Maybe it feels the weight of our grief, maybe the floorboards are buckling because the burden is too heavy.
I ache, desperate to forget the long battle with cancer, the blood sputtering out of his mouth with his last words—what where they? I can’t remember because the fear in his eyes overshadowed anything he said. Now the loss. I don’t want to feel this loss. Some divine entity has taken dull scissors and cut out a piece of my life and now I have jagged scars to remind me I lost too much. Too much.
I want to forget, because it hurts to remember.
I bury my head in the pillow, hoping to suffocate the memories, to choke out the pain.
Excerpt #3
“Have you ever been in love?”
I spill my popcorn on my lap. “I, uh, what?” I say, swiping off the kernels. The question catches me off guard.
“You know, in love.”
“No. No, I haven’t.” I shift on the couch, needing more space between us. “What about you?”
“Nah.” She flicks her hand toward me as if she is brushing away nonsense, but the hard look in her eyes says something different.
“Why?”
She points to the TV screen and the couple making out there. “Figured if you had been, then you could explain that to me.”
The guy sweeps the girl up and carries her into bed before they… you know. “Uh, sex?”
She bursts out laughing. “That too. But I was talking about what it feels like to be, you know, in love. Totally, without question. Like, does that,” she points to the screen again, “exist?”
“Yeah, I think it exists.” I think of mom and dad—the way they kissed every morning, hugged a few moments longer than anyone else, laughed so hard they cried, and cuddled, shutting out the world, looking more content than these fakers on the screen. “It exists. And in real life, it’s better than that crap.” I say, suddenly uncomfortable by the moaning coming from the TV.
“I thought you said you’ve never been in love?”
“I haven’t. But I’ve seen it. And I haven’t ever seen anything come close to that in the movies.”
She opens her mouth as if about to ask a question, but then closes it and smiles, accepting my answer. “Well, it’s good that there may be something in life to look forward to.” She drops a kernel of popcorn in her mouth.
“May be?”
“Well nothing is guaranteed. Who knows, I may die an old spinster.” She’s smiling, but her eyes aren’t.
I think about the movie store guy’s possessive eyes, Jesse’s chair fiasco, and Dominic’s leering, my heart. “I doubt that.”
Excerpt #4
He smiles a bit wider and hands out the pin.
As, I reach to pluck it from his palm, he snatches my wrist with one hand, my bicep with the other and crushes me against his chest.
His grip is tight—too tight, it hurts—and the bend of him hovers over me, leaning in. I try to shake him off, but he doesn’t let go. I squirm as I feel his thumb trace circles on the inside of my wrist. The touch sends a skitter of sensation over me. Something tinges the air; a sweet, cool feeling brushes over my skin, making my knees want to buckle. He smells like mint, his breath tickles my face. I pull back, hating the sensations that please my skin and curdle my insides. Bile surges in my throat. I tear myself away from him, glaring.
“What?” He says coolly as if he hadn’t just bruised my arms with his clutching fingertips.
“That. Hurt.” I say. I don’t say he smells sweet or his breath is refreshing on my skin or his touch sends chills up my spine, delicious chills. I step away.
His smile is unnerving. “Don’t worry, Jade.” He winks at me. Damn that wink of his. “One day, you’ll like it.”
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This is the first book I have read by H.M. Ward and I absolutely loved it. In one sitting I read The Arrangement, The Arrangement 2 and started another series by her because I just couldn't get enough. This is the story of Avery and Sean and their chance meeting and the relationship that unfolds between them told through a series of short stories. There will be a total of 4 books each continuing from where the last book left off. I am impatiently waiting for the 3rd book, which should release Feb 8, 2013.
Blurb: FML is becoming Avery's motto. Just when she doesn't think things could
get any worse, they do. When her car stalls out at a busy intersection and she
gets out to check under the hood, a guy steals her car. Armed with a dress and a
pair of Chucks, Avery runs after the thief. When a hot stranger offers to help,
she can't say no. That's how Avery meets Sean Ferro, the totally sexy, totally
damaged guy with more secrets than she has time for.
Avery doesn't have
time for anything anymore. Her is life falling apart and it's not just the car.
It's everything, and it doesn't matter how tightly she tries to hold on, there's
nothing left to hold on to. With the sudden death of her parents, it's only a
matter of months until Avery's shot at college is gone, and she's living in a
cardboard box. Other students have their families to rely on when things get
bad. Avery has no one. But there's one option, one incredibly sexy,
morally devoid, option. If Avery takes a job as a call girl, one guy could save
her. One client. One time. She just has to say yes.
I love this story line, the chemistry between Avery and Sean, it's sizzling, HOT and steamy!! I'm a little torn on how I feel about the story being broken down between 4 short stories. I hate that I have to wait to find out what happens next, it's killing me!!! BUT, I love that it builds the suspense for the next book.
Nikki Young was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago where she still currently lives with her husband, two boys and their pug, Beeker. She is a third grade teacher and spends her days forcing her love of reading and writing onto a group of poor unsuspecting eight year olds. After all is quiet, late in the evenings she can be found writing with her pug asleep at her feet.
