Showing posts with label A Fierce & Subtle Poison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Fierce & Subtle Poison. Show all posts

Monday, 16 May 2016

Release Day Blitz: SMUT by Karina Halle #Smut #KarinaHalle

Exciting news!!

Karina Halle's newest book, SMUT, releases today!! I'm extremely excited about this one. Karina has described it as a romantic comedy where the main characters are writing erotica...hilarity is sure to ensue!! ;D 

I've got a great excerpt and a teensy teaser for you all! Let me know if you're as excited as I am. :D




SMUT by Karina Halle

What happens when the kink between the pages leads to heat between the sheets?


All Blake Crawford wants is to pass his creative writing course, get his university degree and take over his dad’s ailing family business. What Amanda Newland wants is to graduate at the top of her class, as well as finally finish her novel and prove to her family that writing is a respectful career.

What Blake and Amanda don’t want is to be paired up with each other for their final project but that’s exactly what they both get when they’re forced to collaborate on a writing piece. Since Amanda thinks Blake is a pushy asshole (with a panty-melting smirk and British accent) and Blake thinks Amanda has a stick up her ass (though it’s brilliant ass), they fight tooth and nail until they discover they write well together. They also might find each other really attractive, but that’s neither here nor there.

When their writing project turns out to be a success, the two of them decide to start up a secret partnership together using a pen name, infiltrating the self-publishing market in the lucrative genre of erotica. Naturally, with so much heat and passion between the pages, it’s not long before their dirty words become a dirty reality. Sure, they still fight a lot but at least there’s make-up sex now.

But even as they start to fall hard for each other, will their burgeoning relationship survive if their scandalous secret is exposed or are happily-ever-afters just a work of fiction?

Purchase Links: Amazon | iTunes | Nook | Kobo


About Karina Halle:
Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Racing the Sun, Sins & Needles and over 25 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.

Halle is represented by the Waxman Leavell Agency and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK.

Hit her up on Instagram at @authorHalle, on Twitter at @MetalBlonde and on Facebook. You can also visit www.authorkarinahalle.com and sign up for the newsletter for news, excerpts, previews, private book signing sales and more.

LINKS: Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

EXCERPT

She holds my gaze for a moment and something passes over her. Regret, maybe. Then she nods. “Sit down. Let’s work.”

And so we do. And for the first time in a long time, it’s strained. I’m about to suggest maybe we need the Estonian vodka anyway when she lets out an exasperated sigh over something she’s reading.
It happens to be something I wrote.

“What?” I ask, wondering what I did wrong.

She gives me the are you kidding me? look. “Okay, I was ignoring it earlier but I think you need to get a grip on some of this shit. This simply does not happen.”

“Explain, please.”

“I just think it’s unrealistic for there to be so much talking, let alone the fact that the first time they do it it’s in a public place.”

“Too much talking?”

“Yeah.” she scans over the document. “You know, give me your cock, oh you feel so good, harder, harder, you’re so big, fuck me harder big boy.”

“Have you even had good sex?” I ask incredulously.

She flinches. “Of course I have. And it’s none of your business.”

“We’re writing about sex. It’s completely my business. I’m not letting you interject your edits based on your personal experiences about sex because believe me, if the sex is good, you’re moaning my name.”

She raises her chin. “Maybe all those girls were faking it.”

Oh, brilliant.

“Excuse me?” I say, hands pressed against the table, nearly getting out of my chair. “You have no idea. I pride myself in giving a girl as many bloody orgasms as she can handle.”

“Bloody orgasms don’t sound like fun,” she jokes softly.

“They can be if you’re into knife play,” I tell her, even though that’s not exactly what I meant. Still, she scrunches up her nose. “Don’t knock it until you try it, but that’s neither here nor there. When you were with Alan, he must have made you come at least a few times.”

If he didn’t, I feel like finding the guy and showing him a thing or two for wasting four years of her life.

“Yeah,” she says flatly.

“And in the middle of that orgasm, didn’t you want to yell a few things?”

“Sometimes.”

“And why didn’t you?”

She looks at her nails as if they’re suddenly fascinating. “It didn’t seem right. It was…too intimate. I would have felt dumb. He didn’t like any of that stuff.”

The plot thickens. “Any of what stuff?”

“Sex that didn’t involve the missionary position or the bed.”
 
My mouth drops open. My brain and penis can’t compute this. “I feel so sorry for you.”

We must remedy this.

She glares at me. “It’s not like I didn’t want to do it. I did. And he did try it. Most of it. But it always went back to the same old.”

I knew it. She’s a nerd on the streets and a freak in the sheets.

“I don’t mean to brag,” I tell her in all seriousness. “But you do realize that I could give you an orgasm in thirty seconds.”

Her eyes widen. I can’t tell if she’s horrified or intrigued. “I don’t believe you and I don’t want you to try.”

She’s not getting it. I frown, trying to explain. “If you’re having good sex and it’s with someone you’re comfortable with, you won’t worry about holding back. You’ll cry out all the nonsense you want, you’ll make noises like a pig and scream like you’re on fire because you truly can’t have a good orgasm unless you’re letting go on all accounts.” I lean back in my chair and study her, running my fingers along my jaw. “I would venture that every time you came with your ex, you were only experiencing half of what you should have been. How is it with your vibrators?”

I expect her to tell me to fuck off, that I’m getting too personal but to my surprise she gives me a small smile. “It’s better. But I do have a roommate with exceptionally good hearing.” She clears her throat. “Anyway, so I guess I’m wrong. The heroine can make all the noise she wants.”

 “And have first time sex in public.”

“I don’t know…”

“Believe me, when you finally get a chance to fuck, you don’t care where it is. That’s why I always have a condom in my pocket. And the more public the sex, the sneakier you have to be, the hotter it is.”

“But in the book you would never get caught.”

“You don’t always get caught in real life too.”

I can see she wants to ask me where I’ve done it but she loses her nerve. “Okay.” She looks back to the document. “I accept defeat.”

But I don’t want her to. I want to prove to her I’m right and not have her take my word.

Is there a non-creepy way to show her just how amazing good sex can feel? I’m thinking not.

Or…maybe there is.





What do you think?
Does SMUT sound like something you'd like to read?

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

Review: A Fierce & Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry

Source: Received a copy from Thomas Allen & Son while working there. All opinions are my own, and are a reflection of my personal feelings surrounding the story.
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Release Date: April 12, 2016
Number of Pages: 288 (Hardcover)


Description from Goodreads:
In this stunning debut, legends collide with reality when a boy is swept into the magical, dangerous world of a girl filled with poison.

Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl--Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Some say she can grant wishes; some say her touch can kill.

Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He’s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic. When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers--and finds himself lured into her strange and enchanted world. But time is running out for the girl filled with poison, and the more entangled Lucas becomes with Isabel, the less certain he is of escaping with his own life.

A Fierce and Subtle Poison beautifully blends magical realism with a page-turning mystery and a dark,  starcrossed romance--all delivered in lush, urgent prose.

“A breathtaking story in which myths come to frightening life and buried wishes might actually come true. This is a hypnotic debut by a remarkable talent.” —Nova Ren Suma, author of The Walls Around Us and Imaginary Girls
A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON was absolutely wonderful! I loved the writing, and as soon as I started reading, I couldn't put it down! I had to actually force myself to go to bed so that I wouldn't be exhausted for work in the morning. :P

I loved Lucas as the narrator, and found it refreshing to have a male protagonist for this story. His perspective kept the story moving at a quick pace, and I really enjoyed seeing the story from his point of view because he was almost as much of an outsider to the culture as I was. I loved the mystery surrounding Isabel, too, and I think that's why I loved that Lucas was the narrator. I liked not knowing what to expect from Isabel, so Lucas was perfect! He also was completely unapologetic in his womanizing ways...and I actually found that I appreciated that. He was upfront with both the girls he fooled around with, and with the reader when he told us about them. :P

As for the plot and the story itself, I absolutely loved it all! I really enjoyed the Puerto Rican stories, and loved the magical realism of the story. I don't often read mysteries, but I thought the mystery was really well done, too. It was intriguing, and definitely kept me guessing. Lucas was also a bit of an unreliable narrator sometimes, so that made the mystery even better! The ending was a little bit open-ended, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I think it reflected the magical aspect of the story extremely well. Just like Lucas, we don't know what magic is really possible in his world...and it left me extremely curious and excited to see what Samantha Mabry comes up with next!

Overall, I absolutely loved A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON. It was captivating, and incredibly unique. I loved the characters, and the story was well-written and extremely interesting! It was also super refreshing to see a story set in Puerto Rico, and I loved hearing the folk stories and how Spanish was woven into the dialogue of the story!!! I'd recommend A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON to fans of magical realism, and also to readers who are looking for some diversity in their YA!


I was extremely excited to have the chance to read A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON and it definitely didn't disappoint!

What do you think?
Does it sound like a story that you would enjoy?
Have you ever read any magical realism?