Perfection by J. L. Spelbring

Title: Perfection
Author: J. L. Spelbring
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Released: May 7th 2013
Pages: 320 (ARC)
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The personification of Aryan purity, Ellyssa's spent her whole life under her creator's strict training and guidance; her purpose is to eradicate inferior beings. She was genetically engineered to be the perfect soldier: strong, intelligent, unemotional, and telepathic. 

Only Ellyssa isn't perfect. 

Ellyssa feels emotions--a fact she's spent her life concealing. Until she encounters the epitome of inferiority: a dark-haired boy raised among renegades hiding since the Nazis won the war a century ago. He speaks to her telepathically, pushing thoughts into her mind, despite the impossibility of such a substandard person having psychic abilities. 

But he does. 

His unspoken words and visions of a place she's never visited make Ellyssa question her creator. Confused and afraid her secret will be discovered, Ellyssa runs away, embarking on a journey where she discovers there is more to her than perfection.

Oh dear....I really don't know what to say. I couldn't wait to read Perfection when I received it  through the ARC share - I mean, imagine a world where Hitler had succeeded and won the war? It's an understatement to say I was excited. However, halfway through and I just knew it wouldn't get any better than disappointing. I think this is a classic example of a book with an amazing concept that just isn't delivered in a way that makes it interesting.

Bitter Like Orange Peel by Jessica Bell

Title: Bitter Like Orange Peel
Author: Jessica Bell
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Released: November 1st 2013
Pages: 179 (eBook)
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Six women. One man. Seven secrets. One could ruin them all.

Kit is a twenty-five-year-old archaeology undergrad, who doesn’t like to get her hands dirty. Life seems purposeless. But if she could track down her father, Roger, maybe her perspective would change.

The only problem—Roger is as rotten as the decomposing oranges in her back yard according to the women in her life: Ailish, her mother—an English literature professor who communicates in quotes and clichés, and who still hasn’t learned how to express emotion on her face; Ivy, her half-sister—a depressed archaeologist, with a slight case of nymphomania who fled to America after a divorce to become a waitress; and Eleanor, Ivy’s mother—a pediatric surgeon who embellishes her feelings with medical jargon, and named her daughter after "Intravenous."

Against all three women’s wishes, Kit decides to find Roger.
Enter a sister Kit never knew about.
But everyone else did.

What a bloody awful book. I'm sorry, but it has to be said. I've read some bad books in my time, but this is most definitely in the top five. The synopsis held the promise of a novel that wasn't delivered.

The basic premise is a group of six women who all have ties to this one man - to some of them he was a lover, a husband, and to others he was a father - or an absentee one at that. Kit, one of the daughters, is desperate to find out about this man who she has never met, so sets out on a journey to meet him. However, in doing so she unveils a whole load of buried family secrets.

Touching Melody by RaShelle Workman

Title: Touching Melody
Author: RaShelle Workman
Publisher: All Night Reads
Released: May 14th 2013
Pages: 286 (eBook)
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Sometimes life isn't pretty, but you have to close your eyes and let go...

Maddie Martin's first weekend at college is nothing like she's used to. It's wild, like the wilderness on which the University of Bellam Springs sits. Roped into going to a fraternity party, she literally runs into Kyle Hadley. The boy she's loved since she was nine. The boy she promised all of her firsts to. But that was before his father killed her parents. 

Determined to stay away from him, she throws herself into her music. Practicing piano eases her heavy heart, calms the sadness, and pushes away images of Kyle's face. 

Until it doesn't. 

Her music professor asks her to play a duet for their annual Winter Gala. Doing so means she'll be assured another full ride scholarship. It's an opportunity she can't pass up. 

But Kyle is the other half of the duet. And that means hours and hours of practicing. 

Weeks of seclusion - just the two of them. And it's more than just music. It's passion like Maddie never believed was possible. 

The inevitable happens. She falls in love with him all over again. 

But, will loving him be enough to erase all the hate in her heart for his father? Can she look at him, and not see the evil in his family tree?

And maybe it's all a set up. Maybe Kyle is only pretending to care so he can finish what his father started, and kill her too.

To write this review, I wrote a list of things I liked and things I disliked. Let me tell you that there is absolutely nothing on the like list. I tried to find something, I did, but I couldn't. In the least horrible way possible, I think this is the worst New Adult novel I have ever read - and I finished The Edge of Never the other week, so that is certainly saying something.

The Edge of Never by J. A. Redmerski

Title: The Edge of Never
Author: J. A. Redmerski
Publisher: Harper
Released: November 13th 2012
Pages: 480 (eBook)
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Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett thought she knew exactly where her life was going. But after a wild night at the hottest club in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, she shocks everyone-including herself-when she decides to leave the only life she's ever known and set out on her own. Grabbing her purse and her cell phone, Camryn boards a Greyhound bus ready to find herself. Instead, she finds Andrew Parrish.

Sexy and exciting, Andrew lives life like there is no tomorrow. He persuades Camryn to do things she never thought she would and shows her how to give in to her deepest, most forbidden desires. Soon he becomes the center of her daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But there is more to Andrew than Camryn realizes. Will his secret push them inseparably together-or destroy them forever?

NOTE: This review does contain a few swear words, all words directly used from the novel.

I first attempted The Edge of Never about a month ago, and eight percent in, I knew I had to DNF it. However, after reading raving review after raving review, I put my instant dislike down to my current reading mood. So I decided to pick it up again and, ugh, why did I bother?!

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L.James

Title: Fifty Shades of Grey
Author: E.L.James
Publisher: Arrow Books
Released: June 20th 2011
Pages: 514 (Paperback)
Buy: Amazon


When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Convinced that their meeting went badly, she tries to put him out of her mind - until he turns up at the store where she works part-time, and invites her out.

Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man. And, when he warns her to keep her distance, it only makes her want him more.

But Grey is tormented by inner demons, and consumed by the need to control. As they embark on a passionate love affair, Ana discovers more about her own desires, as well as the dark secrets Grey keeps hidden way from public view.


I feel like I need some kind of award for having finished this book. It's been sat on my shelf all summer, and if I'm being honest, I was avoiding reading it because I had a nagging voice in my head saying, What if you like it? What if you really enjoy it, and you become one of the people who can't get enough of it? It's fair enough to say that my worries were silly - there is no way on Earth that I would ever like a novel like this. Please prepare yourself for the rant of a lifetime.

Careless by Anne Cassidy

As Chloe Cozens mourns the death of her mother, Lesley, teenage 'delinquent' Nicky Nelson experiences quite a different emotion towards her, his social worker, the one person he thought he could rely on when everyone else had let him down. Lesley Cozens wrote Nicky a letter before she died, the contents of which the reader does not know until much later in the novel, but the letter triggers a rage in Nicky that could have had tragic consequences if Chloe had not got involved. When Nicky begins hanging around Chloe's house with a mixture of curiosity and anger that she has had a happy life compared with his, he is prepared to hate her, but instead the two of them form a strange kind of bond. Chloe is her mother's daughter, and finds herself wanting to help Nicky find his real mother, the one who abandoned him at birth. Ironically, the clues she pieces together about what happened lead her back to her mother's home town, and to her childhood friend, Sonia, who is keeping a painful secret of her own. Chloe finds comfort in helping Nicky, a boy who is almost like a brother in that her own mother looked out for him for so long, and Nicky discovers that sometimes you have to trust in people in order to move on and build a life...

This book was rubbish. I chose it from the library because the blurb makes it sound good - like it has a lot of unanswered mysteries in it. And it does, that's for sure. But the way Cassidy reveals them...she just downplays it. I honestly think that the initial storyline is great - she could have done so much with it. But she didn't. Every mystery turned out to be obvious and rubbish. You didn't feel for Nicky or Chloe or Lesley or Sonia. You didn't even get to know them, despite knowing their brief background history and some stuff which should be personal. I just...words can't describe how disappointed I was. Really not worth the read, but I will admit that it is a light and easy read.
Rating:1/5