S.C. StephensCritiques

so I loved this a lot more then I thought I would but I have to admit between unpacking and having no net this has been my late night companion. I will be writing my review after work I just wanted to post that I LOVED it.

I liked the characters but the back and forth on the love triangle took to long to resolve. I did not enjoy the tug of war at all.

no.

Después de estar atrapada en un triángulo amoroso y de protagonizar una traición devastadora, Kiera juró aprender de los errores que había cometido. Estaba decidida a no volver a causar esa clase de dolor a nadie más, en especial a Kellan, ese hombre talentoso y vital que se había convertido en dueño de su corazón. Pero la vida siempre presenta nuevos desafíos y complicaciones para cada relación. Después de todo, Kellan es una estrella de rock, y las chicas que acuden a sus conciertos pueden ser muy convincentes.
Cuando Kellan se embarque en una prolongada gira que los mantendrá separados durante varios meses, la confianza y la seguridad de Kiera se verán comprometidas y Kiera sentirá que hasta su propio amor será puesto a prueba. ¿Será capaz de mantenerlo vivo contra viento y marea?

After re-reading this series... it's not as great as I thought it was back in 2013 .. lol

Finally finished this whole series! lol
Griffin Hancock is tired of being stuck behind Kellan Kyle's spotlight. He's the best, the main event, and everyone should know it. He has Anna, and his beautiful daughters Gibson & Onnika, to hell with the rest of them.
Griffin is annoying at times but he has a soft spot in my heart.
This book will put you in an up and down roller coaster of emotions. You will want to slap, punch the Hero, but also fall in love with him at the same time. haha Glad I finally finished it.

After re-reading this series... it's not as great as I thought it was back in 2013 .. lol

OMG OMG!!



Review posted at SoManyBooksSoLittleTime

much longer than it needs to be but definitely makes you cry as you experience Luc's spiral of loss and depression and hope and clarity. not sure I'd recommend this to anyone as a must read but I did enjoy the reading of it.

I had to find out what all the Kellan Kyle, rock god, love god, etc, etc posts were all about. The emotions of Kiera inside the love triangle are so well done. I feel her pain and even though it seems like such an easy decision from the outside, inside is complete chaos.

This is probably pretty good, but I don't feel like another book read by Rebekkah Ross. I've not long listened to her read The Simple Wild, by K.A. Tucker.

Puns on the title aside, Kiera Allen is the kind of heroine to make you miss lovable, personable, empathetic Bella Swan. She thinks of every woman in the entire book, including her mother and sister, in terms of:

a: if she is more/less beautiful than Kiera (generally the former, in which case Kiera either hates her, or justifies liking the other woman in spite of her looks)
b: if she wants Kellan (she always does)
c: how Kiera is better than the other woman because Kellan is her man OR how Kellan is too good for the likes of her and will instantly go to the other woman

It's probably the most misogynistic book I've ever read. No one has ever thought less of other women. The only exception I can think of is Abby, Denny's new True Love, which she justifies because Denny is too good for her anyway. In fact, as I was typing this sentence I realized that Abby is the ONLY WOMAN IN THE ENTIRE SERIES, INCLUDING LESBIANS (don't get me started about that subplot) WHO ISN'T INTERESTED IN KELLAN. Mystery solved. She is no threat.

Everyone else gets Kiera's scorn and pity in equal measure. Other women are openly mocked and reviled for being sexually confident, but when Kiera is publicly sexual with Kellan and "helpless before his erotic energy" or whatever (not a real quote, but plausible), that's all the excuse she needs. I think every time Anna and Griffin are mentioned she throws in a line about how much she doesn't want to think/see/hear/know about their sex lives. The lady doth protest too much.

Kellan can be awful, but I suppose they deserve each other. If you really think love is more valuable because it "wasn't easy" or was "passionate" (read: fighting) then I suppose we just don't have a lot to talk about on this front.

Longer review to follow, but here's the intro:

It would be a little too facile to say that Thoughtless is aptly named, but I’d say that thoughts do not come organically to our narratrix. Indeed, each individual Thought comes like an ancient machine to life, with great creaking of rusted gears, faculties not used for eons.
But I think we get ahead of ourselves. Thoughtless is part of the “New Adult” wave of twentysomething romances that read like high school romances, tapping into the vein that Twilight brought to prominence a few years ago (adult women longing for adolescent romance from within their safe adult lives) but not directly related to it.
So I feel we must begin by placing Thoughtless in its time and place, in (presumably, since the rest of the site is in the first person) the author’s own words*:
“Thoughtless, an angst-filled love triangle charged with insurmountable passion and the unforgettable Kellan Kyle, took the literary world by storm.”

Before we even begin to examine the claims of storming the literary world, I need to point out that this encapsulates the book perfectly.
1. It self-defines as an angst-filled love triangle
2. It mentions one of the choices by name, suggesting who will “win”

I'm trying to think of something to say about this book, but for once I'm speechless...



Edit: DNF at 32%

4 stars,

I have to start this review, with the acknowledgment of some poor reviews based upon the "cheating" in this book. I am disappointed in those that leave a review like that without even truly giving the book a chance. Especially for some of those people that left the reviews, hadn't even gotten to the crux of the moment where "cheating", if you can even call it that, happened when there is not much more of the finality of a relationship than what Val and Jake experienced. Did Val fantasize? Yes, she did. Hell, I am pretty sure I would have too. Val and Kylie both met Jake within days of each other. When Val first started fantasizing she didn't even know he was dating her sister. I would have found it hard to just stop when for weeks before I had no idea who he was to my sister. I know I have done it in real life, with a friend's boyfriend, not knowing who he was. I think what frustrates me the most is that the people are not even taking into consideration the hard work that went into this book. Instead, they are basing the reviews off of hypothetical cheating.

I wouldn't even call this cheating as they were in a situation that they didn't even know if they would ever find that "life" that they had left. Not giving spoilers, but there isn't much more isolated than these two could find themselves in. I actually liked that they tried to fight this attraction for each other as long as they did. They discussed the ramifications of this. It wasn't willy nilly and to just get their rocks off, and screw whomever they hurt.

My issues with this book were not the areas that others had issues with, it was in the details, such as carving out bowls, lack of concern with Pregnancy (which would have been a BIG issue for me considering where they were and that there wasn't any medical help, the lack of encounters with natural wildlife, and finally the ridiculousness of Kylie. What did she really think was going to happen? I was expecting more of the details to be something along the lines of the book by Pepper Winters, Unseen Messages. That being said, I still really enjoyed this book and the characters. My advice on this book is that reading is a singular journey and is up to individual preferences. Those preferences don't give someone the luxury to bash a person's hard work, especially when they are doing something that the majority of people cannot do on a good day so if you are adventurous jump in and go on a new journey in finding love, even if that love is discovered in unexpected places.

I really enjoyed the first in this series and liked the characters, so I thought I'd read the rest of the trilogy. Unfortunately, the drama in the 2nd and especially in the 3rd book felt drawn out and forced. Took me a while to get through this one just because I stopped reading it a few times to read something more interesting. Glad to see the characters get their HEA, even if it took far too much exposition to get us there.

Recommend only reading the first one. This felt like "oh, I should write a sequel to ensure everyone they live happily ever after." Rather dull for most of the book, then *poof* unnecessarily complicated issues, followed by an all-too-perfect HEA for everyone... even the secondary characters. No way does everyone end up deliriously happy. However... I still like many of the characters so I guess it's alright if they're happy. :)

I loved this book so much. Kellan is one of my all time favorite book characters. It was so good to hear the story form his viewpoint, It was nice to read a book form the male viewpoint that was truly believable ; so often books that try to tell the story from a characters view other than the original fail but this did not.

I am reviewing this book based on an ARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

S.C. Stepehens is one of those authors whose books I generally quite enjoy. However, I did not enjoy this book. The characters and the story just felt flat to me and it was a struggle to finish the book. Possibly I was just in the wrong mindset when I read it but it did not work for me.

'I threw my arms around his neck and, for just a moment, let myself believe that it was months ago, and we were just two friends giving one another a moments comfort. But...we weren't. Our friendship had inflamed into passion, and, once ignited, that burn was impossible to turn back down.'

Plot

For nearly two years, Kiera's boyfriend Denny has been everything she's ever wanted. He's tender, loving, and completely devoted to her. Everything seems perfect when they head off for their dream life together in a new city; Kiera at a top University, and Denny at his dream job.

But when Denny's new job forces him to spend time away from Kiera, she's left feeling hurt, lonely and confused. Feeling in need of comfort, Kiera turns to their new roommate,a local rockstar named Kellan Kyle. At first he's just a good friend, helping her through a tough time, but as Kiera's loneliness grows, so do her feelings for Kellan. One night changes everything between them, and it's clear that things can never go back to how they were before.

My thoughts

I'd heard a lot about this book through friends on Goodreads, and saw a lot of different reviews, mostly positive, although there were some negatives too. I decided that this sounded like just the kind of book I love to read, so I decided to get myself a copy for my Kindle.

The first thing I noticed was how long the book is; at nearly 400 pages,it's quite a bit longer than a lot of the Romance books I read. However, the story was written well, and it didn't feel like a chore to get through all of the pages. In fact, I think that the length of the book helped to create tension between the characters, which definitely made the story more interesting and more believable.

I really felt sorry for Denny, as he's always put Kiera first before himself, and the one time that he doesn't, he feels really guilty and is determined to make it up to her. However, this makes Kiera feel unwanted and pushes her into the arms of Kellan, who's more than willing to oblige. But it's clear how bad Kellan feels for betraying Denny, as Denny helped him through a tough time and is one of his closest friends. Of course, Kiera is left feeling confused, having feelings for two men and not knowing who to choose. She knows that she'll have to hurt one of them in order to choose, so she's left with a difficult decision.

I really enjoyed this book and thought that the building tension between the three main characters was great. Although I loved the story, at times I found myself getting frustrated with Kiera as most of the story was centered around her inability to choose between Denny or Kellan. After a while she started to get on my nerves and I found myself wanting to shout, 'Just choose someone!', at her. I really liked the ending and wasn't expecting what happened, but the gradually building tension lead up to an explosive ending, and finally, Kiera has to make a choice.

Well, I'm glad it's over. I did enjoy the epilogue and the "jujube" .....

Was too ... I don't know there was too much crying and blushing it was just annoying

Love Kellan

I have mixed feelings about this book. I love Kellan, loved hearing his side of the story, but Kiera, ugh, I just want to punch her! Which is what makes this a great book.

At first, I wasn't sure about this book because Griffin was so frustrating. I didn't know if I could make it through to the end, but seeing how he evolved and finally grew up made me glad that I stuck with it. I was worried what all of the drama/angst would do to the D-Bags, but I'm happy with the ending. I hope books are written for Evan and Matt.

Much better than the first book. Hoping this means the 3rd will be even better!