Broken Girl vs Fix-it Boy by: Jordan Ford

Broken Girl vs Fix-It Boy (Forever Love #2)

After reading book 1 I could not wait for book 2 to come out, and I have to say, Jordan did not disappoint. Each chapter is told by either Harper, Tane or Bianca. Disclaimer: Make sure you have tissues handy.

Harper is still struggling with the loss of her parents and taking over as caretaker of her siblings and the household. While trying to fight her feelings for Tane as she is still grieving the loss of her parents puts her on a slippery slope that is leading to a major breakdown. Her best friends come over for a surprise visit and they go out and party. Harper ends up spilling all that she is going through a drunken rant.

Tane spends his time split between school, farm work and trying to win Harper over. I like the fact that it’s not a rushed relationship, but I do feel like Harper could’ve been a little more willing to try sooner, but there is a book 3, so maybe it will continue there.

Bianca is a loaner who is still lost and trying to find her place in her new school and new life. Stacey is trying to force her to hang out with her friends. After the family realizes that they forgot Harper’s birthday they plan to throw a surprise party for her which ends up falling in Bianca’s lap to put together. She has to get over her shyness to ask one of Tane’s friends for help.

Beck seems to have come out of his shell in this book, fulfilling his role as guardian. You will read several scenes of him having one on one time with the characters and watch them all grow as a family. When it comes to Oscar, Beck is the best at getting to him. And poor Willow is still struggling so hard but making great progress.

There is so much I want to say but once again I feel like the more I talk about it the less you will need to read it and you can skip it, but since that is not my goal, I am going to stop here.

There will be a book 3 out in November that follows Bianca and…you’ll just have to wait and see who catches her eye. Once you read Broken Girl vs Fix-it Boy you will know exactly who I’m talking about but I can’t give away spoilers, now can I?

I received this as an ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Publication Date: October 24, 2019 Pages: not sure about 3 hours reading time Kindle Edition YA Family, Friends, Romance

City Girl vs Country Boy by: Jordan Ford

City Girl vs Country Boy (Forever Love #1)

Oh! Where do I even start…Let’s see-in this book, you have characters who have suffered tremendous loss that changes everything they have ever known. I have been not so patiently waiting for this book to release since the author first started talking about it and now the time has come where I can share it with you.

When tragedy strikes and three families become one, some major changes take place. After losing their parents in a car crash Harper and her two siblings along with Stacey and her twin Bianca end up going to live with their “uncle” Beck and Tane, who is living with Beck since his mother’s indiscretions. Beck and the kids’ fathers where all best friends growing up and made a pact that if something ever happened to any one of them, the remaining family would take care of their children/family.

Everyone deals with grief differently, and in this story that holds true, as Harper’s sister becomes mute and her brother gets lost in the online world and develops anger issues. Stacey and Bianca, who used to be super close, let past mistakes come between them.

Beck, even though he is still dealing with his own trauma, does what any good person would do and takes the kids in and helps them through the difficult time as best as he can, which turns out to be really good for Harper’s brother. When things blow up with the kids, Beck takes all of them out to sit around a fire and finally tells them the story of how the guys all became friends and what happened in the past. He ends in telling them they are all welcome to stay with him for as long as they need and no one has to leave.

Harper, who is 18 and about to start college, has to make a tough choice of choosing between continuing to live with Beck and have help, or take her younger siblings back home to their house and become a single parent/college student.

It is told from Harper, Tane and Stacey’s pov. Where getting back to who they used to be and friendship is more of the forefront instead of a romance but you can feel the pull between Harper and Tane. I wouldn’t say it ends on a cliffhanger per-say, but the story is continued in book 2 Broken Girl vs Fix-it Boy which comes out in October.

The author informs you in the beginning that it is based in New Zealand, so some of the wording might be a little different than what you are used to but I have to tell you that I loved seeing a different part of the world.

I received this as an ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Publication Date: September 26, 2019 Pages: 317 Kindle Edition YA Family, Tragedy, Romance

15 Days With You by: Ara Grigorian

This is my first book by this author but I am glad I was given the chance to read it. I had not read a blurb when I got this book so I was going into it blind but the cover intrigued me as I am still wishing it was summer and I was at the beach.

Shep, who has recently lost his mom to cancer, loads up her old truck and moves from Texas to California to live with his uncle and aunt. When he arrived there he meets Sam, who is basically a sister to Carmen, his cousin. She is known as a clutz to the family and when she tries to help Shep move in, she breaks a picture frame of Shep’s, his uncle comes in saying “what has Sam broke this time” only to find out that behind the picture was a letter for Shep to only be read after talking with his uncle. So they all head down to the kitchen to talk and it comes to light that his mom was a surfer back in the day and went on a 15 day surfing trip up the coast and wants Shep to take the trip and spread her ashes at each of the spots she visited.

In her letter to Shep, she tells him that she is not proud of the choices she made when she was younger but she wants him to take this journey and on each day there will be a letter for him to read that will give insight to her life 18 years prior. Shep and Carmen decide they are going to go on the 15 day trip but Sam wants to go as well and it takes a little convincing for his uncle to let Sam go, with the rule being that Shep has to sleep in a tent so they are not in the RV together.

During the 15 day trip, Shep learns a lot about his mom, which as she warned was not all good, but he learned to push past his own barriers and do what she wanted him to do. When Shep left his old home and school he left some, let’s say demons, behind and it has been eating at him while on the trip. As the three of them travel, Shep and Sam get closer but she can tell he is hiding something from her, but he tells her he is not ready to talk about it. When he was younger he had learned to surf but had a traumatic experience so now being afraid of the water feels like he can’t honor his mother’s wishes and as time goes by, he finally asked Sam to teach him how to surf.

I want to keep talking about the book, but I feel like if I do then you won’t even need to read the book. So I’m going to stop there and tell you that the lessons he learns while on the trip are much needed to help him heal. I felt like this book was very well put together and it sucked you in from the beginning.

I received this as an ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Publication Date: September 24, 2019 Pages: 348 Kindle Edition YA Family, Loss, New Beginnings

The Playmaker by: Jordan Ford

The Playmaker (A Big Play Novel Book 1)

In this story, you have the football star Colt and the freaky little hipster Tori. They used to be best friends when they were younger, but after high school starts and the social standards are put into place, they drift apart.

With it being their senior year, Tori has come up with a plan to make Colt fall for her under the guise of liking one of his teammates. At first he turns her down, but after some consideration he agrees to help but only in secret. They start spending time in the meadow that they frequented when they were younger, leading to hanging out at his place and watching games.

After some hints about changing her wardrobe, the guys start to take notice of what she hides underneath her homemade tye-die flowy dresses she wears. Which in turns makes Colt realize that he has feelings and/or thoughts about her that he tries to ignore due to her being “weird”.

After Colt is injured in a game, Tori shows up at his house the next day to check on him. They start talking about a paper he has to write and it comes out that he has dyslexia and the letters get mixed up. Deciding to put Operation Fall for Tori on hold, she comes up with a solution to the problem. The next day, she goes back over to his house with research to show him that a lot of famous people have suffered from dyslexia and found ways to overcome it. So now instead of him teaching her, she teaches him.

Still struggling with his feelings for Tori, Colt tells her she is ready and she doesn’t need his help anymore. So she decides it’s time to “man up” and tell Colt that he is the one she likes so she dresses up to go to a party. Come to find out the whole football team skipped out on going due to a rival school attending. Things don’t turn out well for Tori and she is found in a bad position.

Oh, I so want to say more, but I think it’s time you went and picked up The Playmaker and read it for yourself.

Originally released March 2016-new look/new cover released September 2019
Pages: 328 Paperback Edition Teen YA Football, Family, School Drama Nelson High Raiders Book 1

Wipe Out by: Jordan Ford

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The Ryder Bay series continues in this story about Jace and Scarlett, aka Bass and Lettie. If you read the Boys of Summer Riptide novela you got a preview into this one.

When Jace makes one bad decision too many, he is shipped across the country to live with his mom’s cousin until he can learn to straighten up. At his new school, Jace finds some kids he fits with, until lunch, when he is busted for having a vape pen that’s not even his. Not wanting to become a nark on his first day, he takes the punishment and gets a day of dentition, along with the message to stay away from those kids and make new friends. When he gets out of detention, Marshall is there to pick him up and lecture him, telling him he needs to hang out with a different crowd such as Griffin’s girlfriend Savannah, along with her friend Harley and their crew. Not wanting to make friends but keep the calm he’s like whatever and goes to his room.

Lettie is having her own bad first day. Starting high school, she thought she would have at least one friend, come to find out that over the summer her friend decided she wanted nothing to do with her and made new friends, the popular kind, who go out of their way to make fun of Lettie for being a loner and bookworm.

Lettie and Bass have still been emailing back and forth with each other and growing closer until Lettie starts getting confused by having feelings for Jace and feeling like she is cheating on Bass.

Jace, not wanting to tell Snap Dragon about Lettie and his confusing feelings, starts slacking off on his emails to Snap. That all changes when he tells her if she misses her email buddy that she needs to write him and tell him that. So she does and ends up giving off enough clues that Bass figures out that Snap Dragon is Lettie, but he doesn’t know how to tell her he’s Bass without causing problems between them.

When she finally decides to tell Bass who she is, and he decides to come clean as well, when Reed comes in a screws it all up. But that’s all I am saying about that, you will have to read to find out for yourself what happens.

What another great read by Jordan. I loved the interactions with previous characters, but I think Harley and her stubborn streak just might be my favorite.

Publication Date: July 20, 2019 Pages: 398 Kindle Edition YA Summer, Friends, Family

Riptide by: Jordan Ford

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Boys of Summer

Jace, a.k.a. Bass, is a 16 year old boy who thinks no one will ever want him and that he is always being pushed away. His dad moved overseas when he was younger, leaving him with his mom. Now his mom is remarried and they are expecting a baby, making Bass feel like he lost his mom to Tony and their baby.

While at a party, after Bass thought it was a good idea to jump from a two story balcony into a pool, a girl he was dancing with gave him the email address to someone who could get him something to give him that rush feeling he is always seeking. After a night of hanging with his buddies and drinking, Bass decides to email SnapDragon and see what’s up.

The next morning, his computer dings to let him know he’s got a new email. Bass discovers that in his drunken state last night, he added numbers that did not belong in the email and sent it to someone else. What happened in his drunken haze ends up being a good thing as he makes an online email buddy. After a few emails back and forth they decide to keep things anonymous because they don’t want to mess up what they have with each other, which happens to be finding out that someone else out there knows what you are going through. They get to know each other, and as things turn bad for Bass and he gets grounded to his room, he turns to S and she helps him through things.

Bass is a typical teenage bad boy, hanging out with his buds, surfing, drinking on the beach, going to parties and a little law breaking good time, until one too many nights roof jumping end up being his downfall. You find out a little more in the end of the book but be warned you will be waiting on the edge of your seat until August 2, 2019 when Wipe Out comes out and you find out just who S is. This is going to be a long summer!

I received this as an ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Publication Date: June 18, 2019 Pages: ?? Kindle Edition YA Summer, Friends, Family

Hidden Creek Secrets by: Jaxson Kidman

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Hidden Creek High Book 1

Get ready to get to know Weslee and Aira in this new four book series from Jaxson Kidman. I will start off by saying that, yes this one ends in a cliffhanger as I suspected , but rest assured you don’t have to wait a year before the next one comes out. Every two weeks through June, Jaxson will release the next book with the next one available to preorder!

As kids, you have neighbors and friends, Weslee and Aira, who are ripped apart when Aira and her family move out of Hidden. Fast forward a few years and Aira is moving back to Hidden and will live with Julia. No one knows the reason behind Aira moving back but her aunt and she plans on keeping it a secret because in a town like Hidden, secrets are best kept hidden.

Since she is returning after years of being gone, she runs into a girl that she used to play with from before and they pick up almost were they left off. Everyone tells Aira that Wes is bad news and she needs to stay away from him, but she says she knows Wes and he’s not like that. She has nightmares and can’t sleep without first wearing herself out and taking long walks on the beach helps. One night she runs into Wes at the pier and he discovers one of her deep secrets. After confronting her, he makes her promise to quit.

Choosing to let what everyone said about Wes go in one ear and out the other, things start to happen to her. Old rivalries flare up due to some of those buried secrets and the fact Aira is hanging with Wes. When her dark secret, that Wes had discovered comes out she automatically accuses him of telling everyone, but after finding out the truth, she comes out fighting back, showing them she is not weak. Then just as everything starts to get better, a knock on the door and a phone call cause all kinds of crap to hit the fan. And then book one is over. Told you it was a cliffhanger but fear not book two is out already so you won’t have to wait for it.

Publication Date: May 14, 2019 Pages: 268 Kindle Edition High School, Drama, Romance Listed as YA but I say on the older side due to sexual scenes

Stealing Home by: Becky Wallace

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ARC may contain spoilers

Ryan, the daughter of the Buckley Beavers divorced owners, has grown up with baseball in her life and has always dreamed of owning the team when she gets older. When Sawyer shows up, she feels like her plans have been thrown a curveball. She has always been good at “no the fraternizing” policy, but his cool swagger is throwing her off her game.

When Ryan learns that her mom is going to sell her half of the team due to both financial reasons and the fact the she doesn’t want to be stuck with them any longer, Ryan has an idea that might just help her save her beloved team. Sawyer, who has been injured and is sitting on the sidelines, offers to help her out. She is in need of sponsors that will help her remodel and upgrade the Buckley complex. Sawyer gives her the idea of using an events center to host summer camps and special days for handicap or underprivileged kids.

The doctors are wanting Sawyer to see a major league doctor, and since its Ryan’s duty to drive him where he needs to go, they take a three hour trip. While at Ranger Stadium, Ryan gets a look around with her tour guide, and she actually gets even more ideas of how to help save Buckley’s. After his visit with the doctor and her tour, they are about to head back home, but Sawyer ends up scoring tickets and they decide to stay and watch Ryan’s first major league game. While at the game, they get caught on the kiss cam. Because they’re fighting their attraction to one another, let’s face it that’s what two teenagers are gonna do, they try to stay away from each other after the kiss and hope no one sees the picture.

Once his injury heals and Sawyer is back to playing, he ends up in a rut. And when Ryan tries to talk with her mom about her plan to save Buckley’s, she finds out that it’s a done deal and her mom already sold the team. After a heated exchange, she leaves her mom at a food joint. Then things finally start to turn around.

It’s actually baseball season as I read this so the time frame fits perfect in real life. It brings back memories of me out on the field when I was younger. I’m not really a sports fan but if I had to choose a favorite sport it would be baseball. I like the reference to the BBQ place and the fact that it serves your meat on brown butcher paper. Not too long ago I ate at a BBQ place that served their meat that way- to say the least, it was a first. All in all, this was a fairly quick read for me.

Publication Date: July 9, 2019 Pages: 320 Hardback YA Baseball

In Another Life by: C.C. Hunter

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What would you do if you walked into a store and saw someone who resembled a person who had been missing for 15 years?

The first thing Cash does after bumping into Chole is tell her “whatever you’re trying to pull, don’t do it.” Chloe has no clue what he is talking about; she’s just kinda stuck in life right now. Her parents are getting divorced and her dad is in the process of taking her back to her mother in Joyful, Texas. Her mom has just gotten the all clear from the doctor regarding her cancer and her dad has moved on to some hussie just a few years older than Chloe. Chloe’s mom has such a strong hatred for her dad that she lets it consume her to the point of depression.

When Chloe starts her new school in her senior year of high school she tells herself it won’t suck as bad as she thinks it’s going to. Having had made friends with her neighbor Lindsey, she takes her to school and is given the rundown of whos who and all that high school drama information that is needed to survive; including but not limited to, the name of her current crush, who ends up hitting on Chloe later that day.

When the school day is out, Chloe and Lindsey head out to her car only to stop when Jamie pulls up and offers Lindsey a ride home, which turns out to be a good thing when Chloe has a flat tire. She doesn’t notice Cash hanging around until he offers to help fix it. Her dad and her used to have races to see who could change a tire faster so she knows what she is doing and tells him no thanks. He keeps offering to help, even offering to give her a can of fix-a-flat that he has in his jeep. Chloe keeps refusing his help-until she can’t get the lug nut off. As they get to talking, she discovers he knows a lot about her for her being new to town and to the school. Then he confesses to stalking her on social media because he thought she was someone else who might have been kidnapped. Chloe tells him she was adopted and explains that her parents would never do something like that.

The more they get to talking, they decide to find out the truth on their own before they confront either one of her “moms.” Cash eventually reveals he is the son of a bad guy who had him doing illegal things since he was eight, and he had been in foster care for many years. As time goes by, the pair get closer to what happened regarding her adoption and possible kidnapping-revealing long buried secrets that could be deadly.

To me it was an insta-love story. I was on a non-stop reading binge for hours then kinda got stuck in the book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great read; but I got to the point where, in some books, I’m just ready for it to be over and end up skipping until the last chapter or two, but this time I put it down for a couple of days then picked it back up and was back into that non stop reading until I finished it.

Publication Date: March 26, 2019 Pages: 336 Hardback YA Contemporary, Adoption, Family

Face the Wave by: Jordan Ford

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Book 3 of the Ryder Bay series that follows Skylar and Jed May contain spoilers

Skylar, after being in a coma for four weeks, finally wakes up while Jed is in her room cleaning and talking to her. When she wakes up she is groggy and does not remember what happened to her. Since she has been asleep for so long, she has to go through physical therapy to learn how to walk again. A few days after waking up and learning to walk again, Sklyar is released to go home. When she arrives home and goes to her room she gets a bad feeling and can’t stay in her room so her mom sets her up in the downstairs guest room, it also makes it easier, as she is still weak.

Her mom tries to do everything she can think of to get her back to the old Skylar, even throwing her a party with all her friends. It’s too much for her to take and she ends up slipping out, going to the roof where Savannah finds her thinking she is going to do something bad. Skylar has a darkness in her that she can’t escape from. She keeps having flashes of color in her mind but is not able to connect the dots. Savannah, not being able to help her, asks Jed for help, as she feels like it will benefit her to have new people around and not people from her past. She slowly gets to know Griffin, Savannah’s boyfriend; Harley, Adian’s girlfriend; and Jed, Harley’s BMF. When she is around Jed she feels a safe prescenes around her; when she is around her boyfriend, Craig she gets this off feeling.

After some time, Skylar remembers what happened to her on that fateful day. Luckily, she feels safe enough with Jed that she tells him everything and he promises to help her but that she needs to tell everyone else what happened. When everyone learns the secret, they come up with a way to help with the solution.

There is so much more I could write about but in order to leave you hanging and wanting to read the book yourself, I will leave off with this: once you find out what happened and what is going to happen you will need tissues but then you will be cheering for Skylar. This story focus is mainly on Skylar and Jed unlike the previous books where all the characters had semi-equal roles, but it’s what this one needed. Hope you enjoy this trilogy as much as I did. Now we wait for Little Lettie.

Publication Date: April 12, 2019 Pages: 275 YA Romance Kindle Edition