The International Giveaways Café (93)

Welcome back to another wonderful Saturday morning! The list has been shrinking a little of late, but there are always at least a few great giveaways on hand. Now would be a great time to add your’s here, too, to get some great exposure. Hope you all have a great weekend!

And, remember to let us know if you’ve won anything recently; the Book Lovers would love to hear! At Book Lovers Inc., it’s our pleasure to share the bookish love! Good luck to everyone and hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

And, remember to let us know if you’ve won anything recently; the Book Lovers would love to hear! At Book Lovers Inc., it’s our pleasure to share the bookish love! Good luck to everyone and hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Here’s the fine print for entering your link:
Guidelines:
If …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and once again we have another author meltdown but this time over their struggles for their art and selling out, Amazon moving into their own currency and more publishing and book updates.

Amazon is back in the news with their recent announcement that they will be launching a digital currency to purchase apps in the Kindle Fire platform.  The more customers purchase and use Amazon Coins for buying apps the more discounts they will get and Amazon is enticing their customers with a free 500 coins offer for all customers in the US which comes up to $5 for those who buy games, movies or apps.

And talking about Amazon, I reported a few months ago that there was problems with their warehouses due to a security firm who were bullying  and throwing racist abuse at workers in Germany. Well it looks like there …

Review: It Had to Be You by Jill Shalvis

Format read: ebook copy provided by publisher through NetGalley
Series: Book #7 in the Lucky Harbor series
Release Date: 28 May 2013
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Number of pages: 368 pages
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon, Kindle, Book Depository US, Book Depository UK

Blurb:

Ali Winters is not having a good day. Her boyfriend left her, everyone in town thinks she’s a thief, and now she’s about to be kicked out of her home. Her only shot at keeping a roof over her head and clearing her name is to beg for help from a police detective who’s as sexy as he is stern….

After a high-profile case goes wrong, Luke Hanover returns to his hometown for some peace and quiet. Instead he finds a bombshell brunette in a heap of trouble. As he helps Ali put her world back together, the pieces of Luke’s own life finally …

Bookish Rant: Unconventional Endings Need Not Apply

“I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it” -Edmund Dantes.

Book adaptations are a constant bone of contention for Book Lovers. Do we want to see our favorite works beautifully depicted on screen a la Game of Thrones? Or are we outraged by the humorous defilement of a definitely not humorous body of literature in School of Thrones? (Note: Regardless of sexposition in the former, and lack of Arya in the latter, I am a huge fan of both adaptations.)

I take most adaptations on a case-by-case basis. But will instantly and irrevocably transform into a flaming ball of nerd-hate when screenwriters who are essentially transmitting the story directly from page to screen, get a sudden aneurysm brainstorm and “improve” the ending. Screw things like plot, character development, …

Dual Review: Lover Undercover by Samanthe Beck

Format Read: e-book copy provided from publisher for review
Number of Pages: 293 pages
Release Date: April 22nd 2013
Publisher: Entangled – Brazen
Series: Love Undercover, #1
Formats Available: e-book, Kindle Edition
Purchasing Info: Goodreads | Publisher | Amazon | B&N | Kobo

Book Blurb:

He’s undercover. She’s in over her head.

Yoga instructor Kylie Roberts is the good twin. At least she was—until an accident forces Kylie to step into her twin’s sexy stilettos at a posh Hollywood “men’s club.” But nothing could’ve prepared Kylie for the dead body in the club’s parking lot or the ridiculously hot detective who insists the killer is targeting her regulars.

Detective Trevor McCade needs Kylie’s help to draw out the killer. It means long nights undercover and long dances where Kylie’s body tempts him with sensual promises. Dances that leave them both wanting more. But despite Kylie’s hidden identity and the danger lurking in the shadows, it’s only …

Romance and Me: Discrimination Based on Name

Hi Everyone!

You all know that I’m an equal opportunity reader when it comes to romance: I read anything from contemporary to historical, erotic to inspirational, sci-fi to paranormal. I keep an open mind and I’m always up to expand my reading horizons by experimenting with different sub-genres. So with that disclaimer out of the way I can make my confession: despite my tolerant and open-minded reader beliefs I sometimes discriminate books/stories/characters based on names.

And I don’t mean the cutesy and at times over the top names of the town/place the story is set in, like a contemporary romance being set in the small town of Love, or Promise Harbor or a historical romance taking place in Harmony Creek or Temperance Manor. No, those just receive an eyebrow twitch, but they don’t disturb me too much to make me stop reading the book.

New Releases: May 13-19, 2013

Title: Parallel
Author: Lauren Miller
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Release date: May 14, 2013 by HarperTeen

Description:

Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She’d go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she’s in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it’s as if her past has been rewritten.

With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only …