Bilqis is born to a jinni mother in the ancient lands of Saba, what is now known as Yemen.  Bilquis' birthday come with a prophesy- that she will have a great destiny to fulfill.  Bilqis doesn't seems to have the same talents as a jinn as her mother, but is easily able to soak up all of the knowledge that her mother can bring her.  As a young adult, Biqis learns of one of the jinn powers that she can use-her power of sensuality. After discovering the power of sex, Bilqis' world changes and opens. Then, tragedy strikes that leads Bliqis on a mission of revenge.  With her mission, Bilqis learns more of the terrible King ruling over Saba.  As Bilqis continues her journey, her destiny becomes clear- to end the King's regime and become the leader that the people need.

The full story of Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba is lost to history.  I have read several other versions this amazing Queen's story, but none quite like this.  Autumn Bardot is known for her strong female characters as well as erotic story lines.  Confessions of a Sheba Queen definitely falls firmly in erotic historical fiction, which isn't something I normally read, but I really enjoyed this.  Bilqis' story combined with the erotic story line makes for an intense and absorbing plot. From the beginning Bilqis jinn parentage and destiny add a sense of purpose to the story.  Even without her jinn heritage, Bilqis' character is strong, intelligent, and willing to put others first.  I liked that the jinn part of her parentage allowed Bilqis to use sex and her sensuality as a source of power and clarity in her life and allowed her to grow as a person.  The sex scenes were all unique, imaginative and used very modern language. However, what I appreciated most were the ties to what little history we do know of Bilqis.  I loved the lavish descriptions of the temple of Awwam and Bilqis' time with King Solomon. Richly absorbing and passionate, Confessions of a Sheba Queen creates a great blend of erotica and historical fiction.


This book was received for free in return for an honest review. 

I've become more and more interested in language and grammar over the past few years, probably in part because I've been writing more online and I don't want to embarrass myself.  Living in Australia has something to do with it too, as I find myself defending why Americans talk or write the way they do, and I like to be armed with facts.

Between You & Me was a Christmas gift, and I was expecting, from promotional blurbs, a book with a similar tone to Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss.  It's not; the humour here is...negligible. Or maybe just different.  As much as this book is about grammar and usage, it's also a memoir of sorts of Norris' time at The New Yorker. 

I was thrilled to learn that I can let go of the guilt I feel for using hyphens instead of proper em/en dashes, because it's an acceptable substitution, given a hyphen is easier to reach on the keyboard.  I was also happy to learn I wasn't abusing my dash usage - they're so useful!

But it turns out that using semi-colons is considered pretentious (in America anyway).  Bummer; I guess that means I'm pretentious?  They just seem to be the natural punctuation for how I write.  I try to keep them to a minimum, but I do like stringing together a couple of independent clauses.

Generally, a well-written (I can't imagine the OCD proof-reading process for this book), interesting read about grammar - and the fact that I can use 'grammar' and 'interesting' in the same sentence should say something about Norris' ability to make a dry subject worth reading about.

January is always a great book month for me, between the sales and my birthday, it's always the biggest haul month.  Luckily, it's summer holidays here so I'm mostly off work all month too, making it also a big reading month.

The b-day haul consisted of:

The Book of Human Emotion - Not absolutely sure about this, but it's done as a dictionary type setup, so I was intrigued.

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen - Norris writes for The New Yorker and I've heard only good things about the book.

Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine - This is a no-brainer title and it's published by the Bodleian Library so I'm hoping that equates to a quality read.

My purchases:

Thirteen Guests - I heard good things about this one from someone here on BookLikes

The Masquerading Magician - A follow up to a promising first book in a series.

A Familiar Tail - First in a new series about cats and witches.

Stiff Competition - the latest in a great mystery series that always makes me laugh.

New books:  7

Books read:  8

Total physical books on TBR:  195 and gaining...  ;)

I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review

Confessions of a Queen B* is a cute, fluffy YA contemporary read. Very fast-paced, I raced through this story in just a couple of hours. With endearing characters and a fun plot, this is a nice book to read during a balmy summer evening.

I really liked Alexis. Perhaps it was because I could relate to her. There was just something about her drive and hidden vulnerability that drew me to her. I also loved Brett-- another almost-too-good-to-be-true leading man. Lots of teenage stereotypes mixed with some intriguing non-stereotypical characters made for an interesting line-up.

Loved the snippets from Alexis's blog posts at the beginning of each chapter-- they helped me understand her character more. Though I really liked the characters, the plot didn't draw me in as much as I had hoped. I found myself frequently skimming to get to the next part. The ending wasn't really an ending as much as an invitation to continue the series. If you're looking for HEA, you won't find it here. That's not to say it's bad, in fact I liked the ending-- it was much more realistic than a HEA would have been.

If you're looking for fun and fluff to read on a hot summer day, this book should fit the bill.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My stop on the blog tour can be found at Donnie Darko Girl.

Confessions of a Queen B* was a rollicking ride through high school with Alexis, the Queen Bitch, and I also named her the Queen of Snark. I loved this girl, but man, she had some majorly steep walls up all around her. I was glad to see she had at least two friends. Even if you are going after the popular kids, you still need friends!

After being humiliated in front of the entire school (when you find out how, well, I think you'll agree it was a really messed up thing for someone to do), Alexis decides to get revenge by creating a gossip blog called The Eastline Spy where she outs people who do crappy things. To Alexis, anything and anyone are fair game, including the awful school lunches and one class everyone joked you only had to breathe to get an "A". That class changed after her post on it by the way.

So everyone is terrified of Alexis. She uses that fear to help those who are bullied, which is cool, but she's also not friendly to the victims of bullying. When Alexis and the quarterback, Brett, must partner up in a school project, she's forced to look beyond her stereotypes when she slowly begins to realize Brett isn't the kind of person she thought he was.

He's able to thaw her out a bit - she's pretty icy to him at first - and I loved them working together. Their back-and-forth banter was entertaining and had me laughing. Alexis is a sharp-witted girl, and while I hoped she would stop letting the popular kids get to her, I didn't want her to lose her wittiness. To me, they still must be getting under her skin because otherwise she'd stop her blog, right? Or maybe I'm wrong?

Confessions of a Queen B* is a quick read, and I loved EVERY MOMENT. Alexis's friends reminded me of the friends Lindsay Lohan had in Mean Girls, and they were pretty awesome friends to have. I think Alexis is a tough girl to do what she does, but I also think she could soften up a bit. There are times it's good not to be a bitch, lol. Confessions of a Queen B* is a fun read, and I'm looking forward to grabbing the next book in the series!