Alex DeLuca and Cassandra Harrell are opposing lawyers during a divorce case. Alex sees a copy of an erotic novel sitting on his paralegal's desk with Cassandra's picture on it. He says something about it when in court. Cassandra is confused when he calls her by her sister's name. She goes to see her sister to find out her sister used Cassandra's photo on the dust jacket. Cassandra decides she will confront Alex when he calls to take her out to dinner over the fiasco he created. She goes, explains, then turns the tables on him. This leads him to want to show her something special. Will she let him? Will she listen to him? Can they become a couple?

I enjoyed this story. I liked Cassandra. She knew just where to get Alex. I liked her sister K. C. also and she knew how to tell Cassandra how she needed to improve her life. Alex, I warmed up to. At first, he was kind of a jerk but once he explained himself, he became okay. I would like to see their story expanded. This was just one episode of them.

LG are quite rightly very proud of their excellent Optimus 2X handset.  Not only is China Finish Cut Part Factory it their most powerful phone to date but it is the first handset in the UK to boast a dual core processor.  Since its announcement several other end top end phones have tried to compete with it with varying success.  The HTC Sensation however is one model that looks best equipped to eclipse the dizzy heights reached by the LG model.  

So how do these two models match up with one another and more importantly which one should tempt you to take your first steps into the would of dual core smartphones.It would only be right to start this comparison by looking at the dual core properties of both of these models given as it is one of their main selling points.  When first released the Optimus 2X was truly ground breaking as it sported a Nvidia Tegra Two chipset.  This included a 1Ghz processor that was separated into two cores enabling the phone to offer users true multi tasking facilities.  There was no handset available that could rival the speed of this phone despite the handset boasting a very modest 512MB of RAM.  Since its release technology has moved on a little and now we have the HTC Sensation complete with a 1.2Ghz dual core processor and an impressive Adreno 220 graphics accelerator.  Not content with offering a faster processor than the Optimus 2X the Sensation takes thinks a step further by also fitting 768MB of RAM memory.  Despite HTCs excellent Sense user interface placing extra strain on the processor the model still operates in a flash.   The result of this is that the Sensation performs better than the LG despite that handset being one of the fastest available.Things are a little more evenly matched when we take a look at the screen technology found on both of these models.  The HTC Sensation offers one of the largest phone screens currently available at 4.3 inches.  In order to maintain the quality on these larger screens it a necessary to implement a resolution higher than the 480 x 800 standard that is found on many of the smaller displays.

 In this case HTC have upped the quality to a massive 540 x 960 pixels which together with the excellent S-LCD screen offers a good clarity of image.  The LG Optimus 2X screen measures up a touch smaller at 4 inches but rather than use the newer S-LCD technology LG have opted to stick with TFT.  This may have resulted in a poorer standard of image if the manufacturer had not chosen to also implement IPS technology which offers improved viewing angles as well as more naturally deep colours.  The Sensation may offer the better specification on paper but in practice there is little to choose between both of these displays.LG set the standard with the excellent Optimus 2X but the time has come for the bar to be raised yet again and the HTC Sensation is the perfect model to do just that.The HTC Sensation And The LG Optimus 2X are available now.

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

I did not finish this book at 10 percent. Sorry, the changing perspectives and formatting was too much for me to overcome. I really liked the synopsis which is why I chose this book and just felt let down in the end. I noticed a lot of reviewers mentioned the slowly moving story and honestly I just kept going this is boring, this is boring, who is this, and this is boring. 

"The Woman in the Green Dress" follows Fleur Richards. Fleur is waiting for her husband Hugh to return from The Great War (World War I) when she receives news of his death on Armistice Day. She supposedly leaves England for Australia (I didn't get that far).

What didn't help me while reading though is that we follow so many characters in this (and I only got to 10 percent). We are introduced to a character named Della. I still don't know what she was about since the formatting made it hard to "see" who was speaking. And then we followed Fleur and there was a male character whose name is eluding me right now. 

I just have to say my first impression of Fleur was she was weak as anything. She literally hides and doesn't speak to anyone and the book jumps to a character in Australia who I assume is important later. I think Cooper didn't set up enough time for readers to even care about Fleur's predicament. She throws us right into Armistice Day and then Fleur sees the Queen of England and then runs home to bad news. The book would have been better to show Fleur and Hugh in love so that you at least care when she receives news of his death. 

I think the writing wasn't doing a lot for me. The dialogue that I managed to get through felt stiff and forced. The book felt slow and also at the same time not as developed as it should have been. I know this is an ARC, but it was hard to get through this with the formatting being all over the place too. 

Sorry, not sorry, DNFed this thing at 12 percent. I cannot with this book right now. I felt like my brain was trying to slide away. The author dumps us in the book as if we should know things that she just blithely gets into. I don't know if she world-builds later or what, but I can't keep reading this book as if I know who everyone is and what they are doing. 

"Ninth House" is the first book in the Alex Stern series. Yeah, I say first book though the author makes it seems like this is just a continuation of another book. Alex through machinations (that I managed to gather) is a student at Yale. She is there because she can see ghosts (called Grays) in this book and seems to be some record keeper of a secret society at Yale. I can't say much more than that cause this book is all over the place.

My problems are the following:

Alex Stern. Can't really say much about her besides there is not much there to keep me reading about her. We start at the end of something big happening to her and then jump back to her observing some messed up ritual. I don't even know anything besides she eats a lot of ginger candy which I do not enjoy. Also I think she has another name? I don't know. I think between that and her having a secret society name I was just done. 

Yale. I got nothing here folks. Bardugo acts like everyone who reads this book knows exactly how Yale is set up. Bardugo go into the architecture and the meaning behind said architecture a couple of places and I wondered if she has a background in history cause that's the kind of meaningless stuff historians like to just randomly tell you when you ask them a question about anything. 

World-building. It's often hard to thread the needle with world-building in the first book in a series. This is a fantasy series and they are often harder in my opinion cause readers will be the first ones to bring up how the rules the author set up in book #1, and #2 are incorrect due to whatever happens in book #3. I say readers like I don't do this too.

Bardugo went a different direction and just threw us into this world and acted like it's no big deal. I still don't get what is happening. Secret rituals to keep people rich? Alex sees Grays? Alex is called upon when a dead body shows? Sorry, this made zero sense and I just did not want to continue. The whole mystery surrounding Lethe House could have potential, I just don't want to waste my time pushing myself to the finish on this one. Too many books out there. 

I am pretty on board with the philosophy that the author is trying to put forward, but I just really can't stand the overdone writing with all its flourishes and tangents. Another era I suppose. I'll try to find a summary of the main philosophical ideas somewhere else. DNF.