Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.  This Tuesday we are talking about our TBR and the books we’ve added that we forgot why we added them in the first place to that Mountain of a Reading Pile.

June 9: Books I’ve Added to my TBR and Forgotten Why (stolen from Louise @ Foxes & Fairy Tales)

That ever growing TBR…. Looking back at my Goodreads To Read List I’ve found several books I’ve add that I can’t remember why I put them on their to begin with.  I started going through my list last year and culling the heard, but I still have a long way to go.  As to why I put them on their maybe it was the cover, maybe it was the blurb, or maybe it was a blogger friend who reviewed and made it sound like something I might like.  Now looking back and reading the blurbs I’m at a loose as to why I picked these to go on my TBR.  All the books featured I added to my TBR back in 2012 and 2013.

Here are my Top 10 Picks off my TBR that I can’t remember why I put them on the list:

What books are on your TBR that you forgot why you added them?  

I’d love to hear from you!

Angela 

I was born and raised in Northern Indiana. I’m an outdoor sun loving reader living near San Fransisco. I’m a mother, wife, dog owner, animal, and book lover. I’m the owner, reviewer, and mind behind Angel’s Guilty Pleasures. My favorite animals are horses & dogs. As for reading I love all things paranormal & urban fantasy. My favorite shifters are dragons!

The Top Ten is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

All the books featured here are 4 or 5 Stars.  Some I’ve re-read/listened to multiple times.  I decided to share the opening paragraphs from the books that grabbed me.  The pictures take you to my review or affiliate link.

May 26: Opening Lines (Best, favorite, funny, unique, shocking, gripping, lines that grabbed you immediately, etc.)

Sinister Magic (Death Before Dragons, #1) by Lindsay Buroker

As I scooted a few more inches down the cliff, I came to the end of my rope. And Swore. Vehemently and virulently, as appropriate for someone hanging from damp, gritty, vertical rock a hundred feet above crashing ocean waves.

Then I made the mistake of looking down and swore a little more. Heights don’t usually faze me. What gets me is the thought of fall-ing from them, landing on sharp pointy rocks, being pulverized like flank steak in a meat grinder, and then being sucked out to sea, never to be seen again.
 

Slouch Witch (The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic) by Helen Harper

The man didn’t look like much at first glance. Taller than me but weedy, with an oddly bul-bous head perched on top of a white, scrawny neck. He was smartly dressed, with a suit and tie, but I should have known better than to assume that clothes maketh the man. I’d had some ridiculously wealthy people in the back of my cab in the past and the most affluent of them looked as if he’d been sleeping rough for three months. maybe that was why he had such a healthy bank account – because he didn’t waste time on things like shaving or brushing his hair or, um, washing.
 

Elizabeth’s Wolf (Breeds) by Lara Leigh

Prologue

Cassie At Seven

Dash Sinclair. That’s the name you want, Cassie. Choose Dash.

Seven-year-old Cassie Colder stared at the name that the pale, translucent finger pointed to. Her heart raced, fear was an ugly taste in her mouth and desperation had the tears she couldn’t shed threading to well in her eyes. But when the fairy pointed to him, all she could do was hope.

Dash Sinclair sounded like such a nice daddy’s name. She bet Dash Sinclair didn’t hit his little girl or scream at her. She bet he loved her and he took care of her like a daddy was supposed to do.
 

Bear Meets Girl (Pride) by Shelly Laurenston

Brutal, undeniable pain. The kind of pain that could kill a man. Maybe it had. Maybe the pain throbbing in his head right at this moment had killed him and he’d have to spend eternity feeling like this. Like warmed-over shit melting in the hot desert sun.

The worst part about all this? It was his fault. He had no one to blame for this but him-self-and those dame Jell-O shots. He should have stayed away from them. He knew better. All that alcohol intros delectable little jiggly squares … what was he thinking? And now he could barely move without pain. Brutal, un-deniable pain.
 

Hot and Badgered (The Honey Badger) by Shelly Laurenston

Prologue

Charles Taylor didn’t realize until that moment how fast life could flip on a man.

One second he’d been listening to two crazy women he’d known for years try to talk him into taking over the Pack from the young, arrogant wolf they all hated. The next second the doorbell rang . . . and everything changed. Forever.
 

Spider’s Bite (Elemental Assassin) by Jennifer Estep

“My name is Gin, and I kill people.”

Normally, my confession would have elicited gasps of surprise. Pale faces. Nervous sweat. Stifled screams. An overturned chair or two as people scrambled to get away before I buried a knife in their heart–or back. A suck-ing would was a sucking wind. I wasn’t picky about where I caused it.

“Hi, Gin,” four people chorused back to me in perfect, dull, monotones unison.

But not in this place. Within the walled confines of Ashland Asylum, my confession, true though it might be, didn’t even merit a raised eyebrow, much less shock and frightened awe. I was relatively normal compared to the freaks of nature and magic who populated the grounds. Like Jackson, the seven-foot-tall albino giant seated to my left who drooled worse than a mastiff and gurgled like a three=month-old child.
 

Oracle’s Moon by Thea Harrison

Attracting a Djinn’s interest is generally not considered to be a good thing, Grace.

The babysitter Janice’s pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace’s head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with all the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could talk, you know it would be whining, “Oh geez this is gonna hurt.”

Which was pretty much how the whole day had felt to Grace, including the sense of impending doom.

So thanks for the snark fest, Janice. It wasn’t like Grace had any choice about the Djinn appearing in her life in the first place. He had been part of the group that had shown up on her doorstep at three thirty in the morning, because they couldn’t wait until a goddamn decent time to talk to her. 

She should probably stop calling him “the Djinn.” He didn’t, after all, have a name. He was Khalil somebody. According to one of his companions, he was Khalil Somebody Important. 
 

Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1) by Thea Harrison

After Another night filled with nightmares, Sophie overslept. When she finally woke and looked blearily around her bedroom, she could tell by the angle of the light along the edges of the blinds that the day was no longer new.

The day had, in fact, not been new for some time. Her stomach took a nosedive as she snatched up her alarm clock. Damn it. Her technology curse and struck again. Resorting to an old-fashioned windup clock hadn’t helped in the slightest, and the clock’s hands had stopped at 4:36.

Ignoring the flare of aches in her shoulder, abdomen, and right thigh, she shoved upright and limped into the living room to check her cell phone. The screen confirmed what she already knew. She was horribly late. 

Angela 

I was born and raised in Northern Indiana. I’m an outdoor sun loving reader living near San Fransisco. I’m a mother, wife, dog owner, animal, and book lover. I’m the owner, reviewer, and mind behind Angel’s Guilty Pleasures. My favorite animals are horses & dogs. As for reading I love all things paranormal & urban fantasy. My favorite shifters are dragons!

 I found this tag on Lili Lost in a Book and she saw it on Emily the Book Nerd.

What book cover makes you think of summer?

I read Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy.  Most of those covers aren’t to summer like.  I have dived into a few Contemporary Romance/Western Romance’s and one is The Original Heartbreakers series by Gena Showalter.  This cover is sweet and has those nice bright relaxing tones that remind me of summer. 

What book has brightened your day?

Well I like the Pride series by Shelly Laurenston.  It always makes me smile with it’s great hummer, but the one I pick to re-listen/read the most is, Wolf With Benefits.  It’s just so much fun with several laugh out loud moments. 

Find a book cover with Yellow on it.

I LOVE the Psy-Changeling series and the spin-off Psy-Changling Trilogy.  Open Light just popped into my head.  You can see why!

What is your favorite summer beach read?

I like to go with light, fun, and humorous.   My picks are re-reads/listens to old favorites.  Shelly Laurenston aka G.A. Akin books give me a good time and make me laugh/smile. 

What action book had you running for the ice cream man?

I’d have to pick any of Ilona Andrews books.  The Kate Daniels series is a favorite and in that one I’d pick Magic Strikes; because the relationship between Kate and Curran changes. 

(Sunburn) What book has left you with a bad and/or painful ending?

Butcher gives us some surprises along the way in The Dresden Files series, but this one shocked me at the end.  I cried!

(Sunset) What book gave you the happiest feelings when it ended?

This was a lot of fun and I loved it.  Roth had me laughing and falling in love with Grimm Cove and all its fun and wacky characters we get to meet.

What book cover reminds you of a sunset?

Such a beautiful cover!

What is one book or series you hope to read this summer?

I’ve got a lot of books and series I’d like to read, just check out my Goodreads To Read Shelf, but these three are at the top of the list to read.  Briggs – I love her work and Mercy kicks-butt, Roth – this over 40’s books grabbed me and well they are fun, and last is Summers – I’d like to finish the last book in this series that I’ve been putting off. 

I’d love to hear from you.
What are your answers to the Summer Book Tag!

Angela 

I was born and raised in Northern Indiana. I’m an outdoor sun loving reader living near San Fransisco. I’m a mother, wife, dog owner, animal, and book lover. I’m the owner, reviewer, and mind behind Angel’s Guilty Pleasures. My favorite animals are horses & dogs. As for reading I love all things paranormal & urban fantasy. My favorite shifters are dragons!

I found these questions over at Drizzle & Hurricane Books.  They’ve started a new type of fun posts called The Burning Bookish Questions. “How it works? Is that the sisters through each other a couple of random questions, keywords or themes and they answer them with a book. It looks a little bit like any book tag you’d see out there, except that there are no rules, they’re just trying to bother each other with hard themes and such.”

The Quarantine Edition looked like fun and so here are my answers to their questions:

Since you’re stuck at home, you may as well be stuck with a book character. Which one and why?

Gin Blanco from The Elemental Assassins series. Why? Because that woman can cook and if the apocalypse comes she can kick-ass too. ^_^  But really I want her for her cooking. I always get so hungry reading a book in the series. It features so many delicious foods to drool over.

Which character would you hate to be stuck with? If you were stuck with said character, how would you handle it?

Bea from Gold Valley series. Her sweet, innocent, and kind-heart are all well and good, but it would and did in the series get on my nerves. To me she never grew up and felt like a child and I’ve already got two children, well one kid and one man who feels like a child at times, to deal with. As for handling it I’d be like here keep my kid occupied while I go do something else. She could be the baby-sitter.

During quarantine, you can chat online with any author you want, which one do you choose?

I’d pick Patricia Briggs. She’s got horses and writes two of my favorite series Alpha & Omega and the Mercy Thompson series.

You can read one series entirely during quarantine, but just one! Which one is it and why? (Whether it’s a new series or a re-read).

Ahhh this one is hard. I’ve got a lot of favorite series I like to re-read and a few sereis I’m currently working on. To pick one I’d go with Mercy Thompson, which I’m currently re-listening too.

You’ve got a lot of free time on your hands and you decide to cook. What recipe inspired by a book would you like to try?

This comes from the Elemental Assassin series by Jennifer Estep – Gin cooks Spicy Southwestern Chicken. Find the recipe on the Series Elemental Assassin website here or take a look below:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or however much you like)
Chili powder
Cumin
Black pepper
Red pepper
Lime juice (about 1 cup)
Honey (optional)

Arrange the chicken breasts in a baking dish. Season both sides with the chili powder, cumin, black pepper, and red pepper, forming a spicy rub. (The more seasoning you use, the spicier the chicken will be.) Pour the lime juice over the chicken, putting enough in the baking dish so that the chicken won’t dry out while it cooks. Bake at 350 degrees until the chicken is done. Before serving, drizzle the chicken with the honey for a touch of sweetness.

You forgot ALL of your unread physical books elsewhere (let’s pretend that’s possible)…. and you have no new digital books. Do you re-read, do you buy new ebooks, do you do both?

I’d end up doing both. Right now there are a lot of free eBooks or on sale/discounted eBooks for people to pick up. I’ve been grabbing a lot of freebies and some on sale books. But, yep if for some reason I forgot my books I’d just re-read or buy some new ones, but not the ones I already own.

It’s time to work out to stay in shape! Which character do you pick as your coach?

Any dragon from the Caldwecr Clan in the Dragon Kin series by G.A. Aiken. Their ethic is to start them young and to work with them in any form (human and dragon) to hone their warrior skills. With their help I’d be in shape and a mighty warrior woman.

What’s the kind of book, stories, tropes you reach for to distract yourself the most?

Platonic relationships and fantasy worlds. I love Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance, so any book that has that element or elements in them I’ll enjoy. And, maybe a little mystery and science fiction, but it needs a fantasy or paranormal element to keep me interested. I also like a lot of action and world building. I’m not a fan of the triangle romance or billionaire romance, so those I try to stay away from in any genre.

Quarantine is finally over and hugs are permitted again. To which bookish character do you grant your first kiss?

I’m going with one of the un-attached wolves from the Mercy Thompson series, because if i planted one on Adam, Mercy would kill me, so Ben is my pick. 

You can finally get back into the world and into a bookshop: what’s the first book you buy?

Well I buy all my books online, so I don’t have an answer for this one except to say that I’ve got Emerald Blaze (Paperback) due out Aug. 2020 and Alpha Night (Hardcover) due out June 2020 on Pre-Order.

Let’s Chat!
What do you think of my answers? What do you think of the books I picked?
I’d love to hear your answers to the questions!

I found this tag over on Delighted Reader and she found it on Under the Covers blog. The tag was created by Romance Queen of Booktube and Not Just Romance Novels. This is a fun tag to showcases my love for the romance genre.

1. How old was I when I started reading romance?

I started in my mid-20’s after I graduated from college. On my about page I talk about my husband’s Aunt who is an avid reader and how she got me into romance. My first experience was with Jeaniene Frost and her Night Huntress series. After that I was hooked.

2. If I could pick one hero from a favorite romance to meet, who would it be and why?

Oh my god! That’s a very tough question to answer. I’ve got my favorites like Adam from the Mercy Thompson series, Curran from the Kate Daniels series, and Bones from the Night Huntress series. If I have to pick it would be a tossup between my two favorite shifters Adam and Curran. 

3. Who are my favorite romance authors and why?

Ilona Andrews – The Andrews team bring out the best and worst in their characters. Since it’s a husband and wife team they give us both the male and female perspectives done accurately which make their characters that much more relatable. I also love their world building. They just have a way with words and bring everything out. Making it feel so real and vivid. Favorite series: Kate Daniels thou I love everything they have written.

Nalini Singh – What can I say. Her Sci-Fi world and characters in her Psy-Changeling series hooked me. I love how she built this world and the unique characters we get. Shifters of all kinds, people with unique powerful gifts, and more. Besides the PNR she also writes Contemporary Romance thou I haven’t read them yet. I like when authors can diversify. Favorite series: Psy-Changeling & a spin-off Psy-Changeling Trinity thou I also enjoy her Guild Hunter which features Angels and Vampires. 

Gena Showalter – I like when authors diversify and Showalter is one. She writes PNR, Young Adult, and Contemporary Romance. I very much like her Lords of the Underworld series thou I haven’t re-read them nor am I up too date, but I have re-read/listened to The Original Heartbreakers series. I adore the sweet home town feel she has created and the characters that are like us, every day people, dealing with issues like we do. 

4. What is my favorite romance to re-read?

I like my romance to be platonic. No love triangles.  Troupes I enjoy are Second Chance Romances, Soul Mates (find a lot of this in PNR). & Friends to Lovers or Enemy’s to Lovers. No a Billionaire fan. I think that everything is too easy when you have a lot of money.  I also love having loads of action, suspense or maybe a mystery, and world building in any of my reads. 

I’ve got a lot of series that I re-read/re-listen to that have a lot of what I like in my romance:

Dragon Kin series by G. A. Aiken, the Pride series by Shelly Laurenston, the Kate Daniels, Hidden Legacy, & Innkeeper Chronicles series by Ilona Andrews, The Original Heartbreakers series by Gena Showalter, and Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs.

Do I have a favorite book in each series? Yes and No. Here are a few of my favorites, but I do love all the books in the series listed. Some I can’t pick a favorite. 

• Kate Daniels – Book 3 Magic Strikes
• Hidden Legacy – Book 1 Burn For Me
• Dragon Kin – Book 1 Dragon Actually, Book 3 What A Dragon Should Know 
• The Original Heartbreakers – Book 3 Can’t Hardly Breath

5. What would I recommend to non-romance readers?

Pick a genre you will enjoy! If you love Paranormal then I’d say read any of the series and authors I mentioned above; Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Nalini Singh, Felicity Heaton, and the list can go on. If you’re into Contemporary then I’d recommend the Original Heartbreakers or if you like Suspense then the K-9 Rescue series by D.D. Ayers. If your into Sci-Fi then I say Author Anna Hackett is perfect for this genre and she’s got many different series to try out. If you enjoy Erotic then Setta Jay and her Guardians of the Realms series. 

Feel free to check out my Must Read page with recommendations on books and series I’ve enjoyed or stop by my Amazon Shopping Page for more recommendations. 

6. Which is my favorite genre and why?

Favorite genre is Fantasy or Paranormal with romance added in. I love diving into another world, getting magic, and unique characters that don’t define any logic.

Share some of your favorite romances? What type of trope do you like most? What type of genre inside the romance do you enjoy? I’d love to hear your answers to the questions or just jump in and share your favorite romance to re-read!!