Easily one of my favorite books of 2014. The Hook Up is everything I didn’t know I needed.

I am from middle of nowhere Football USA South Louisiana. I grew up with Friday night football games, and nachos, and swooning over the all the boys on the sidelines with my friends. My gym class in high school was spent panting the field for the games coming up that week.

For as long as I remember, every Saturday, Sunday and Monday has been dedicated to football at my house. Half of my closet is college football t-shirts. I went to college is a college town where Blue and Gold or Purple and Gold were the main colors of everyone on any campus. We bleed football down here.

And yet, all I know about football is that The Patriots are cheaters and that Payton Manning is a God (according to my mom, anyways). I know the very basics, but the only time I’ll sit down to watch a game is the Super Bowl, and that’s just for the commercials and half-time performance.

Anna Jones is a real, multi-dimensional, true southern girl. I instantly related to Anna in a disturbingly wrong way. I get where she is coming from with the thinking. Her inner monologue about not being good enough is also my inner monologue sometimes. I think there are way too many of us that feel that same way and I wish that wasn’t a fact. 

“I’m not going to say it was love at first sight. No, it was more like oh, hell-yes-please, I’ll have that. With a helping of right-the-fuck-now on the side.” –Anna Jones, everyone.

Drew Baylor.
Every quiet girls dirty dream. 
Star quarterback and sweetheart.
Good Lord, I was ready for the dick jock act, but what I got was borderline perfection.

This book was funny, y’all. It’s cheeky. The banter between Jones and Baylor is my favorite thing at the moment.

It’s hot. Like holy hell, can we Blue’s Clues this shit and I can jump into this scene?

It’s real. They deal with issues that we all deal with. Indecisiveness about the future and the inevitable.

Drew and his boys were THE BEST! I died laughing most of the time and flat out grinned any other time. (So happy Gray is getting his own story!)

Most of all, The Hook Up made me want this sort of thing. This kind of relationship. A relationship at all. When a book makes me question my singledom, that’s when I know it’s made a mark on me.
“I am so gone on him. I want to dance in place. I want to run and hide.” Shit, y'all. I want that!

The Hook Up is interesting and funny and sweet. The dual pov takes us into the mind of both Baylor and Jones. It’s everything you need.

I started out loving this.

Cash’s voice was one I could read in for days. It was a bit John Green esque, and I couldn’t put it down. He was your typical teenage boy, but he was witty and adorable with a “Luella Intuition” that intrigued me. God, he was awesome.

So things happened and promises were made and kisses were stolen and I was eager to find out what the heck was going on.

And then 5 years pass without Cash and Piper seeing each other.

But it doesn’t seem like it because Cash still has that inner teenager vibe and Piper (I seriously was on my way to get my Kindle to look up her name when I remembered it only because of Charmed. I don’t blame my forgetting on lack of a memorable character, but more of the fact that I had a very long day at work) just didn’t click with me.

Very quickly, the whole universe thing grated on my nerves and warranted several eye rolls from me. Yes, this is called fate.

But this is basically just coincidences. A happenstance that fate has lined up. I guess I was never the type of person to see recurring facts in certain situations and base my whole life on it.

Fate: A nail gets into my tire causing me to break down on my way to work. 
Coincidence: I run into several people with broken legs and that means I shouldn’t go jogging that day.

“That’s what it was. It was about our ancestors leaving us with something to deal with, whether we like it or not.” Really, now. You got all that out of another man’s story. I think not.

It was all very cute, but very cheesy. That sex scene. Seriously? The cowboy hat. Seriously. 

They say “yee-haw” 4 too many times for my liking. I’m from southwest Louisiana and even we don’t say that down here. Ever.

Once I figured out what was going on, the book slowed down from there. The ending was sweet and finding out who L was made me smile.

I loved Hudson. He is the sidekick that every good character needs.

Cash is tragically a hopeless romantic and Piper is just…well Piper. Not much to say about her.

It just wasn’t what I was expecting. It was extremely fluffy and cheesy and okay for a quick read, but other than that, it was wasn’t special to me.

I love Jus Accardo’s books. She writes such fast-paced, action-packed, sexy romantic tales. Whether it’s Cain and Abel descended twins or a bounty hunter shackled to his hit, I’m never bored.

And she also writes some strong willed women. Women who don’t let no man decide their life choices. Women who fight for their lives and what matters most to them. Women who survive.

Thus, Rules of Survival.

I was hooked from the beginning. Barely wanting to put it down (although I was dividing my time between reading this, working, and season 4 of Downton Abbey).

Kayla is one of those strong girls I mentioned above. Left by a dead mother to live a life running from the inevitable. She has a will to live and I appreciated that she hardly let her vision get cloudy when it came to Shaun.

Shaun. (for some reason I thought of Dylan O’Brien. Not a bad thought, really).
“Moments of great kindness competing with glimpses of rage.” That’d be our Shaun. Smooth talking, joke cracking bounty hunter. I liked him a bunch. No complaints there.

And this book was full of moments that had me giggling.
“Because seriously, who pulled weeds in full makeup and loose hair?”
The same girls that go to the gym with prom ready makeup, that’s who, Kayla.

(I couldn’t help being distracted by the shackles. So many unanswered questions about how they got around. How they did certain things. I don’t know. I’m just very curious).

A quick read (woulda been quicker for me if I wasn’t hella invested in the drama going on at Downton), that won’t let you down.

Killing me. That’s what you’re doing, Mrs. Brenna Aubrey. You’re killing me with this couple.

This couple that doesn’t know what is best for the other. The couple that doesn’t know how to have a multiple sided conversation. These 2 people that are holding all these internal thoughts that are begging to be spoken, but instead say shit that messes everything up. But at the same time, I love them. And I want them to be happy. I need everything to be okay.

But let me ya’ll why it’s not okay.

Adam is extremely selfish. He HAS to be in control or else he feels like nothing will be done perfectly. He has issues with letting Mia live her own life. He’s interested in his own personal benefit without giving thought to what she would want.

And some of it is understandable because after all, Adam is a multimillionaire with a capital company who is used to playing dirty for what he wants, but you can’t run a relationship like a business. And after he finally realizes this, it’s too late.

Mia, on the other hand, refuses to let anyone help her (other than Heath)! Damn, woman. PLEASE! Just ask for help. Confide in the people closest to you. Otherwise, all the shit going on will eat at you a thousand times worse.

I loved reading from Adam’s perspective. Mrs. Aubrey does a male’s viewpoint very well, and I couldn’t see much resemblance in his and Mia’s.

At Any Turn has none of that money bullshit hovering over their heads. It’s a real relationship, not a contracted one.

And, lord have mercy, sexy as hell. (The mirror scene. That is all).

Even though I had an idea of what was coming, what the heartbreaking reveal of hers was going to be, it still shook me to my core. I had goose bumps at the final sentence and just cried for a few minutes after I turned my Kindle off. (A book hasn’t hit me that hard in a very long time. Like since The Fault In Our Stars or Thirteen Reasons Why or Hopeless.) Emotionally drained.

From where all of this is going, the next book is going to be hard to read. But I guess I have a while to mentally prepare until it is released!

Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve been infatuated with a demon. There seriously has to be some sort of internal moral compass that is being disturbed. I blame Supernatural. “I fucking love Lucifer”, are words that have actually spilled forth from my mouth any time Mark Pellegrino is on screen. And that one time that my mom asked me what was up with Crowley and I told her he is my favorite demon of all time and she looked at me strange for a week or so.

That’s how I feel about Jax. Like, he’s obviously a tad evil (he’s got a demon floating around inside him for god sakes), but I couldn’t help but like it. So, with all that said, I have a total book boy crush on the son of Cain.

The premise of Ruined is very interesting. I was intrigued the second I read the tidbit about the descendants of Cain. I’m very familiar with the story of Cain and Abel, and I was excited to see how this would all play out.

I fell in love immediately. Ruined grabbed my attention like Pinterest grabs my attention when I have a stack of reports on my desk at work. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want Sam and Jax’s story to end.

I had no problem wrapping up their backstory with the present. They obviously have some built up tension in there and I loved their banter.

Sam and Jax reminded me of Perry and Dex from Karina Halle’s Experiment in Terror series. And those books are my shit. So when I started comparing the two not even half way through Ruined, I was okay with where thing were going. They both have that relatable story that is easy to get involved in. (Minus the demons and supernatural shit in both series).

Jax is sexy as all hell (pun intended). He is sarcastic. He is a smart-ass. He is adorable. And he is sharing his body with a demon named Azirak. Whom I also grew to love, because basically they’re the same person.

Sam, possibly one of the strongest female characters I’ve ever read about, has some serious balls. Not once did I feel like anything she did was strictly for the love of a boy. She saw the greater picture. She’s cool.

Chase is this evil, manipulative villain that I really liked to begin with. Maybe I still like him. Don’t ask me. I don’t know. I believe the Flynn brothers really do love each other. They’re the only family either has.

Heckle!!! (I couldn’t help but thinking of Hoggle from Labyrinth the entire time). He was a pleasant surprise!

Action.
Humor.
Sexy twin brothers.
A family curse with a twist.

Did I cover everything?

Ruined is awesome! Don’t miss it.