Perfect Lie by Teresa Mummert: SPOILERS!!!

     So here is pretty much a summary of Perfect Lie. The book starts off with Trish and Lie going to a party as Lie trys to fit in with Trish and her crowd of douche bags. Lie meets Abel there, they smoke pot together, then they go play spin the bottle, Brock who is Lies supposed boyfriend gets brought up by Trish, and Abel kisses Trish instead of Lie when the bottle Lie spun lands on him. Lie gets all butthurt about it...after about 3 hours of knowing him tops...and what does she do?? Drugs!!! Pills to be exact. And guess what? She didn't even know what they were! But hey. If Trish does it...
     Abel gets worried and has Lie stay the night in his room, then they go out for breakfast, Lie figures out Abel used to deal drugs, Abel invites himself over, and that's how Lie and Abel become friends. Trish and her merry band of douche dags talk Abel and Lie into going out, where shocker...Lie does more drugs because Trish did and they were offered. Abel takes her home and takes care of her blah blah blah poor Lie all helpless and needing saved.
     One day Abel is over hanging out with Lie and somehow he and Trish end up setting up a date, then going out. At this point we notice the obvious feelings Lie and Abel have but Abel still thinks there is a Brock in the picture even though Lie was abandoned by this Brock guy somehow and so far that's all we know from Lies memories. After a few dates and over hearing Trish talking about something that once again hurts Lies feelings, Lie decides to barrow Skankzillas clothes and go out and get drunk and make more poor choices. Abel ditches his date and saves the day again. Lie stays with him, they hang out the next day, have a sexy scene on the couch that they actually don't even kiss in, Trish comes home, talks mild trash about Lie, then Abel goes with Trish to her room all while Lie pretends to be asleep. Abel tells Lie they didnt have sex. Abel and Lie fight. Abel then sleeps with Trish while Lie is in the next room. Which pissed me off to no end and I will explain why in a while.
     After that things progress pretty much the same way, with Abel saving Lies ass after Lie tries to hook-up with a random dude at a party everyone's at, then Abel and Lie make up, we find out Brock is in prison, Abel parents are dead and that's why he won't go back home, and then Lie invites Abel to her see her therapist with her so she can tell him what happened. They're at the therapists office and she finally reveals that in Brocks messed-up way of trying to protect her he did a school shooting trying to kill all of Lies bullies. He told her to stay home but she didn't and she got shot.
     Now for the real ending. It's a huge plot twist which I normally like but no. Not this time. You ready?? OK....here goes nothing...
THEY ARE ALL FUCKING DEAD!!!
She was actually killed in the shooting, she's in some weird afterlife place, and Abel knew the whole time that she was actually dead. Which brings me back to WHY EXACTLY DID HE HAVE TO SLEEP WITH TRISH THEN??? HE KNEW!!! HE KNEW SHE DIDNT KNOW SHE WAS DEAD YET AND IF HE COULD JUST LET HER FIGURE IT OUT THEN...POOF HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!!! BUT NOOOOOO. Turns out Brock shot her, then shot himself, and now she's dead. Abel and Lie figure their shit out, and after she visits Brock in dead person jail to tell him she forgives him, her and Abel are able to move forward with eachother.
The end.
All done.
That's how it ends.
Yup.
Pissed me right off.


So that is pretty much it, I think it's a pretty accurate summary. Small things that were unimportant or had nothing to do with the story I left out but honestly you didn't miss a thing.

Perfect Lie by Teresa Mummert

.....What in the hell did I just read??? 

     I liked the first half of this book. Lie was an awkward character but her and Abel seemed ehhhh alright together. Nothing to write home about though because to me the chemistry between the two ran hot and cold. When I say cold I mean frigid. Not only that but Lies friend Trish pissed me off, and for some stupid reason Lie wanted to be like her. That just pissed me off even more because GROW A BACKBONE AND BE YOUR OWN DAMN PERSON!!! I mean, would it kill you to stand up for yourself? The story line was decent though, and I liked Abel. The main reason I even kept reading is because the author leaves a lot of questions unanswered until the end of the damn book and I'm too curious for my own good. So when I say I liked the first half of the book, I say it loosely. 

     After reading the first half of the book I thought maybe, just maybe...it has potential and I could really like it all depending on how the book ended, how the many unanswered questions were finally answered. Then the second half of this book happened and fit hit the shan. I loved Abel and I kind of liked Lie. OK so it was more like I tolerated her because I wanted to see where the story ended up going. But hey! The potential of me liking her character was there. She was just, as I have stated, too weak of a female lead for me and the second half of the book really highlighted that. In the past I have liked some relatively mindless female leads so I guess it's just the way she's such a pushover. Like someone could take her first born child and she still wouldn't have the spine to stand up for herself. The whole mystery of Brock was just there...he wasn't even a real character just a memory. The second half of the book was even more infuriating because Brock was not even a real character which is not the impression I was given from the reading the back of the book. When he still hadn't shown up or been discussed all that much in the last half of the book I was ready to just give up! The second half of the book you're left hanging about him and pretty much everything else. Everything was alright for a while, Abel and Lie tried to work some stuff out, blah blah blah, some other bullshit happened, the book was just OK and continued being OK, then BOOM BABY!!! The end happened and just screwed the whole book up for me and I hated it. Not that is was a great book to begin with but come on!!! IT HAD POTENTIAL UNTIL THE BOOK ENDED LIKE THAT!!! It's a personal preference but definitely could have had a better closing. This is coming from a girl that LOVES a good plot twist. Just not this one.

     Half of the book I did like, half of the book I hated. Therefore my overall rating of this book is 2.5 out of 5 stars. Half the stars because I only liked half the book. Seems appropriate to me. If I were to recommend this book to anyone I'd probably have to say 15-17 year old girls. I think if I were still an angst filled hormone trap of a high school female I would have liked this book. Read at your own risk. The end still makes me so angry I wish I just didn't finish the story. As they say...curiosity killed the cat. If you would like to know how this book ended I will do a post with abundant spoilers soon. If you're curious to a fault such as myself, I want to save you the hassle of reading this book. After all...after reading a review like this, I would need to know how it ended myself. Don't let this review determine weather or not you read other Teresa Mummert because she is a good author, this book was just not my cup of tea. 

All Lined Up by Cora Carmack

My first review!! I hope I do this the right way, although I can't imagine how one could screw it up. Is there a right way?...

Anyhow, as you can see by my title the first book I'll be reviewing is All Lined Up by Cora Carmack. I chose this because Cora Carmack is one of the best authors I follow and I really didn't want my first review to be mean in nature, I did not to set out to slam writers books and that's not what I want to project in my first post. Maybe I'll save that for the second review!! Also I just finished reading All Lined Up and would love to share my opinion. ON TO THE REVIEWING!!!

So another reason I chose to read this book is because I read Faking It, Losing It, and Finding It which are all books in Cora Carmacks Losing It series and I really enjoyed them. I would recommend them to anyone that has a taste for New Adult & College romance like myself. I really enjoyed that all three books could definitely be read as stand-alone novels, and yet all the books were still interconnected because of the characters in the books, which is something I also really like about the Rusk University series. When I started reading All Lined Up I just knew I was going to like it because it has a good start. It really gets you interested and draws you in. It's set apart enough from her other books that you aren't getting that "Haven't I read this before?" feeling, but is still something that you would totally expect Cora Carmack to write so you're not getting that "Who are you, and what have you done to my author!?" feeling if you're a repeat reader and read all Cora Carmacks other books as well. The sports element for me was like the icing on top of the cake because I'm a huge sports fan, but if you don't like hot jocks and find a football playing, hard working, smooth talking, solid bodied, sexy as hell, smart man attractive you really should think about reading something else. If you like steamy hook-ups, plot twists, sexy interesting lead characters, situations you can relate to, and a book you can swallow in one sitting this is a good book for you.

 WARNING: THIS DESCRIPTION WILL BE BLAND I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE ANYTHING AWAY. CONTAINS NO SPOILERS! So, Dallas is our leading lady and we start out the book in her point of view as she's getting ready to go to a party with her best friend Stella who, by the way is a spunky, witty, determined character. This party is where Dallas first runs into Carson, our extremely captivating male lead. Quite the run in it turned out to be if I do say so myself...sparks!!! Sparks everywhere!!! A few things go on at this party involving a few of the football players on Dallas's dads team so Carson and Dallas just happened upon eachother and decided to be friends. Then Stella ruins all of the fun. Remember me calling her witty and stuff? Add feisty to the list please, and thank you! Soon enough though Dallas finds out that Carson's a football player on her dad's team and she decides they can't be involved in anyway all because she hates everything about football and made some kind of deal with herself that she'd never date a football player. Not cool Dallas! Soon enough they run into eachother and decide to be study buddys. Study buddies turns into friends. Friends turns into not exactly sure what the hell to call it. That just evolves on some more. There's also a LOT that goes on that I left out but...I'll leave that for you to read. Read it, just read it. Pleeeeeeaaaaaaaase because I promise I'm not describing it up to even half the awesomeness of this book and if I describe it anymore I'll just go on and on and ruin all of the good stuff and twists. So spare me the humility of that and pick up the book!

So, if the book had a recipe this is what it would be! Start out with a good sturdy basis of love, sex, football, friendship, and desire. Toss a plot twist in here or there. Sprinkle on some family drama. Stir it with the Golden Spoon of Excellency. Pop in a little jealousy, seduction, distraction, and a great story line. Put it in the Oven of Brilliance. Pre-Heat to just enough to melt your panties off. Leave it in until the top is just about to blow. When you finally pull it out, put it on the cooling rack to top it with some seriousness. Serve with laughter. Then you've got yourself All Lined Up! I take no credit for this recipe, Cora Carmack wrote the book therefore she gets the street cred.

My final rating on All Lined Up by Cora Carmack is a 4.5 stars.