New Release! Best Kept Secrets by Evangeline Anderson

No one- NO ONE -can keep you on your toes better than Evangeline Anderson. One day, it's 'Coming Soon' or due out 'Sometime in....' then Bam! Here it is! Today, I found this on her website, released yesterday and not even on Goodreads or Amazon yet!

Best Kept Secrets
Evangeline Anderson
Loose ID
Published February 25, 2014

Cassandra and Josh are xenobiologists. Traveling around the universe searching for new forms of life is exciting and Cass is never lonely because Josh is there. He is sweet, funny, kind and handsome…everything Cass has ever wanted in a man. But he’s also her stepbrother. There’s never been anything but normal affection between the two of them…until they encounter the truth plant of Svortza 6.

The truth plant is said to have strange properties—it forces all who come in contact with it to act on their deepest emotions. Cass is skeptical of the rumors until Josh is sprayed with the plant’s secretions and begins having fugue states where he is a mindless creature bent only on satisfying his sexual hunger.

Now, trapped on an alien world, Cassandra is learning a lesson in submission and forbidden lust. She knows she must keep Josh’s actions secret from him or he will hate himself forever. But some secrets are just too big to keep…

Note: Carrie and Josh have no blood ties and their relationship is fully consensual; however, some readers, particularly those with a history of sexual abuse or incest, may find this story disturbing.

What else can EA do better than anyone else? Write a forbidden, step-sibling love affair. Oh damn, I'm off to get my copy and I highly suggest you do the same here.

Check out Forbidden, Eyes Like A Wolf, and Picture Perfect (my multi-read favorite!) while you're at it.

edit:: Goodreads link here.

A Devil Named Desire: Devil's Bargain #2

Available at Amazon.com

A Devil Named Desire
Terri Garey
Devil's Bargain, book two
ebook, 368 pages
Published January 31st 2012 by Avon
(first published January 24th 2012)
ISBN 9780062096289

Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest...

...and no one knows that better than Sammy Divine, High Prince of Darkness. Once an angel, now cast down, Sammy's out to prove he's not the only angel who can be led into temptation...

Hope Henderson's sister has disappeared without a trace, and Hope will do anything to find her--even make a deal with the Devil. An ancient text holds the key to unspeakable power, and it's the Archangel Gabriel's job to make sure it stays hidden, even if he has to become human to do it. Lives, love and the fate of the world hang in the balance, as Hope and Gabriel learn that when passion's involved, it may be impossible to withstand a devil named desire.

Hot Damn! This baby opened up with all kinds of promise... and sadly, fell a tad flat.

Gabriel, or Gabe as he calls himself in our human realm, has long been confounded by the ideas of love and lust. Unable to fathom what about them that drive men, and women alike, to destroy themselves for the sake of either or even both. His dearest friend, and brother, Samael, fell victim to lust with Eve in the Garden, thus introducing sin into the world. Then, Sammy fell in love with a woman who chose another over him. Today, Sammy is the devil. Lucifer himself. The King of Lies.

There are not many books that you'll open up only to find your heroine committing suicide. She's human. She's lost. She's pretty. I get it. These are attributes that bring Gabe to her door, convicted to save her. And for some reason, logic be damned, she becomes the one person in all of eternity that tempts him.

Gabriel, despite all, stays true to himself. He seeks his God, and even in the end, is loyal and willing to return to Him even though God had taken his wings and left him to play out where Fate was taking him. Gabe never broke his vows. He never fell from grace. Yays for that.

But Hope, and Charity, and Pandora... each and all brought this story to a mindnumbing level of blahness. And yes, even Sammy, too.

3 out of 5 stars.

The Four Agreements

Available at Amazon.com

The Four Agreements
Miguel Ruiz
Hardcover, 168 pages
Published September 14th 2001 by Amber-Allen Publishing
First published 1997
ISBN 9781878424501

In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

Self-help, philosophy, or inspirational. Where this one falls within the shelves, I'm not entirely sure. Most classified it as a book focused on spirituality and I definitely have an argument with that one. I will say this with absolute certainty though: The introduction flew right over my head. So it took a re-read to settle my thoughts and thoroughly process the three page prologue. Sad. But true.

And unfortunately, I went from a numbing confusion to a deep depression with The Domestication of Humanity. Ouch!

If we compare the dream of human society with the description of hell that religions all around the world have promulgated, we find they are exactly the same. Religions say that hell is a place of punishment, a place of fear, pain, and suffering, a place where the fire burns you. Fire is generated by emotions that come from fear. Whenever we feel the emotions of anger, jealousy, envy, or hate, we experience a fire burning within us. We are living in a dream of hell.

The gist of this book is a simple one. We are living a dream. A dream constructed by others, shaped by those who love us, and agreed upon by ourselves. It is our hell. And knowing that I am personally molding the hell in which my son will grow, suffer, and war within simply by rewarding him in my efforts to teach right from wrong... it's not such a happy thought.

2 out of 5 stars.

A New Earth

"Love and do what you will." -St Augustine

Available at Amazon.com

A New Earth
Eckhart Tolle
Hardcover, 315 pages
Published October 11th 2005 by Dutton Adult
ISBN 9780525948025

Building on the astonishing success of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle presents readers with an honest look at the current state of humanity: He implores us to see and accept that this state, which is based on an erroneous identification with the egoic mind, is one of dangerous insanity.

Tolle tells us there is good news, however. There is an alternative to this potentially dire situation. Humanity now, perhaps more than in any previous time, has an opportunity to create a new, saner, more loving world. This will involve a radical inner leap from the current egoic consciousness to an entirely new one.

In illuminating the nature of this shift in consciousness, Tolle describes in detail how our current ego-based state of consciousness operates. Then gently, and in very practical terms, he leads us into this new consciousness. We will come to experience who we truly are—which is something infinitely greater than anything we currently think we are—and learn to live and breathe freely.

You're there. That what-the-fuck moment, where you're trying to fathom why a book like that is on a blog like this.

This year (2014), for myself, is about opening up to new experiences. Preparing myself for the revelations of the world. I started here with what was available to me, because this, and many books like it, is what my husband reads. Oh yes, while I am lost in romance and fantasy, my beloved is expanding his consciousness. As it happens, we share the resulting benefits of one another's ride.

Outflow determines inflow.

Being of such a vastly different concept as what I typically gravitate towards, DH had some concerns with my ability to grasp or even appreciate what all A New Earth held inside. But reading, as a whole, enables us to open our minds to something beyond. I had no doubt I would enjoy this book, despite it's lack of smut and declarations of undying love which, yes, is the usual *must* for me. But the suspense of a topic previously unexplored, combined with the very real relation it had to my life, and what I want for that life, kept me engrossed enough to see it through. And I find, ever so subtly, that I have taken it with me from its pages.

What you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.

4 out of 5 stars.