Results May Vary by Bethany Chase
Release Date: August 9, 2016
Publisher: Random House, Ballantine
Genres: Contemporary, Women’s Fiction
Pages: 336
Format: eBook
Source: Bought
Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Can you ever really know the person you love?

She never saw it coming. Without even a shiver of suspicion to warn her, Caroline Hammond discovers that her husband is having an affair with a man—a revelation that forces her to question their entire history together, from their early days as high school sweethearts through their ten years as a happily married couple. In her now upside-down world, Caroline begins envisioning her life without the relationship that has defined it: the loneliness of being an “I” instead of a “we”; the rekindled yet tenuous closeness with her younger sister; and the unexpected—and potentially disastrous—attraction she can’t get off her mind. Caroline always thought she knew her own love story, but as her husband’s other secrets emerge, she must decide whether that story’s ending will mean forgiving the man she’s loved for half her life, or facing her future without him.

Compassionate and uplifting, Results May Vary is a bittersweet celebration of the fact that in love and in life, we rarely get exactly what we bargained for.

Everyone and their Mom has read and loved this book so I was only too glad to buy the book so that I can read it and love it too. I was hopeful that I would enjoy the book as so many other book bloggers have and my hope paid off because I couldn’t put this book down.

Adam and Caroline have been married for ten years and have been together since high school. They were so very much in love until Caroline stumbles upon a secret that Adam has been hiding from her. He’s having an affair with another man. This shocks Caroline to her core because she never had an inkling that her husband was bi-sexual or well, gay. The betrayal guts her in a way nothing has before and she spends a lot of time going over their past and trying to find the signs that she missed. She also spends a lot of time being mad at Adam and even tries to move on but you can’t really move on from something as huge as marriage without facing some universal truths about yourself and your spouse.

This book had me captivated from the very first page and I finished it in no time because I couldn’t put it down. I was right there in the trenches with Caroline as she tried to figure out if she could forgive Adam, if she should take him back and where to go from here. Chase handles the many mixed emotions that Caroline had extremely well.

I’m used to reading romances where the focus is on the main characters falling in love with each other but with this book, the focus was on the growth that the main character goes through over the course of the book and I really liked that. I liked being right there with Caroline as she experiences everything after her life falls apart. It made the ending that much more satisfying and while there were times in the middle where the book kind of slows a bit (I thought the bits where she was meeting with the old schoolmate from high school was a bit slow), I still liked this book a great deal. Caroline was refreshingly honest with others and herself and that made me like her. She’s not perfect and that was another thing I liked about her. She was real. She made mistakes and her life was messy but she was getting through it.

This was a very satisfying read and I will definitely be reading more from this author.

My Rating

4 out of 5

Addicted by Elle Kennedy
Series: Outlaws #2
Release Date: June 28, 2016
Publisher: Penguin, Berkley/NAL, Jove
Genre: Dystopian, Romance
Pages: 368
Format: eBook
Source: Bought
Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

From the New York Times bestselling author of Claimed comes the second enticingly erotic novel set in a world on the brink of chaos.

Lennox used to live in a paradise on earth with his best friend Jamie, in a place where visitors came and went, allowing their desires to run free. But everything changes when a deadly attack forces them to take up with Connor Mackenzie’s band of Outlaws. Lennox knows Jamie is hung up on someone else, but he’s always believed he’s the man for her—and won’t let her go without a fight.

Even though Jamie is well aware that Lennox is one hot specimen of a man, she refuses to let sex ruin the most important relationship in her life. But when the object of her interest spurns her, she indulges in a little pleasure-filled revenge with her very magnetic, very willing best friend. One thrilling night with Lennox is enough to awaken Jamie’s unexpected desires for him. And now that she’s had a taste, she’s not sure she can ever give him up…

I should mention right off the bat that I don’t read a lot of erotica stuff and I don’t read very many dystopian romances either. I started this series strictly because Elle Kennedy wrote it. I didn’t know what to expect from the first book and I really enjoyed it so I was happy to continue the series.

To recap the series so far, the characters we meet in this series are all living the Outlaw life. They live in a world that is controlled by the government and if you don’t want to live by the rules of the government than you live outside the city limits and are outlaws. The outlaw life is pretty dangerous because there aren’t any rules. You’re scrapping by, surviving any way that you can and if you are fortunate enough to have the protection of someone like Connor Mackenzie (hero of the first book, Claimed) than you can sleep a little better at night because Connor handles any trouble that lands on their doorstep.

Lennox and Jamie have been best friends since they were kids. They lost everyone and everything close to them so it’s just them against the world. They have each other’s backs and their relationship is completely platonic. They’ve never hooked up because they don’t want to ruin their relationship. They’re all they have left and they didn’t want to ruin things with sex. They both sleep around but they’ve never settled down but one night, things go a lot further than they’ve ever gone and these two realize that they can’t go back.

It’s been a couple of days since I finished this book and I still can’t figure out what I thought about it. I liked it. I liked seeing everyone again and I liked meeting the new people and the romance between Lennox and Jamie was pretty steamy but I didn’t love it. For a lot of the book, nothing really happens except Lennox and Jamie yelling at each other and then having makeup sex. We also get Rylan getting rejected at every turn from the one woman he can’t have (set up to the next book in this series) and I spent a huge chunk of the book waiting for the book to really take off.

This book was slower in pace than the first book and I can’t really say that I really got to know Lennox and Jamie the same way that I felt I got to know Connor and Hudson. There’s a lot going on so maybe that’s why but I never fully connected with Lennox or Jamie. You’d think that because there was so much going on that the pacing would be a lot faster but it still felt like it took forever for stuff to happen. I’m hopeful that the next book will be better so I’m still excited for that one.

Overall, with the slow pacing and everything going on that took away from the romance between Jamie and Lennox, there’s still stuff to like about this read. There’s Rylan. There’s Hudson and Connor. The others at Connor’s camp. The steamy sex between…everyone. The new additions of the townfolks at Foxworth. The big mystery surrounding what Reese has planned. I think fans of Elle Kennedy’s work will enjoy this one.

My Rating

3.5 out of 5

Series Order

Claimed | Addicted | Ruled