Saturday, March 21, 2015

ARC Review: The Secrets Between You & Me (Stolen Kiss #2)

The Secrets Between You & Me (Stolen Kiss #2) by Shana Norris

Publisher: The Studio (a Paper Lantern Lit Imprint), 2015
247 pages, kindle edition
Source: Netgalley
Release Date: February 10th 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Chick-Lit
Links: Goodreads | Amazon US | Amazon AU | Amazon UK

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
4 wheels on a rusty truck * 2 gray eyes * 1 secret that could ruin everything...

All Hannah wanted was a summer break from being “perfect Hannah Cohen” and a chance to forget about the devastating family secret that could ruin her seemingly perfect life. So when she takes off for her eccentric aunt’s house in the mountains of North Carolina and everyone makes one big (wrong) assumption about her past, Hannah figures that it’s easier to live a lie than have to face the truth.

She never expected to make any real friends, like the hilarious and spontaneous Kate and Ashton, who drag her to late night bonfires and ice cream marathons. And she especially never counted on meeting Jude Westmore, the brooding bad boy next door with gray eyes and permanent oil smudges on his fingers, or that he would ever take an interest in her.

Between moonlit movie nights in the bed of Jude’s truck and nearly romantic Ferris Wheel rides, Hannah’s old life seems father away then ever, but can she keep her secret, or is the truth worth the risk of losing everything, including Jude?

My Review:
For this book I really liked the main character Hannah. I really thought he was a realistic in her own way and was well developed, throughout the book she learns to let go of her rules that were set by mom who loves perfection and you definitely see her grow and change throughout the book. I liked that we see her grow and learn how not to always strive for perfection.

I really liked Jude, he was a well developed character who also grows and develops through the book. Like Hannah, he is dealing with his own problems and they both lean on each other. I liked the subtle romance in the book. but it was not the insta-love which was a change and it was not super slow and dragging, it was a romance that developed realistically.

I also loved the secondary characters in the book but my main favs are Ashton and Kate, I liked how they would help Hannah come out of her shell and show how to let go and have fun. They also did not judge her when her came out and did not leave her, but they also stood by her and they were really good friends. But in the end I really did enjoy how the book talks about issues such as drug abuse and alcoholism. I like books that are not just fluffy romances so the book that was not just that was good.

My Rating:

Author Bio:
I was born August 19, on my parents’ first wedding anniversary, in a small town in eastern North Carolina. I’m the oldest of four children. I’m a leo, which means I’m supposed to be bossy, interfering, and intolerant. But I’m also supposed to be broad-minded, warm-hearted, and creative, so maybe it all evens out.

I’ve always loved books. My parents would read my favorite books to me so often that I’d memorize them before I had learned how to read. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are of my mom taking my siblings and me to the public library. I’d always check out a big stack of books and then have them all read within a week. The first time I can remember writing a story that wasn’t for school, but simply because I wanted to write, was when I was eight years old. I wrote and illustrated a book called The Lonely Rectangle. It was a story about a rectangle that had been thrown in the trash and felt unloved until someone found it and took it home to use as a table. No, it was not a box or anything like that, it was just a plain rectangle. I have no clue why I decided to write about a geometric shape. It wasn’t like I was particularly fond of math or anything.

I spent my junior year of high school and part of my senior year living just outside of West Palm Beach, Florida, where my family moved to the summer I turned sixteen. I had a hard time making friends, but the good thing that came out of it was that I started to spend a lot of time online since I had no one to hang out with after school. That was when I discovered online journals written by teen girls and even started my own, which I wrote under a pen name. It was that experience with online journals in 1996-1997, the predecessor of today’s blogs, that helped inspire Something to Blog About.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a writer. Well, actually I wanted to be a ballerina, an archaeologist, a teacher, AND a writer, all at the same time. But after a while I figured out that I’d never taken a ballet lesson in my life, I didn’t particularly like to get dirty, and I hated being in a classroom all day, so that really only left writer as my future job. My family advised me to get a back up plan, which meant, “study something else in school that you can earn a living at while waiting for your books to sell.” So I studied graphic design, tested out of as many classes as I possibly could to avoid sitting in so many classrooms, and got my degree.

I’m still a web designer by day and write my books during my lunch hours and at night. I currently live in North Carolina with my husband and our menagerie of pets: two dogs–Chloe and Zoey–and five cats–Elmo, Bandit, Kit, BC, and Butter.


Author Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | Goodreads

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