I am participating in the 2015 New Release Challenge hosted by Lexxie from Unconventional Book Views and Stormi at Books, Movies, Reviews! Oh My!. Basically the goal is to read books released in 2015. They have to be at least 130 pages and need to be released, read and reviewed in 2015 to count. I set the goal New Release Newbie: 1-15 books per year. I am hoping to read around 15 new releases this year. I am doing quarterly recaps to show my progress. This quarterly recap recaps the books I read in July, August and September. These past three months I read 16 new releases. So in total I read 42 new releases so far this year. I am really surprised at how many new releases I read as I never realized it until this challenge.
Check out my previous recaps here:
- first quarterly recap – 11 new releases read.
- Second Quarterly recap – 15 new releases read.
Books I read for this challenge in the past 3 months
Led Astray: The Best of Kelley Armstrong
by Kelley Armstrong
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find Led Astray on Goodreads
Blurb:
Two brand new tales anchor this wide-ranging collection from one of urban fantasy’s most successful authors. Here is the first time that best-selling fantasy, YA, and crime author Kelley Armstrong has had her stories collected from Otherworld and beyond. With her signature twists and turns, Armstrong gives a fresh spin on city-dwelling vampires, werewolves, and zombies, while also traveling further afield, to a post-apocalyptic fortress, a superstitious village, a supernatural brothel, and even to feudal Japan.With tales that range from humorous to heart-stopping, these are the stories that showcase Kelley Armstrong at her versatile best.
– Rakshashi (standalone)
– Kat (Darkest Powers universe, non-series narrator)
– A Haunted House of Her Own (standalone)
– Learning Curve (Otherworld universe, Zoe)
– The Screams of Dragons (Cainsville universe, non-series narrator)
– The Kitsune’s Nine Tales (Age of Legends universe, non-series narrator)
– Last Stand (standalone)
– Bamboozled (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– Branded (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– The List (Otherworld universe, Zoe)
– Young Bloods (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– The Door (standalone, original to this collection)
– Dead Flowers by a Roadside (standalone)
– Suffer the Children (standalone)
– The Collector (standalone)
– Gabriel’s Gargoyles (Cainsville universe, Gabriel)
– Harbinger (standalone)
– V Plates (Otherworld universe, Nick)
– Life Sentence (Otherworld universe, non-series narrator)
– Plan B (standalone)
– The Hunt (Cainsville universe, non-series narrator)
– Dead to Me (standalone)
– Devil May Care (Cainsville universe, Patrick, original to this collection)
You can read my review of Led Astray here
Second Chance Summer (Cedar Ridge #1)
by Jill Shalvis
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find Second Chance Summer on Goodreads
Blurb:
Cedar Ridge, Colorado, is famous for crisp mountain air, clear blue skies, and pine-scented breezes. And it’s the last place Lily Danville wants to be. But she needs a job, and there’s an opening at the hottest resort in her hometown. What has her concerned is the other hot property in Cedar Ridge: Aidan Kincaid-firefighter, rescue worker, and heartbreaker. She never could resist that devastating smile . . .The Kincaid brothers are as rough and rugged as the Rocky Mountains they call home. Aidan has always done things his own way, by his own rules. And never has he regretted anything more than letting Lily walk out of his life ten years ago. If anyone has ever been in need of rescuing, she has. What she needs more than anything are long hikes, slow dances, and sizzling kisses. But that can only happen if he can get her to give Cedar Ridge-and this bad boy-a second chance . . .
You can read my review of Second Chance Summer here
Freya’s Inferno (Winging It #1)
by Sonja Bair
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find Freya’s Inferno on Goodreads
Blurb:
Freya Holm is smart, quick-witted, and an Alva—a paranormal species with the ability to fly. In a bid for a normal life outside of family expectations, she moved across the country. But within a few days of arriving in a small California town, she finds herself fighting over the last bag of lentils with an attractive but ill-tempered werewolf named David.David Waterstone is desperate for normal, too. Recently banished from his pack, he finds himself struggling to stay sane. The presence of another supernatural power in his new town, especially one as inquisitive and lively as Freya, makes his struggle even harder.
When their new city gets besieged by an insane supernatural with a passion for Dante’s Inferno, Freya’s family sends in one of her old schoolmates. Alrik Isaksson has long been in love with Freya, but she can’t see beyond their hurtful history. Despite the tension, David, Alrik, and Freya must work together and use their intellect, supernatural powers, and sense of humor to survive the layers of Hell being created in their town by a maniac with a passion for literature.
You can read my review of Freya’s Inferno here
The Wolf Wilder
by Katherine Rundell
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find The Wolf Wilder on Goodreads
Blurb:
Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora’s mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans.When the murderous hostility of the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run. What follows is a story of revolution and adventure, about standing up for the things you love and fighting back. And, of course, wolves.
You can read my review of The Wolf Wilder here
Summer Haikus (Happily Ever Asia)
by S.J. Pajonas
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find Summer Haikus on Goodreads
Blurb:
“When it comes to fight or flight, I always choose to run like hell.”Isa planned the perfect summer:
Tokyo and the Summer Olympics — check.
Helping her best friend prepare for the marathon — check.
Forgetting she’s in love with Masa — double check.But when Isa’s mother is hospitalized, she has to abandon her summer plans to run the family’s Tokyo business. Masa’s offer to help makes it impossible for Isa to ignore him — and the firecracker kiss they shared half a world away. Everyone expects the world of her, but the pressure to please them all is as oppressive as the Tokyo summer heat. The simplest answer to all her problems? Run.
You can read my review of Summer Haikus here.
The Good Girl’s Second Chance
by Christine Rimmer
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find The Good Girl’s Second Chance on Goodreads
Blurb:
The Littlest Matchmaker Of Them AllQuinn Bravo is a committed single dad; emphasis on single. The millionaire bachelor is focused on his four-year-old daughter and his fitness business. So while he’s intrigued by his beautiful new interior decorator, Quinn resolves to keep the chemistry at a simmer. Until one night together causes their attraction to burst into flame.
After her ex-husband betrayed her, local good girl Chloe Winchester returned to Justice Creek, determined not to risk her heart again. Still, maybe she can live out some teenage fantasies with sexy Quinn while redecorating his house. But first Chloe will have to avoid falling for one adorable little girl and the man of her dreams!
You can read my review of The Good Girls’Second Chance here.
How to be a Mermaid (Falling in Deep Collection)
by Erin Hayes
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find How to be a Mermaid on Goodreads
Blurb:
All Tara ever wanted was to be a mermaid.So she takes a year off between high school and college to don a fake tail and tour aquariums across the country in a professional mermaid troupe.
Everything’s great until she meets a gorgeous real-life merman named Finn. Suddenly, what she thought was a dream turns out to be a nightmare — she’s turning into a mermaid herself. For real.
Yet when she returns to the sea to seek out Finn and reverse her transformation, she finds herself in the middle of an impending war between the land and sea. Tara may have always wanted to be a mermaid, but now it’s sink or swim. In order to survive, she has to learn how to be one, too.
***
Summer 2015, award-winning, and best-selling authors will bring you romantic tales of mermaids, sirens, sprites, and other creatures of the deep! Keep in touch as we reveal each title in our collection!
You can read my review of How to be a Mermaid here.
Torn Sky (Rebel Wing #3)
by Tracy Banghart
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find Torn Sky on Goodreads
Blurb:
The end is near . . .When Aris Haan brought down Safara’s biggest war criminal, she’d thought it was a turning point in the war. Victory was on the horizon, as was a peaceful future with her Promised, Milek.
But a deadly new threat has emerged: a Safaran bomb that could wipe out all of Atalanta in one catastrophic blast. Aris is tasked with finding the weapon before it is completed, a mission made more difficult when she starts to suspect that there is a Safaran spy in her unit. Friendships are tested, loyalties are strained, and suddenly Aris no longer knows whom she can trust.
In the epic conclusion to the Rebel Wing series, Atalanta’s fate rests on Aris’s shoulders. Can she find the bomb before it destroys everything—and everyone—she loves?
You can read my review of Torn Sky here.
Thor’s Serpents (The Blackwell Pages #3)
by K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr
Format: paperback
Source: bought it myself
You can find Thor’s Serpents on Goodreads
Blurb:
Thirteen-year-olds Matt, Laurie, and Fen have beaten near-impossible odds to assemble their fellow descendants of the Norse Gods and complete epic quests. Their biggest challenge lies ahead: battling the fierce monsters working to bring about the apocalypse.But when they learn that Matt must fight the Midgard Serpent alone and Fen and Laurie are pulled in other directions, the friends realize they can’t take every step of this journey together. Matt, Laurie, and Fen will each have to fight their own battles to survive, to be true to themselves, and to one another – with nothing less than the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
You can read my review of Thor’s Serpents here.
The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2)
by Susan Kaye Quinn
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find The Duality Bridge on Goodreads
Blurb:
What does it mean to be human?Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He’s the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders—the human/machine hybrids who run the world—in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to live forever.
Too bad it’s all a complicated web of lies.
Worse, Eli’s not even entirely human. Few know about the ascenders’ genetic experiments that left him… different. Fewer know about the unearthly fugue state that creates his transcendent art—as well as a bridge that lets him speak to the dead. But the Resistance is the one place he can hide from the ascender who knows everything the fugue can do. Because if Marcus finds him, he’ll either use Eli for his own nefarious purposes… or destroy him once and for all.
The Duality Bridge is the second book in the Singularity series and the sequel to The Legacy Human. This thrilling new young adult science fiction series explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world.
You can read my review of The Duality Bridge here.
Damned if I Do (The Harker Trilogy #1)
by Erin Hayes
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find Damned if I Do on Goodreads
Blurb:
They killed my sister and infected me.
Now I have to pick up the pieces before I die.I’ve spent the last five months trying to find the bastard who did this. Yet, even with the help of a hot amnesiac vampire named Jude, I’ve had zero luck.
Until now. And it could change everything. Even though I grew up in a family that hunted the supernatural, there were still things I didn’t believe in.
Now I have to hurry for the slim chance that I could save us all. Because when you fight against immortal vampires, you’re the one who’s running out of time.
You can read my review of Damned if I Do here.
Immersed (Immersed #1)
by Katie Hayoz
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find Immersed on Goodreads
Blurb:
What if love turned you into a monster?Forget petticoats and demure female behavior. Melusine Doré prefers armored corsets and knives and slays evil creatures for a living. The grim and gruesome don’t frighten her; she’ll take on a cyclops or a dragon and not even break a sweat. But when her rival, the charismatic Levi Cannon, comes to town, all her buried fears begin to surface. Melusine realizes she is in danger of something much more horrifying than facing blood-thirsty beasts – she’s in danger of falling in love. Because love alone has the power to reveal a secret terrible enough to completely shatter her world.
Set in the muddy streets of 1850s steampunk Chicago, Immersed by Katie Hayoz is a dark yet romantic fantastical romp. It is a stand-alone novella, but the first in a series of adventures that follow Melusine on her quest to rid the world of monsters…and her struggle to come to terms with every monstrous facet of herself.
Immersed is also part of the Falling in Deep Collection: From mermaids to sirens, Miami to Athens, dark paranormal romance to contemporary stories with steam, the fifteen award-winning and best-selling authors of the Falling in Deep Collection are bringing you mermaid tales like you’ve never seen before.
You can read my review of Immersed here.
A Spark of Justice
by J.D. Hawkins
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find A Spark of Justice on Goodreads
Blurb:
A fatal accident at the circus sparks an insurance investigation that leads John Nieves, a former New York cop, to a list of murder suspects. It seems that The Great Rollo, beloved of millions, had enemies… both at the circus and among his own family. All that is surreal and magical about the circus brings out Nieves’ deepest fears, blinding him to the very real danger that is closer at hand.A bizarre series of revelations and coincidences keep Nieves’ suspicions of the circus people high, even after the actual evidence suggests that the incident really was only an unfortunate accident. The furtive actions of Rollo’s wife and brother, the beneficiaries of his insurance, lead Nieves into even dirtier family secrets. Apparent attempts on his life from all quarters threaten Nieves, but he refuses to drop the case until the whole truth of who killed The Great Rollo is revealed.
You can read my review of A Spark of Justice here.
Dream on Amber
by Emma Shevah
Format: e-copy
Source: for review through netgalley
You can find Dream On Amber on Goodreads
Blurb:
Amber Alessandra Leola Kimiko Miyamoto. As if her name made up for being tiny, half Japanese and half Italian, and starting a new school with a caveman phone. Dream on! But the hardest bit about being Amber is that a part of her is missing. Her dad. He left when she was little and if he isn’t coming back, she’ll have to sort things out another way. And Amber has a big imagination …
You can read my review of Dream on Amber here.
Scales (Falling in Deep Collection)
by Pauline Creeden
Blurb:
Verona is a bottom feeder. She is the one mer in her clan who is considered the ugliest and least intelligent. Growing up with the constant bullying and abuse wasn’t the worst of what her kind had in store for her. At seventeen years old, she must now endure “The Reckoning.”The scales will measure her worth to her clan. Will she endure thirty days as a land-walker to gather information and knowledge to appease her clan and return a valued member? Will she wait three years, until she is twenty, and find a mer of her kind to accept her and marry her? Or will she suffer exile for the rest of her life?
You can read my review of Scales here.
Echoes
by Laura Tisdall
Format: e-copy
Source: for review
You can find Echoes on Goodreads
Blurb:
“There is truth to be shared. Let us begin…”Volatile mathematical genius Mallory Park is living two lives. In one, she is balancing senior year with looking after her little brother and troubled ex-Marine father; in the other, she spends her nights glued to her laptop, breaking into some of the world’s most secure systems as the hacker Echo Six.
As part of a corruption-exposing cyber network called the Forum, Mallory is far more at ease among the codes and hidden identities of her online world than she has ever been in the real one, but when other hackers start to go missing, she finds herself caught up in a web of secrets that could have repercussions far beyond both.
When anyone can be a name on a screen, how do you know who to trust?
You can read my review of Echoes here.
Wow you’ve read some very interesting looking books. And very diverse.. I love that since I also really like all kinds of books and genres. Seems to me you’re doing extremely well with this challenge!! Good work 😉
Maureen Hinten recently posted…Review ‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody
I underestimated how many new releases I read each year, I definitely did well with this challenge. I like reading a lot of different genres and am tryign to read some newer to me genres this year as well.
You certainly have been busy reading this year. The best book I read that came out this yer was Dead Ice by Laurell K Hamilton.
Mary Kirkland recently posted…Review: Stainless Steel Dog Bowls
I didn’t expect to read so many new releases in a year, well at least I know to set my goal higher next year, lol. I only read one book by Hamilton so far, but I don’t think I liked that one very much, so I never continued the series.
You’ve read some really good books. I loved Second Chance Summer. It’s definitely on my 2015 favorites list.
Angela @Simply Angela recently posted…The Taming of Malcolm Grant by Paula Quinn
Second Chance Summer was a good one. I am definitely planning on reading more books by that author!
Lola recently posted…2015 New Release Challenge: 3rd quarterly recap
You had some great new releases. I still need to read Led Astray. I really enjoyed Thor’s Serpents. Damed If I Do looks really good.
Melanie Simmons @mlsimmons recently posted…Swan and the Bear Audiobook by Eve Langlais (REVIEW)
Let me know once you’ve read Led Astray! I am looking forward to your review of it! It’s a great short story collection. I also really enjoted Thor’s Serpent. Damned If I Do is by a new to me author who’s books I am really enjoying so far, she has a new fan 😉
Lola recently posted…Lola’s Ramblings: What aspects do you like to see in romance?
It’s fun to beat the challenge goal. I also discover certain habits or trends in my reading when I do the challenges. Keep it going! 🙂
I Think this year my favorite new release author will be technically a re-release author that I wasn’t familiar with until I read her re-release. I’ve five starred all three Rosanne Bittner western historicals that I’ve read.
Sophia Rose recently posted…The Book Report September 2015
I never realized how many new releases I read, it really gave me a new insight in my own reading habbits.
That shows how handy those re-releases can be and how they can reach new readers. It’s great when you find a series like that where you love all the books in a series.
Lola recently posted…Lola’s Ramblings: What aspects do you like to see in romance?
Look at you! You’ve read some great new releases, Lola! I’m like you in that I set my goal low thinking I wouldn’t read that many new releases…and yet we *both* have! It’s a good feeling to have done so well with this challenge, isn’t it? Let’s see how many more we get read before the end of the year…
Bookworm Brandee recently posted…That’s What HE Said #38 ~ Thirsty Thursday & Hungry Hearts #17
I really underestimated how many new releases I read, I thought one or two each month was a nice indication, lol guess I was wrong. I read a lot of enw releases and thanks to reading more netgalley books on my ipad now I probably read even more. It sure is nice to do so well with a challenge and surprise even myself. Three more months left 😉
Oooh, another challenge I need to look into joining in 2016! I’m terrible at reading new releases. It takes me months sometimes hehe!
Sarah @ One Curvy Blogger recently posted…My Goals for Blog Ahead 2015!
I always thought I didn’t read that many new releases, but this challenge gave me insight in how many I read. I think about half of the books I read this year was a new release.
Dream on Amber looks so cute, that cover is just totally adorable. Will definitely check it out!
Heather @ Random Redheaded Ramblings recently posted…REVIEW – Pompidou Posse by Sarah Lotz
I agree the cover is really cute and that’s what got my attention in the first place, the story didn’t fully work for me, but maybe that’s because this was my first contemporary MG book.
Lola recently posted…My To-Be Read List #14: poll