Review: Finding It by Cora Carmack

finding it by cora carmackFormat read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: New Adult romance, Contemporary romance
Series: Losing It #3
Length: 323 pages
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Date Released: October 15, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find where you truly belong…

Most girls would kill to spend months traveling around Europe after college graduation with no responsibility, no parents, and no-limit credit cards. Kelsey Summers is no exception. She’s having the time of her life . . . or that’s what she keeps telling herself.

It’s a lonely business trying to find out who you are, especially when you’re afraid you won’t like what you discover. No amount of drinking or dancing can chase away Kelsey’s loneliness, but maybe Jackson Hunt can. After a few chance meetings, he convinces her to take a journey of adventure instead of alcohol. With each new city and experience, Kelsey’s mind becomes a little clearer and her heart a little less hers. Jackson helps her unravel her own dreams and desires. But the more she learns about herself, the more Kelsey realizes how little she knows about Jackson.

My Review:

losing it by cora carmackFinding It felt a bit loosely connected to the first two books in this series, Losing It and Faking It (reviewed here and here).

That seems kind of right, because at the beginning of the story, Kelsey Summers is only loosely connected to pretty much everything; reality, sobriety, safety, her own sense of identity and self-worth.

The ruin bar in Budapest where the story really begins is a metaphor for Kelsey’s life. She feels ruined and she’s working hard towards making the outside match the inside, even if that isn’t what she thinks she’s doing.

She thinks she’s collecting adventures by spending her way across Europe using her Daddy’s platinum American Express card. What she’s really doing is anesthetizing herself so that she doesn’t feel any pain.

Until Jackson Hunt swoops in and helps her stumble away from the Euro-trash flavor-of-the-night, but doesn’t take her anywhere except back to the hostel where she’s deliberately slumming it.

His departure, after taking care of her but not taking care of what they obviously both want, leaves her unsettled enough to want to see him again. Both fortunately and unfortunately for Kelsey, Jackson turns up just when she needs another rescue.

But this time he decides to stick around, since she seems to be making a habit of requiring his services. Except he’s not providing the services she definitely wants, the kind that make her forgot herself in a stranger’s arms and body for a night at a time.

Kelsey feels broken, and Jackson tries to help her pull herself together, without adding the sexual relationship they both want into the mix. It’s better if Kelsey finds a piece of herself before she tries to give any more of herself away to anyone else.

Even the man who might come to love her.

Because Jackson Hunt has already been where Kelsey is, even if he doesn’t know exactly what brought her there. He knows exactly what he’s protecting her from.

Particularly since her father paid him to be her bodyguard. Becoming her lover has totally screwed everything up. Especially Kelsey.

Escape Rating B+: On the one hand, the love story between Jackson and Kelsey is both very moving and very hot. You not only follow their adventure across Europe, you follow the push-pull of their intense attraction and his resistance and you want them to figure out a way to make things work.

On that other hand, Jackson’s secret in particular is screamingly obvious. While it becomes apparent through the story that Kelsey’s parents’ reasons for hiring a bodyguard may not have been totally pure, there’s no question in the reader’s mind that she needed some kind of safety net. She had totally stopped even minimally minding her own safety. She’d stopped caring about her future, any future. Jackson stepped in not just to keep her from drinking herself to death, but to keep her from getting beaten, raped, drugged or a whole lot of other bad things.

Kelsey was deliberately looking for friends in the lowest places she could find.

At first, it does seem like Kelsey is a whiny and bitchy little rich girl, pissing and moaning about the safe country-club lifestyle she doesn’t want to go back to, but also refusing to let go of daddy’s Amex. It’s only as Kelsey starts to reveal herself to Jackson that we figure out just what is going on. Or went on.

It’s not difficult to guess what Kelsey’s trauma is. The only questions are who the perpetrator was and what happened afterwards. Kelsey’s pain resides much more in the aftermath than the original event. And that totally makes sense.

faking it by cora carmackKelsey, like Bliss in Losing It and Cade in Faking It, trained as an actor. She uses her training to cover up whatever she really feels, to the point where the mask has become the only face she shows the world. Jackson forces her to really feel her own emotions, and then she discovers that everything they had was a lie.

But Kelsey has finally found either her courage, or her true self.

Jackson doesn’t save Kelsey after all. But he helped her build enough tools that she was able to save herself.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Faking It by Cora Carmack

faking it by cora carmackFormat read: print book provided by the publisher
Formats available: Paperback, ebook, audiobooks
Genre: New Adult Romance
Series: Losing It #2
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Date Released: June 4, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Mackenzie “Max” Miller has a problem. Her parents have arrived in town for a surprise visit, and if they see her dyed hair, tattoos, and piercings, they just might disown her. Even worse, they’re expecting to meet a nice, wholesome boyfriend, not a guy named Mace who has a neck tattoo and plays in a band. All her lies are about to come crashing down around her, but then she meets Cade.

Cade moved to Philadelphia to act and to leave his problems behind in Texas. So far though, he’s kept the problems and had very little opportunity to take the stage. When Max approaches him in a coffee shop with a crazy request to pretend to be her boyfriend, he agrees to play the part. But when Cade plays the role a little too well, they’re forced to keep the ruse going. And the more they fake the relationship, the more real it begins to feel.

My Review:

This is a marvelous story about how being oh so wrong can turn into being oh so right.

What makes both Cade and Max interesting is that they are both faking it in the beginning of the story. Max is totally faking who she is, and Cade is faking what he feels. so even though they don’t look like they fit, they actually do fit, in a weird way. Because they both really need to learn to stop. Sort of.

Cade Winston is an actor, so he needs to at least learn when he’s faking. After all, faking is his job. He has to be good at it. But he has to stop pretending to himself. All that’s doing is making him depressed.

losing it by cora carmackHe has to get past losing Bliss. And is there ever a metaphor in there. Because the Bliss that Cade lost was a person and not a state of being and absolutely not his to lose. (That story is in Losing It, reviewed here) Bliss Edwards has moved on, and Cade has to, too.

Max Miller keeps pretending to her parents that she isn’t a musician in New York City. When she visits home, she covers up her tattoos and her piercings and acts like the pretentious upper-crust society woman they think they know, instead of the musician and songwriter she really is. They think that marriage and membership in the country club is the only proper future. That is the opposite of Max, but they don’t see it.

They can’t see that Max believes that she should have been the one who died in the accident that killed her sister Alex. That Max feels unworthy and that every time they belittle or disregard her choices, they make her feel less worthy.

Only her music makes her feel alive. Until she needs a fake boyfriend who does not look or act like the tattooed drummer currently sponging off her that passes for her real boyfriend.

Cade has just said goodbye to Bliss and her boyfriend, the man who will ask Bliss to marry him. Cade’s dreams are over. Max, finding herself in the middle of a surprise visit by her parents, sucks him into her need for a fake boyfriend, and he acts the part. Cade’s an actor, he does it well.

Her parents love him. And he feels like Max is the sparkliest thing in his universe. For a few minutes, he totally forgets Bliss.

Max has herself a fake boyfriend for as long as she needs one to convince her parents that she has not sold herself to Satan. Because she hasn’t. She isn’t doing anything wrong except choosing music over convention.

Cade needs Max to knock his overly conventional universe off its axis for a while. And Max needs Cade not just to look conventional, but to provide her with just the tiniest bit of stability in her otherwise chaotic life.

And to be her fake boyfriend. Until neither of them is faking anything.

Escape Rating A-: Faking It has more depth than Losing It, and it felt like a more involving story. I also found the characters more believable than in the first story. Unlike Garrett in Losing It, Cade does not have the patience of a saint and gets angry at Max when he should. He also loses heart when things go against him. Garrett was too good to ring true. Cade may look too perfect but thankfully he doesn’t act that way.

It’s the story of Max putting on her “big girl panties” and dealing with a whole lot of awfully bad stuff. She doesn’t want to hurt or disappoint her parents, but at the same time, she’s past the point where she can live with herself if she lets them decide her life for her. It takes a lot of courage to chose an unexpected path.

There are no villains here. Max’s parents aren’t bad parents. They are just scared. They lost one daughter to tragedy, so they try to protect the other by keeping to paths they believe are safe. Their choices are misguided but not evil.

On the other hand, sister-in-law Bethany may just be the spawn of Satan that Max says she is.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Losing It by Cora Carmack

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Contemporary Romance, New Adult Romance
Series: Losing It #1
Length: 204 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Released: December 5, 2012
Purchasing Info:Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Virginity.

Bliss Edwards is about to graduate from college and still has hers. Sick of being the only virgin among her friends, she decides the best way to deal with the problem is to lose it as quickly and simply as possible– a one-night stand. But her plan turns out to be anything but simple when she freaks out and leaves a gorgeous guy alone and naked in her bed with an excuse that no one with half-a-brain would ever believe. And as if if that weren’t embarrassing enough, when she arrives for her first class of her last college semester, she recognizes her new theatre professor. She’d left him naked in her bed about 8 hours earlier.

Meet cute turns into awkward morning after, compounded with a dose of “when I kissed the teacher” that manages to be sappy rather than squicky, which is difficult. Add in a dose of long-time friend wishing he could make this a triangle, but that just isn’t happening.

Then add in the heroine’s desire to finally get rid of her virginity, as if it’s an out-of-date pair of shoes. Or something like that. Except every time she screws up her courage (no pun intended), or girds her loins (pun definitely intended) she panics.

Bliss is 22, so she is an adult in this story. Awkward about it, but an adult. Also about to graduate college. It’s time for her to spread her wings. She just hasn’t found any guy she wants to spread them for. She overthinks everything. And she likes to be in control.

Sex is all about losing control, and Bliss doesn’t do that very well. At all.

Until she meets this cute guy with a British accent in a bar, and he’s reading Shakespeare. She finally discovers what all the love songs are about. Or at least the lust songs. She takes him home, intending to finally do the deed.

She can’t go through with it. She can’t stop thinking of all the things she might do wrong. All the ways it might become awkward. She runs away, leaving him naked in her bed. She pretends she has an emergency.

The next morning she finds out he’s her new theatre professor. He’s a temp for the final semester. He also lives in the next building over from her. They can’t escape each other. They also can’t escape how they feel about each other.

Because in spite of the really awkward start (epically awkward), they have pretty amazing chemistry together. Yes, on a physical level, but also in every other way. They like each other, they don’t just lust after each other.

Garrett may be her professor, but his days in college aren’t that far behind him. He just finished his MFA, so he’s probably four or at the most five years older than Bliss. But the gap between student and teacher is huge in other ways. Relationships are often forbidden because the teacher has power over the student. Power to give grades, to give easy, or difficult assignments, etc.

So when Garrett and Bliss can’t keep away from each other, they have to keep it a secret. For a whole semester. Which brings an entire roller coaster full of emotions into play.

And in the meantime, Bliss is still a virgin, and has an incredibly difficult time telling Garrett. I did mention she was a theatre student, right? Dramatics all around. Dramatic misunderstandings abound.

And in the middle of it all, the senior class puts on a play. And they all get mono. The course of true love definitely does not run smooth, but it absolutely does manage to run on.

Escape Rating B: Bliss is an endearing heroine in her awkwardness. The opening scene where she runs out on a naked Garrick is hilarious, but also sad.  You want her to be happy, and you’re not too sure at that point whether she’s going to make it past her own insecurities.

Garrick has the patience of a saint. He’s a little, maybe a lot, too perfect. I’m not sure how many real men would have the patience that he does. Not just to wait through the long sexual drought, but to do it without knowing why Bliss wants to go so slow, and to put up with her jumping to so many wrong conclusions in so many different directions. They don’t talk about where their relationship is going, Bliss always assumes the worst. And Garrick patiently puts up with it.

Then there’s poor Cade, Bliss’ best friend at the beginning of the story. Cade is a stock character in so many stories, the best friend who loves the oblivious main character, only to lose out when the main character finds true love. Cade’s purpose in Losing It is to lose his best friend, so that he can be the main character of a future book.

 

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.