Reader Favorites – Lisa’s Top Favorite Books List:

Happy Saturday!!! It’s time to play in someone else’s “favorites list” and see how close to us they are in book love, and discover something new to read! After all… if they love it that much, and they so obviously have similar book tastes, then that must mean we are missing something awesome, right? YAY US!!!

And Lisa agrees! “Gosh I just love these lists!!!! They not only remind me of my long forgotten but much loved books but also give me new tbrs.”

Today’s list features our fellow reader and friend, Lisa! Let’s find out a little more about Lisa, shall we? Oh there is SO much good stuff to list!!! She’s been actively chatting with us since May of this year, but she’s been “with us” for much longer, and I feel like I’ve known her forever!!

• Lisa is Australian and has a thing for our book “sports stars”. 😉

“Think I have an ice hockey/football player crush going on……too bad we don’t have either in Australia”

• Just perfect for this Halloween month, she regales us with a spooky tale! She suspects the last place she lived in was haunted:

“I swear the last house we lived in was haunted. The microwave would turn itself on at random times…like the middle of the night! It would totally freak me out when I was home alone. And lights in the main bedroom would flicker and dim at times. My husband would hear loud footsteps along the timber hallway, thinking it was me, only to have no one there when he’d look. We found out the previous owners wife had died there. Too spooky.”

• She gives us an Australian “man-bun” lesson:

“…they’re called Muns in Australia (man buns) and as long as they’re not paired with Meggings (weird man leggings) I’m OK with the look *snort*”

• Lisa loves book boyfriends, but she has her limits!

“…if misogynistic self centred self serving manwhores are the characters being written for us to fall in love with I think Im done!!!! AND female leads who are every other woman’s worse nightmare don’t give me warm and fuzzies either…”

“Hi Maryse,

Thought Id send in my top reads…its so much fun reading everyone else’s.:

I’ve been checking out your blog for a couple of years now and can thank you for some of my most favorite book recommendations.  I love reading all of the banter and comments from your peanut gallery.  There are some pretty funny discussions!  But mostly I love their book recommendations and have a ridiculously long tbr list (like if I read non-stop from now until the day I die I still won’t finish it long – yikes) thanks to them.  Being an Aussie I get a giggle at some of the ‘cultural differences’ in some of the language in the chat…..thongs really really should only ever go on your feet people!!

Anyhoo….”

Here’s my list:

1. Colleen Hoover – I know! Not a book….but seriously I would read a cereal box if she wrote the blurb – and love it! My fave is Maybe Someday.  We use sign language for our daughter so perhaps it resonated with me.  Honorable mention to Slammed series – Will and Layken too. Her characters are real and the kind of people Id like to meet. And she does coming of age love to perfection.

2. How to Kill a Rock Star – Tiffanie DeBartolo.  If I rate books by how long the characters stay with me when I finished their story then this is my all time most loved book. Paul Hudson will stay with me always in his hideous pea green suit strumming ‘Just Like Heaven’ on his guitar.  I love him. I wanted to add Tiffanie’s other book God Shaped Hole: A Novel to this list too – but really  this book wrecked me so badly I needed a quiet weekend to myself to get over it!!  Too painful to be able to say I loved it – but it was ‘rip you heart out and stomp on it’ amazing. Ugly ugly crying was involved.

3. One Day by David Nicholls – another rip your heart out book that I couldn’t put down.  Dexter is the anti-hero who I spent as much time despising and wanting to throat punch as I did cheering for.  Emma was neurotic and divine and I want her as my best friend.

4. Beautiful Bastard – Christina Lauren (love these two ladies and laughed my a**e off when they vowed to never use the word ‘vulva’ in a sex scene) – this book was the first laugh out loud sexy romp style book I read and the banter between the characters Bennett & Chloe is golden.  It introduced me to others that became faves also like Tangled, Wallbanger, Confessions of a Reformed Tom Cat, The Redhead Series.  I enjoy reading these books in between the previously mentioned rip your heart out books – cos really I’d be rocking and mumbling in a corner somewhere if it was all God-Shaped Hole!!!!!

5. Sweet Thing – Renee Carlino. She hasn’t written a book I haven’t loved and her recent Before We Were Strangers almost tops Sweet Thing – almost.  I just adore the way she writes such heart-achingly beautiful love stories and can fill pages with such longing and loss – it’s astounding. Her hero’s are beautiful and not the usual alpha dick’s but just gorgeous. Sigh.

6. The Driven Series K Bromberg – one of the first series I read after 50.  There are so many of these types of stories out there but for some reason this one stayed with me. Colton was a gigantic d**k but I couldn’t stop reading these books!!

7. The REAL Series Katy Evans – what can I say.  Remy is my book catnip.  This is how you write the emotionally shattered alpha manwhore character.  I’m loving her Manwhore series too.

8. The Pact – Karina Halle.  It’s hard to pick just one of her books but this one broke me. Linden and Steph – I wanted to bang their thick heads together with frustration.  This is the perfect ‘friend-zoned’ book.

9. The Mighty Storm series – Samantha Towle.  I love a good rock god story and there are plenty of these out there but Jake and Tru’s story stuck. Honorable mentions to the The Resistance SL Scott, Mayhem Series, Stage Dive Series Kylie Scott, High Strung & The Lexi Series T Gephart and the original…… Thoughtless and yummy, yummy Kellan.

10. The Dark Duet books CJ Roberts – so darkly disturbing I’m not sure if they stayed with me because I was traumatized or if I actually really liked them.  I do remember having to frequently put the book/kindle down and walk away at times, it was just too painful to read. Indebted by Pepper Winters is my current selection in self torture….I have to really be in the mood to manage this kind of book and will frequently follow up with lighter reads or a tried and true Kristen Ashley – that I know will give my heart the HEA it needs to recover.

Soooo many more I could mention – Vi Keeland – Throb & Beat, anything by Penelope Ward, Bully (Fall Away Series) by Penelope Douglas, The Deal, The Mistake by Elle Kennedy and The Friend Zone & The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan, Left Drowning by Jessica Park, If I Stay & Where She Went by Gayle Forman, Archer’s Voice & Kyland – Mia Sheridan, This Man Series & One Night Series by Jodi Malpas…………and on and on it goes.

I think I need more reading time and far fewer recommendation for must reads.  No! Not true….happiness is a long tbr.  So keep the recommendations coming Maryse!!

So that’s me. Cheers!! Lisa xx