Social Icons

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Blog Tour/Review ♥ Charged by Jay Crownover ♥ #giveaway $25 GC @InkSlingerPR or @JayCrownover

CHARGED - Tour Banner


From New York Times bestselling author Jay Crownover comes CHARGED, the latest in her sexy The Saints of Denver Series, releasing May 24th! Known for her strong heroines and alpha males, you won't know what hit you as you read Avett and Quaid's story. Keep reading for more about the Leagle Eagle and Avett and order your copy today.



CHARGED - cover

About CHARGED:

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Marked Men books comes the second installment in the Saints of Denver series featuring a bad girl and a by the book attorney who could be her salvation...or her ruin.Avett Walker and Quaid Jackson’s worlds have no reason to collide. Ever. Quaid is a high powered criminal attorney as slick as he is handsome. Avett is a pink-haired troublemaker with a bad attitude and a history of picking the wrong men.
When Avett lands in a sea of hot water because of one terrible mistake, the only person who can get her out of it is the insanely sexy lawyer. The last thing on earth she wants to do is rely on the no-nonsense attorney who thinks of her as nothing more than a nuisance. He literally has her fate in his hands. Yet there is something about him that makes her want to convince him to loosen his tie and have a little fun…with her.
Quaid never takes on clients like the impulsive young woman with a Technicolor dye job. She could stand to learn a hard lesson or two, but something about her guileless hazel eyes intrigues him. Still, he’s determined to keep their relationship strictly business. But doing so is becoming more impossible with each day he spends with her.
As they work side-by-side, they’ll have to figure out a way to get along and keep their hands off each other—because the chemistry between them is beyond charged.

 CHARGED - Tour Teaser 1

 A Review by Wendy

 5 All The Answers You Need Stars
* * * * *

All of us bring something Valuable to "The Table of Life". We may be Stay at Home Moms, Professionals, Blue Collar Workers... Whatever... It doesn't matter what we do....It is who we are and how we live our lives that matter...and Jay Crownover is a perfect example of this. 

It is through her writing about her characters and their stories which has opened minds and relationships for many of her readers, I think. She took a different approach in her book Rule, Marked Men. She brought the focus to young people who maybe were the ones others would look at disapprovingly only because they looked different or didn't understand their spirit and the freedoms they chose. By telling these stories with characters who had complex backgrounds which many have lived through themselves or by family and friends...she has enlightened generations to see more clearly the importance of acceptance and loving from the heart.

In all of her books, the characters each have a burden everyone of us can relate to...and it is through the journey of these characters, they grow and so do we.

In Charged (Saints of Denver #2) we catch up with Avett and Quaid, characters from the first entry, Built. These two seem to be from two different universes.

One is a powerful defense attorney, working to be the best in his field. Image, accumulation of all the trappings are important to him. He wears what is the uniform of success, lives in a sterile Ivory  Loft Tower looking out over all of Denver decorated with art he could care less about. Quaid has fought to be where he is and being in control of his image, success and how everyone perceives him is everything. It is the part he has been playing for quite a long time and until he crosses path with Avett, he looks to be on track to be partner at his firm.

On the other hand, we have Avett. She has been on her own personal track....one of self destruction...What had been a sweet free spirited child, curious to experiment and go against the easy safe way...turned into a woman determined to make punishing choices... ones destined to hurt her but unfortunately have ramifications on those she loves the most, her family and friends. What was just a wild child... testing her wings turned into a moth...looking to see where the flame was the brightest and if the burn was going to be too much...so much the better.

Avett is in the biggest trouble of her young life. We know of her relationship with her past boyfriend, an abusive one. She was under the spell of thinking she loved him and when the dye was cast... it was  revealed to her he was into hard drugs and selling... He made it difficult for her to see clearly... she thought this was the life she deserved...She did things that she hadn't before under his influence...stole from the cash register at the bar her dad sold to Rome. She became entrenched in his dirty dealings and was hurt/almost raped by the drug dealers looking for a stash he had used himself instead of selling. He took her with him when he was running from the dealers. Saying they just had to stop at the bar for a sec caused her to protest, resulting in him smashing her head into the dashboard. He went in, tried to hold up the bar with a gun and all of it did not end well. Asa and Royal were hurt but recovered...and charges were filed.

Avett is being held as an accessory and this is not something her dad can make better with a few hugs and kisses on a hurt boo boo. Avett has always been a daddy's girl and Brite has been this rock for all around him. He is the quintessential badass man. He served in Vietnam, came back to a world which had no clue as to what these guys had experienced. He found brothers in a motorcycle club and a mentor who saw what type of man he could be..
The mentor handed down to Brite the bar he had...and the rest is Denver history. Brite ran The Bar and all of the Marked Men and others have been touched by him. He is like a father figure to many and those that listen...turn a lot of what is personally torturing them around.  He has looked out for his girl, loved her up through all the bad judgements and told her, "bad decisions make for good stories, Sprite." 

We are in the room were prisoners meet with their lawyers. Avett, with her fading pink hair is sitting at the metal table we have all seen on TV and the movies with her hands and feet locked in cuffs. This isn't playtime... this is real and she is scared out of her mind. She thinks she has finally done it... hit the bottom she has been aiming for since that night so long ago.

Ouaid is sitting there with his thousand dollar suit fitting just so, adjusting his cuff over the top of the line Rolex on his wrist and is looking at her 3 inch thick file. There every infraction she has every had with the law is printed and organized. Quaid starts his standard first meeting speech with all of his clients stating he doesn't want to hear her story... and she is to do exactly everything he says... period if things are to go the way she wants.

Well, nothing goes standard where Avett is concerned... and Quaid's first encounter with her is a telling one...He has handle the slim of the slime and gotten them cleared of charges he was sure they did. But that wasn't his job... his job was to represent and do his best...Yet with this woman... he actually senses she had nothing to do with the robbery or anything the ex boyfriend is saying.
Her pleading to not call the father for bail has him shocked when she says she will fire him if he does...

Quaid does reach out to Brite and Avett is stunned yet relieved to see her father and mother are both there for her arraignment. The process happens and it is the start of what is to come for all of them.  While awaiting trial, it is a way for Avett to work through all the pain and hurt inflicted to her mom over the years; a way to look at her life and why doing nothing was her go to action...and trying to learn what all of these feelings she has for Quaid mean if anything...for anything to do with her is destined to destroy him...

Ouaid goes through his own reckoning; the past childhood and scars he has worked so hard to hide sneak into his exchanges with Avett. She is so real, nothing like the women he had experience with....it is refreshing, exciting and stimulating.  She is a spitfire and he is drawn to her even when she is everything his career path does not need.    

This tale is so much more than the moving parts. It takes family, parental love and lays it out there for all to see. Children need unconditional love... they need to know you will always be there for them even at the lowest of times...It is during those lowest moments when the security of their place in your heart might be the only thing which brings them back from the brink of self destruction...However, tough choices also may be needed too...

We have characters talking to Avett about her need to punish herself... to always take the wrong choice and why...with one of the strongest lessons told...Of letting go and forgiving yourself of the past is the only way to go forward. It is not to say the past actions will disappear... they will always have happened... but in order to live the life you were meant to ... you must forgive yourself...stop looking for punishment because you think you don't deserve good.

And with Quaid...he learns as much from Avett as she does from him. He realizes he is who he is...and there is absolutely nothing wrong in being the person he is... he starts to see things very differently through Avett's open honest way and it feels good.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't tell you of the chemistry between these two is off the charts...But then again, it is a Crownover book.

What I loved most about this book was the revealing dedication to Crownover's mother and her introduction. In the dedication, she gave extraordinary props to mom and my heart turned to goo. In the intro she talked about times in her personal life which gave her a sense of Déjà vu while writing this character Avett. She also addressed the need to write the character as she comes, not worrying if she is totally likable... for it is the need of her to be true to the character.

There are powerful lessons in this book... and lucky for us they are wrapped around characters we want to know more about...we care and become involved from the first page. Take the lessons; enjoy the story. There is more to come and I cannot wait. 


A gifted copy was provided by author/publisher for an honest review.

Excerpt

Quaid

I tapped the edge of my thumb on the black-and-white mug shot photo and couldn’t stop the grin from tugging at my mouth.

She tried to fire me.

She was five-foot-nothing, a lifetime younger than me, had multicolored hair that had seen better days, wild eyes that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be green, gold, or brown, while dressed in convict orange and obviously scared out of her ever loving mind, yet she still tried to fire me. If it had been any of my other clients—the cop accused of sexual battery, the frat boy accused of manslaughter over a bet on a football game gone wrong, the middle school teacher accused of pedophilia and having an inappropriate relationship with several of her students, or the pro football player accused of domestic abuse—I would have tipped my proverbial hat, wished them luck while I cut my losses, and walked away without a backward glance. People always committed crimes. People always needed a good defense, so it wasn’t like I was hurting for clients, but there was something about the girl. Something about the defiant tilt of her chin and the raw desperation in her tone when she begged me not to call her father.

“I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything from you.” She sounded like she meant it when she said it, but I figured she was too young and too scared to know exactly what she wanted or needed. Regardless, it was still refreshing to hear.

Everyone always wanted something from me and my help was usually the least of it.

I tapped the picture again, wondering why I found it so easy to believe that she really hadn’t been a part of the boyfriend’s plan to rob the bar. She wasn’t anyone’s idea of a model citizen and she had the shady track record to prove it. She was too young, and frankly too adorable, to have a file this thick. From what I could see, she had a set of parents always willing to ride to the rescue when she got herself into trouble. She looked like some kind of colorful woodland fairy from a Disney movie with her odd hair and delicate features. None of it added up, but the sincerity in her tone when she said she would never have gone with the boyfriend if she knew his intent and the fear in her eyes when I mentioned her father seemed genuine.

I learned long ago to treat everyone like they were guilty of whatever it was I was paid to defend them against. I didn’t want to know the truth. I didn’t want to know the circumstances. I wanted my clients to listen to me and let me do my job as I tried to convince the rest of the world they were innocent, regardless if they were or not. But this girl with her faded, rose colored hair and turbulent eyes oozed innocence through the cracks of a very guilty façade.

Because I was intrigued and actually believed the girl might be innocent, I wasn’t going to let her fire me. I was going to call her father and hope that he would help me keep her out of the slammer while I figured out how to plea bargain her charges down or get them dismissed altogether. Again, because a cop was involved in the robbery and because the boyfriend, junkie or not, was offering up a pretty plausible explanation for Avett’s involvement in the crime, nothing was a slam dunk, yet. I was going to help her whether she wanted me to or not.


 And don’t miss the first titles in The Saints of Denver Series!
 LEVELED - cover

LEVELED



Studio portrait of young bearded man --- Image by © pinkypills/Corbis

BUILT


About Jay Crownover:


Jay Crownover - author picJay Crownover is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Marked Men, The Point, and the Saints of Denverseries. Like her characters, she is a big fan of tattoos. She loves music and wishes she could be a rock star, but since she has no aptitude for singing or instrument playing, she'll settle for writing stories with interesting characters that make the reader feel something. She lives in Colorado with her three dogs.

Website ** Blog ** Facebook ** Twitter

CHARGED Goodreads ** Jay Crownover Goodreads


CHARGED - Tour Teaser 2



CHARGED Review & Excerpt Tour
May 16th
Ramblings From This Chick – Review & Excerpt
BJ' S Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
2 Girls & Their Kindles – Review & Excerpt
She Hearts Books – Review & Excerpt
Booky Ramblings of a Neurotic Mom – Review & Excerpt
BookWorm221 – Review & Excerpt
Red Hot + Blue Reads – Review & Excerpt
Three Little Birds Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Gemma Reads Too Much – Review & Excerpt
Ticket to Anywhere – Review & Excerpt
May 17th
Never Judge a Book by its Cover – Review & Excerpt
The Book Disciple – Review & Excerpt
Desert Divas Book Addiction – Review & Excerpt
Literati Literature Lovers – Review & Excerpt
BFF Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Hot Guys in Books - Review & Excerpt
This Wacky Momma reads! – Review & Excerpt
The Rambling Book Junke – Review & Excerpt
A Reader Who Reads – Excerpt
Books to Breathe – Review & Excerpt
Disheveled Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
May 18th
The Book Bellas – Excerpt
HotPressedBooks – Review & Excerpt
Books by Migs – Review & Excerpt
Emilie's Book World – Review & Excerpt
Dirty Birdie Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Pages Abound – Review & Excerpt
NC 2 DC – Review & Excerpt
kimberlyfaye reads – Review & Excerpt
The Book Maven – Review & Excerpt
Julalicious Book Paradise – Review & Excerpt
The Dirty Book Girls – Review & Excerpt
May 19th
Ineffable Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Much Loved Books – Review
Reading is Sexy – Review & Excerpt
Pretty Sassy Cool – Review & Excerpt
About That Story – Excerpt
Shanoff Says... – Review & Excerpt
Krista's Dust Jacket – Review & Excerpt
Home. Love. Books. – Review
Girls With Books – Review & Excerpt
Milky Way of Books – Review & Excerpt
May 20th
Naughty and nice book blog – Review & Excerpt
Waiting For Wentworth – Review & Excerpt
TjLovesToRead – Review & Excerpt
Zili in the Sky – Review & Excerpt
From the TBR Pile – Review & Excerpt
Typical Distractions – Review & Excerpt
Blog of Books – Review & Excerpt
Lea's Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Crazii Bitches Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
May 21st
Random Book Muses – Review
Dark Faerie Tales – Review & Excerpt
three chicks and their books – Review & Excerpt
Ali's Reviews and More – Review & Excerpt
Little Red's Reviews – Review & Excerpt
Book Angel Booktopia – Review & Excerpt
Andi's ABCs – Review & Excerpt
StarAngels Reviews – Review & Excerpt
We stole your book boyfriend – Review & Excerpt
City of Fandoms – Review & Excerpt
May 22nd
Best Book Boyfriends – Review & Excerpt
Bookcrack – Review
Bookaholics Not-So-Anonymous – Review & Excerpt
Guiltyindulgencebookclub – Review & Excerpt
Cocktails and Books – Review & Excerpt
Ceres Books World – Review
Reese's Reviews – Review & Excerpt
May 23rd
Lazy Book Lovers – Review
People Like Books – Review & Excerpt
The Book Lovers Codex – Review & Excerpt
Tash – Review & Excerpt
Under the Covers – Review & Excerpt
Princess Reads – Review & Excerpt
Shelf_life – Review & Excerpt
The Bookmark Blog – Review & Excerpt
May 24th
RELEASE WEEK BLITZ!
May 25th
Escaping Into Books – Review & Excerpt
Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews – Review & Excerpt
True Story Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Lili's Books – Review & Excerpt
Two Book Pushers – Review
Book Sojourner – Review & Excerpt
Reviews by Tammy & Kim – Review & Excerpt
Romance Addict Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Babbling Chatter Reads – Review & Excerpt
Rentastic Reads – Review
Smut Book Junkie Reviews – Review & Excerpt
Total Book Geek – Review & Excerpt
My Girlfriend's Couch – Review & Excerpt
The Book Avenue – Review & Excerpt
Nose Stuck in a Book – Review & Excerpt
May 26th
RELEASE WEEK BLITZ!
May 27th
Mistress of Romance – Review & Excerpt
The Revolving Bookcase – Review & Excerpt
Red Cheeks Reads – Review & Excerpt
BFD Book Blog – Review & Excerpt
Read-Love-Blog – Review & Excerpt
Renee Entress's Blog – Review & Excerpt
Oh My Shelves – Review
I Heart Books – Review & Excerpt
InkSlinger PR - blogger banner

7 comments :

  1. Excellent review! I also enjoyed reading the excerpt. This book sounds like such a fun, hot, steamy, exciting, and intriguing read! Totally can't wait to read it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I could do anything style wise that I've never done before, I would choose to color my hair pink or at least have some pink streaks. I work with customers and I represent a company so I have to have a neutral look. I've always been in some kind of job that has strict appearance rules so I've never been able to do something fun and silly with my style, so it would be interesting and exciting to try it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think I would loose the weight I can't seem to get ride of and a new romantic, sexy look but of course that takes money and time I don't seem to have..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you so much! ~Jessica, InkSlinger PR

    ReplyDelete
  5. I would love to color my hair to have a brilliant blue streaks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I would try a new hairstyle - I've had the same one for years now.

    ReplyDelete