Review – To The Moon And Back by Jocelyn Han

After her father’s death, the last thing Ava Windsor wants is to leave Earth and move to an Elite colony on the moon for the next ten months. Nicolas Carter, a man she doesn’t even remember meeting, is to be her custodian until she reaches the age of twenty-one. Until then, she is not allowed to touch the money her dad has left her. Being the only child of a disowned Elite father and a common mother just got a lot more complicated.

But surviving among the Luna Six Elitists who treat commoners as servants should have been the least of Ava’s worries. Nicolas Carter is nothing like she expected. He condemns the Elite lifestyle, he is a lot younger than her father, and he is definitely way sexier.
Ten months on the moon seem like an eternity if you know you shouldn’t be falling for your guardian… but just can’t help yourself.

A sweet, steamy romance novella for lovers of New Adult with a hint of Futuristic.

I received an ARC of this book from the Publisher, via Netgalley, this does not affect my opinion of this book or the content of my review.

I picked this up because New Adult is just insanely ubiquitous, and I figured I can’t keep avoiding it like the plague. It sounded interesting, and while the falling in love with you guardian trope is not my favorite, I do tend to tolerate it more when it is in a non-contemporary setting. I was also hoping that having the hero be a bit older might make it a good transition into NA for me, and since the heroine is almost 21, and age gap wasn’t likely to bother me.

Stop now if you’d rather not be spoiled……………………………………………..

I got two percent in and found something that absolutely did bother me. Turns out the hero is her uncle. An adopted one apparently, but I have too many adopted family members to not get squicked out. Heck, I’m not even a fan of the step brother trope. Adding this to the guardian trope was just not something I could tolerate. So I took a look at other reviews to see if there was anything that would ameliorate this for me, and it turns out that this is a reprint or amended version or something to a work originally titled Fly Me To the Moon, which was published December 2013. Going by the reviews, in the original story he may have been her half uncle, but adopted is still kin as far as I am concerned. I went ahead and skimmed, but it looks like the hero/uncle is dating someone else for a good chunk of the time too.

So this really wasn’t the right book for me at all. I hate to DNF, but I really couldn’t read this one. From what I did read, it seemed well written and there weren’t any obvious editing flaws. This is probably a case of it being me rather than the book, but it is a detail I wish had been included in the blurb.

ARC – Review Below the Belt

Below the Belt
by Sydney Halston

I received an ARC of this book from the Publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. 

I simply could not do it. This book was impossible for me to get into. While I enjoyed Against the Cage and Full Contact I simply could not get into this book. Antonio was such a spoiled, self entitled, petulent jerk I felt like I had been dropped into a young adult or new adult novel rather than a novel about grown ups. And once the accent started being typed in, I was out. It was like nails scraping down a chalkboard for me. Halston in general seems to write light, fluffy humorous romance, so for the person who can get past this first part (and I am doubting that it is all that much of the book considering I jumped to the end and that wasn’t bad at all), they will probably enjoy it. It just isn’t for me and I just could not do it.