WoW | Learning not to drown. by Anna Shinoda

Waiting on Wednesday

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Date Released/Releasing: April 1, 2014

There is a pecking order to every family. Seventeen-year old Clare is the overprotected baby; Peter is the typical, rebellious middle child; and Luke is the-can't-do wrong favorite. To their mother, they are a normal, happy family. And then there are the roles we give ourselves. Clare: the ambitious striver; Peter: the angry ticking time bomb; and Luke: a drug addicted, convicted felon who has been in and out of jail for as long as Clare can remember. To Clare, they are a family on the verge of disaster. Clare has long refused to believe her brother is truly bad...he dotes her, doesn't he? But as Clare starts piecing together the truth about her brother's stints in jail, it starts changing the way she thinks about him. It has also changes the way the community views the family. The only thing it hasn't changed is the way their mother feels about Luke. Each time she welcomes him home with open arms and brushes off his crimes as "wrong place and wrong time," Clare can feel a little piece of her happy home life being taken away. And when her mother does the unthinkable--takes Clare's hard-earned college savings to post bail for Luke's latest transgression--Clare has to decide if sticking up for herself and her future means selfishly turning her back on family...or if it's the only way to keep herself from drowning along with them.

Debut novelist Anna Shinoda's raw, gritty, powerful novel cuts right to the bone and brings to life the skeletons the lurk in the closet.

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Review | Overprotected by Jennifer Laurens

Title: Overprotected
Author: Jennifer Laurens
Series: N/A
Pages: 243
Date Released: April 29, 2011

Summary: Ashlyn: A lonely society princess living in New York City.

Colin: Childhood enemy, now her protector.

Daddy hired him to be my bodyguard. Daddy thought I'd be safe. He thought I'd never fall in love. He thought he could keep me forever. 

Charles: Obsessed with keeping her safe and keeping her his, he hires the one person he knows she could never fall in love with: Colin.

Daddy was wrong.

   Overprotected was a very intense and underrated novel. Ashlyn was a wonderful character who grew a lot throughout the course of the book. Her strength was so admirable and inspirational especially after being so badly incarcerated by her own paranoid father. Every part of the book was filled with a weird or unexpected twist of turn which were my favorite parts of the book. Colin was a great supporting character. He was such a gentleman towards Ashlyn and he took all her issues well. He was there whenever she needed him and stood quietly by her side when she needed to do something on her own. Their relationship was dynamic and one of the most realistic I've read before. The ending of Overprotected was so jam-packed with action and made me feel so much more connected with Ashlyn as she kicked butt and took names.

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