Review: The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan

Rating: 3 stars

Pub Date: September 7, 2014

Publisher: self-published

Genre: new adult contemporary romance, sports

Format/Source: Kindle ebook, purchased

Status: book 1 of the Game On series

Summary:

The rules: no kissing on the mouth, no staying the night, no telling anyone, and above all... No falling in love

Anna Jones just wants to finish college and figure out her life. Falling for star quarterback Drew Baylor is certainly not on her to do list. Confident and charming, he lives in the limelight and is way too gorgeous for his own good. If only she could ignore his heated stares and stop thinking about doing hot and dirty things with him. Easy right?

Too bad he's committed to making her break every rule...

Football has been good to Drew. It's given him recognition, two National Championships, and the Heisman. But what he really craves is sexy yet prickly Anna Jones. Her cutting humor and blatant disregard for his fame turns him on like nothing else. But there's one problem: she's shut him down. Completely.

That is until a chance encounter leads to the hottest sex of their lives, along with the possibility of something great. Unfortunately, Anna wants it to remain a hook up. Now it's up to Drew to tempt her with more: more sex, more satisfaction, more time with him. Until she's truly hooked. It's a good thing Drew knows all about winning.

Happy Anniversary to Me! + New Feature Alert

Last week Mary Had a Little Book Blog celebrated three years (more or less) in existence, but this week I'm celebrating another personal and professional anniversary: my one year mark working at the library!

Last year I mentioned getting the job, but I haven't talked very much about my life at the library, but I'd like to start doing that so I'm also going to start a new feature on the blog called 

(that's kind of the first time I've made a
graphic for the blog. Does that look terrible?)

So mixed in with reviews and discussions and rambly things, I'll also be posting about life in a library in the hopes that you'll understand library policies a bit better and ways to support authors/libraries/books. Do you have any questions about life behind the shelves? Let me know in the comments, and I'll try to answer in an upcoming post!

Mary Had a Little Book Blog Turns 3

Wow. Three years, huh? Hardly seems like any time has gone by at all.... Wait, no, that's a lie. Three years is a long time, and in that time I have gone through several Big Life Changes such as:

I moved to Dallas

I started working at a science museum

I moved again (still in Dallas)

Job at the science museum changed

I moved again (still in Dallas)

Job at the museum changed again

And again (yay, big promotion)

And again (SO MANY RESPONSIBILITIES)

And one more time (ummm....wut)

I got a second job at the library (wheeeee!)

I quit the museum

I moved again (still in Dallas)

I got a promotion at the library (WHEEEEEE!)

I'd say this has been probably the most impactful three years of my life, and through it all, I've had the book community at my back. But....this year, trying to juggle both jobs was more difficult than I ever expected, and I had to take an unexpected and unannounced break from the blog. Sure, I missed talking to you guys about books, but I was still doing that on Twitter only minus the stress of formatting and sounding "official" or whatever and page views and unique visitors and HTML and images and all that other stuff that will occasionally make you go insane. It's not exactly that I lost sight of the blog, but I felt like the blog wasn't what I wanted it to be. I was tired and facing an extreme bout of depression. Taking a mental breather was good.

Eventually I fell in love with ya again (2015 marked an upswing in the number of new adult and romance titles I read and a severe decrease in ya), and then I missed blogging more than I was glad to be taking a break. Hence, my glorious return! Huzzah! Seriously, it's good to be back. But now, rather than posting every day because I feel like I have to, even if I don't have anything unique or interesting to say, I have no problem waiting a few days. Suddenly I am made of chill when it comes to the blog, rather than being an obsessive weirdo. It was not a good look for me.

Ironically, though, the blog/my platform did hit a couple really amazing milestones statistically. During my break, I reached 100,000 total page views and in November, I reached 3,000 Twitter followers. You can't live and die or blog by stats, but I remember how excited I was when I hit 1,000 page views overall (it took four months) and how excited I was when I hit 1,000 page views in a month (it took another two months) and how excited I was when I hit 1,000 page views on a post (it took.... several months more). Those numbers are not indicative of the quality of anything, but.... it's still cool to think that sometimes I have something to say and people are listening (because even all the times I've looked at my blog while messing with the format or whatever doesn't equal 100,000 worth of hits).

So thank you guys for sticking in there with me. Thanks for reading and commenting and subscribing and sharing!

Love,
Mary

PS Totally going to do some giveaways this month. Just fyi.