Friday 1 March 2019

πŸ’œ Ella James πŸ’œ COVET πŸ’œ #BlogTour πŸ’œ

© Bianca ✰ 



• 25 February 2019
• Standalone Angsty Twisty Emotional Love Story
• Book #3 in the Sinful Secrets Series

★★★
4.25 Stars

Homer Carnegie. Admit ityou know my name. Your kid’s got my e-trading card. Your husband sits up straighter when I stroll onto the TV screen. He knows I’m going to crack the bat and save the day. Even your grandma’s jonesing for my autograph. But women my age? They’re the worst. Or would that be the best?

It’s not my fault they line up at the door. They catch my balls all right, two at a time sometimes, or even three. Believe me, everybody wins.

At least they diduntil the video. I heard TMZ paid a million for a bird’s eye view of Homer on his A-game. The only folks who didn’t watch with eager eyes? Red Sox management. They want me benched, or worse, shipped off to rehab.

It’s a long story, what happens next. How I end up on a boat, bound for the world’s most remote island: Tristan da Cunha. Just a speck of dust in the Atlantic.

Except my heart is there.
I don’t know that when I step onto the boat.
I don’t know a lot of things.
What I’ll covet
What I’ll lose




Declan is a huge baseball star in Boston. But that's pretty much over now.
His team wants him to go to rehab - but he's not going to rehab - he's going on a cargo ship! A ship who brings him to the very remote south atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha.
He's been there before as a kid. He's kind of royalty there. His dad donated so much money to the islanders. (For reasons!☺)

Enter Finley.
She's from the island.
Her parents died when she was only a little kid and since then she spent her life living and working for the island. She's currently the resident nurse-doc until the real doc comes back. Plus she's the island's best shepherd! And she's 'renting' out her late grandma's house for the island's celebrity visitor.

Finley and Declan don't exactly have the cutest of meet cutes (it was for us though!☺) and Finley kind of hates him after that. But of course she's also extremely attracted to the beautiful athlete!

Lots of problems and adventures and drama and heartbreak to survive until we can even think of getting a happy end!

LET THE FUN TIMES BEGIN ☺
.....





Well, that was a huge book!
I'm not really a fan of too many words in books. I prefer dialogue-based, fast-paced stories. Too much describing the weather and landscape usually gets on my nerves real fast. BUT - this time it was fascinating! It was still way too long and there were still way too many words for my tastes, but I liked it anyway. I even googled the island - I wanted to see what it looks like down there! Really interesting!

The story.
It starts with this heartbreaking little prologue about how Finley loses her parents and then we fast forward twenty years to today and Declan arriving on the island.

It's so adorable to watch Finley and Declan together. They just rub each other the wrong way - or rather he's rubbing her the wrong way. She's way too sweet and nun-ish for his city-boy ways.
I love how she calls him The Carnegie. Too cute.

The whole atmosphere of the story was a bit sad or melancholy - it rains a lot. It's a tiny little island with not even 300 people living there. It's all so ... no idea what I mean. It felt a bit like going back in time. And with the islanders talking in that weird accent mix of all the british accents it was a bit like being in a 19th century scottish dramance! ☺

It was a great book with adorable moments, funny moments, really exciting and sexy and even suspensy moments and so many heartbreaking moments. I really enjoyed reading it, but I also had lots of problems with it.

If you're scared of spoilers - please stop reading now. I'm not really spoiling much - but a little bit!!!

I hate it when the hero or heroine in my books is ... how can I best say what I mean?? Leathally flawed? No. You know those romances where the girl had cancer and now all is good and she gets her HEA with the hot guy? Yeah - I HATE that! I don't want to be scared after finishing a book - I don't want to think about her cancer coming back in 4 years and bam! Dead! People have enough bad stuff in their private lives - romances should not add to that - they're supposed to take you out of your sometimes horrible life! Declan doesn't have cancer - it's addiction in this case - which is just as bad. I would've been okay with it if he only got addicted after a baseball injury and taking too many pain pills. But that's not the case. Not that he doesn't have a good reason for his addiction, but still. I hated that part very much! He'll never be really okay.

And as I mentioned before. The writing. The book is just way too long. Why didn't Ella's editor tell her to cut 100 pages? It would've made the story more interesting. Especially the cave time - way too long!
And then the accent. I can live with a british accent - of course! BUT! Finley talks so weird. Yes, she's not a tv-watcher, not a cell-phone-owner, it's all a bit back-in-time on that island. But she has such a very weird way of talking.

Another thing - just me being weird - I hate the word prior in books. It was never used much in recent years and these last months every author is mega overusing it. Just say earlier or before or whatever. I never heard that word used in conversation!

The cover! It's sooo pretty and sexy and I love the colors. But it's so not the book. Not even a little bit. The book is a heartbreaking island drama ... no idea how the cover should look - maybe a girl running up a grassy hill in the rain with a lamb following her - and she's looking behind her - maybe trying to reach a guy's hand? LOL! No idea - but this is not a good cover for this story!

Another tiny little thing ... the religiousness of the book. People who read my reviews know I hate religion sooo much - and there was a lot of being religious in here.  

I'm putting the next bit in a spoiler thingy - meaning I wrote it in white - just move your finger/mouse across the following lines:  There's this huge plot-twist thingy happening towards the end. We were expecting it. But I thought it would be along the lines of Finley being a nun!!! ☺ But she's 'only' married to that weird abusive doctor. I liked that more than the nun thing! ☺ But I expected something a tiny little bit more exciting or un-over-come-able like being siblings - which of course we would've proven wrong at the end! 

End of rant!

Even if it didn't sound like it - I really liked the story and most people in it. The last few chapters really made up for most of what I didn't love!  And the lamb! Oy - she was adorable - I want one too!!!!!!!

 I really wouldn't mind seeing this on Netflix one day!

COVET was such a beautiful & heartbreaking island-adventure-love-story!!
Run to your nearest amazon for your own Declan - this one is MINE!!!!




LINKS TO THE BOOK AND AUTHOR
  






Ella James is the USA Today bestselling author of seventeen teen and adult love stories. She's an angst-a-holic who loves exploring difficult situations and the emotions of the people caught up in them. Also, smut. But always, always romance.

Ella's obsessions include vanilla cream soda, hiking, other obscure, crunchy stuff like rock collecting, and the antics of her three little monsters.