Big Demon Energy by Deborah Wilde (Bedeviled AF #1)

 

She’s just a demon, standing in front of a vampire, trying not to punch him.

Aviva Fleischer hides a dangerous secret. She’s carefully concealing her infernal heritage, a.k.a. Cherry Bomb. Maybe it’s weird naming her demon side and referring to her in the third person, but guys do the same with their junk, and unlike most of them, Avi isn’t deluded about Cherry’s prowess.

Avi’s been working her ass off, climbing the ranks of a supernatural policing organization to enact change and empower those like her forced to hide their true nature. Sure, she’s bent the rules now and then, but her arrest record speaks for itself. Her promotion is in the bag.

Instead, the director strikes a deal with Avi: spy on the operative sent in to work a rash of bizarre murders and prove she can be a team player, or kiss that new rank goodbye.

No problem.

Okay, maybe just one.

Her co-leader, Ezra Cardoso, is a charming, ruthless vampire with his own agenda, whom she fantasizes about: mostly staking him then vacuuming up his remains.

But when the killer sets Aviva’s team firmly in their sights, she’ll have to decide whether to keep playing by the rules or show everyone exactly what she—and Cherry Bomb—are capable of…

A new heroine, a new world and a fabulous new series from Deborah Wilde!

I love me some Urban Fantasy but when it's UF full of snark, quirky characters, and a slow-burning second chance romance that repeatedly pulls on the heartstrings I go from, "Yes, this is nice, more please." To virtual stalking of the author's social media to hoover up every snippet about future books whilst wailing into the wind, "I neeeeeeds it!" and trying to convince the old gods to do a gal a favour and send her some books from the future so that her sanity remains intact. 👀

So, yes... Big Demon Energy. I liked it very much. I'm excited to read more. I am positively feral to see how Avi and Ezra's relationship heals and evolves. I'm curious as to what happens when Avi's dual heritage comes into the open and I want to know more about the insidious plot and evil faction doing the bad things.

If you're an UF lover give this series a try!

Spring Cleaning The Blog!

 Oh, hi there! Remember me? Nicci? 

I used to live here but I had a bit of a mental meltdown and when I recovered I struggled with my attention span which means I mostly moved to Instagram... 👀

(To be fair, I still struggle with my attention span, but I'm relearning (have relearnt?) all my coping mechanisms which allowed me to be a functional individual for over 30 years of my life 'pre-meltdown.')

Despite multiple attempts to "get back to blogging," since recovery* I've never really succeeded but, alas, I'm a stubborn goat and I'm not giving up my little wordy space! 

Nope. No sir. 

I will reclaim this final piece of myself, therefore, I'm having a virtual spring clean!

My blog space is currently a mess of broken links, missing graphics and general WTFery of horrid formatting and other ugliness caused by changing my colour scheme, blog name and graphics numerous times during the previously mentioned period of mental instability and return attempts. 

This means I need to fix it or I need to delete it all. 

My brain will accept nothing less. 

Since I don't want to delete everything, fix it I will!

Now, I need to convince myself that everything doesn't need to be fixed and uniform before starting to post again... Logically, I know that it doesn't but the feral creature that lives in my head is rattling its bars and howling at the very thought. *sigh*

Anyhoo, I guess this is my way of saying I'm about to undertake attempt 10043 at returning to my blog space!

I'm excited to catch up with old favourites and meet new folks!

❤

*Recovery has many ups, downs, backward steps and forward sprints. I've given up trying to pin-point when recovery was or even if I am fully recovered... I'm just rolling with it and trying to be better every day. 

November Hello!

 

Hello. Long time no speak... again. Honestly, I wonder why I keep the blog sometimes but then I remember that I actually prefer writing bookish thoughts more than any of the social media stuff... Then I'm left pondering why I don't spend more time on here?! I blame my brain. I have a very short attention span these days so scrolling is easier than sitting still and thinking thoughts to translate into a blog post. 

Anyhoo! Hello! It's November! 

I cannot believe we're almost at the end of another year but since this is my favourite time of year I'm all excited about it.

I last updated on what's been going on in August (😱) so a quick run down of what's been going on since then:

👉I went to Florence (and attended RARE Florence whilst there.)

👉 The professor got promoted at work.

👉The little dude has started his second year of secondary school and got an award for academic excellence in his first year. 

👉I got a new hamster (named badgey) and he's pretty cool... (I still miss Bucky though. He was the bees-knees.)

👉I caught and recovered from Covid (for the second time.)

👉 My mum's health has been really poor and she's pending surgery but she'll hopefully be on the mend soon! Despite that, she was cleared to come visit for a couple of weeks which was lovely.

👉 It was my birthday! 38... that big 40 is creeping ever closer!

👉 I got a new laptop. It is super fast and super snazzy (not surprising considering my old laptop was over 8 years old) but like a new pair of boots, breaking in new technology takes time and I'm in the frustrating phase of having to reinstall things, save passwords, reset passwords, try and find where things are saved now... Bleh. It'll be good in a month or two once it's been suitably trained. 😂

👉 I managed to snag tickets to RARE's 10 year anniversary in Edinburgh next year (Sept).

👉 We completely redecorated the little dude's bedroom... It's went from "little kid room" to "teenage room" but the general chaos it's caused with furniture and boxes and stuff being all over the house whilst we decorated, sold/gave away old furniture, moved in new furniture etc... Ugh. Glad we don't have to do that again any time soon!!

👉 I've been stuck in a never ending cycle of blanching and freezing vegetables from the garden... Not to mention making chutney, pickling beetroot and other forms of preservation. I love how the husband's hobby has forced me to learn a whole new set of life-skills so the abundance of stuff he hauls from his garden doesn't go to waste! 😶 

I'm sure there's other stuff that I could add in here but I've rambled enough... Whilst the blogging mood has stuck me, I plan on working up some posts today so hopefully the blog won't be barren for much longer! Also, I've managed to transfer my blog list to the new computer in an easy to click through format so I'll hopefully be hopping around and catching up with folks!

(Instagram is fun and all but I miss my original blog-buddies!!)

I'm not going to list off what I've been reading since August but instead share my birthday book haul!

I got the Waterstones special edition of Kerri Maniscalco's Throne of the Fallen and it is beautiful! Printed edges, gorgeous embossed cover underneath the dust jacket... I've always been a cover whore but I've never really been a book collector but with how pretty some of these editions are I may be flipping...

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

Between Us by Mhairi McFarlane

The Many Lives of Hadley Monroe by Bec McMaster

Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim

Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim

In other news, it's the time of year for the HoHoHo Readathon hosted by Kimberly and I am, of course, going to take part! I think the HoHoHoRAT is my favourite of all of them every year!

 Who else is joining in?

❤

Hope you're all well! 

Hello, Sunday Posters, it's been a long time!!

 

Hello Sunday Posters!!

Wow, it's been a long time... So long I can't even remember the last time! I bet there's a lot of new bloggers on the roll and others missing... But hopefully there's still a lot of familiar faces! 

So, what's been going on over here? 

Erm... Not much. My mental health is still on the merry rollercoaster it's been on for the last couple of years (I'm on a nice steady part of the ride atm). 

The kid has finished his first year of high school and is on summer break atm (driving me steadily more insane with his pre-teen shenanigans). I'm still in the same job (project managing STEM stuffs), the professor is still plodding away with his job... We still have 3 cats but we lost our Bucky boy hamster months ago and I miss the little nut something fierce. 

Summer is here and I've been hating it (naturally) although we've been going on some day trips and what not which has been fun.

I attended RARE London back in July and met a load of authors (both new and known) and now I'm on the countdown to RARE Florence in September!

I'm so excited for Florence... We haven't been out of the UK as a family since 2017(ish) so a break is LONG overdue! While in Italy we'll be enjoying both Florence and Pisa and even though it's only a month away it stills feels like it's too long to wait!

Despite being completely erratic at posting here on the blog over the past few months... or maybe that should be years? I've been trying to be active over on Instagram with reading updates, reviews and the like. If you have an account, and want to keep up with me, that's the place to do it!

Oh yeah, and I deleted all twitter accounts - personal and blog. Mr Musk has lost his flippin' marbles and the whole "X" thing was the final straw for me.

Throughout August I've managed to read a grand total of ZERO books, so far!

What can I say, I'm on a roll. 😂

In all seriousness, I'm being such a moody moo mood reader at the moment... I currently have 6 different books at various stages of completion. Ideally, I'd like to finish all of them by the end of August but who knows what I'll end up doing.