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Hidden Agenda
Hidden Agenda
2017 | Action/Adventure
Casting, story & quick time events. (0 more)
Very short story, perma-death style system & game can only be played via downloadable app?! (0 more)
An unfortunate let down
Hidden agenda is a story about detective marney (katie Cassidy) who 5 years after capturing and arresting the infamous serial killer "the trapper killer" is thrown after the announcement that she may have arrested the wrong man...who is on death row with only 48 hours left...she has to be sure.

This game genuinely looked like a hit, with its dark, gritty tone, detective based story & quick time scenarios but was quickly derailed due to only being able to play by downloading a companion app and using a portable device (providing your device was able too - fyi old fire tabs don't 😕)

Once you have it, you will be prompted to add you name & choose a colour? As you can have friends join in too, but still need to if it's just you?

The story is incredibly short, even shorter if you make a wrong choice or are too slow to move your device pointer to a specific moving target, which from a I can assure you, can become rather infuriating.

Answering a phone call or video call WILL disrupt your game and you will be sent back to start all over.....Including adding your name and colour again.

Aside from that- great casting, great story, great graphics and this would make and absolutely fantastic live action movie.
  
*Note: This review is from my original posting in March of 2014, which can be found here:http://cafinatedreads.com/book-reviewlove-at-any-cost-by-julie-lessman/. My thoughts are still the same, my emotions are still the same as the first time I read it!*

Sweet Saints above, Ms. Lessman has done it again!!! Next to Karen Kingsbury, she is absolutely positively my absolute favorite Christian Fiction author. I love her work! Her characters (my favorite is Katie from A Hope Undaunted!) steal you away to their time and place and sweep you into their mix for a time. I laugh, I cry, I smile through all her books and her characters……well, they are chiseled absolutely perfectly for their stories!

Oh my! Cassidy was absolute a breath of fresh air! I loved the phrases she used through out the story. Ms. Lessman used phrases my granddaddy used to use before he passed away years ago, it brought back so many memories for me! And her heart, bless her, she just wanted to let go of her broken engagement from a gold digger and move on with becoming a teacher in a new place. I laughed at her and wanted to wrap her up and squeeze her tight!

And Jamie McKenna……oh sweet lawdy, I loved him! Can we say *drool*??? That is one fine man….err, um. Yes, back to my review. Jamie is a wonderful man and I saw it from the start! He was made out to be a womanizer but I could just tell that deep down, he was a tenderhearted, one woman man. Yes sirree I did indeed see it! Ms. Lessman did a wonderful job with his creation and I didn’t want to say goodbye to him, especially as I started watching him pursue Ms. Cassidy.

I can’t give this book anything less than 5 stars! It would be an utter disgrace to do so! Ms. Lessman combined laugh out loud laughter, spark flying romance (clean, of course!), and a setting to sweep you off your feet! I highly, hats-off, two thumbs up, the whole shebang, recommend this start to a fabulous series by Ms. Lessman!<a href="http://cafinatedreads.com/book-review-love-at-any-cost-by-julie-lessman-re-read/"; target="_blank">This review was originally posted on Cafinated Reads</a>
  
The Kiss Quotient
The Kiss Quotient
Helen Hoang | 2018 | Romance
8
8.4 (13 Ratings)
Book Rating
This was one of three books I got through Book of the Month this month - the other two were The Book of Essie and When Katie Met Cassidy. I'm reviewing this today instead of another Pride Month read because today is Autistic Pride Day! The Kiss Quotient both stars and is written by a woman on the autistic spectrum, so I thought today would be a fitting day to tell you about it!

So The Kiss Quotient is basically a gender-swapped Pretty Woman, as Hoang mentions in the Author's Note. Our heroine, Stella Lane, books an escort to teach her about sex. Stella is thirty years old, has only had sex a couple of times, never enjoyed it, and is worried about not being good at it and therefore not being able to get or keep a boyfriend. She's an incredibly successful econometrician, or someone who uses data and statistics to model and predict economic trends, in her case predicting what people will want to buy from clients. (She's the kind of person responsible for those "Amazon started marketing baby products to me before I even knew I was pregnant!" incidents.) So she has more money than she knows what to do with, and offers Michael, an escort, $50,000 a month to teach her about sex and relationships.

Because this is a romance, we know what's going to happen here. They fall in love with each other, but are sure that for the other one it's just a business arrangement.

I was NOT expecting this book to be as explicit as it is! I think because it is a Book of the Month, I wasn't expecting the standard trope of romance book with hot sex scenes. But that's what I got! I can't say I'm unhappy with that - god knows I like my guilty pleasure romance smut - but it was definitely unexpected. I'm not sure why it surprised me. The book's premise is all about Stella wanting to learn about sex; if that wasn't conducted on screen we'd lose a third of the book!

A sequel has already been announced, and it's about the other autistic character in the book, the hero's best friend's little brother, Khai, who we only see in one scene. Who I'd also like to know more about is the best friend, Quan! So I'm holding out hope for a third book.

One last thing that I found important - in the Author's Note, Hoang mentions her daughter was diagnosed with AS, and in reading about Autism, she realized she is also on the spectrum. This is something I've seen in three different books now. It's so common for women, especially, to go undiagnosed. They might be better at modelling allistic (non-autistic) behavior, or their special interests might be more "acceptable" to allistics, or sometimes they just get looked at as introverts when they're young instead of getting the help they might need. This is starting to change, as researchers and doctors are realizing Autism presents differently in women. But it seems autistic adult women are often discovering they're autistic through a diagnosis of their children. I found that interesting.

I did really enjoy this book. I think it's a great debut novel, and a great romance. I really like the recent trend of more diversity in lead characters in romance novels. Bring on the people of color! More disabled main characters! There's got to be a romance somewhere with a deaf heroine, right? More alternative sexualities and relationship structures! Everyone, everywhere, wants to be loved, and I want to read about it. The thing is, I'm sure these books exist, but they don't get the kind of publicity they need for people to know about them. We have to actually go looking for them. I feel like I've been better about that recently, but it's definitely a place where the publication industry could improve.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com