Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood
Quote:
"He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it's not about winning or losing. That with some people, it's just about playing. Though for the longest time, I didn't really believe him."
Quote:
"He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it's not about winning or losing. That with some people, it's just about playing. Though for the longest time, I didn't really believe him."
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"That was love, wasn't it? It wasn't just a quick drop - it was falling over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn't something you could plan for.
Love was an invitation into the wild unknown, one step at a time together."
Quote:
"I think we all wear armor. I think those who don't are fools risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I've learned anything from those fools, it's that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can't risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there's also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that tells me, "You will miss so much by being so guarded."
Perhaps it begins with one person. Someone you trust. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel."
Quote:
"She was less shitshow and more about living in high-definition, wide-awake, full-on color. Or something more poetic than that. But once I'd seen it, I couldn't unsee it. It was in everything she did, and it was why everyone was drawn to her the way they were."
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"Most people go though their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone."
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"I honestly can't totally figure out why someone as good as you would love me, when I can be kind of a pessimistic asshole. But I do feel the luckiest person in the world, to be who you want. Because I want you too. I love you too. I love you in a way that feels brand-new. You make every single thing that went wrong feel like it was just a step in the right direction, and it makes me excited. For life to keep surprising me. You aren't what I pictured. You are so, so, so much better than what my cynical little brain could've ever come up with."
"But at times, there are decisions that feel right, deep in the marrow of my bones. You are one of them"
Blurb: Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast - again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold an historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange - again.
Quote:
"She is an intoxicating sort of exhausting, like running until you've lost your breath but enjoying the feeling all the while. And I feel as though I've been sprinting for days. Even worse, I fear that I am, in fact, beginning to enjoy her."
Blurb: Adena and Paedyn have always been inseparable. Fate brought them together when they were young, but friendship ensured they would always protect each other and the home they built in the slums of Loot. But now Paedyn - an Ordinary - has been selected for the Purging Trials, which means almost certain death.
Now alone in Loot, Adena must fend for herself. After attempting to steal, it's a mysterious man from the market who comes to her rescue. Mak's shadowy past and secretive power set him apart from the other low- level Elites of Loot. And as the pair team up to see their loved ones before the Trials, the quest tests their loyalty, their love, and their lives.
"She couldn't look at him. Couldn't look at his kind-without-trying face, or at the perfect smile he shared with his brother, or his eyes so brown and deep you could fall right into them. So she didn't look."
Blurb: Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it.
Everyone in town knows he did it.
But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn't so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final-year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
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“I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
Blurb: A fragile teenage girl is held captive. Locked in a cell by The Reestablishment, a harsh dictatorship in change of a crumbling world. But Juliette is no ordinary teenager - one touch from her can kill.
The Reestablishment wants to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has other plans. After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovered the strength to fight back - and to find a future with the one person she thought she'd lost forever...
Stefan Salvatore in the form of a book boyfriend. The storyline of the whole getting to know each other, and the chemistry was good. The ch...