Tara Chevrestt's Blog, page 139

Women Heroes of World War II by Kathryn J. Atwood

Not all the heroes of WWII were in the trenches, some were behind the lines and they were women.

This book talks about 26 of those women. Women who hid Jews right in Nazis' basements, women who were radio operators, women were underwent torture, were purposely infected with gangrene, sterilized, women who smuggled fake papers, tried to save sick Jewish kids from ghettos, transported bombs in the bicycles, parachuted into enemy territory... I could mention each one, but the review would be as long as the book.


[image error] One that stood out for me: Josephine Baker. Despite her ill treatment in America, she helped the Allies by hiding secrets in her underwear. She was a spy. This woman's chapter was fascinating. There's so much more to her.


Marlene Dietrich...this really shocked me. I confess I'm not a fan. I think she's always a hussy in her movies. (Yes, I watch those old back and whites.) She was German by birth and canceled her citizenship out of disgust for the Nazis. She sent money to get friends out of the country and joined the USO, traveling with the American  troops, pistol in her pocket, as she sang over the radio, sad German songs in an attempt to dissuade German soldiers. She was also a member of the OSS. I didn't know that!

Very intriguing book. Something I noticed in particular. At least half of the stories are about women trying to smuggle/hide/save Jews and when their male comrades were tortured, the men blabbered out names, turning in the women and the resistance organization..but when the women were tortured--sometimes for four months or more--they didn't break. Some died, but none of these women gave names. Interesting. Something to be said for a our pain tolerance there.


Quibble: Though the WASP was mentioned briefly in the opening of the U.S. part, there were no stories, no women pilots featured. I wasn't too pleased to find that. Many of the WASP and the ATA were def heroes. *frowny face*


Four stars. I bought this on Amazon.[image error]

Prohibited Passion by Alyssa Linn Palmer

More of a romance than an erotic. Major points for that. I'm not into more sex than story. I thought the story to sex ratio was perfect. The characters were engaging and realistic though the romance was a tad rushed.

Major thumbs up for uniqueness. A f/f romance in a town and a time that didn't tolerate such things. The sideline story is bootlegging/thugs. You got a minister's daughter, Ruth, who knows she's different (I'd have liked this dwelled on more.) and she immediately falls for a woman passing through with her gangster boyfriend. Gangster boyfriend gets mad and forces Ruth to help him with his bootlegging operation. Things go seriously wrong...


More points for not conforming to everyone's expectation of a HEA. Frankly, I'm sick to death of HEAs. Life isn't always a HEA. Let's be realistic.


I enjoyed it, was surprised at the short length. I love shorties, but in this instance, I think it could have been longer. Not by too much, just a bit more so the romance wasn't so quick. 


Three stars. I bought this on Amazon Kindle. 

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

A very exciting read, if a bit long -winded. Anything over four hundred pages starts to lose my attention in the middle. I didn't realize it was so long when I first picked it up. 

You've got a girl with special skills she's not really aware of...she isn't affected by the plague, heals quickly, and her family and village are terrified of her. She's death's daughter..death being Saint Mortain. She escapes from an abusive father and unwanted marriage and ends up in a nunnery of killer nuns.


"If you choose to stay, you will be trained in His arts. You will learn more ways to kill a man than you imagined possible. We will train you in stealth and cunning and all manner of skills that will ensure no man is ever again a threat to you."


Sign me up!


From the nunnery, she goes on to "work a case" so to speak alongside a handsome duke's bastard. Together, they are embroiled in a political mess involving the kingdom, the threat from Franch, who the duchess is to wed... Men die, there are attacks on her and her companion's lives... here is where it started to drag for me. As someone who is tudored out and just tired of ye olde court politics, my attention started waning. But comments like this one kept it lively:


"I have been in Guerande three days. As urgently as the abbess wanted me here, I would think there should be someone who needed killing by now."


LOL. And the heroine does some intriguing killing...from the pearls in her hair net to other ways... and did I mention there is budding romance and self-doubts? Can you really believe all you are taught?


I got this from netgalley. 

Breathless Press Sexy Bunny Blog Hop

[image error] I'm trying something new. I'm participating in a blog hop. I'm giving away an ebook of my latest release, Afterburn. For a chance to win, simply leave a comment on this post. Click on any of the links below to continue the blog hop. Contest ends Monday, April 9th. There's a grand prize of a $10 gift certificate to the Breathless Press store!



About Afterburn:
Their love burns hot, but will it stay fueled?Crystal is an enlisted mechanic with a tragic past. Grant is an officer and a pilot with a broken heart. When faced with a difficult decision, will Crystal choose wisely or lose the best thing that ever happened to her?
 
The love between them burns hot, but their relationship won't stay fueled if they can't beat the obstacles that stand in their way. Besides breaking the fraternization rules, Grant and Crystal have the difference of race between them…but can they prove to the rest of the world, and to each other, that love is color blind?

Afterburn is about overcoming one's past, not judging others, learning to forgive, and what it's like to be a woman in a "man's world."

Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall

This book had me mumbling the same question throughout the entire reading of it..."Who's really the crazy one?"

It's not the heroine, Iris who tried to save a slave from being whipped, tried to save a baby and ran away with the entire population of slaves from her husband and their overseer...No, she was pretty amazing.


Blue Asylum is about an insane asylum on an island during the Civil war. This is a time when men could toss their wives in the looney bin for being a suffragette. And it seems, in this asylum, everyone is nuts but Iris. 


The man she loves has PTS from a experience he went through in the war. There's a woman who eats everything. I think one of my favorite scenes was when she offered Iris a ring back, shiny as new, after having swallowed it a few days before. LMAO. The matron has a control and abusive issue, tearing up beds and demanding they be remade over and over. The doctor's wife is a sniveling ninny. The doctor's son has an obsession with fondling himself and masturbation. The doctor thinks he is in love with Iris.


Everyone but Iris is nuts. And the chef.. he seemed sane.


What I really liked about this, (besides Iris), was how the book raises the question..."You think you know it all, but do you? Who really has the problem here?"


"There's a woman in this asylum, Doctor, who never says a word. Who merely claps in delight at anything spoken to her. And I suspect that if I merely clapped at everything you said, I could clap my way to freedom."


The doctor is a pompous arse who needs to realize it, and his son needs help.
And all this unfolds with the Civil war in the background, and there's an escape plan and a surprising turn of events that I didn't predict. I also really loved the woman who refused to be widowed.. That was just too sweet.
What I didn't like: I'm not big on descriptions. Most reviewers seemed to love the descriptions. Me, I grow bored with that and want it to get on with the story. I don't have trouble visualizing an island. Nor did I care much for the son and his fondling/masturbation problems or his memories of Penelope. I didn't see how that added to the tale, really. And the romance... I didn't feel the love. 
Three stars and I got this on netgalley. 

Six Sentence Saturday

My six sentences for this week are from my newest release, Afterburn.



Shebent to open the case. Grant was only a few feet away and to her chagrin, shediscovered that by bending over, she was on eye level with his crotch. Ratherthan avert her gaze, she found herself looking closely at it. For what? Inwardly, she scolded herself.But damn, the man filled out his uniformjust fine...

Nocturne by Elaine Corvidae

A decent read that was free on kindle. It's like Zorro in Regency England? Not sure of the time. I just got that impression. 

Anne has been discarded from the King of England's bed. Her parents send her to marry a man of a large estate, thinking he is wealthy. Truth is, he's broke and his lands are the hunting ground for Nocturne, a man dressed in black with a bullet proof cloak and a demon horse. He robs everyone of wealth passing through, including Anne.


Anne settles into a loveless marriage and meets Nocturne at night to learn self-defense as she frightened after her attack.


Who is Nocturne? I knew all along. The story was a tad too predictable. I enjoyed it, however, as I am fan of bandits and  Zorro type stuff. The only reason this lost another star was the romance...I didn't feel it, not between her and Nocturne, not between her and her husband. For them to suddenly confess their love for another. It seemed to have come out of the blue.


An enjoyable weekend read though. I'd recommend it for treadmill workout, a plane flight... It's not filled with mundane or boring stuff.


Favorite quote:
"I cannot chose (?) the color of my hair, or my height, which is that of my father. But I can chose (?) my actions."


It needs another round of edits, but I still liked that saying. Three stars.

North of Heartbreak by Julie Rowe

Having read Ice Bound by this same author a few months ago, when I saw there was another by her, I was terribly excited. And that title and cover sure don't hurt!

Once again, we have a medical contemporary romance in an "exotic" location. This time it's Alaska. The heroine, Willa, is a nurse who was battered before and is struggling to trust again.. especially men. Enter sexy bush pilot, Liam...good-looking, rich, arrogant...all the things that remind Will of her abusive ex. Her brain tells her to stay far away from him, her body tells her quite another.

What I really liked about this story was it's moral... DO NOT JUDGE A PERSON BASED ON THE ACTIONS OF ANOTHER. I don't think this can be pounded into our head often enough.

In the middle of flights, polar bear attacks, kids hurt by caribous, flu epidemic, and turbulence, Liam and Willa  must learn to trust one another--not just because he's flying her around in MediVac, but because once they surrender their bodies, it's only a matter of time before they surrender their  hearts.

See, Liam doesn't trust women. So this is a two-sided issue. I saw the ending coming a mile away...well, part of it. As soon as I found out why Liam didn't care for women, I knew what was going to happen. However, I liked the book. I liked the way the author managed to keep it all the heroine's POV. I was surprised, but found it worked. LOVED the Alaska stuff. I can't get enough of that.

Four stars. I got this from netgalley.

Favorite quote"
Flying three days a week with him was going to be an odd sort of torture. Like being diabetic and having someone wave your favorite chocolate bar in your face everyday.

An Interview with ME.

You're probably going, "Huh? What kind of author posts an interview about herself with herself?" The answer: One who has been burned too many times. I've written numerous blog posts for blog tour stops that never got posted. I have sent tons of free review copies to bloggers that say, "OMG yea, I wanna read your book" only to see no reviews. But the kicker was when I was asked to do an interview for the Paperback Swap blog. I was stoked!!!! I was over the moon! That was the exposure I needed... So, I sent the interviewer all my books so that she could asked pertinent questions. And they are good questions... good, homeless questions.

It didn't happen. This site, where I've been extremely active for months now and spent a lot of money, declared they don't showcase digital authors... See, they can't make a profit off of me.

So, now, I have this lovely interview that both India Penwick and I spent  hours writing up...with no where to go. So I'm posting it here.


Tara Chevrestt is a young writer, but an old soul.  She has written a number of novellas and an autobiography.   Tara is hearing impaired, and has perhaps for that reason become an advocate for equal rights.  She also writes under the name Sonia Hightower for her more steamy work. She is also an editor.  Recently, she has left her job as an airplane mechanic, to focus full time on her writing and editing. It may seem a little odd for us to be interviewing an author who has work that is strictly in digital format, but we felt that so many of us are utilizing e-readers that we should pay attention to those books as well.  I would like to thank Tara for agreeing to this interview.
First off will you tell us a bit about yourself?
You summed it up pretty nicely. J But let's see, I love dogs. I have three of them, all girls. They inspired my Dog Tails. I love motorcycles. It was my love of motorcycles (and my husband's desire to visit Sturgis) that led to Ride for Rights. I love airplanes (also in two of my works). I enjoy traveling and playing with new recipes.  I love reading.
When did you begin writing?
I've always been a writer. I was in Honors English and loved doing essays and book reports. Through my teen and young adult years, I was always writing down poems and songs on stray pieces of paper or napkins. I penned my first real book, however, in 2010.
Your first book was very cute and funny, based upon your dogs will you tell us about Dog Tails?
That was my first book released, but not the first I wrote.  Ride is the first I wrote. Dog Tails…it's kind of cute, actually, how that came about. I was sitting in my recliner one day, down and depressed due to some serious problems at work. Lola, my Peke, was on my lap. I said to her, "I wish I could trade places with you, and you could go to work tomorrow and deal with the jerks, and I'll stay home and eat, sleep, and lick myself." And just like that, the idea for Thank Dog It's Friday was born. That's the first story in the book. Well, Pudgy and Jazzy, my other two little dogs, kept giving me these sad looks, and I started feeling guilty. How could I write a story for Lola and not them? So I vowed that all three would have their "tail," and I wrote Pugnacious and Tail of Terror.
I just read Ride for Rights, can you tell us about this book, and why Y/A historical fiction?
My husband dragged me to the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum where I found a display about the Van Buren sisters. They rode their Indian motorbikes across the U.S. in 1916 and had a lot of bad luck and even got arrested for wearing pants. I found this fascinating and jotted their names down. As soon as I got back to my computer, I said to my husband, "I need to find a historical novel about these chicks!" Well, I couldn't find one! So I wrote one! LOLThe book is inspired by the real life sisters, but a work of fiction. The reason it is YA is because it's clean, and I specifically wanted to target young women to inspire them to be all they can be, to not let people put them down and tell them they can't do things simply because they are girls. Don't be a housewife if it's not for you. If you want to be a lawyer, do it. If you want to fly planes, do it.  Women can.
I also read your A Facebook Affair, would you tell us about it?
It is my first contemporary romance. The idea was born when I joined Facebook. I got to thinking about how you could find someone on there.. .and one thing led to another. It's about a hearing impaired woman trying to find love, while at the same time, old demons from school bullying rise up to haunt her and possibly hurt her new relationship and newfound self-confidence. My goal was to educate as well as entertain the general public about my disability and all it entails and also educate parents about school bullying. I hope that after reading it, some people may talk to their kids about how they may be treating handicapped classmates.
Is A Facebook Affair a bit autobiographical?
As far as location, yes. They say, "Write about what you know." I've lived in Oklahoma and Utah mostly so I made the locations what I was familiar with. Except for the hearing impairment issues and school bullying, no. The only things Kelly and I have in common are the need for closed captioned movies, love of wine, the vibrating alarm clock… LOL The school bits, some of them were my memories. I'd say the little Kelly was me. The grown Kelly, no.
You as Sonia Hightower have written a couple of erotic novellas, can you tell us about them?
Sinful Urges is a novelette about adultery and its repercussions. It's an erotic noir with a surprising twist. Afterburn is a military interracial romance . I got to get into my mechanic mode for writing that one. It was fun! Sonia also has a sexy scary Halloween tale coming out in October called Taking It Too Far. It's about a husband who gets too "involved" in his costume…
So many writers seem to be writing erotica, why did you decide to turn your hand to this genre?
Sinful Urges just bit me on the arse and wouldn't let go until I put the idea in the computer. Not sure what happened there. Sometimes, Sonia just takes over. LOL  Afterburn isn't really erotica. It is just a military romance with some steamy sex. I didn't want Sonia to have only one work to her name, so I made it a Sonia book. The Halloween story was just a very disturbing thought I had.
Do you ever worry that someone won't buy your more mainstream work because you also write erotica?
No. Different names, different things. I'm not the only author with a pen name.
Safe sex seems to be a theme in your books, has anyone told you they find this unromantic in a story?
Yes, but too bad. Unless the couple is married, they will be practicing safe sex. It's a huge pet peeve of mine to read contemporary romance in which the otherwise smart characters are engaging in stupidity, such as having unprotected sex with someone they barely know, someone they suspect of a crime, or in the woman's case, risking a career that doesn't permit her getting pregnant. In real life, we have to think about this stuff, so why shouldn't our characters?Also, what kind of example are we setting for the more naïve, fresh out of high school readers?
I wanted to ask about Deaf Isn't Dumb, what inspired you to write your memoirs?  You're still a young woman.
Discrimination; I have faced so much of it. Also, I am tired of people judging me. They think I'm rude when I just didn't hear them. I want people to be more aware of us. I figured the best way of going about this was to write my story.
You write about strong women, having read some of your reviews you're not a fan of shrinking violets.   Why is that?
Good question. I'm not sure why, but I've never been able to tolerate weak women. Even as a little girl, I was obsessed with strong women. Joan of Arc, Helen Keller; I have a lot of strong women in my family. I have an aunt who works in a prison and yells at men all day. My mother was in the military. I have a female cousin who is going to be the first in our family to graduate from college. Yep, first one is a female. J Lots of cool women in my family. But I think, having fought so much due to my gender and my handicap, I'm just drawn to women in history and in literature that fight too.
Your work is available on digital media only; do you believe this is a good way for new writers to get their foot in the door?
I do; Lots of people buying Kindles now.
I want to ask about marketing your work, so many authors find this a challenge, have you found this to be the case?
Yes, I do. It's hard. You don't want to be a broken record, and I still haven't figured out how to get beyond the 120 people on my FB friend list. I figure they are sick to death of hearing about my books. I can only hope that friends and family help by word of mouth. Also the support of PBS community would be immensely helpful (I'm laughing over this now.)
I always ask what books a writer read as a child; would you tell us what you liked to read?
As a child? NANCY DREW!!!!!
Do you have any authors that inspired you?
As an adult, many authors have encouraged or inspired me. Christina Courtenay, Bev Pettersen, D.F. Krieger.
What do you read, are you drawn to a specific genre?
Historical Fiction is my favorite because I love history. I feel I live in the wrong time. I love to go back to the past. Love classic movies too.
Will you tell us about your upcoming books?
Afterburn is by Sonia Hightower and comes out March 23rd. It's a military romance about a woman mechanic and a fighter pilot. It delves into sexual harassment on the job and interracial dating.Deaf Isn't Dumb is my memoir, a book of short stories about incidents in my life that have to do with my hearing loss. April 27th is its release date.Telling Tatiana is appearing in two different breast cancer anthologies. It's a short story I wrote in honor of my mother, a survivor of the disease. It appears in a print edition in July and an ebook in August. Both separate books, both donating funds to charity.Taking It Too Far is a shortie to be released around October 12. It's a bit scary and sexy. It's a Sonia book. Operation: Enduring Santa is coming out around Christmas. It's about a woman fighter pilot stationed in Iraq and a Christmas surprise. It's a shortie. 

One Night to Remember by Kristin Miller

Being a Titanic nutty person, when I saw this pop up on a friend's feed, I had to have it and read it myself. Woman "Robin Hood" of sorts, Titanic, Romance..."

There were things to like and things not to like.

Liked: Even though I've read this story (the sinking) so many times, I still got goosebumps reading those parts. Especially as the dude passed by a couple counting to three, prepared to jump into the frigid water below. I don't think there's any way to write a Titanic book without rehashing what we already know. It's such a talked about and marketed subject. Also was surprised by a twist at the end involving one of the heroine's robbed victims.

Didn't Like: The love story. I found it preposterous that a woman in 1912 would be so inhibited as to sleep with a man right after meeting him... It's that immediate. He catches her stealing a purse and some silverware and chases her, puts her in handcuffs, questions her in his stateroom, and they have sex?? Not buying it. Nor do I fall for immediate feelings of love.

I would have gave this a different ending. It was too predictable. Every single Titanic book, in order to have a HEA without making the hero a numbskull jerk that pushes women and children off the lifeboats to make room for himself, has the hero on the very last, submerged, overturned life raft. Now, THIS is done to death. Man ends up trying help, ends in the water himself, is placed upon the last chance boat... Just once, someone needs to kill the man off. Hey, fiction should imitate life and most of the Titanic stories weren't HEA. More of those women lost their men...

Well written, properly edited, an engaging read, but I didn't buy into the love story, and the ending is overdone. Three stars. I bought this on Amazon Kindle.

"They were all the same. Everyone was in need at some point in their life. It was only a matter of when."