Roxanne Crouse's Blog, page 5
January 7, 2015
#Bookreview Turned (Vampire Journals, Book 1) by Morgan Rice #amreading
3 out of 5 Stars
Turned by Morgan Rice is a short vampire novel about a teen named Caitlin who moves to New York after mostly living in small towns. She has an uncaring mother, a brother to care for, and only one friend, Jonah, in her new dangerous neighborhood. Something strange is happening to Caitlin. During an attack in an ally, she suddenly becomes super strong and fast. While on her first date with Jonah, it happens again only this time she looses control and the unthinkable happens. Others notice what she does and a chase begins to catch Caitlin. Only Caleb tries to help her escape.
I liked parts of this novel even though it wasn't a complete story and even though the writing was a bit immature. The work needs a lot of editing. There are missing words, misused words, and shifts into present tense when the novel is written in past tense. There are inconsistencies , too, like the Russian. He starts out a world-renowned violin player and changes to a vocalist later on, unless I missed something somewhere.
The style of writing might appeal to a younger crowd, an age around thirteen, but twenty somethings and older may find it too childish. The idea behind everything seems like it could be interesting, but for me, I don't think this first novel had enough happening to hook me to read on. This story is more the first 25% of a novel instead of a whole novel and does not have a conclusion. Perhaps the author would do better adding the second novel to this one to make one more complete work.
The story is hinting at a love triangle development between Caitlin, Jonah, and Caleb to come in the future, so if you are tired of the love triangle theme you may want to skip this one. It does seem like a Twilight type plot line will come later.
I would recommend this novel to younger people. I don't think most adults will like it but it never hurts to give it a try to see for yourself.
December 31, 2014
#Bookreview Equal Parts (Supernova #1) by Emma Winters #amreading
Equal Parts (Supernova #1) by Emma Winters
3 1/2 out of 5 Stars
I thought Equal Parts had a strong beginning. The voice of the main character, Felicity, immediately drew me into the story, no prologues, no long passages explaining the character’s history or the history of the world, the reader starts right in the spot where the world changes for the main character, the part when she meets the city’s villain, Achilles. Immediately the reader knows the destiny of these two are intertwined in some way. The reader is also introduced right off the bat to what type of story they are reading, a world full of people with superpowers. The writing is also clean and real sounding, not all flowery to the point the first person character no longer sounds like a real person, but a writer trying too hard. I knew immediately that I would pick this book to review.
As I continued reading, I found there was a nice balance between action, narrative summary, and dialogue. I never encountered talking heads with no movement or description, or sections of character thought or unnecessary description that went on forever and ever. Just enough action was thrown in to keep the scenes where Felicity spends a lot of time locked up from being boring.
There were times where I questioned whether the character’s reactions were realistic. There is a scene where Felicity does something quite violent. She isn’t a violent person. She’s a very sad but normal nineteen year old girl who happens to have a super power in a world where superpowers are normal. It seemed to me that the choice she made in the restaurant would have had more of an effect on her, but after it happens, it’s never really mentioned again like the action was nothing to her. And the way Achilles changes at the end. I think the change was too much too fast. Maybe it’s Felicity’s sunshine power effecting him? I don’t know, maybe that’s what the next books in the series will be about. I kept thinking along the way that it would be revealed that Achilles isn’t really a bad guy, more a good guy in disguise as a bad guy, like batman or Robin hood, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I would have also preferred a stronger good guy super hero. Finn was too whiny and not a real challenge for Achilles. No wonder the town is full of crime. No super villain would see Finn as a real threat.
I would have liked more development in how the whole super hero aspect effected and changed this world compared to our normal world. I guess I would have liked to know the rules of the world more. Enough was explained in this first book to get by but the next books will need to explore it more.
One small thing that disturbed me is Felicity falling for a guy who kills people. She has a serious case of Stockholm syndrome or something. I understand meeting a bad boy type and feeling an instant attraction and connection, but this is beyond bad boy. He’s a killer. Perhaps Felicity is meant to come across as a kind of Bonnie and Clyde situation, which would explain the restaurant scene, but her inner thoughts don’t jibe with that theory. So I’m left a little confused, but not so much I’d stop reading. It’s written well enough I can ignore this problem. I also found it disturbing that Felicity’s friend would help her get back to Achilles considering his reputation. It seems to me a normal reaction would be to get her friend help and keep her away, not deliver her on a silver platter.
I am happy to say that this book has a complete arc and conclusion but leaves enough open for lots of future books to be written in this world. So many new writers are not concluding their first books. Because this one does, I’ll be willing and eager to read more books in this series because I know this author can end something satisfyingly.
Mostly I enjoyed this book. I think it might have worked better if it had been taken somewhere a little darker, where Felicity becomes a murdering criminal as well, or that Achilles turned out not to be the bad guy he was rumored to be. With the main character being such a nice person who helps others and Achilles is an actual violent person, I don’t know if I believe these two could have fallen for each other. I still recommend this book if you can let go of this small problem.
December 24, 2014
#Bookreview Be'askaas - Tales of Death and Redemption #amreading
Be'askaas - Tales of Death and Redemption
by Nicholas Kerkhoff 3 out of 5 Stars
This book is currently available for free on Amazon.
The story is set in a fantasy world with magic following the adventures of two brothers who are sent off by their father to apprentice with a necromancer. The story idea sounded interesting and I like zombies so I decided to give it a shot. The Kindle formatting could be worked on. Page breaks would help keep the chapters from starting at the end of other chapters. The book could use a copy editor, too. I found several missing words, misused words, redundancies, and confusing sentences. For example: “There’s lots opportunity in the east” missing “of” and determiner agreement is incorrect, “The most disconcerting part were its wide open eyes” should be “was”, “and let out a deep and wheezy low.” that’s where the sentence ends. What was deep and wheezy? Another one, “A cousin though marriage only.” a misused word, and the last example,”The boys didn’t know if they’d left either; there when the brothers went off bed, and the cold seemed not to affect them.” a very confusing sentence with missing words and misused words such as affect. Despite these errors, some sections of the book were well written and drew me in to the story, for a while.
I almost passed on this book. The beginning was slow and full of back story the reader could have learned about as we went along with the two boys. Instead, the information is dumped at the beginning. The story didn’t take off until chapter 3 and remained interesting until the army arrives on the necromancer’s doorstep. At this point, the novel switches from the boys’ perspective to the army’s leader’s point of view. For three or four chapters there is nothing but back story dumps about Palthrian, and four soldiers in the army. The back story dumps were boring to read because they were all written in a telling fashion with little dialog instead of showing. The information given in the back story isn’t needed and can be cut just like most of the back story in chapters one and two. I wish the author would have stayed in the point of view of Rafe, the older brother. In my opinion the novel should be his story and should not have changed to the other points of view.
Another problem with the novel that brought my star rating down was the lack of a plot or any character goals. The boys go to train with the necromancer and a number of random events happen during that time, but none of the events equal a plot or goal for the novel to reach. The result is the novel has no real climax because the reader never knows where the novel is heading.
Chapter three up to the part the army arrives were the best parts of the novel. The story stays in scene mode, not telling mode, and interesting things happen like resurrecting the cow and the boys assisting the other mage exorcise a girl. These were the parts that kept me reading. These parts were well written, well described, and worth reading. If the novel had continued along with the boys discovering their new necromancy world and had some sort of indecent happen to give the boys a clear goal or problem to solve, I think this book would have been great.
July 18, 2014
Winter Angel by Mia Hoddell Genre: YA Romance Release d...
July 14, 2014
The Seven Deadly Sins of Prologues
Image via Flikr Creative Commons, via Mikko Luntiala To prologue or not to prologue? That is the question. The problem with the prologue is it has kind of gotten a bad rap over the years, especially with agents. They generally hate them. Why? In my opinion, it is…
July 9, 2014
Help make Fanged Princess permanently free!
I finally went and did something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I hopped on over to Smashwords and uploaded Fanged Princess, listing it for free. It has been accepted into their premium catalog, which means it shall be available for Nook, Sony, Kobo, and Apple, all…
May 21, 2014
Reading Bad Reviews
Whenever a book piques my interest, the first thing I do is go on Amazon or Goodreads and read the bad reviews. Why? Because, for once, I believe that by reading the bad reviews you get a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t in that particular book. Also,…
May 18, 2014
What Do You Aim for and Include in Word Counts? An Odd Controversy
May I please ask for opinions and assistance in regards to novel word counts? This is a topic which affects us all and the feedback may also be helpful for you. When I started writing the first book of The Chronicles of Mirchar, The Dragon Tree,…
May 14, 2014
You READ – but do you leave REVIEWS?
If not, why not? I don’t have time The author probably spent a heck of a lot more time writing the story than you took to read it, no matter how slow you think you are, so why not take…
May 12, 2014
The Dangerous Trap of Forced Writing
There comes a time in every writer’s career, when you look back at a piece of work and realize how truly bad it is. Wait. Did you just say that happens to you all the time? Well, isn’t that funny, because that happens to me all the time too. It’s…
