Robyn Jones's Blog, page 18

robgirlbooks' Clean Out Your e-Reader Challenge Reviews of Prince of Wolves and Winter's Thaw

So I have a little dilemma. I read a pretty innocent YA book (Prince of Wolves) and then jumped right into a hardcore steamy read (Winter's Thaw). Is it bad form to review them together? Maybe. But I'm gonna do it anyway. 
3.5 STARS! Prince of Wolves by Quinn Loftis is one fun read. Despite there being a serious case of insta-love and a trio of teens whose chatter revolves solely around boys, I read this book in three days. I loved Jaque's nicknames for Fane. The friendship with the girls took me back in time to my high school days when all we did was goof off and insult each other. I thought this was a pretty light read with a handful of copy editing issues and a little too much relationship reflection, but the quick wit and colorful characters propelled me through and left me smiling. I can see why this series is so popular. Prince of Wolves sets up a great cast.


4 STARS! Winter's Thaw by Mari Carr and Jayne Rylon is awesome, heartwarming, and mega hot. I love the characters, though the cover actors look nothing like my Sienna and Daniel. Sienna is not a wild girl. She's not damaged. She doesn't even have a hard life. But the girl is robotic in her pursuit to marry her lackluster high school sweetheart. Enter hot, easy going, sex God Daniel. These two had crazy good chemistry. I loved Sienna's journey to learn more about herself. Winter's Thaw is book one in a new series, but it's a spin off from the Compass Brothers series. Just to warn you, if you like your sex scenes mostly left to your imagination or if you like it completely vanilla, maybe this isn't for you, or maybe it's exactly for you!

The Vamps are Loose and It Gets Hairy for Mohawk Jenny! robgirlbooks' reviews of Bound by Night and Dragon's Game

5 STARS! Bound by Night is my first Larissa Ione book, and boy oh boy have I been missing out. The prologue took my breath away with a terrifying view of the world through the eyes of little Nicole Martin. We quickly discover there will be no warm fuzzies, not with counterpart Riker, the human hating, extra snarly, heartless vamp. Even the love story is going to be a jagged edge. There's a nice balance of traditional vampire attributes, like the ability to mystify humans, the ability to make the vamp bite an erotic or terrible experience, and the concept of mates, with a fresh alternate world where humans enslave vampires and vampires aren't so keen on that. I read this book in two days, that's how thoroughly the story hooked me.


5 STARS! Dragon's Game by E.J. Wesley is the 4th installment in the awesome NA urban fantasy Moonsongs novelette series. Did I stalk Amazon and E.J.'s website for a release date for this book? Yes I did. Book 3 (Dark Prelude) left us on the edge and worrying about our favorite tomahawk wielding heroine. Oh, Jenny can beat the crap out of any big bad, but I've always seen her as emotionally fragile. In Dragon's Game, I loved seeing her on her own and realizing for the first time how much it sucked to really live as an island. E.J. takes us on location to a nightclub in Houston. Would she have gotten into so much trouble if she had chosen a community center in a wholesome little town? Probably. If you haven't started this series and have a thing for heroines with an attitude problem, add it to your TBR list right quick. In about 14,000 words we get snark, a different take on our favorite monsters, and a friendship you can't help but cheer on. It's so good.

Sidekick Showcase [35] Fairytales!

This week's sidekick showcase is Fairytales!!! What an exciting challenge. I couldn't get enough Cinderella and Snow White when I was a little girl. Then I discovered Disney movies. Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorites and not for the typical reasons. I loved the Beast. Growly and mean and sad, but he had loyal friends. Sure they wanted the spell broken, but they cared for the master of the house. I've read Beastly and watched the movie, a modern day Beauty and the Beast and I enjoyed both, but they missed the mark on how cool Belle is and how gruff and secretly charming the beast is. So I choose the big furry jerk. (I found this drawing on the web.) [image error] “If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast? -Beauty & the Beast” ― Walt Disney Company

[screaming]
(quotes from the Disney movie)
[Belle is washing the Beast's wounds]
[presses cloth to wound; the beast growls in pain]
(quotes from the Disney movie)

Now for my own sidekick portion of the showcase. My sister jumped around a lot with this one. At one point she went with a character from The Wizard of Oz because her favorite show Supernatural just had an Oz storyline. I guess Dorothy ran off into the sunset with a girl, which is plain cool. Then she said Three Blind Mice and I was about to throw a french fry at her (we were at lunch). Finally she picked Aslan from Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan, how can I hit her with my attitude problem at that pick. He's practically Jesus in that story. So I LOVE her choice. My mom first went with Cinderella. Might have been because I made her listen to the movie record a million times when I was a girl. But she finally settled on the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. She also said the wolf looked a little like Matthew Mcconaughey. Imagine that.


Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fit's in the week's topic• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post their's throughout the week as well

(By http://flickr.com/photos/nieve44/ (http://flickr.com/photos/nieve44/4180...) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Clean out your E-reader Challenge!!!

I'm so excited to commit the entire month of November to reading books I eagerly one-clicked and then neglected. All of them deserve attention, so here it goes. They range from paranormal to contemporary and from YA to whoa baby. I might not make it to all the books here, but I'll do my best. Thank you to Fantasy is More Fun and Because Reading is better than real life. This is an awesome reading challenge!


Prince of Wolves by Quinn Loftis first came to my attention from a barista at one of my favorite coffee shops and then this awesome shifter book just sat there neglected.







Obsession by Jennifer Armentrout was all over the blogsphere months ago and I quickly one-clicked then moved on. The cover is so hot.








Sterling by Dannika Dark is a series I might have missed out on if it weren't Lexxie's Sidekick Showcase posts. I can't wait to dive in!








Clutch (I am just Junco) by JA Huss is a total favorite of Bookworm Brandee. I'm telling you the girl is nuts for J.A. Huss (for good reason).








Persephone's Orchard by Molly Ringle has such a pretty cover, but it was Jaclyn's review that sold me on this book.








Winter's Thaw by Jayne Rylon and Mari Carr is total grown up fun and I'm looking forward to it! These two ladies know how to write steamy stories.








Tempting the Best Man by L.Lynn is another dose of hot goodness. What a cover!









Holding On and Letting Go by K.A. Coleman is another book I would have missed if it weren't for the wonderful blogging world. Donnie Darko Girl just loved this story.

Think Out Loud [30] My Ghost Story

At the beginning of my senior year of high school my mom flew off to Hawaii to get my sister settled into college. I was happy to be home alone with the occasional check-in by her boyfriend. The forecasters announced a tropical depression before I went to bed. That morning they changed their tune completely. Super typhoon. Direct hit. I had four dogs at home and me. Then the power was out. The winds slammed the house so fast I only managed shutters on half of the house. Then the rain came. I heard a huge crash, so I ran into the living room. My feet sloshed through two inches of water. I looked outside. A small boat had flown into the back of my car. I turned around and finally noticed that the living room had flooded. I slid my feet over the wet marble, kicked water at the dogs in a playful gesture, and then froze. Their eyes were glued to the corner. I'd never seen them spooked until that moment. I stupidly tiptoed over to get a closer look and jumped back. The corner was dry as a bone. At the sound of whining I looked back at the dogs. In unison they were tracking something I couldn't see. First with their eyes, then their heads moved like some crazy choreographed dog dance. More whining, some whimpering by me, then actual ripples rolled down their backs in spastic body shudders. I wasn't kicking water around anymore that's for sure. I inched away from the freaky corner, but then the dogs yelped and raced into my room and jumped into my bed. 

The End of a Beloved Series. Crap!

I just read Rachel Caine's newsletter stating Daylighters would be the last installment in the Morganville series. What!? No. Wait. I thought I had more time. I'm not prepared. I love this series.

I'm the first person to say a TV or book series went on too long, but rationalizing a series' end when it's the right time feels like a well thought out break up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends, Angel, Monk, Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica, all shows that ended on the right note at the right time, but that I still miss. Firefly and Wonderfalls are two shows that ended before their time and I still growl about it, mostly Firefly because that was pure awesomeness.

When Richelle Mead's Succubus series ended I paced around my apartment, book in hand, plotting the spinoff. I've never written fanfiction before, but that would have been my first if I knew what it was back then.

As a reader, what are we to do at the end of our favorite stories? Savor the experience? Spin the rest of the tale in our heads? Shrug it off and move on? Get on Goodreads and open a discussion? Whine in a blogpost? Sadness.

To Prologue or Not to Prologue

[image error] New writers are notorious for massive info dumps in the early pages of their precious novels (I'm talking about me here). It's a struggle for every writer to ride the fine line between enticing a reader into the world you created for them and holding hands from start to finish.

So what about prologues as a device to alleviate those massive paragraphs of backstory? As a reader, I love books with short prologues because they give me a glimpse the first chapter can't. Not really a preview, but a domain of questions I must have answered, must as in, I must keep reading. As a writer, prologues are plain fun to write.

Two books immediately come to mind when I think of fantastic prologues, Poison Princess by Kresley Cole and Bound by Night by Larissa Ione. Oh my goodness, talk about being left breathless on the edge of a cliff. So I'm wondering about prologues, when and how to use them. When they should have been left out of the book. When they're just another form of hand holding the reader.

How do you all feel about prologues?

(By Mike DelGaudio (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Sidekick Showcase [34] Creatures of the Night- Defanged Vamps

Creatures of the night month is on its last weekend! My boys have their costumes. Two Face for Will and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for John. Not very scary. And it turns out that a lot of the characters in the books I love that start out scary turn into fluffy bunnies at some point. So I'm choosing one character that has fluffy potential in future books, but right now with his titanium fangs, huge size, and hatred for humans, he freaks me out. I'm choosing Myne from Larissa Ione's Bound by Night. I just finished reading it today and Myne is still on my mind. The guy can rip a person's head off with his fangs. Why are they shiny and metal you may ask? Because evil humans defanged him. Oh, boy. So when he bites, it hurts. I'm thinking when it's time for his story, the girl is going to be a bit of a masochist. Yikes! Or maybe they'll figure out a way to give him back his awesome vamp sex elixir that all the best paranormal romance books have including this one. If you're wondering what this hunka biting scariness looks like, he's 6'5, black hair, Native American heritage. His hobbies include hunting humans, drinking alcohol as a means of therapy, hunting some more.

"He relishes this. What a bastard. And what the hell was up with his fangs?
"My fangs?...What, do I have something in them? Yo, Rike. Do I have a piece of that...dude in my teeth?" (pg. 35)

"Adrenaline adds a pleasantly piquant note to the blood." (pg 37)

"Can Riker come out to play?" Myne asked.
"Depends." Riker narrowed his eyes at his friend. Myne often had a skewed view on what was fun. "What are we playing?"
"Poach the Poachers." (pg. 167)

Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fit's in the week's topic• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in
• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick
• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post their's throughout the week as well

Think Out Loud [29] Bullying Starts Real Young

I planned to gush about the writer's conference I attended over the weekend because I had been thinking nonstop about the wonderful people, workshops, and awesome Butt In Chair Challenge meant to inspire writers to finish that damn book. I have a fun paranormal story idea and everything. Then bam. Life.
[image error]
This morning I fired my younger son's school because they failed to protect him from bullying. Yep. I yanked him out and I'm homeschooling him until he's placed in a new school. My four year old has a bruise on his cheek. He's been punched in the eye, the stomach. He's been teased, had his things yanked from his hands and thrown on the floor. He's been spit on. All in one month. The school failed him. I failed him. My voice wasn't loud enough. My conversations and eye witness statements to the teacher were not enough. How come? I know the world of hitting. I was hit in school, not by students. My teachers had a fondness for paddles, wide and skinny, with and without holes. They liked metal rods and rulers. I developed my "fuck them" attitude before I was ten years old. I learned if you cry you could get away with five paddles instead of fifteen, but it's not worth how much you hate yourself for crying in front of the whole class. I learned to take it with my chin high and my mind wandering. I don't want John to learn that shit. So I fired them. Hard, with a hard voice. The girl who tried her best not to burn bridges because motherhood and divorce taught me to play nice burned a few in a matter of hours and more are lined up. I see a lot of tantrumming hugs in my future. A lot of conflict resolution. I see deadlines being pushed back and blog posts being neglected, but John will heal from this. We all will.

Think Out Loud is a mind freeing meme. Post whatever you want because we're paying attention. Promise.

(By Venera N. Lekaj - Lela (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Poetry time! robgirlbooks' Review of Transitions by Greg Schroeder

Transitions
by Greg Schroeder
Published by CreateSpace (10/4/13)
Poetry
4 STARS
(author provided me with an e-copy for an honest review)

Pictures of nature flowed in and out of my mind frequently as I read Transitions. Many of the poems take you through the changing seasons, some pull you right into Hurricane Sandy and the harsh aftermath. I felt the wind crashing on shore with the unforgiving tide. I felt the darkness of no power and little hope.

My favorite poems revolved around parenthood. A father watched his son play a sport in Dichotomy. The words built until I was thrown back in time to the days when my dad cheered me on from the stands. The poem Slowing was so fun I could see it as a children's book. And Depths drew me into a love story I wasn't ready to leave.

The word choice went from down to earth to whimsical to scholarly. I loved the calm that came over me as I read the poems, but I had to take my time or my mind skipped over the meaning. Greg Schroeder writes daily life poems. There are static moments like working in a cubicle with no window. There are times when you come home from a busy day and find nature putting on a show and doing her best to be just as noisy. I enjoyed the humor, the hope, and Greg's ability to make his words ring true.