Gypsy Madden's Blog, page 2
December 31, 2022
Book Review: To Cure a Curse
To Cure a Curse by Sky Sommers
3 stars
Category: Adult
Note: $0.99 cents on Kindle
Summary: Beauty and the Beast retelling. But this time, our cursed prince is human when he meets Belle. His curse has him turn into a beast from Midnight to mid-day, but the rest of the hours, he’s a handsome young man, who Belle meets naked wandering in the woods. The book mostly focuses on their friendship and the prince hedging around his curse. When she does come face to face with his curse, she runs far away, in search of a cure, leaving him on his own as the curse takes over.
Comments: The best things about this book are the cover and the blurb and how short it is. I love Beauty and the Beast tales, for how gothic and atmospheric they are. This one, however, didn’t bother to describe the scene. It focused almost exclusively on the dialogue, which felt rather clinical and jaded. It doesn’t flesh out the prince or Belle as being anything more than the characters that we already know in the old fairy tale. I really would have liked to have known more about Caroline who was undead and falling apart. I think the mechanics of the curse confused me. Like it seemed too convenient how many rules it had and how it did this at this time and behaved this way at this time and I lost all respect for Belle when she seemed very eager to put the curse on the next generation, though I did like that she was pro-active. The part about the being forgotten, mentioned in the blurb really only takes one chapter nearly at the end of the book where they just plain decide to re-get to know each other. And then the story just skips to a year later. And it actually talks about sex. When it says fade to black, I was expecting it to be a relatively innocent story, but during the last couple of chapters it mentions intercourse (yes, actually referring to it as such) frequently and how they were worried about it with him being a beast etc, which really takes the romance out of it. The second half of the story feels rushed with how much gets time jumped forward. In all, it’s a short read and a different twist on the story while still having the usual elements.
3 stars
Category: Adult
Note: $0.99 cents on Kindle
Summary: Beauty and the Beast retelling. But this time, our cursed prince is human when he meets Belle. His curse has him turn into a beast from Midnight to mid-day, but the rest of the hours, he’s a handsome young man, who Belle meets naked wandering in the woods. The book mostly focuses on their friendship and the prince hedging around his curse. When she does come face to face with his curse, she runs far away, in search of a cure, leaving him on his own as the curse takes over.
Comments: The best things about this book are the cover and the blurb and how short it is. I love Beauty and the Beast tales, for how gothic and atmospheric they are. This one, however, didn’t bother to describe the scene. It focused almost exclusively on the dialogue, which felt rather clinical and jaded. It doesn’t flesh out the prince or Belle as being anything more than the characters that we already know in the old fairy tale. I really would have liked to have known more about Caroline who was undead and falling apart. I think the mechanics of the curse confused me. Like it seemed too convenient how many rules it had and how it did this at this time and behaved this way at this time and I lost all respect for Belle when she seemed very eager to put the curse on the next generation, though I did like that she was pro-active. The part about the being forgotten, mentioned in the blurb really only takes one chapter nearly at the end of the book where they just plain decide to re-get to know each other. And then the story just skips to a year later. And it actually talks about sex. When it says fade to black, I was expecting it to be a relatively innocent story, but during the last couple of chapters it mentions intercourse (yes, actually referring to it as such) frequently and how they were worried about it with him being a beast etc, which really takes the romance out of it. The second half of the story feels rushed with how much gets time jumped forward. In all, it’s a short read and a different twist on the story while still having the usual elements.
September 11, 2022
Book Review: Sands of Reckoning (Sands of Eppla - Book 3)
Sands of Reckoning (Sands of Eppla – Book 3) by Janeal Falor
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: I obtained a free ARC from the author.
Summary: Blind Cassandra finds out that the High Priest has been planning to remove love completely from the country of Eppla by poisoning the water and has to devise a way to stop him with the help of former elite warrior Nikon and her friends, while being hunted by the high priest’s minions, without the ability to fall in love at first sight herself because of being blind.
Comments: What shines in this series are the foreign location (we’re talking a series of cities spread apart by a lengthy desert, with the flavor of ancient Egypt with the pyramids and even a Sphynx lurking around), and how utterly in the dark Cassandra is, with us having to just fill in the blanks since she isn’t able to describe really anything around her. She has a multitude of friends, which I had trouble keeping apart after a while, since she kept adding to the group. Tewy, her monkey, is a definite bright spot in the book, always showing who he prefers (Nikon), and pulling Cassandra’s hair and getting her into trouble, and helping at times. With this being the last book in the series, it did tie things together nicely in the end, finally revealing motives of characters and hidden relations of characters, though it did feel like certain threads got dropped (like being a part of the rebels, and even the magic of the sand, even the sphynx felt like an afterthought with an explanation on it that didn’t make a whole lot of sense). Cassandra herself did wear on me a bit more this time around since she felt like she was fussing over every single detail down to the smallest minutiae and it felt like her blindness had been a bit glossed over and forgotten since she didn’t seem to be feeling her way around in the darkness and discovering her surroundings as much, but more of waiting around for other people, letting others guide her, and worrying while she waited in the darkness, but the draw for me was definitely the relationship between her and Nikon which was in a bit of jeopardy at the end of the last book with him finding his fated partner.
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: I obtained a free ARC from the author.
Summary: Blind Cassandra finds out that the High Priest has been planning to remove love completely from the country of Eppla by poisoning the water and has to devise a way to stop him with the help of former elite warrior Nikon and her friends, while being hunted by the high priest’s minions, without the ability to fall in love at first sight herself because of being blind.
Comments: What shines in this series are the foreign location (we’re talking a series of cities spread apart by a lengthy desert, with the flavor of ancient Egypt with the pyramids and even a Sphynx lurking around), and how utterly in the dark Cassandra is, with us having to just fill in the blanks since she isn’t able to describe really anything around her. She has a multitude of friends, which I had trouble keeping apart after a while, since she kept adding to the group. Tewy, her monkey, is a definite bright spot in the book, always showing who he prefers (Nikon), and pulling Cassandra’s hair and getting her into trouble, and helping at times. With this being the last book in the series, it did tie things together nicely in the end, finally revealing motives of characters and hidden relations of characters, though it did feel like certain threads got dropped (like being a part of the rebels, and even the magic of the sand, even the sphynx felt like an afterthought with an explanation on it that didn’t make a whole lot of sense). Cassandra herself did wear on me a bit more this time around since she felt like she was fussing over every single detail down to the smallest minutiae and it felt like her blindness had been a bit glossed over and forgotten since she didn’t seem to be feeling her way around in the darkness and discovering her surroundings as much, but more of waiting around for other people, letting others guide her, and worrying while she waited in the darkness, but the draw for me was definitely the relationship between her and Nikon which was in a bit of jeopardy at the end of the last book with him finding his fated partner.
July 24, 2022
Book Review: Beauty
Beauty by Stacy Claflin
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: Novella-length
Summary: Chase, formerly one of Hollywood’s hottest stars, met Penelope a few years earlier when she was hunting down the people who killed her parents. She claimed she was a time traveler and was trying to hunt down the murderers before they could kill her parents, so she could go back to her proper time and they would still be alive. Penelope made a lasting impression on him and he was convinced he was in love, though she still left to do her missions in the future. Since she traveled by a specific mirror, he hunted the country trying to find her mirror, and he finally found and bought it and waited for her to reappear, but when she does, she is younger than the version that he had met and doesn’t know him. So, he helps her on her mission to find her parents’ killers, and unravel problems about the time travel organization, while trying to romance her and make her fall in love with him.
Comments: I liked the idea for this book. I love plots like Back to the Future where the hero goes back in time to try to fix things. But the writing focuses on the relationship between Chase and Penelope to the point that it doesn’t give reasons for key things, like why were Penelope’s parents killed? Who killed them? As far as I could tell the killers were just some faceless goons with tattoos. What did those tattoos signify? No idea. Why did Chase have to search for the mirror? Wouldn’t he have known where it was the first time he met Penelope? What was the point of the Agency that Penelope worked for? It sends her on missions, and she said the Agency didn’t like her changing things in the past (like the past/future her getting to know Chase), but her main objective was to kill her parents’ killers, which would definitely change things in the past. When were her parents killed?
I didn’t really care for Chase. He was determined to make Penelope love him. Yes, I know Alpha. But it made him pushy and he just wasn’t going to take no for an answer and wasn’t inclined to listen to her or really get to know her. He had his mind made up from what he remembered of the future version of her. It made the relationship between them feel forced and one-sided. I never really felt any connection to him on Penelope’s part. Sure, she thought he was cute at times, but that doesn’t make a relationship.
I hated all of the sound effects. Each time I ran across reading one, it felt like suddenly I was thrust into a comic book or one of the old Batman episodes. I kept running across Thud! Wham! Clunk! Knock! Thunk! Whack!
And the ending, I know I’m being spoilery, but it felt like the author just ran out of energy on taking the story through the motions and just decided to end it without any actual explanation. The only explanation we got was a note from herself in the future that just appears at an opportune time in her pocket saying that future her tied up all of the loose ends with the Agency and Chase’s sister and took care of the group hunting their parents and that there were apparently two of them now since the future her was going to stay with the parents. The future her even, somehow unexplained, switched out the cellphone that was currently sitting in Penelope’s jacket that she was currently wearing with a note.
I love time travel stories, but they really need to explain things and be consistent for the plot to hold water. All the important key events can’t just all happen off camera. Why is this called Beauty? There are a few Beauty and the Beast references, I suppose. Chase has let his appearance go, so he’s got a large beard and scruffy hair and dresses a bit like a lumberjack and he lives in a castle complete with a hidden wing where he hides her mirror and won’t let her venture.
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: Novella-length
Summary: Chase, formerly one of Hollywood’s hottest stars, met Penelope a few years earlier when she was hunting down the people who killed her parents. She claimed she was a time traveler and was trying to hunt down the murderers before they could kill her parents, so she could go back to her proper time and they would still be alive. Penelope made a lasting impression on him and he was convinced he was in love, though she still left to do her missions in the future. Since she traveled by a specific mirror, he hunted the country trying to find her mirror, and he finally found and bought it and waited for her to reappear, but when she does, she is younger than the version that he had met and doesn’t know him. So, he helps her on her mission to find her parents’ killers, and unravel problems about the time travel organization, while trying to romance her and make her fall in love with him.
Comments: I liked the idea for this book. I love plots like Back to the Future where the hero goes back in time to try to fix things. But the writing focuses on the relationship between Chase and Penelope to the point that it doesn’t give reasons for key things, like why were Penelope’s parents killed? Who killed them? As far as I could tell the killers were just some faceless goons with tattoos. What did those tattoos signify? No idea. Why did Chase have to search for the mirror? Wouldn’t he have known where it was the first time he met Penelope? What was the point of the Agency that Penelope worked for? It sends her on missions, and she said the Agency didn’t like her changing things in the past (like the past/future her getting to know Chase), but her main objective was to kill her parents’ killers, which would definitely change things in the past. When were her parents killed?
I didn’t really care for Chase. He was determined to make Penelope love him. Yes, I know Alpha. But it made him pushy and he just wasn’t going to take no for an answer and wasn’t inclined to listen to her or really get to know her. He had his mind made up from what he remembered of the future version of her. It made the relationship between them feel forced and one-sided. I never really felt any connection to him on Penelope’s part. Sure, she thought he was cute at times, but that doesn’t make a relationship.
I hated all of the sound effects. Each time I ran across reading one, it felt like suddenly I was thrust into a comic book or one of the old Batman episodes. I kept running across Thud! Wham! Clunk! Knock! Thunk! Whack!
And the ending, I know I’m being spoilery, but it felt like the author just ran out of energy on taking the story through the motions and just decided to end it without any actual explanation. The only explanation we got was a note from herself in the future that just appears at an opportune time in her pocket saying that future her tied up all of the loose ends with the Agency and Chase’s sister and took care of the group hunting their parents and that there were apparently two of them now since the future her was going to stay with the parents. The future her even, somehow unexplained, switched out the cellphone that was currently sitting in Penelope’s jacket that she was currently wearing with a note.
I love time travel stories, but they really need to explain things and be consistent for the plot to hold water. All the important key events can’t just all happen off camera. Why is this called Beauty? There are a few Beauty and the Beast references, I suppose. Chase has let his appearance go, so he’s got a large beard and scruffy hair and dresses a bit like a lumberjack and he lives in a castle complete with a hidden wing where he hides her mirror and won’t let her venture.
July 23, 2022
Book Review: Heart of the Forest (The Darkwood Trilogy - prequel novella)
Heart of the Forest (The Darkwood Trilogy – prequel novella) by Anthea Sharp
4 stars
Category: Young Adult/New Adult
Note: Free on Amazon! Novella-length
Summary: When Prince Kentry’s girlfriend is betrothed to his older brother, the heir to the kingdom, he’s convinced he loves her more than his brother, and that she loves him more, and that he needs to capture the fabled White Heart to earn himself a wish to make her his once again. So, he ventures into the Darkwood forest to capture the White Heart. But while chasing the White Heart and crossing into the Elven Realm, an elf lady crosses his path and he assumes she’s the White Heart. Lady Fanyaleth knows the human prince is trapped in the Elven world, with its odd two moons and no sun, and is wounded, and needs her to survive and get home.
Comments: I do love the Darkwood world and all of the faery realms written about by Anthea Sharp. She has such lyrical descriptions, bringing to life the fantastic imagery of the imaginative faery world. And I love the mythology and folktales brought in, like the White Hart. Though the focus in this, really isn’t the White Hart, which only crosses paths with our characters for a brief moment. I was a little disappointed that the story is predictable and there’s not much to it. There’s companionship between the two and his determination to make his wish. But it’s really not a romance. The two main characters were rather cardboard without much depth to them, so I didn’t really take to them, though I did love their journey through the world with its eternal night and two moons as they encountered fantasy creatures, and wove magic, and the faery courts.
4 stars
Category: Young Adult/New Adult
Note: Free on Amazon! Novella-length
Summary: When Prince Kentry’s girlfriend is betrothed to his older brother, the heir to the kingdom, he’s convinced he loves her more than his brother, and that she loves him more, and that he needs to capture the fabled White Heart to earn himself a wish to make her his once again. So, he ventures into the Darkwood forest to capture the White Heart. But while chasing the White Heart and crossing into the Elven Realm, an elf lady crosses his path and he assumes she’s the White Heart. Lady Fanyaleth knows the human prince is trapped in the Elven world, with its odd two moons and no sun, and is wounded, and needs her to survive and get home.
Comments: I do love the Darkwood world and all of the faery realms written about by Anthea Sharp. She has such lyrical descriptions, bringing to life the fantastic imagery of the imaginative faery world. And I love the mythology and folktales brought in, like the White Hart. Though the focus in this, really isn’t the White Hart, which only crosses paths with our characters for a brief moment. I was a little disappointed that the story is predictable and there’s not much to it. There’s companionship between the two and his determination to make his wish. But it’s really not a romance. The two main characters were rather cardboard without much depth to them, so I didn’t really take to them, though I did love their journey through the world with its eternal night and two moons as they encountered fantasy creatures, and wove magic, and the faery courts.
July 17, 2022
Book Review: Survivors of the Rising Sea
Survivors of the Rising Sea by Nicole Adrienne
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: $0.99 cents on Amazon. Novella-length
Summary: In a world that has been completely submerged under rising seas, Margot is a Collector for the Viking Empire. She sails to small islands with her boyfriend Aro to collect algae, while he chops down trees. During one mission, a storm arises, and Margot is swept overboard, and is rescued by the enemy, an Avaa ship, manned by friendly, red-headed Avaa pirate captain Kiona who shows Margot everything that the anti-technological Vikings had been keeping from her.
Comments: This is definitely a pro-women piece as Margot realizes she doesn’t need Aro and finds herself attracted to Kiona and everything that she promises, and all of the main pirates in this story are women. It is wonderful seeing the women take charge in the fighting scenes and there was plenty of action and exploration of this submerged world. Where I wasn’t really buying it was Aro and Margot’s relationship. They barely talked to each other, they certainly didn’t touch each other, I thought there might be something tentative between them in the beginning, so it threw me for a loop when somewhere near halfway, Margo mentions Aro is her boyfriend. There certainly wasn’t anything to suggest a deep tie between them earlier in the book, so I wasn’t really feeling the issues when problems arise with their relationship further into the book since they didn’t seem to really care for each other. The technology in this world really isn’t Victorian steampunk, nor is it Viking technology (I actually wasn’t seeing much sign of Viking culture in it aside from mentioning the Norse gods every so often). It’s modern technology, complete with elevators and all of the people in this report to corporate bosses, even the pirates have bosses in a larger organization.
4 stars
Category: New Adult
Note: $0.99 cents on Amazon. Novella-length
Summary: In a world that has been completely submerged under rising seas, Margot is a Collector for the Viking Empire. She sails to small islands with her boyfriend Aro to collect algae, while he chops down trees. During one mission, a storm arises, and Margot is swept overboard, and is rescued by the enemy, an Avaa ship, manned by friendly, red-headed Avaa pirate captain Kiona who shows Margot everything that the anti-technological Vikings had been keeping from her.
Comments: This is definitely a pro-women piece as Margot realizes she doesn’t need Aro and finds herself attracted to Kiona and everything that she promises, and all of the main pirates in this story are women. It is wonderful seeing the women take charge in the fighting scenes and there was plenty of action and exploration of this submerged world. Where I wasn’t really buying it was Aro and Margot’s relationship. They barely talked to each other, they certainly didn’t touch each other, I thought there might be something tentative between them in the beginning, so it threw me for a loop when somewhere near halfway, Margo mentions Aro is her boyfriend. There certainly wasn’t anything to suggest a deep tie between them earlier in the book, so I wasn’t really feeling the issues when problems arise with their relationship further into the book since they didn’t seem to really care for each other. The technology in this world really isn’t Victorian steampunk, nor is it Viking technology (I actually wasn’t seeing much sign of Viking culture in it aside from mentioning the Norse gods every so often). It’s modern technology, complete with elevators and all of the people in this report to corporate bosses, even the pirates have bosses in a larger organization.
July 15, 2022
Book Review: Freshman Sidekick (High School Sidekick - Book 1)
Freshman Sidekick (High School Sidekick – Book 1) by Ron Tucker
4 stars
Category: YA/Teen
Note: Free on Amazon!
Summary: In a world where people sometimes develop superpowers in their teenage years, Robbie has come into his powers over his summer break. He discovered he had the power of teleportation and immediately applied to join the local superhero group. He now has to split his time between high school and his new job as a superhero sidekick named Worm. He has to balance his friendship with his best friend Pete which has suffered lately because of being constantly on-call for missions and his new girlfriend and classes and his home life, and getting to know the other sidekicks, and learn on the job as he's sent into death defying missions while still trying to fine tune his power.
Comments: This story has it all! Heroics, first love, coming-of-age, action, and plenty of costumed superheroes. I loved that Worm had a superpower that isn’t usually focused on making it wonderfully different from all of the standard Superman/Batman/Green Arrow types that seem to star in most of the indie superhero books these days (with Doctor Strange/Scarlet Witch/Black Widow types starring in most of the superpowered paranormal indie books). Though all of the superheroes around Worm felt like clones of the DC heroes (Majestic = Wonder Woman, Supron = Superman, The Shadow = Batman, Mighty Miss = Wonder Girl). The story, while action-filled, felt like it meandered and didn’t really have a focus as it just followed Robbie day to day as he tried to balance his personal life with his hero life over the school year. His personal life felt superficial and not really developed with most of the characters being a bit cardboard cliched, like the girlfriend and the girlfriend’s best friend, and the bully/foe was really one-note, and his parents were barely more than just mentioned. Pete at least felt a bit rounded out as a character. My largest complaint was that in the last couple of chapters Robbie started making dumb decision after dumb decision, refusing to take backup with him, ignoring rules, not telling people in charge, determined that he knew better than anyone else. It really annoyed me that he nearly kills another character, and no one mentioned it (aside from Miss) or punished him for it. He didn’t learn that he shouldn’t do that, which really didn’t sell me on continuing with this series (though I already have the second book since I picked it up on sale a while back). I do love the idea of a teenage superhero and all the problems it entails and having to sneak out of classes to do heroics. It’s just a lot of his story was stereotypical and out of all of the people in his school he only interacted with his friend Pete, and the girl Jasmin, and the bully Craig.
4 stars
Category: YA/Teen
Note: Free on Amazon!
Summary: In a world where people sometimes develop superpowers in their teenage years, Robbie has come into his powers over his summer break. He discovered he had the power of teleportation and immediately applied to join the local superhero group. He now has to split his time between high school and his new job as a superhero sidekick named Worm. He has to balance his friendship with his best friend Pete which has suffered lately because of being constantly on-call for missions and his new girlfriend and classes and his home life, and getting to know the other sidekicks, and learn on the job as he's sent into death defying missions while still trying to fine tune his power.
Comments: This story has it all! Heroics, first love, coming-of-age, action, and plenty of costumed superheroes. I loved that Worm had a superpower that isn’t usually focused on making it wonderfully different from all of the standard Superman/Batman/Green Arrow types that seem to star in most of the indie superhero books these days (with Doctor Strange/Scarlet Witch/Black Widow types starring in most of the superpowered paranormal indie books). Though all of the superheroes around Worm felt like clones of the DC heroes (Majestic = Wonder Woman, Supron = Superman, The Shadow = Batman, Mighty Miss = Wonder Girl). The story, while action-filled, felt like it meandered and didn’t really have a focus as it just followed Robbie day to day as he tried to balance his personal life with his hero life over the school year. His personal life felt superficial and not really developed with most of the characters being a bit cardboard cliched, like the girlfriend and the girlfriend’s best friend, and the bully/foe was really one-note, and his parents were barely more than just mentioned. Pete at least felt a bit rounded out as a character. My largest complaint was that in the last couple of chapters Robbie started making dumb decision after dumb decision, refusing to take backup with him, ignoring rules, not telling people in charge, determined that he knew better than anyone else. It really annoyed me that he nearly kills another character, and no one mentioned it (aside from Miss) or punished him for it. He didn’t learn that he shouldn’t do that, which really didn’t sell me on continuing with this series (though I already have the second book since I picked it up on sale a while back). I do love the idea of a teenage superhero and all the problems it entails and having to sneak out of classes to do heroics. It’s just a lot of his story was stereotypical and out of all of the people in his school he only interacted with his friend Pete, and the girl Jasmin, and the bully Craig.
June 20, 2022
Book Review: Born of Air (Elemental Origins series - Book 5)
Born of Air (Elemental Origins series - Book 5) by A.L. Knorr
5 stars
Category: New Adult
Summary: A woman, wearing plenty of jewelry, with no ID, speaking only a foreign language is found at a hospital, dying and about to give birth. She lives long enough to name the baby, Petra Kara. Petra has known a hard life, being bounced around in the foster system, and struggling through her life with odd powers with no explanation as to how to use them or where they came from. She can read people’s minds and move objects. But over the years she has gotten good at hiding, and her real love is archaeology, especially of the Middle-East where her mother was from. When an opening for a position with a dig team going to Libya opens up, she jumps on it.
Note: Plenty of questions didn’t get answered in this book, like who was her father, who was her mother, what was her mother doing in Saltford, and Jesse, her romance interest she loses track of at the end. When she leaves, and he supposedly returns to Australia, he doesn’t pick up her calls, or call her back. Theory is that he might actually have been the rich billionaire backing the company financing the dig, Devin. I’m hoping all of this gets tied up in the next book in the series The Elementals, or if those answers aren’t there, then hopefully Petra will get her own spin-off series. (This ends on the note that the company that hired the dig, hires Petra to recruit the girls from the other books in a sort of a supernatural clandestine taskforce).
Comments: Even though this was book 5 in a series, this is a standalone story. You don’t have to have read any of the others in the series to follow this one. Like the other books in the series, this focuses on a young woman coming into supernatural powers. Yes, it has a lot of the cliched elements of the young woman being a loner, being in the foster system, having a special background unknown to her that she discovers. But rather than being the run-of-the-mill urban fantasy average girl discovers powers story, the bulk of the story follows Petra as she journeys to Libya on an excavation. I found the setting endlessly fascinating, even if it was mostly just rocks and desert. As a fan of Indiana Jones, this has sifting through sand, working in trenches, and discovering ancient relics, one which triggers the depths of Petra’s powers and unlocks her mythic history. There’s a dash of romance in this, and friends that she makes on the dig team, including Ibby who has her own spin-off trilogy Born of Metal. There were questions raised in this though, that were never answered, which I hope get answered in Book 6 of this series The Elementals, where all of the girls in these books come together (I was dragging my heels on reading it since it’s just so cliched that they’re recruited into a generic supernatural taskforce. I hate those books having an agency/organization in them with a passion). If they don’t get answered, I hope that there will be a spin-off series for Petra written eventually, since I did love her Indiana Jones style adventuring and hope it gets continued. (There is a weird jump at the end where it goes from Petra walking into the lab about to test for her powers at the end of Chapter 18 to her standing on a street at the beginning of Chapter 19. I have the kindle version and I didn’t notice any missing chapters).
5 stars
Category: New Adult
Summary: A woman, wearing plenty of jewelry, with no ID, speaking only a foreign language is found at a hospital, dying and about to give birth. She lives long enough to name the baby, Petra Kara. Petra has known a hard life, being bounced around in the foster system, and struggling through her life with odd powers with no explanation as to how to use them or where they came from. She can read people’s minds and move objects. But over the years she has gotten good at hiding, and her real love is archaeology, especially of the Middle-East where her mother was from. When an opening for a position with a dig team going to Libya opens up, she jumps on it.
Note: Plenty of questions didn’t get answered in this book, like who was her father, who was her mother, what was her mother doing in Saltford, and Jesse, her romance interest she loses track of at the end. When she leaves, and he supposedly returns to Australia, he doesn’t pick up her calls, or call her back. Theory is that he might actually have been the rich billionaire backing the company financing the dig, Devin. I’m hoping all of this gets tied up in the next book in the series The Elementals, or if those answers aren’t there, then hopefully Petra will get her own spin-off series. (This ends on the note that the company that hired the dig, hires Petra to recruit the girls from the other books in a sort of a supernatural clandestine taskforce).
Comments: Even though this was book 5 in a series, this is a standalone story. You don’t have to have read any of the others in the series to follow this one. Like the other books in the series, this focuses on a young woman coming into supernatural powers. Yes, it has a lot of the cliched elements of the young woman being a loner, being in the foster system, having a special background unknown to her that she discovers. But rather than being the run-of-the-mill urban fantasy average girl discovers powers story, the bulk of the story follows Petra as she journeys to Libya on an excavation. I found the setting endlessly fascinating, even if it was mostly just rocks and desert. As a fan of Indiana Jones, this has sifting through sand, working in trenches, and discovering ancient relics, one which triggers the depths of Petra’s powers and unlocks her mythic history. There’s a dash of romance in this, and friends that she makes on the dig team, including Ibby who has her own spin-off trilogy Born of Metal. There were questions raised in this though, that were never answered, which I hope get answered in Book 6 of this series The Elementals, where all of the girls in these books come together (I was dragging my heels on reading it since it’s just so cliched that they’re recruited into a generic supernatural taskforce. I hate those books having an agency/organization in them with a passion). If they don’t get answered, I hope that there will be a spin-off series for Petra written eventually, since I did love her Indiana Jones style adventuring and hope it gets continued. (There is a weird jump at the end where it goes from Petra walking into the lab about to test for her powers at the end of Chapter 18 to her standing on a street at the beginning of Chapter 19. I have the kindle version and I didn’t notice any missing chapters).
June 12, 2022
Book Review: Never Trust a Vampire (Strange Allies - Book 1)
Never Trust a Vampire (Strange Allies – Book 1) by Vivian Lane
4 stars (probably closer to 3)
Category: Adult
Note: I read this as included in the Magick and Monsters anthology.
Summary: Agent Seven (aka Della) is a paladin (monster slayer) who works for The Agency. She gets hired by a vampire named Adam to help him take out his evil master Juliet. Though Adam is handsome and charming and capable, Seven has trouble trusting him and the whole idea of being friends with him is laughable considering she’s been trained to never trust a vampire, even if he claims that he never takes human lives and works to help her take down monsters.
Comments: Think the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, but with less. There’s no comedic, every day man Scooby crew backing her up. She does have a tech researcher with her named Amelia who we barely see. The personalities in this are bland, Seven doesn’t have the fun personality quirks that Buffy had, nor much of a backstory either. She is tough as nails, and bad ass, but nothing that really stands out from all the other tough slay-first, ask questions later female Buffy-wannabes out there in indie fiction. Adam is, yes, our Angel stand in, the hot vampire with a heart of gold, drawn to our tough slayer, mainly because he likes teasing and messing with her. Her trying to keep Adam at arms' length and sniping at him just because he's a vampire, does get tiresome over the course of the book. The villains were the usual standard cardboard villains (and Juliet is more than a little like Darla from the Buffy series), though I did like her life after Juliet where she went on mission after mission slaying monsters other than vampires. And I did like his Renfield (Darius). There was also this odd secondary story that the book opened on with this immortal friend of Adam’s who was convinced he’s found his destined mate reincarnated in one of Della’s friends and was determined to follow her around the country until she would accept him (which felt creepy and stalker), and then that plotline immediately got dropped after the first chapter and didn’t get mentioned, not once during the course of the book. I started wondering if I’d just dreamed that I had read that scene, or if I had read a sample from a different book and only thought it belonged with this one. And then it came back in the very last chapter of this story.
4 stars (probably closer to 3)
Category: Adult
Note: I read this as included in the Magick and Monsters anthology.
Summary: Agent Seven (aka Della) is a paladin (monster slayer) who works for The Agency. She gets hired by a vampire named Adam to help him take out his evil master Juliet. Though Adam is handsome and charming and capable, Seven has trouble trusting him and the whole idea of being friends with him is laughable considering she’s been trained to never trust a vampire, even if he claims that he never takes human lives and works to help her take down monsters.
Comments: Think the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, but with less. There’s no comedic, every day man Scooby crew backing her up. She does have a tech researcher with her named Amelia who we barely see. The personalities in this are bland, Seven doesn’t have the fun personality quirks that Buffy had, nor much of a backstory either. She is tough as nails, and bad ass, but nothing that really stands out from all the other tough slay-first, ask questions later female Buffy-wannabes out there in indie fiction. Adam is, yes, our Angel stand in, the hot vampire with a heart of gold, drawn to our tough slayer, mainly because he likes teasing and messing with her. Her trying to keep Adam at arms' length and sniping at him just because he's a vampire, does get tiresome over the course of the book. The villains were the usual standard cardboard villains (and Juliet is more than a little like Darla from the Buffy series), though I did like her life after Juliet where she went on mission after mission slaying monsters other than vampires. And I did like his Renfield (Darius). There was also this odd secondary story that the book opened on with this immortal friend of Adam’s who was convinced he’s found his destined mate reincarnated in one of Della’s friends and was determined to follow her around the country until she would accept him (which felt creepy and stalker), and then that plotline immediately got dropped after the first chapter and didn’t get mentioned, not once during the course of the book. I started wondering if I’d just dreamed that I had read that scene, or if I had read a sample from a different book and only thought it belonged with this one. And then it came back in the very last chapter of this story.
March 18, 2022
Book Review: Scapegoat
Scapegoat by Aimee Easterling
5 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Short Story. I read this as included in the Street Spells collection free on Amazon.
Summary: Sienna, a stripper in a nightclub (and college student by day) is attacked after a show and rescued by a werewolf who turns out to be a young fan of hers, saying he would be moving and to keep in touch. Sixteen years later, Sienna now works watching over a state preserve that abuts a farm with a man who raises goats. He suddenly claims that a wolf has been massacring his goats, but when she investigates it, she’s almost convinced a human probably caused the damage, but there are enough things to suggest it was done by a wolf. She knows it’s within a mile of a family of wolves that she loves watching over and is convinced that if the farmer gets the permit to hunt wolves, he will harm the family of wolves. So, out of options and forced to issue the permit to the farmer, she calls upon her former werewolf rescuer, Chase. He brings Wolf Young along with him to root out the guilty party.
Comments: Aimee Easterling never ceases to amaze me. Though I love fantasy, I reached my limit of shifters and werewolves, especially long ago when they first started to flood the indie market. But yet, I am always surprised by how good Aimee Easterling’s stories are and how much they make me toss that rule of not reading werewolf books out the window. She always finds some new twist to reel me in. This time around, I read through the beginning going, “I don’t do books starring strippers.” I gritted my teeth through that beginning, telling myself I would dump it at the end of the chapter. But then it reached the point where the young awkward younger than her teenage patron turned out to be a werewolf and put his email in the heroine’s hand saying he would be moving and he wanted her to keep in touch. And it just won me over to keep reading. While we got to know Sienna well with her passion for animals, we really don’t get to know Chase much. After 16 years, you’d expect she’d have a ton of questions for him (and visa versa), but she was really just focused on the mystery and problem at hand. I would have liked to have seen him fleshed out a lot more. I loved seeing Wolfie in this (from the Wolf Rampant trilogy and The Complete Bloodling Serial), though this time around, without his mate, we’re seeing a different side of him. Where he’s usually irreverent and a bit goofy even, this time he’s rather uncouth and out of touch with his human side. And, honestly, I don’t remember Chase from the other books since Wolfie has so many members in his pack. But Wolfie still is the same alpha man with a plan, who isn’t the greatest on communication and solves things rather creatively. It is a fun mystery (though you can see the guilty party and know the motives without even trying) with tension and even a bit of action.
Admittedly, I’m not certain why it was in a collection called “Street Spells” since there were no actual magic spells used during this story.
5 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Short Story. I read this as included in the Street Spells collection free on Amazon.
Summary: Sienna, a stripper in a nightclub (and college student by day) is attacked after a show and rescued by a werewolf who turns out to be a young fan of hers, saying he would be moving and to keep in touch. Sixteen years later, Sienna now works watching over a state preserve that abuts a farm with a man who raises goats. He suddenly claims that a wolf has been massacring his goats, but when she investigates it, she’s almost convinced a human probably caused the damage, but there are enough things to suggest it was done by a wolf. She knows it’s within a mile of a family of wolves that she loves watching over and is convinced that if the farmer gets the permit to hunt wolves, he will harm the family of wolves. So, out of options and forced to issue the permit to the farmer, she calls upon her former werewolf rescuer, Chase. He brings Wolf Young along with him to root out the guilty party.
Comments: Aimee Easterling never ceases to amaze me. Though I love fantasy, I reached my limit of shifters and werewolves, especially long ago when they first started to flood the indie market. But yet, I am always surprised by how good Aimee Easterling’s stories are and how much they make me toss that rule of not reading werewolf books out the window. She always finds some new twist to reel me in. This time around, I read through the beginning going, “I don’t do books starring strippers.” I gritted my teeth through that beginning, telling myself I would dump it at the end of the chapter. But then it reached the point where the young awkward younger than her teenage patron turned out to be a werewolf and put his email in the heroine’s hand saying he would be moving and he wanted her to keep in touch. And it just won me over to keep reading. While we got to know Sienna well with her passion for animals, we really don’t get to know Chase much. After 16 years, you’d expect she’d have a ton of questions for him (and visa versa), but she was really just focused on the mystery and problem at hand. I would have liked to have seen him fleshed out a lot more. I loved seeing Wolfie in this (from the Wolf Rampant trilogy and The Complete Bloodling Serial), though this time around, without his mate, we’re seeing a different side of him. Where he’s usually irreverent and a bit goofy even, this time he’s rather uncouth and out of touch with his human side. And, honestly, I don’t remember Chase from the other books since Wolfie has so many members in his pack. But Wolfie still is the same alpha man with a plan, who isn’t the greatest on communication and solves things rather creatively. It is a fun mystery (though you can see the guilty party and know the motives without even trying) with tension and even a bit of action.
Admittedly, I’m not certain why it was in a collection called “Street Spells” since there were no actual magic spells used during this story.
March 17, 2022
Book Review: The Mistletoe Trap
The Mistletoe Trap by Eve Pendle
4 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Novella-length
Summary: After her best friend chose to marry another woman, Amelia had resigned herself to life as a spinster. She had an embroidery profession, donated to a charity, and lived as a companion to her aunt in London. But a family Christmas party drags her home and finds Robert, her childhood best friend, now recently widowed, and his family on the guest list. Amelia has her opportunity to befriend his adorable daughter and confront him about why he chose someone else.
Comments: There were really two separate acts to this story. In the first half of the book, the hero and heroine spend most of the time resenting each other. Robert was mad at Amelia for rebuffing him when they were younger, for turning away when he wanted a kiss under the mistletoe. And she was mad at him for marrying someone else. I loved the mention of Pride & Prejudice and likens herself to sweet, painfully shy Jane who has trouble outwardly showing affection. And then because of complications (being caught together, though nothing actually happened), their relationship felt forced. I did love the second chance trope and finding romance later in life (though this isn’t too much later to really qualify as later in life).
The second half of the book reminded me of Bridgerton where the hero attempted to use the heroine’s naivety to avoid sex (in this case to avoid losing another wife in childbirth), though Amelia wasn’t innocent (which felt too modern for the time period and gets mentioned frequently), so she knew better, and she wasn’t weak-willed and knew what she wanted, which led to a fascinating battle of wills. And, yes, I loved the embroidery piece she made for Robert. (There is a bit of graphic sex in this).
4 stars
Category: Adult
Note: Novella-length
Summary: After her best friend chose to marry another woman, Amelia had resigned herself to life as a spinster. She had an embroidery profession, donated to a charity, and lived as a companion to her aunt in London. But a family Christmas party drags her home and finds Robert, her childhood best friend, now recently widowed, and his family on the guest list. Amelia has her opportunity to befriend his adorable daughter and confront him about why he chose someone else.
Comments: There were really two separate acts to this story. In the first half of the book, the hero and heroine spend most of the time resenting each other. Robert was mad at Amelia for rebuffing him when they were younger, for turning away when he wanted a kiss under the mistletoe. And she was mad at him for marrying someone else. I loved the mention of Pride & Prejudice and likens herself to sweet, painfully shy Jane who has trouble outwardly showing affection. And then because of complications (being caught together, though nothing actually happened), their relationship felt forced. I did love the second chance trope and finding romance later in life (though this isn’t too much later to really qualify as later in life).
The second half of the book reminded me of Bridgerton where the hero attempted to use the heroine’s naivety to avoid sex (in this case to avoid losing another wife in childbirth), though Amelia wasn’t innocent (which felt too modern for the time period and gets mentioned frequently), so she knew better, and she wasn’t weak-willed and knew what she wanted, which led to a fascinating battle of wills. And, yes, I loved the embroidery piece she made for Robert. (There is a bit of graphic sex in this).
