Category: ARC

A Cunning Plan (Sloane Harper: Book 1) by Astrid Arditi

A Cunning Plan (Sloane Harper Book 1)

Title: A Cunning Plan

Author: Astrid Arditi

Publisher: Self Published

Date of publication: November 11th, 2016

Genre: Romance, Mystery, Thriller

Number of pages: 378

POV: 1st person

Series: Sloane Harper

A Cunning Plan – Book 1

Can be read out-of-order from series: Yes, 1st book

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Goodreads synopsis:

The First Sloane Harper Novel
Determined to put her family back together, Sloane Harper stalks her ex-husband and his annoyingly stunning mistress, Kate Stappleton. But she’s not the only one. Handsome IRS agent Ethan Cunning is surveying Kate too, but for entirely different reasons. He is attempting to nail Kate’s playboy boss. Ethan and Sloane decide to help each other, which sends Sloane’s wobbly life spinning out of control. She’ll have to face danger, humiliation, and – scariest of all – the dating scene, to lure her daughters’ father home. Losing control was the best thing to happen to Sloane…until it turned lethal.

My review:

I am going to come straight out and admit this, I didn’t think I would like A Cunning Plan by what I read in the synopsis <hangs head>. What I didn’t expect was the humor that was in the book. I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did.

I actually felt very bad for Sloane in the first few chapters of the book. She was blindsided by her divorce and refused to accept it. She had the mindset that her divorce was only temporary and that her husband will eventually come back and remarry her. I actually wanted to hug her during that part of the book. It was so sad to read. But, once Ethan began his campaign to get her to do his dirty work (get into for Gabriel Varela) for him, the book took off.

Tom, Sloane’s ex, was a huge jerk and I really wanted to punch him. He knew that Sloane wanted him back and he kept stringing her along. To be honest, I couldn’t stand how he treated her. Like she was beneath him. Always laughing at her when she would trip or make a mistake. When Sloane decided to start living her life instead of waiting for him, in other words…dating, he freaked out. Hardcore freaked out. I think I said out loud during that point of the book “Can’t have your cake and eat it to sweetpea”.

Ethan Cunning, oh where do I begin with him. I had a love/hate relationship with him, like Sloane. He kinda did creep me out with all the stalking he did. I mean, he showed up everywhere Sloane was and it was freaky. But, in a way, Sloane was getting hers for stalking Tom’s mistress/new girlfriend. I also didn’t like how he could change in a minute. When he called Sloane desperate (all because he was jealous of her dating Gabriel), I wanted to reach through the book and smack him. Hard.

I loved the friendship that Sloane had with Claudia. It was one of the most honest ones in the book and oh boy, did Claudia not hold back. She was brutally honest and did not hold back of her dislike for Tom (which made me love her even more). She truly had Sloane’s best interests at heart and she was truly a best friend to Sloane.

The relationship Sloane had with her mother, Bizzy, was very complicated. To be honest, I did think was very selfish in taking advantage of her mother for 6 months but then again, I didn’t think it was selfish. Bizzy was not a great mother….always putting Sloane down, buddying up to Tom and harping on Claudia. Plus, she was always drinking her “lemonade” and was always half lit. The whole day after a binge with Claudia was hilarious.

What I liked the most about this book was that Sloane cherished her children and Tom was a great father, even if he was a jerk in every other area of his life. They made a united front to co-parent as peacefully as possible for Rose and Poppy. I will say that the highlight of this book was the horse/whore conversation and its after-effects. I couldn’t breathe, I was laughing so hard.

The storylines of A Cunning Plan were great. I couldn’t decide if I was Team Ethan or Team Gabriel for most of the book but I can tell you that I was most definitely not Team Tom. I do like that Sloane’s super secret spy mission did get results, even if it did go a little haywire (well, a lot haywire). I do have some questions that needed to be answered (what about Alina and Sloane’s friendship? Will it survive what happened?) but I am sure that it will be answered in the next book.

How many stars will I give A Cunning Plan: 4

Why: A very fast paced mystery that kept you guessing. Also a great look into how a woman blindsided by her divorce got her life and self-worth back.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Language and violence

**I received a free copy of this book and volunteered to review it**

Bunyan’s Guide to the Great American Wildlife by Quentin Canterel’

Bunyan's Guide to the Great American Wildlife

Title: Bunyan’s Guide To The Great American Wildlife

Author: Quentin Canterel

Publisher: Acorn Independent Press

Date of Publication: October 11th, 2016

Genre: General Fiction

Number of pages: 262

POV: 3rd person, 1st person, and 2nd person

Series: No

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Goodreads synopsis:

What happens when the Manhattan zoo empties its cages?

John, part radicalized anarchist, part ticking time bomb, is haunted by a particular story, that of Willow, a 9-year old mute who flees to New York after her brutal rape. The only way his girlfriend, Felicity, can stop the clock counting down is by disentangling the riddle of their pasts before their entwined futures are blown to pieces.

Quentin Canterel’s second novel presents a collage of voices, dead and alive, in a unique and unnerving novel that experiments with form, structure, and language.

Truly a mystery shrouded in an enigma.

My review:

This was a very hard book to read. Not because of the subject (9-year-old mute girl gets gang-raped) but because of how it was written. Normally, I am pretty good with numerous POV’s in a book but this one, well it was all over the place. One chapter would be in 2nd person, then another in 1st person, then back to 2nd person and then to 3rd person. It was very confusing and I couldn’t keep track of who was “talking” half the time. Not something that really makes a great reading experience.

Another reason this was a very hard book to read was the wordage. I am not stupid, far from it, but I still had to use my Kindle’s dictionary to figure out what some of the words meant and when they weren’t available on that, I had to google the word. Yes, google it. That lowered the book’s esteem in my eyes.

This review is going to be very short because, honestly, I can’t say anything good about the book. The plotlines were awful, the characters came across as either immensely screwed up, immensely stuck up or both and I just couldn’t get past Felicity and John’s “romance”.

How many stars will I give Bunyan’s Guide to the Great American Wildlife: 1

Why: I didn’t like the book and found it very hard to read. The POV’s were changed lightning fast and without notification, the characters were not very relatable and the language they used was very pretentious. I did not enjoy reading this book at all…which is sad because books should be enjoyed.

Will I reread: No

Will I recommend to family and friends: No

Age range: Adult

Why: Violence and language

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy Book 1) by [Arden, Katherine]

5 Stars

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine, Del Ray

Date of publication: January 10th, 2017

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Winternight Trilogy

The Bear and the Nightingale—Book 1

The Girl in the Tower—Book 2

The Winter of the Witch—Book 3

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Book synopsis:

Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil.

Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring. And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.

But Vasya’s stepmother only grows harsher, determined to remake the village to her liking and to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for marriage or a convent. As the village’s defenses weaken and evil from the forest creeps nearer, Vasilisa must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed—to protect her family from a threat sprung to life from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

My review:

The book starts on a late winter night in northern Rus’ (Russia) in Pytor Vladimirovich’s house. Dunya and the children were gathered around the oven. Dunya was about to tell the children a folktale about the frost-demon, the winter-king Karachun, when their mother, Marina, came in and joined in listening. Pytor was outside, assisting a ewe in giving birth. When he came in, Marina told him her news. She was expecting another child. This child would be like her mother, who was known as a witch-woman and had mysterious powers. She could tame animals, dream the future and summon rain. Pytor was worried about the news. Marina wasn’t a young woman, and he was afraid that she wouldn’t be strong enough for birth.

He was right. Marina died shortly after giving birth to Vasilisa (Vasya), and what she predicted came true. Vasya was a headstrong, willful, and almost feral. She also inherited her grandmother’s powers.

When she was six years old, she got lost in the forest outside her house and came upon an older man sleeping in the roots of a tree. Thinking that she could wake him up and he would know the way to her father’s house, she shook him. Only to find out that he is a hideously disfigured man. One eye was missing, with the socket sewn shut and with hideous scars on that side of her face. Still, she invites him back to her house if he can take her home. Then a genuinely supernatural thing happens, as she goes to take this stranger’s hand, a man on a white horse comes thundering to where they were, makes the older man go back to sleep and frightens Vasya, who ends up being found by Sascha, her beloved older brother.

After that escapade that Pytor decides to head to Moscow and get a wife for himself. He takes Sasha and Kolya with him. While he was there, he meets a mysterious stranger who gives him a beautiful jewel and tells him to hold on to it until Vasya gets older. If he doesn’t, this strange man will come after and kill Kolya.

Pytor does find a wife while in Moscow. His late wife’s half brother’s daughter, who sees demons and is classified as mad by her father, stepmother, and servants. Anna is her name, and she becomes my least favorite person in the book. After discovering that Vasya can talk to the household spirits and non-household spirits, Anna would beat her to get her repent. Not that it did any good. Vasya only became more feral, more headstrong.

When Vasya turns fourteen, a new priest is sent to her village since the old one has died. Anna begs the Metropolitan to send a new one, and they did. A young priest named Konstantin Nikonovich, who is considered somewhat of an upstart, is sent there to straighten him out. Anna is thrilled because he is driving out the demons (aka the household spirits) that she sees. Vasya, not so much, and she resorts to leaving offerings for them where her stepmother can’t see them or in rooms where she doesn’t go.

It is during that time that the mysterious man makes an appearance in Dunya’s dream, and he demands that she give Vasya the necklace. Dunya makes a bargain with him to wait another year to give it to her. In that year, everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

I loved Vasya. She was a spunky girl who called it like it was and wasn’t afraid to stand up to anyone or anything. I did think, at one point, that her spunkiness was going to get her killed, but it didn’t.

The end of the book is a must-read. It was fantastic. The very end of the book, though, is what got me, and it made me smile.

I would give The Bear and The Nightingale an Adult rating. There is no sex. There is no language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread The Bear and The Nightingale. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

The Second Mrs. Hockaday: A Novel by [Rivers, Susan]

5 Stars

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Genre: Historical Fiction

Date of publication: January 17th, 2017

Where you can find The Second Mrs. Hockaday: Amazon

Book synopsis:

When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband’s three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really transpired in the two years he was away?

A love story, a story of racial divide, and a story of the South as it fell in the war, The Second Mrs. Hockaday reveals how this generation—and the next—began to see their world anew.

My Review:

The Second Mrs. Hockaday was a fantastic book, and I loved reading it. Told through letters and journal entries, it brings Civil War Era South to life.

I have read plenty of Civil War Era books to know when one is good or not. This book is a good one. The plot is fantastic, and for the author to use letters and journals to tell a horrendous story was beautiful. She seamlessly weaved the letters and the journal into a spellbound tale that you can’t put down.

I will say that there are several twists in this story. I called one of them, but the other one (which was told from Charlie’s perspective) surprised and haunted me after I finished reading the book.

I would give The Second Mrs. Hockaday an Adult rating. There is non-graphic sex. There is mild language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread The Second Mrs. Hockaday. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

Deadlight Jack (The Faceless One: Book 2) by Mark Onspaugh

Deadlight Jack (The Raven and the Canary Book 2) by [Onspaugh, Mark]

4 Stars

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Hydra, Hydra

Date of Publication: January 3rd, 2017

Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal

Series: The Faceless One

The Faceless One – Book 1

Deadlight Jack – Book 2

Where you can find this book – Amazon

Book synopsis:

Worse things than gators lurk in the Louisiana swamp. . . . The author of The Faceless One fuses the twisted imagination of Fritz Leiber with the razor-sharp plotting of Joe Hill in this rollicking horror thriller.
 
Appearances can be deceiving. Take Jimmy Kalmaku. Anyone passing him on the streets of Lake Nisqually, Washington, would merely see an elderly man. But Jimmy is actually a powerful Tlingit shaman, with a link to the god Raven and a résumé that includes saving the world.
 
Or take his friend and roommate, George Watters. Another ordinary retiree, right? Wrong. Like Jimmy, George is more than he seems to be. He too has a link to the supernatural. He too has saved the world.
 
Then there’s Professor Foxfire—also known as Deadlight Jack. Dressed in the garb of a stage magician, he seems a figure of magic and fun. But he isn’t fun at all. He isn’t even human. And his magic is of the darkest and bloodiest kind.
 
When George’s grandson vanishes on a family vacation to the Louisiana bayou, George and Jimmy fly across the country to aid in the search. Once they arrive, family feuds and buried secrets bring George face-to-face with the ghosts of a forgotten past; Jimmy finds his powers wilting under the humid Southern sun; and deep in the swamp, Deadlight Jack prepares his long-awaited revenge.

My review:

Deadlight Jack is not a book to read at night.

Repeat.

Deadlight Jack is not a book to read at night.

I generally don’t scared of books but this one, well it scared me, big time. Take the cover, for instance. The one orange eye and the salamander are creepy. Then add the swamp, and the creepiness factor goes up.

Deadlight Jack starts after the events of The Faceless One. Jimmy and George are living together, but not together if you know what I mean. After saving the world in the first book, they are expecting to be left alone and live out the rest of their lives together.

Life (and the Gods) have other plans.

Jimmy is visited by Dabo Muu, a giant albino alligator that tells Jimmy that he needs to get down to Louisiana. It was more of an order, and Jimmy feels that there is more going on than what Dabo Muu is letting on.

George gets a phone call from one of his sons. His grandson, Donny, has gone missing while on a camping trip with his moms and older brother in Louisiana. He and Jimmy decide to head on down to help and offer Mel and her wife moral support while they search for Donny.

When George tells Jimmy that Donny is missing, Jimmy immediately cancels plans that were taking him to Boston to visit his son, daughter in law and granddaughter to go with George. During the flight down to LA, George tells Jimmy about his tragic past. All about his kids, his wife, and the tragedies that happened. He warned Jimmy that his daughter, Delphine, will be there, and it will not be pleasant when she finds out George is there. Delphine is holding on to the hurt and resentment from the past, and she will make things very difficult for George.

And she does. She had to have been the most self-centered secondary character that I have ever read, and I wanted someone to put her in her place sooner than they did. I understand that she had issues with George, but there is a time and a place for everything and to be a rude asshole to him, and making an already tense situation even tenser wasn’t cool.

I loved how George had to come into his own during the book. He had to accept his past to save his grandson and the other children.

I wish that I had read the first book. That would have helped me connect with Jimmy a little more and would have helped me understand his character a bit better. I would have loved to read more about shamanism and the indigenous people of Alaska.

The paranormal/horror aspect was fantastic. Like I said above, this is a book that you really shouldn’t read at night. Not only did it feature a swamp (which is creepy in its own right), but Professor Foxfire was genuinely scary. I mean, anyone who has tattoos that come alive and off their face has a special place in the creepy hall of fame. But add that he can make children into ghosts and he kidnaps even more kids to turn them into either food/more ghost children, he is vile.

The end of the book was excellent, and I loved the showdown. I was expecting something to happen, just not on that scale. I also liked that the author set up for book 3.

I would give Deadlight Jack an Adult rating. There is sex. There is language. There is mild violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread Deadlight Jack. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

House of Silence by Sarah Barthel

House of Silence by [Barthel, Sarah]

4 Stars

Publisher: Kensington Books, Kensington

Date of publication: December 27th, 2016

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Book synopsis:

Oak Park, Illinois, 1875. Isabelle Larkin’s future—like that of every young woman—hinges upon her choice of husband. She delights her mother by becoming engaged to Gregory Gallagher, who is charismatic, politically ambitious, and publicly devoted. But Isabelle’s visions of a happy, profitable match come to a halt when she witnesses her fiancé commit a horrific crime—and no one believes her.
 
Gregory denies all, and Isabelle’s mother insists she marries as planned rather than drag them into a scandal. Fearing for her life, Isabelle can think of only one escape: she feigns a mental breakdown that renders her mute and is brought to Bellevue sanitarium. There she finds a friend in fellow patient Mary Todd Lincoln, committed after her husband’s assassination.
 
In this unlikely refuge, the women become allies, even as Isabelle maintains a veneer of madness for her own protection. But sooner or later, she must reclaim her voice. And if she uses it to expose the truth, Isabelle risks far more than she could ever imagine.
 
Weaving together a thread of finely tuned suspense with a fascinating setting and real-life figures, Sarah Barthel’s debut is historical fiction at its most evocative and compelling.

My review:

Isabelle is the envy of all the girls in Oak Park. She has caught the eye of handsome Gregory Gallagher, and he proposed to her. In an age where marriages are usually treated as business contracts, she considers herself lucky that she loves Gregory, and he loves her.

The night of her engagement party, Isabelle is ecstatic but, at the same time, worried about her friend Lucy. Lucy was too supposed to elope with her true love, Patrick, against the wishes of her mother. Isabelle was surprised when she sees Lucy at her engagement party. As soon as she can, Isabelle speaks to Lucy and finds out that Patrick was called out-of-town to tend to his sick mother. Lucy is understandably upset and resigned to the fact that her mother will marry her off to the highest bidder.

Isabelle is half listening to Lucy when she sees Gregory heading out to the garden. She decides to follow him and finds him talking to a servant girl in the garden. When she asks who that was, he explains that she was a servant girl, and she wanted to speak to him in the garden about a misunderstanding. Isabelle (who is a smart cookie) doesn’t quite believe him and follows him back to the party.

The next day, Isabelle is on her way lunch with her mother after a morning full of appointments. Her maid tells her that someone wants to have a word with her and asks Isabelle to pretend to miss a glove. The person who wants to meet her, the girl from the night before.

What Isabelle hears from the girl throws doubt on her relationship with Gregory. The girl, Katerina, tells Isabelle that she knew Gregory when he was growing up in Joliet, and she wants Isabelle to give him a message. Isabelle tells her she must have the wrong Gregory, but she will be happy to deliver the message for her. The girl is upset but doesn’t say any more.

She does tell Gregory and he reconfirmed that he doesn’t know her, which puts Isabelle at ease. A few days later, Isabelle decides to visit her maid, Abigail, at her house to give her a basket full of fruit, muffins, and tea to thank her for helping her pick out the dress. When Abigail is bringing the basket into the house, Isabelle is left outside, kicking stones. One of the stones goes several houses down, and she follows it. Isabelle hears Gregory and Katerina yelling. She goes to look in the front window, and what she sees terrifies her. She watches as Gregory strangles Katerina to death.

Traumatized by what she has seen, Isabelle stays where she was until dusk. She goes to look at the body and almost gets caught by Gregory when he comes back to move Katerina. Isabelle leaves the house and heads towards Abigail’s house, where she promptly passes out after twisting her ankle. When she comes too, she tries to tell her mother and Dr what she has seen. But they don’t believe her. Her mother tells her that Isabelle must have made it up, that Gregory is a good boy, and that Isabelle is lucky to be marrying him.

After having several run-ins with her mother and Gregory, Isabelle decides that going to a sanitarium would be the best thing for her. So she goes voluntarily mute and starts throwing horrible fits. The next day she was on her way there.

The sanitarium that she goes to is called the Bellevue Sanitarium. While residing there, Isabelle meets some colorful people but none more unusual than Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln. She is admitted shortly after Isabelle, and soon the two of them are friends.

I liked Isabelle. She was so stubborn, and she stood by her story, even if it meant pretending to be insane to avoid marrying Gregory. I felt terrible for her because her mother should have believed her. During those scenes, I wanted to reach through the book and hug her.

Isabelle’s mother was one of the worse characters I have read in a book in a long time. I couldn’t stand her. She was very self-centered. I seriously wanted to smack her. She didn’t even pretend to care about Isabelle.

Historically, the book was on point. The author did a great job of adapting the time Mary Todd Lincoln spent in the Bellevue Sanitarium (and she did) into an excellent thriller.

There wasn’t a mystery to this book, though. You know everything upfront. But it was a mystery as to what Gregory would do when he finally got a hold of Isabelle.

The end of the book was great but somewhat predictable. I thought the girl power element was significant. I did feel bad for Gregory when everything was revealed, though.

I would give House of Silence an Adult rating. There is sex. There is language. There is mild violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread House of Silence. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

The Many by Nathan Field

The Many: The cult psychological thriller by [Field, Nathan]

4 Stars

Publisher: Silvermac Publishing

Date of publication: July 12th, 2016

Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Series: The Many

The Many—Book 1

Ancestral—Book 2

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Book synopsis:

Karl notices something odd about his sister the morning after a blind date. A coldness in her manner; nothing anyone else would notice. Suspicious, he confronts her about the date but she turns nasty, accusing him of taking a perverse interest in her sex life.

When he next sees her, months later, she seems back to normal, until a harmless comment provokes a sudden, violent response. As her mental state fluctuates, Karl seeks out the man she dated just before her personality began to change, convinced she is suppressing a painful memory from that night. But what he discovers is something far more sinister, and pervasive, than he’d ever imagined.

Strictly for adult readers, THE MANY are the first book of a series that explores the dark side of the world we live in and sheds light on a shadowy evil that is both disturbing and eerily familiar.

My review:

Karl’s sister came home acting very weird after a blind date. Concerned that she had been date raped, Karl asks her what the matter. She lashes out in an inappropriate way, accusing Karl of having incestuous thoughts of her and wanting to sleep with her. Shortly afterward, Karl moves out, unable to deal with the insane things she was saying.

The next time Karl sees her is at Thanksgiving, and she acts like nothing is wrong. That is until Karl brings up that night, that’s when she goes bat poop crazy. His sister attacks their mother, twice, and then attacks Karl. Karl was able to restrain her, and when she calms down, he convinces her to go to his friend’s mother….a respectable psychologist. What she reveals there concerns Karl. But before he or the psychologist can act on what was told, she jumps out of the window. But before she dies, his sister tells them who she went on the blind date with, and now Karl is on a mission to discover what exactly happened to his sister the night of her blind date.

Dawn is a 17-year-old living a good life with her mother, Isobel. Isobel, who had just broken up with her long-term girlfriend, had scored a date on a lesbian dating site. Even though Dawn thought the woman looked mean, she encouraged her mother to go out on a date with her. Which, in hindsight, could have been the worse thing she could have done.

Dawn wakes up the next morning to a vastly different Isobel. An Isobel who was disconnected and short with her. An Isobel who hints at things that they both did that nighs, even though Dawn was home all night. Even so, Dawn was surprised when she got up one Saturday morning, and Isobel was gone. All her mother left her was a note. Panicked, she calls the police but gets a blown off. All she had left was to discover what happened the night Isobel went on her blind date.

As Dawn is dealing with that, Karl is dealing with the aftermath of his sister’s suicide. After confronting her date, almost getting arrested, and then hiring a PI, Karl meets a mystery woman who invites him back to her loft for a drink and some fun. He barely escapes after being drugged.

Dawn is dealing with her stuff. Creating a fake profile on the dating site, she meets another woman who has had an encounter with the mystery woman. Meeting up with her and hearing what that woman had to say, Dawn goes to the police, only to be told that they couldn’t help her. She also gets a phone call from the mystery woman, who threatens her. After that phone call, Isobel shows up and is a mess. She starts to go after Dawn, who runs out of the house, and Isobel gets hit by a car and dies. Shortly after her funeral, Dawn is contacted by Karl, and they discover that they have a lot in common, the main thing being that their loved ones had contact with both the mystery man and mystery woman.

The rest of the book, from that point on, was excellent. I liked that the author incorporated mind-altering drugs and mind control experiments into the story. The whole backstory about that was fascinating, and I do wish that more time was spent on it and on the guy who was told to eat until he was obese and how it affected his life.

Dawn had to have been my favorite character in the book. She was smart, she was very sarcastic, and she thought on her feet.

I did like Karl, but I did think he was a bit of a dummy in certain parts of the book. Mainly Dawn’s blind date. I wanted to yell at him when he hung up on the police.

The plot twist was hinted at the beginning of the book but wasn’t confirmed until the end. And, to be honest, it was gross but it explained a lot.

The end of the book was exciting. The main storyline was resolved, but before it was, a whole other storyline was exposed, and the end of the book left it open for the next book.

I would give The Many an Adult rating. There are sexual situations. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread The Many. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

Devil’s Honor (The Devil’s Keepers: Book 1) by Megan Crane

Devil's Honor: The Devil's Keepers by [Crane, Megan]

3 Stars

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Loveswept, Loveswept

Publication Date: November 1st, 2016

Genre: Romance

Series: The Devil Keeper’s

Devil’s Honor – Book 1

Devil’s Mark – Book 2

Devil’s Own – Book 3

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Goodreads synopsis:

In the start of a sizzling new series, bestselling author Megan Crane takes readers deep into bayou country, where the sultry swamp has nothing on the heat of Louisiana’s fiercest bikers: the Devil’s Keepers.
 
Merritt Broussard grew up knowing she had two choices if she stayed in Lagrange: run with the outlaws or get left in their dust. So she got the hell out, leaving behind a bad-boy biker and scorching memories of their summer fling. Now Merritt’s back, with trouble on her tail, and the sergeant-at-arms of the Devil’s Keepers is the one person she can still trust. But Greeley isn’t the boy she remembers. He’s harder now, more dangerous—and even more alluring.
 
Joseph “Greeley” Shaw loves two things: his bike and his club. At eighteen, he escaped a rough life, found the Devil’s Keepers on the wrong side of a bad weekend, and never looked back. Greeley swore to live and die by their code: Devil’s Keepers first, Devil’s Keepers forever. No one comes between him and his brothers—except for the tantalizing woman who touched his soul. Greeley’s the kind of man who honors his commitments . . . and Merritt is one promise he’s determined to keep.

My review:

Merritt Broussard had vowed that she would never return to Lagrange, La after finally escaping it when she was 18. She was briefly tempted when she was 22, about to go to law school, and came home on break. What, or should I say, who lured her? A biker named Greeley, who was a member of the Devil’s Keepers, the local biker club that ran Lagrange. She was hellbent on getting out of Lagrange and getting away from her swamp rat roots, and she left, breaking Greeley’s heart.

Five years later, and Merritt is returning to the one place she vowed she would never go back. Lagrange. She didn’t even return there when her father died, that’s how much she hated her hometown. The only reason she is returned is that she has an abusive ex-boyfriend and her hometown is the last place that he would look.

But Greeley is in Lagrange, and Merritt knew that it would be a matter of time before he showed up. The last time she saw him, he warned her about coming back.

Greeley is at the club’s clubhouse when another brother tells him that Merritt is back in Lagrange and staying at her father’s house. He leaves the clubhouse and has a confrontation with Merritt that almost ends with sex. Almost because right as he was sliding home, the phone rings, and he has to go back to the clubhouse.

Merritt and Greeley do hook up, and oh boy, is it hot. The pages burned when they had sex. And, of course, they do it bareback. If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know how I feel about that. Like I have said in previous blogs, I really should start a movement: Safe Sex For Fictional People (SSFFP)….lmao.

Anyways, back to the review.

The plotline with Merritt’s abusive boyfriend was anticlimactic. After what Merritt told her best friend, I thought that Antony would be more of a badass. Instead, when he did make an appearance, he came across as flat. I don’t know how to describe it. I was expecting Greeley to kill him and was a little put off that he got away with just a beating (hey, I’m bloodthirsty sometimes).

The end of the book was pretty good. All the storylines got wrapped up, and there is a HEA for Merritt and Greeley. I am pretty excited to read the other two books in this series once they come out, and I do hope that the author doesn’t stop with just 2. There are a few characters that I would like to read their stories.

I would give Devil’s Honor an Adult rating. There are sexual situations. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread Devil’s Honor. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

Blood Divine by Greg Howard

Blood Divine by [Howard, Greg]

4 Stars

Publisher: Anakim Press

Date of publication: November 28th, 2017

Genre: LGBTQIA, Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal

Where you can find this book: Amazon

Book synopsis:

Cooper Causey spent a lifetime eluding the demons of his youth and suppressing the destructive power inside him. But a disconcerting voicemail lures Cooper back home to the coast of South Carolina and to Warfield—the deserted plantation where his darkness first awakened. While searching for his missing grandmother, Cooper uncovers the truth about his ancestry and becomes a pawn in an ancient war between two supernatural races. In order to protect the only man he’s ever loved, Cooper must embrace the dark power threatening to consume him and choose sides in a deadly war between the righteous and the fallen.

My review:

Cooper Causey is a love them and leave them type of guy. He is unable to form any long-lasting relationship after a disastrous one in high school that ended with the guy in a coma and Cooper blaming himself. So he took off and eventually landed in Nashville, where the story begins.

Well, it began 20 years previously, when Cooper was 8. On a dare, his older brother, his brother’s friends, and Cooper go to an abandoned, haunted manor called Warfield. While they were there, the boys get spooked, and all leave. Well, all but Cooper, who ends up crashing his bicycle into a tree and loses his glasses. He ends up seeing a ghost called Blue. Blue corners Cooper when he falls on top of his bike, holds his head and shoots energy into Cooper’s head. Then Cooper passes out.

When Cooper was with his latest one-night stand, his grandmother, Lillie Mae, calls him and leaves a cryptic voice mail. Panicking (like anyone would when their grandmother doesn’t answer the phone), he heads back to Georgetown, SC, to check on her.

What ends up happening once he gets there is something he doesn’t expect. He calls the police to report Lillie Mae missing, and the officer that shows up is none other than his deceased brother’s best friend and Cooper’s old crush, Randy. After filing the report and Randy leaves, Cooper decides to head to the one place that terrifies him. Warfield.

It is there that his world kind of gets turned upside down, and I am not going to get into it.

I loved the fantasy and paranormal aspect of this book. The author put a great spin on Biblical stories which I enjoyed reading. I also really liked the spin on vampires/witches. He didn’t release all the information on either of them at once. Instead, it was leaked, slowly, throughout the book, and that was more than enough to keep my attention.

The ending was excellent, and I loved that Cooper finally found happiness. The way it ended, though, suggested at a book 2. If so, I will be eagerly awaiting it!!

I would give Blood Divine an Adult rating. There are sexual situations. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread Blood Divine. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

Hatching the Phoenix Egg (Mare Tranquillitatis: Book 2) by Joel Horn

Hatching the Phoenix Egg (Mare Tranquillitatis Series Book 2) by [Horn, Joel]

4 Stars

Publisher:

Date of publication: September 24th, 2016

Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Science Fiction

Series: Mare Tranquillitatis

Lost Coast Rocket – Book 1 (review here)

Hatching The Phoenix Egg – Book 2

Where to find: Amazon

Book synopsis:

Would You Travel a Half-Billion Miles to Escape Your Past?

That’s exactly what Ken O’Brien does in this sequel to Lost Coast Rocket.

Driven by a broken heart and a mysterious compulsion he can’t understand, Ken launches himself into space. During this one-way trip, he has just ten years to answer as many cosmic questions as he can before his body succumbs to the hostile space environment.

But he’s given an unexpected gift and his life is extended. How he spends this gift, however, makes him the most hated man in history. Will the world absolve Ken of his extreme sin? More importantly, will the green-eyed girl who broke his heart forgive him for what he was driven to do?

˃˃˃ Hatching the Phoenix Egg is Book 2 in the epic Mare Tranquillitatis Series

The adventure began in Lost Coast Rocket, the first book of the series.

My review:

This book starts after the launching of the Tranquility and Ken narrowly avoiding being arrested by the FBI. He goes off into orbit around the earth and the moon and starts his journey to Jupiter.

While he is on his way to Jupiter, his friends are left behind to pick up the pieces. Akira breaks the news to Carol and Mary that he will not be coming back and that he was the boy who Dawn was looking for. The FBI investigates them and finds nothing but does take all of Ken’s rockets that were at the clubhouse. Which was no big deal because they didn’t get anything important.

I found Ken’s travel to Jupiter fascinating and very intriguing. It definitely made me wonder when we’ll finally send manned expeditions to Jupiter and its moons. I also thought that him choosing a school to share his journey with was fantastic.

The comet, Ken wanting to save the world from it and how people reacted is totally what I would think people today would act if something like that ever happened. The riots, the food shortages, everything was written about how I expected people to act in an apocalyptic situation.

I did find Ken a bit self-absorbed in this book. But, he was dealing with his own issues and facing his own death. So I understand why he acted that way.

The end of the book was great. So many things were wrapped up and so many storylines, carried over from the first book, were resolved in a satisfactory way. I am wondering if there will be a 3rd book. From the way this one ended, I can see a 3rd one being written.

I will warn everyone, this is not a YA book. The first one, yes. This one, not so much. It is so much darker than the first one. I will also mention that I didn’t get the title until the end of the book.

I would give Hatching the Phoenix Egg an Adult rating. There are sexual situations. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread Hatching the Phoenix Egg. I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**