Category: Release Of the Week

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Featured New Release Of The Week: All The Silent Voices by Elena Mikalsen

This week we’re looking at a story in many ways ripped from the headlines of the last couple of years. This week we’re looking at All The Silent Voices by Elena Mikalsen.

I gotta admit, when I first saw this book shortly after reading The House By The Cypress Trees, I was torn. On the one hand, Cypress had been awesome – light and fun and almost feeling like you were there in Italy experiencing everything with the characters. On the other, this was very obviously a female writing about the MeToo movement – something I’ve seen very little balance on when I’ve seen it in my feeds. So I was leery of this book, but ultimately I decided to take it on and try it.

And yes, it had its moments of wanting to throw it through the nearest window.

But by the end of the book there actually is much more balance and nuance than it initially appears there might be – Mikalsen truly does a great job placing that in the book, even if much of it comes in the last quarter of the book in its final scenes. She uses a concurrent plot of Big Pharma corruption to balance the scales a bit, even while having characters she clearly thinks of as the protagonist and antagonist, and this plot could well have been described in the 2019 book Drugs Money and Secret Handshakes by Robin Feldman it was that seemingly plausible.

Frankly this was an excellent story, and its dichotomy with the author’s previous work shows just how good of a storyteller Mikalsen really is. Very much recommended.

As always, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
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#BookReview: The God Game by Danny Tobey

Solid Yet Could Have Been Transcendental. If you’ve seen the 2016 movie Nerve, you have a pretty good idea what you’re getting into here. The two are very similar in overall concept, though ultimately both use the common concept to speak to different issues. With this particular book, you get more into The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase’s mantra – everyone has a price – even as the book tries in spits and spurts to discuss much weightier metaphysical topics. Hell, the book name drops Aquinas and Lewis and uses Thoth, Christ, Freud, and Heaphestus as characters! And while all of these add some interesting wrinkles to the overall tale, ultimately this book suffers from the same fate as Marcus Sakey’s Afterlife. By this I mean that, as I said in the title, it is a solid action/ scifi book that could have been transcendental with a bit more care. Very much recommended.

This review of The God Game by Danny Tobey was originally written on January 3, 2020.

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Featured New Release of the Week: This Is Not How It Ends by Rochelle Weinstein

This week we’re looking at an epic love triangle set in the beautiful Florida Keys. This week we’re looking at This Is Not How It Ends by Rochelle Weinstein.

Structurally this book is a bit interesting. Part 1 is told via two timelines, one a couple of years ago and one present day. In each, our lead character finds herself falling in love with two men… who happen to be best friends. In Part 2 the book is told via a now unified present day timeline, and right around the 2/3 point we get one character telling another character the title of this book. It is at this point that the book goes from “solid” to “waterfall” level, and the waterworks continue pretty well through the end of the book.

Reading this book just a day after finishing Iona Grey’s The Glittering Hour, another waterfall level book, was a bit intense, and I very much recommend surrounding this book with light and fun romantic comedies in your own reading. (Or maybe mindless “kill everything that moves, get the girl, save the world” level action, if you prefer.) Reading both of these books right at a holiday known for being one of the biggest parties of the year was even more intense, and I very much recommend waiting until the middle of winter when you need a good cry anyway. Guess what? Since you’re reading this after Jan 2, 2020 (I’m writing it at roughly 4a EST on that date), you’re already in a much better position to read this book.

Which is what you should do. Right now. Go buy this book if you haven’t yet and get set for a good weekend cry. Go!
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Husband Material by Emily Belden

This week we’re looking at a book that features a view of my own “real life” industry, software engineering. This week, we’re looking at Husband Material by Emily Belden.

As a romantic comedy, this book falls into the “zany/ WTF” kind of mold. A “numbers girl” who has recreated herself as a software engineer following the death of her husband after just a single year of marriage in her mid 20s finds out that sometimes life itself isn’t nearly so clean as numbers and code. And sometimes that is actually a very good thing.

From a more technical standpoint… it is pretty clear that the author herself is not a coder. Much of the plot revolves around our main character constantly “tweaking the algorithm” to match certain desired outcomes. Including using the same program designed to demo-mine social media to help companies target their advertising to also attempt to determine whether or not potential dates match her own desires. From a non-programmer perspective, I can see where a non-techie would think the two ideas are close enough that it would be plausible that the same code and algorithms could do both tasks. As an experienced Senior Developer with now 20 years of programming knowledge and 13 years of professional corporate level experience… yeah, no. Doing both is very doable, and in fact I’m aware of real world programs that do either/ or. And while yes, the actual algorithms themselves are at least superficially similar – you’re scanning a particular thing and looking for matches to a given set of criteria – the actual implementation details would be too dissimilar to keep even within the same project and likely even within the same database. (Though *perhaps* a strategy could be arranged that they could share at least the same database but with only a few tables referenced by both projects.)

Regardless of the technical inaccuracies though, the overall point of the book is that our lead character has dived into the programming side specifically because she is running away from living in the actual real world of breathing human beings, and that is something that many of us in this field come face to face with at some point in our careers – particularly after long and detailed projects that force us to dive deep for a while. And in that scenario was very much relatable indeed to many of us, and in the particulars of what is going on in that real world is at least somewhat relatable to many beyond our field.

Ultimately a story of actually healing long after you had thought you had healed from a tragedy, this is a story that is very much recommended for all.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Destination Sofia by David Wood and Sean Ellis

This week we’re looking at the latest entry in a long running and expansive universe. This week we’re looking at Destination Sofia by David Wood and Sean Ellis.

This was yet another excellent example of Wood and Ellis’ abilities to take seemingly somewhat random real world mysteries and impressive sceneries and combine them into an action tale with just the right combination of adventure, intrigue, and guns blazing action. The intrigue here centers on the real life Tsarichina Hole, and Wood and Ellis truly do an excellent job explaining the real world mystery in the context of the tale, then spinning their own tale around that real world mystery.

Filled with the action and humor long time fans have come to expect from this universe, this is also a good enough entry point for people new to the series – at somewhat shortish (under 200 pages), it is a fairly quick yet highly entertaining read, perfect for trying to squeeze in another book or two at the end of the year to hit some numerical reading target. Very much recommended.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release Of The Week: True To Me by Kay Bratt

This week we look at an excellent tale of finding oneself that is full of enough potential that the author could spend the rest of her career in this world and I doubt anyone would be disappointed. This week, we are looking at True To Me by Kay Bratt.

This was absolutely a world I’m looking forward to coming back to, which is a good thing since Bratt has already announced a sequel. But the richness of this world is unlike any I’ve seen lately and possibly in quite some time – there are simply so many threads set up here that Bratt could use to spend literally the rest of her career within this world, and yet this book itself is a complete and unitary tale unto itself. In other words, while those other areas are there, this book is a complete experience whether or not they are ever explored more deeply – and that is a testament to Bratt’s skill as a writer that she was able to pull this off.

My own overall experience with this book was perhaps enhanced by reading this tale of Maui and its secrets while on a cruise to the southern Caribbean Sea myself, and indeed much of this book was read while I was somewhere south of Hispaniola either on my way to Curacao and Aruba (where the pic to the right was taken) or on my way back to Miami from Aruba. Truly a perfect read for such a vacation, and I’m sure my experience with both was enhanced by the other.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde

This week we look to an excellent tale of coming of age in the summer of 1969 – that only mentions one of the numerous events happening in the US that summer. This week, we’re looking at Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde. Well, y’all are. This is going up a few days early because I am leaving to meet up with a cruise ship and spend the week in the Caribbean. 😉

This was another strong book from Hyde, with quite a few individual dramas all interconnected via how they intersect with one teenager’s own life. Some school drama, some first romance drama, plenty of familial drama with two different characters impacted by service in Vietnam but also two separate couples having their own difficulties, a black sheep of an entire small town, and more. Overall this story, like so many of Hyde’s, comes down to the power of a caring community – and this is exactly where the book finds its power.

Truly a great story touching many difficult and sensitive topics with an adroitful grace, this is yet another that would work well on the silver screen. Very much recommended.

As always, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Tribe by Jeremy Robinson

This week we are looking at the latest electric release from the Modern Day Master of Science Fiction. This week, we are looking at Tribe by Jeremy Robinson.

I speak here somewhat frequently of my desire for authors to take risks, even within the confines of their own genre. And boy does Robinson do that in spades here – and yet they all work to combine to make the book so much better than the sum of its parts. He speaks of politics and religion – two areas he tends to not discuss with any level of commentary even while building in numerous allegories through many of his books – and yet it totally works within the context of the story he is building here and never feels preachy at all. He has much more nudity than is typical of his books, which while sometimes pretty gory are almost never explicit nudity. (Though to be clear, no sex scenes, just nude bodies.) The man who literally named a character “F-Bomb” yet rarely actually drops them in his writing uses several of them here – and again, within the context of this story they work to enhance the realism. Even the more pure fantasy elements – again, something Robinson typically doesn’t use – work well to enhance the story here (and are used fairly sparingly, even though critical to the plot at points).

Overall simply one of Robinson’s best in recent memory, and a bit more arguably one of the best he’s ever written. If you’re looking for Robinson to return to the frenetic balls to the wall action of some of his earlier tales – you’ve found it. Very much recommended.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel

This week we look at another WWI tale from another new to me Lake Union author. This week, we’re looking at Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel.

This took an aspect of WWI I’d never heard of – the American Women’s Hospital – and showed a fictional version of the life of its people in what seems to be a very realistic manner, never hiding the various horrors of that particular war – be it discussing bodies decomposing in No Man’s Land, the very real threat of chemical weapons, aerial bombardment, or even the Paris Gun. Along the way, we get another all too real tale of how a life can turn in an instant and the social pressures of suddenly finding oneself in dire circumstances. We even get a discussion late in the book of things not usually spoken of in that era, but which were obviously very real.

But there is one particular commentary aspect of the story that I do want to mention, and that is a particular situation involving a discussion of things that should be “given” to the troops.

You see, for this ardent anarchist, such discussions always bring to mind the following Ayn Rand quote from Atlas Shrugged: ““Miss Taggart, we have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind. We come here because we want to rest. But we have certain customs, which we all observe, because they pertain to the things we need to rest from. So I’ll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word ‘give’.” (Full disclosure: I literally have a version of the title of this particular section of the book, “A is A”, – indeed, not far removed from this very sentence – tattooed on my wrist.)

Without giving anything away, let’s just say that giving the troops the thing in discussion is held as an ideal, and quite frankly it is an ideal this reader for one does not personally share. 🙂

All of that said, this really was an excellent book and is very much recommended if for the other atypical discussions alone. (Though seriously, it is an excellent story even absent the few sporadic instances of social commentary solidly embedded within the overall arc of the story.) So go buy it already. 🙂

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of The Week: Raven Lane by Amber Cowie

This week we are looking at a stunning sophomore selection from a very promising new author. This week we are looking at Raven Lane by Amber Cowie.

In Cowie’s debut book last year she attempted a dual timeline story and did it very effectively – an accomplishment, considering that not even all experienced authors can pull that off. In this book, Cowie gets even more experimental with her craft and actually manages to weave in what is effectively a novella length story by the end of this book… *within this book*. This is a technique so rare in my reading experience as to nearly be unique, and Cowie does it astoundingly well, both in creating the novella and in weaving it into the overall tale of the main story.

The main story itself is full of twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing very nearly as long as her debut book did last year, and it does indeed feature several subjects that some might find troublesome. But if you like complicated characters and a well paced mystery, this is definetely the book for you. Overall a truly great work with only the barest hint of a sophomore slump – and that is more due to just how amazing the first book was rather than anything truly negative about this outing. Indeed, with the inclusion and execution of the novella, this is actually a stronger book in its totality. Very much recommended.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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