Month: August 2019

Posted on

Featured New Release of the Week: On the Corner of Love and Hate by Nina Bocci

This week we are looking at an excellent tale of small town life and life long best friends who have a tumultuous history as adults. This week, we are looking at On the Corner of Love and Hate by Nina Bocci.

I gotta admit, I really, really liked this one. It is no real secret that I am a former political activist who actively left a political project to start this very project. In that former period of my life, I even ran for City Council twice in a town very similar to Hope Lake, and indeed the things pushed by our narrator and her family and friends are actually similar to my own goals for that town back in the day. So I really identified with this book. 🙂 For those who need a political fix but don’t want to pay attention to real world news, this can be your Nicorette. 🙂

But even without such a personal connection, this book is genuinely solid in a Hallmark movie kind of way. Lots of angst, quite a few misunderstandings, and even a nefarious opponent or two. Maybe my only minor quibble is that I like the actual title of a book to show up in the text somewhere, and that is missing here – though the title does indeed describe our narrator’s struggle quite well.

Excellent work, and very much recommended.

And as always, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
Continue reading “Featured New Release of the Week: On the Corner of Love and Hate by Nina Bocci”

Posted on

#BookReview: The Love Solution by Ashley Croft

Interesting Solution. This is a single romance book that actually features *two* couples – which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. The science methods are plausible, the characters are all interesting and flawed, and the overall tale works well as a fairly real-ish romance. All around a great effort, and I’m looking forward to seeing more from this version of this author. Very much recommended.

This review of The Love Solution by Ashley Croft was originally written on August 15, 2019.

Posted on

#BookReview: A Tease And A Trail Run by Maddie Evans

Goats! Wood Chippers! Bonfires! In this second entry into Maddie Evans’ Brighthead Running Club series, we meet a new character that didn’t appear in the first entry… and yet is still intertwined with the cast we did meet then. Charlie is an artist running from a cheating fiancee… and Brighthead’s resident artist runner happens to be an old friend. But Brandon is also an idiot, thinking that because he was poor growing up he can’t be relatively wealthy as an adult – and I say this as someone who has undergone just such a transformation in my real life. When Brandon’s efforts for Kealty begin to get him more notice, will he let his history with her sabotage the best things he’s ever come across? And with one final tease at the very end, Evans throws a swerve as to who the couple in the final book in the series may involve… Very much recommended, very much looking forward to the conclusion of this series. 🙂

This review of A Tease And A Trail Run by Maddie Evans was originally written on August 13, 2019.

Posted on

Featured New Release Of the Week: Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

This week we look at an intriguing book about a female firefighter dealing with fires both physical and metaphorical. This week, we’re looking at Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center.

One of my favorite songs growing up and even to this day has been Garth Brooks’ Standing Outside the Fire. For me, it has always been a source of inspiration to overcome any obstacle set before me – no matter what it is, where it comes from, how hard the solution is, or anything else. But what does it have to do with a book about a female firefighter? Don’t firefighters make it a habit of standing inside fires?

Well, in this book our heroine has a problem. You see, we open up with her being awarded her city’s most prestigious award for valor for her efforts in saving a group of kids no one else could. She truly is among the best, if not the best, firefighters in her (not small) town – of any gender. But she’s standing outside the fire in her relationships. She got metaphorically burned pretty damned severely on her 16th birthday by multiple people, and a decade later she hasn’t managed to move on. She’s acted like she has, and she’s become a “model citizen”. To the outside world, she is perfectly awesome. But because she’s been outside the fire and has yet to actually deal with the burns she got on her 16th birthday… her life is about to spiral out of the tight control she’s maintained over it for the last decade.

In the process, she’ll grow. She’ll learn things about everyone involved in the dumpster fire of her 16th birthday, she’ll meet new people and learn about them, and most importantly she’ll learn things about herself.

Overall an excellent tale that uses a reliable and relatable first person narrator well. Very much recommended.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
Continue reading “Featured New Release Of the Week: Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center”

Posted on

#BookReview: Ship Happens by Pandora Pine

Light And Fun – Mostly. In this installment of the Valentine’s Inc Cruises MM romance series, we get paranormal author Pandora Pine’s effort, and it is indicative of her stylings while only tangentially being related to her overall world. If you’re like me and have been on many cruises, there’s a lot here that will bring back your best memories – including Stingray City in Grand Cayman and the Magic Chair at Mahogany Bay. If you’ve never been on a cruise before, this is a good introduction to what ship life can be. If you’ve been curious about Pine but are a bit leery of paranormal stories, this is an excellent way to see how she tells a story while only having the barest mention of her normal schtick. (And btw, her paranormal stories are awesome, so you should try them anyway.) This is a somewhat standard ish romantic comedy in that there is obviously the fight right before the happily ever after, but really that is the only time this book really veers away from being as light and airy as a cruise is supposed to be. Excellent work, and I’m looking forward to more from both this series and Pine.

This review of Ship Happens by Pandora Pine was originally written on August 9, 2019.

Posted on

#BookReview: Dead On His Feet by Pandora Pine

Ronan Faces His Toughest Challenges Yet. In this latest chapter of Pandora Pine’s long running police procedural MM romance series, we find one of her main characters facing some of his toughest battles to date. All because five kids get kidnapped and 2 adults decide to have a shootout with the FBI… in the first two chapters of the book. Pine yet again does a superb job of going with the overarcing story without putting too much emphasis on having the reader already know about things lest they be lost. Thus, virtually any book in this series – this among them – can work as entry points so long as the reader doesn’t mind going back and discovering how the various personal relationships got to the point they are here in this book. The one minor complaint I have with this particular one is that Pine could have potentially allowed some late revelations in this book to play out over several – perhaps dozens, if she wanted to be particularly creative – other books. But instead she plays into the episodic nature of the police procedural, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – several best selling authors more well known than her have achieved their fame almost specifically *because* they play into that trope. Still, a very much recommended book, one long time fans of Pine are likely already reading but are certain to enjoy – and again, a good entry point for any potential new fans.

This review of Dead On His Feet by Pandora Pine was originally written on August 7, 2019.

Posted on

Featured New Release of the Week: All the Lovely Pieces by J. M. Winchester

This week we are looking at one of the darkest, most disturbing books I’ve read in quite some time. This week, we are looking at All The Lovely Pieces by J.M. Winchester.

At the back of this book, in the author bio, it notes that Winchester is a pseudonym for an author that primarily writes bubblegum pop level romance novels but who wanted to take a shot at psychological suspense. After reading this book, I can tell you first hand that if you went in expecting a bubblegum pop romance, well, those notions would have been dispelled in the first few pages. By the time you get to a rape scene fairly early in, the darkness has already been well established. So it is likely a very good marketing decision indeed to keep those two product lines separate.

That said, this was an absolute mind fuck of a book, particularly in the exceedingly dark and oppressive first half. As I say in the Goodreads review below, I really was questioning my desire to finish it, it was *that* dark. To the level that I’m actually glad I was alone when reading this one, just so no one else was impacted by how dark I became while reading it. It was an amazing effort, it really was. Winchester’s ability to bring the reader’s mind to such darkness was truly superb – and a bit disturbing. By the end, the story does in fact brighten up a bit, if only by a shade or two, and this was probably necessary just to preserve the reader’s sanity and ease them back into the real world outside the book.

This is an excellent book for a dark winter night laying around the fire reading, but probably a bit dark for the beach. (Scratch that, I was reading a fair amount of that first half while actually on a beach – there is no probably there. You really don’t want to take this one to a beach. But fall is coming anyway. 😉 )

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
Continue reading “Featured New Release of the Week: All the Lovely Pieces by J. M. Winchester”

Posted on

#BookReview Then I Met You by Matt Dunn

Carpet Diem! This was an interesting look at what happens when two broken people get thrown together for a blind date that keeps getting extended for various reasons both of their own choosing and not. Fairly Hallmark Movie-ish, if one of the ones with a bit more drama to it. Funny without necessarily being gut-bustingly so, it works well for a tight yet plausible romantic dramedy. (The entirety of the actual story of the book takes place over just about 27 hrs or so.) A great palate cleanser after a dark book, this one is very much recommended.

This review of Then I Met You by Matt Dunn was originally written on August 5, 2019.