Tag: pregnancy

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#BookReview: The Trail Of Lost Hearts by Tracey Garvis Graves

Surprise Pregnancy Mars Otherwise Excellent Romance Tale. This is one of those types of romance tales that is going to be divisive in a couple of different ways, but the biggest is that there is a surprise pregnancy around the 50% mark at all. Which comes completely out of the blue – there is not one iota of a hint that this character may be interested in having kids some day *at all*, then *BAM*, pregnant. Which from reading other reviews, even those who *do* have kids don’t always enjoy this particular type of surprise. Much less the childfree or childless.

Outside of the surprise pregnancy though – which *does* dominate the back half of the book, though there *is* some solid character development despite/ through the pregnancy – this was actually a strong book featuring some atypical angles (such as geocaching) and some solid characterization of grief and loss in various forms and through various backgrounds.

Overall a strong tale that perhaps could have been stronger with a different back half, but which many will find perfectly solid as is. Very much recommended.

This review of The Trail Of Lost Hearts by Tracey Garvis Graves was originally written on March 15, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Messy Life Of Jane Tanner by Brenda Novak

Solid Series Continuation. This is one of those books where you thought the author was doing a trilogy… and yet with the story herein, perhaps the author plans to continue coming back to this rural small western town. Both female leads from the first two books, as well as the male lead from the first book, play prominent roles in this tale as we learn of the mess one of their friends has truly gotten herself in. The ending is perhaps a bit rushed and maybe even, arguably, “tacked on” feeling, as though perhaps Novak had a page target, realized she still needed to wrap up the tale, and squeezed into that target. Still, the tale to that point is solid, and even the mad dash to wrap up the book mostly works within the story told here. Note that for those wishing to avoid all versions of pregnancy tales, this is absolutely one of those – and it absolutely works for the character as portrayed within this tale. Overall a solid tale of its type, but absolutely read the first two books in this series first. Then speculate along with me whether Novak plans to continue this series or not. Very much recommended.

This review of The Messy Life Of Jane Tanner by Brenda Novak was originally written on February 23, 2024.

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#BookReview: Aeon Rising by Matthew Mather

This week we’re looking at an action packed series starter from a thrilling scifi author. This week we’re looking at Aeon Rising by Matthew Mather.

Action Packed Series Starter. This is one hell of an action packed series starter for Mather, and one that despite a few similar general ideas (such as crippled communications due to space activity) with his CyberStorm series never gets quite as dark as that one can. Indeed, the darkest thing here is unfortunately all too common, but to reveal it specifically would be a spoiler (though even here, Mather manages to put a scifi twist to it in furtherance of his ultimate series objectives). The different types of action here are reminiscent of everything from nearly-every-Amazon-based-action-movie-you’ve-ever-seen such as Predator or Anaconda, just to name a couple, to more urban based ala Daniel Pyne’s Sentro Security or a Mission Impossible / Jason Bourne type. Throw in some elements similar to Deep Impact, as well as a few other elements of a few other popular tales that would be a touch spoilery to add here, and you’ve truly got a promising start to a potentially long series. This book is mostly set-up without ever truly *feeling* like it is mostly set-up – the action is tightly paced, as is the exposition, there is just *so much here* that by the end it is quite clear that this series is intended as a trilogy at minimum. Very much recommended.

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#BookReview: Second Chance Lane by Nicola Marsh

Typical, Yet Not. This was a solid genre piece with a few nice wrinkles. If you like romance novels generally, you’re going to like this one. If you don’t, you may still actually like this one specifically because of the wrinkles. Without going into spoiler territory, the drama here just seems far more realistic than some others of the genre. You’ve got the mother with a secret. The haunted rock star. The rambunctious and inquisitve 12 yr old. But you’ve also got a second romance in this particular tale – a feature so rare as to be seemingly unique in all of my reading. Normally you get a secondary character blatantly introduced to continue the series in the next book. Here, this secondary character gets their own full story-within-the-story. This story-within-the-story serves to fill out the town and its wide cast even more fully, even as the main story does a good job in and of itself with this. Ultimately this *is* a romance novel and hits pretty well everything one expects – including on-screen (though not erotica-level explicit) sex. So if you are a reader that can’t handle such a scene (and there are less than a handful of them here, basically enough to fulfill the genre requirement and little else) or you can’t handle the occasional “curse” word (again, not prevalent, yet present), you may want to skip this due to your own hangups. For the rest of us, this was an excellent read. Very much recommended.

This review of Second Chance Lane by Nicola Marsh was originally written on October 2, 2020.