Tag: sailing

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#BlogTour: No One Aboard by Emy McGuire

For this blog tour, we’re looking at a solid ‘second screen’ mystery. For this blog tour, we’re looking at No One Aboard by Emy McGuire.

First, the review I posted to the book sites (BookBub.com / BookHype.com / Goodreads.com / PageBound.co / TheStoryGraph.com) and YouTube:

Solid ‘Second Screen’ Book. Apparently there is a concept Netflix show/ movie producers call ‘second screen’ – meaning, essentially, that the video must be produced and the story easy enough to follow even as someone is actually doing something else. Thus, actions are spoken – “I’m cutting the veggies now” – and are loud and concise. Rather than simply showing the character cutting the veggies. Plots are simplified and characters a bit more stereotypical than perhaps fully fleshed out, nuanced, “real” people.

This is *exactly* that kind of book – and there is absolutely *NOTHING* wrong with that. Netflix is making bank right now on exactly this type of content, so why shouldn’t authors take a stab at it as well? Not everything has to be a hyper complicated, hyper real “oh, you missed on page 33 paragraph 3 sentence 2 that this thing had this hyper specific property” kind of tale to be enjoyable. Quite the opposite, I would argue – sometimes, *particularly* during the holidays, you really want something you can just consume while vegging out a bit yourself. Many romance novels – the “bubblegum pop” and “Hallmarkie” ones in particular – offer exactly this level of escapism, so why can’t mystery tales have this from time to time?

For what this book actually *is*, it really is a solid work of its type. One that is enjoyable even at its near-400 page length, and one that can work in exactly the kinds of scenarios I describe above – where perhaps you need some time during the hectic holiday season to simply zone out with a good enough book – quite well indeed.

Very much recommended.

After the jump, an excerpt from the book followed by the “publisher details” – book info, description, author bio, social links, and buy links.
Continue reading “#BlogTour: No One Aboard by Emy McGuire”

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#BookReview: Rope by Tim Queeney

Solid Examination Of The Topic. This is a book written by a sailor that goes deep into all things rope, including its earliest known histories through to its future uses as currently known and planned. We get a *lot* of history from eras from prehistory through Egypt and the Greeks through the Age of Exploration (and even some about the Chinese exploration expeditions) through rope’s uses in executions both sanctioned by governments and not all the way into bleeding edge rope tech taking us into the future of humanity. Through this narrative, I guarantee you that you are going to learn at least something you didn’t previously know – I know I did. I appreciated that the chapter titles were themed to the idea of individual strands in a piece of rope, as that was both perfect theming and a great way of organizing and thinking about the overall history being presented.

Ultimately, this book had two weaknesses for me, though only one worthy of a star deduction. The other, simply a discussion here in the review – a warning, really, to other readers who may be less prepared for it.

The warning is that Queeney *is* a sailor and *really* knows his rope – and knots. He can get quite technical, particularly when he’s talking about how to rig ropes for sailing – which is a significant topic in the book. Through these sections, I recommend the literary/ reading equivalent of the social “nod and ‘uh huh'” when someone is talking about some passion that you’re interested in, but clearly nowhere near as interested in as they are. Read every word – don’t skim it – but allow yourself to not focus on “I must remember every detail of this!”.

Outside of these hyper detailed sections though (and even within them, really), the book really is quite well written and very fascinating indeed in all that it reveals. I’m not joking whatsoever when I mentioned above that even I learned from this book. I really did. Quite a bit that I had never even considered previously. So absolutely go into this book preparing to learn more about this particular subject than at any time since you left formal schooling, whenever that may have been for you.

The star deduction is for the dearth of a bibliography, coming in at 12% or so of the text – still over 30 pages of documented sources in a book of this length, to be clear – which falls just short of even my relaxed-ish standard of 15% and further short of the 20-30% documentation I had been expecting earlier in my reviewing efforts several years ago.

So… that’s it. That’s the review. Go read this book, even if you had never considered the topic and don’t necessarily want to learn anything new. Because this book may be hyper focused, but that actually *increases* its overall quality and ultimately usefulness.

Very much recommended.

This review of Rope by Tim Queeney was originally written on August 12, 2025.

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#BookReview: Love In The Forecast by Jennifer Snow

Short And Sweet Older Romance. This is a short and sweet – with a dash of danger – romance featuring two adults in the late 40s or older after their first marriages break apart for different reasons. Snow manages to show her skill in crafting a complete romance tale in under 50 pages, with the only difference between this and the 300 ish page Alaska For Christmas that it can be acquired bundled with being that in the longer text, obviously more things actually happen (on all angles). Here though, again, we *do* in fact get a solid and plausible romance, one that even the sweet/ clean crowd should be ok with – and we get it in under 50 pages, making it a solid and safe introduction to Snow and this particular series, for new readers to either. Very much recommended.

This review of Love In The Forecast by Jennifer Snow was originally written on October 16, 2022.

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#BookReview: Wherever The Wind Takes Us by Kelly Harms

Discover Yourself And Push Yourself Further Than You Ever Dared. This title of this review is pretty well exactly what happens in this tale of a forty something mother finally having enough and breaking away from the only life she has known as an adult. Along the way, we get the beautiful and sometimes charming waters and towns along the US Eastern Seaboard – and a *lot* of sailing terminology. The techno-babble didn’t bother me too much as a *long* time reader of military technothrillers (where Clancy infamously spent seemingly dozens of pages on the first *nanoseconds* of a nuclear detonation in The Sum Of All Fears, among numerous other examples), but perhaps it could be more of a problem for someone whose experience is more exclusively within the women’s fiction/ romance genres (where this book squarely resides). An excellent tale that almost begs for a sequel to more fully explore the new setting the characters find themselves in at the end. Very much recommended.

This review of Wherever The Wind Takes Us by Kelly Harms was originally written on October 1, 2022.