Three Stars

Choice of the Winter Wolf by Arizona Tape

Posted on by DragonSusie

Somewhat Lacklustre

Compared to the first book in the series, plus the excellent prequel, I felt that this second book was a bit of a let down in comparison.

For me, it wasn’t Akira constantly putting herself down, as others have said bothered them, as I perfectly understand those sentiments, from personal experience, and it makes her decisions regarding the interactions with others more understandable.

If anything, I felt like it wasn’t played through enough. Yes, it’s nice how she’s opening up more to Ashleigh as the trip goes on, and the rivalry with Danny definitely needs more exploring, too. But there’s a piece missing to many of these interactions, and I can’t particularly say what. Maybe that it should just be more intense? She can think more, do more, and none of it needs to be always easily resolved with Ashleigh.

In the original I had liked how they were teaching Akira to fight. Maybe it’s coming, now they’re on their way again. And I hope that Akira teaches JP about the medicinal herbs in return, which she had kicked herself for not collecting on the way.

Akira is currently a complete pushover with a lot of self doubt, which is quite understandable considering her background. But there still could have been so much more here. And we, like Akira, currently know nothing about Darren or Regan (so little that I forgot their names and had to go back to check), or even Danny frankly, except that Danny and Regan are mates, which seemed surprising considering Danny’s suspicions of Akira being akin to jealousy.

Well, there’s one more book to go. Let’s hope we finish on a high.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via the author and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

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Rite of Blood and Secrets by Laura Greenwood

Posted on by DragonSusie

A Bit of a Miss

I always write reviews from a personal space, which means that it’s to do with how I feel, and not a blight on the author in any way. Because, the truth is, not every book gels with everyone, and we all come away with our own unique impressions.

So, these are mine and, as you may have realised by now, they weren’t entirely good. But that’s not to say that they were entirely bad, either.

The problem for me personally was that it felt hollow. It’s understandable how Beatrice is being pulled around like a marionette, especially in the vampire stages of the book. It’s understandable how Beatrice’s relationship with her brother changes after he’s brought her into something she wants no part of. Her relationship with Lord Fallmartin, a complete stranger who now has such control over her life, is to be expected, too. But why do I feel like there’s something missing as I move through the pages?

The story, at a base level, is brilliant; I love the ideas, the interplay. It sounds like there is much political intrigue to come. Beatrice makes a couple of friends along the way, too, although we only really get to hear about one of them. Yet, still, for all that brilliance, I couldn’t bring myself to love this. Very good books keep me reading far beyond bedtime. With this, I just couldn’t connect to it!

My favourite part, mind, has to be vampire pets! Having lost two of my beloved cats, being able to keep them around forever is always a pet lover’s wish. The only true perk of being a vampire.

Yes, somewhat of a disappointment, because I couldn’t make that full connection, but it still has so much potential.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

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The Tea Witch’s Promise by Laura Greenwood and Arizona Tape

Posted on by DragonSusie

Somewhat Disappointing

I absolutely hated the start, and I’m unsure why. There was something missing, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The romance was also a too-slow build up for me, with all the “will they, won’t they?”, which is known to annoy me somewhat. It just felt like they kept recircling around the same ideas, not asking the right questions, before finally deciding all was OK. Once they got to that point, the flow was better, until it came to the issue of Oliver…

Banjo is a fun character, and I would have liked to have seen him fleshed out a bit more. Hopefully we’ll get more of other familiars, including Howie, quite soon. They’re magically-bonded familiars, but what that actually means, apart from a tattoo (no spoilers), and whether there are actually any magical properties there outside of that, I’m not too sure right now.

And I was a little confused about how the magic works, but hopefully that will come along, too.

This doesn’t mean that I will just dump the series. But I will just see it all as an introduction, and hope that the next book finds me better. We are all different in our likes, after all!

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

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Before. After. Always. by Morgan Lee Miller

Posted on by DragonSusie

Potential not seen through

I picked this book up as I absolutely loved the previous book I read by this author. And this book had so much potential! The beginning of this book had me hooked yet, somehow along the way, I started to be less engaged. By the end, instead of feeling elated at the immense HEA, I just felt disappointed.

I’m unsure what went wrong. I mean, long-term effects of PTSD is a thing and therapy doesn’t always help with completely taking away the anxiety and panic attacks, although it should help in easing them. Especially after a certain amount of time has passed. Eliza most definitely doesn’t have CPTSD (Complex PTSD), as that, as its name suggest, is a far more severe form of PTSD, caused by years of repeated trauma in childhood. Yet Eliza has never moved on from a severely traumatic event when she was eighteen (now being thirty-one). She’s achieved so much, is accomplished in so many ways, yet part of her is still stuck in the past. It is certainly possible, but for someone who is so strong in other ways, it’s not necessarily a hundred-percent believable. It’s not to say that otherwise strong and accomplished people do not have panic attacks and suffer from anxiety, but long-term PTSD is usually so debilitating that it prevents you from pushing yourself as much as you otherwise would, strong or not.

Then there’s Blake, broken in her own ways, still sore after losing her brother. She just gets on with things, only breaking down at the anniversary of his death. Yet she is still hung up about a bad breakup with a long-term girlfriend, from about the same time ago as Eliza. Blake has had a few short-term flings, but nothing serious in recent years, happy with that even if she does eventually want more. Eliza has barely dated at all since the accident, just going through the motions a few times hoping to find a spark.

How these two come together, through the understanding of loss, is cute. And when they eventually decide to call each other their “girlfriend”, that’s cute too. Yet their strange bout of miscommunication, not understanding each other, that wasn’t. Every relationship goes through it at some point, yet it was the lack of communication between the two that left me banging my head. They’re both stuck in their own world with their own fears, and neither wants to tell the painful truth of why they’re hurt. It takes yet another traumatic event to bring the two back together again.

I guess that parts of the story felt slow. Other parts felt predictable. Then there were little bits of repetition. Tension is good, but even the tense parts didn’t feel tense enough. I still had moments of rooting for both of them, with their slow progress towards going further in their relationship, yet something was still missing. I wish I could be less vague, but sometimes a book just doesn’t click.

All in all, not a bad read, but not as great as I was hoping.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

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Dead Silence by Robin Caroll

Posted on by DragonSusie

Christian political suspense

I should have paid more attention when picking this book up, that it was listed as Christian fiction, as I know that I have many problems with that. In fact, this book could also be surmised as “Mother of deaf child works her way back to God through additional trials and tribulations.” Yes, the substory was essentially that, which I felt a little uncomfortable with. It wasn’t too preachy, surprisingly, but as soon as a book goes into that sort of territory, I do hope that it’s not going to go too far.

But the main thing that invited me to read this book was actually the fact that the MC’s son is deaf. Sign language, lip reading, and deafness aren’t huge topics for a mystery suspense, so I liked the idea.

So, anyway, as for the main part of the story itself, we have a single mother, who lost her husband a few years previously, who now loses her difficult mother-in-law. She can sign and lipread, making her great as a court sign-language interpreter. But it also puts her into other difficult territory, when she reads the lips of someone without thinking, who turns out to be planning the murder of her mother-in-law, one of the state senators.

Well, of course, something comes in the way, so she can’t inform anyone, until it’s too late and the FBI are already at her workplace asking her questions. One FBI agent, who’s rude, abrasive, and incompetent. Another who is well meaning, but completely blind to how bad his partner actually is. When a leak puts Elise’s life in danger, all secrets are excruciatingly slowly forced out into the open.

In actual fact, it takes Elise herself, plus the assistance of a reporter who wants to help rather than going for the big money, and her ex-press step-father-in-law and sister-in-law, to crack the case. They somehow, between themselves, manage to uncover things that the FBI hasn’t.

How believable all of that truly is, I’m not quite sure. It was quite a ride, which left me wanting to read further at many points. Although it was pretty frustrating when it was revealed what Liliana (MiL) was actually working on and the penny didn’t even drop as to who the villain actually was. For me, it was blazingly obvious! So with the Christian elements, the FBI incompetence, and the supposedly ‘good sleuthing crew’ missing obvious clues, there were a few head bashing moments.

All of it put together, and it ends up as an OK read instead of a brilliant one. I don’t regret reading it, yet it doesn’t warm me to read any of the author’s other books.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

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Refugee Road by Nikki Landis

Posted on by DragonSusie

Too much violence

This book needs to come with warnings. There are really a few things that grate on me here, the first being the amount of domestic violence, which we have absolutely no warning about in the blurb. We are told that Darren is dangerous, but not how dangerous and violent he is. He also isn’t the only one, with another character injuring Lizzie for the fun of it as well. If you have any issues with any of this, best to walk away and stay away.

The next is that, after three years, two people suddenly seem to decide that they’re in love with Lizzie, and want to make their intentions known, just at the point she rediscovers the one she lost, who she fell in love with at 15. It’s damned confusing! Lizzie obviously chooses Alec, as the blurb indicates, but Darren appears to use his sudden increased interest as an excuse to dominate her, and physically punishes her, despite his declared feelings, for insubordination.

Then there’s the timeline. I misread it at first. I assumed that it was all supposed to be taking place around 1945-6, but then Lizzie’s home on the Militia base doesn’t add up to that – domestic appliances that wouldn’t have been available then. So I went back and reread the description: “It was nineteen forty-five, or similar enough.” The Militia movement has been going on since then, when Hitler apparently surrendered and WWIII started. So this war has been fighting for all those decades up until the modern era. The USA is in ruins, with the President firmly in charge of the Militia, who control everything. Except the Refugees. But they try. But this is the thing that gets me most: if they’re stuck in this time warp, how on Earth do they have mobile phones, modern appliances, etc.? They have antibiotics, modern medicines, sonograph. It’s extremely confusing. Yet they still apparently dress like it’s 1945, too.

The romance itself was great, but would have been so much better if it wasn’t for the distractions mentioned above. I was actually shocked by the domestic violence. Now I can cope with it if prewarned, but I don’t expect to be thrown into someone being abused. As I mentioned above, for those triggered by these sorts of scenes, there really needs to be some warnings.

Lizzie settles into domestic life quite easily, despite the fact that she used to train daily, keeping fit to a high level. But, of course, everything is far too easy…

Really, this needed a far more concrete background. All the scenes were descriptive, but those little niggles kept me from enjoying the story completely.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

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The Time of Jacob’s Trouble by Donna VanLiere

Posted on by DragonSusie

Not what I was expecting

I would absolutely love to say that I wasn’t the intended audience for this book, but unfortunately I would be wrong. The author’s intent is that everyone reads it, no matter their background, to better understand Revelations and the end of times, and by so doing come to Christ…

As soon as I opened the first pages of the book, and saw which Bible each character was reading, I should have walked away right then. Seriously, being a non-Christian, I couldn’t care less! So it soon became obvious that it wasn’t what I hoped for – a literary exploration of some Biblical ideas. Why can’t someone write something like that without being religiously involved?!

I really tried to see the story amongst the pages, to appreciate the limited amount of actual storyline, trying to ignore the postscript telling you nearly every page to refer to the Biblical explanation of the events that were happening. Some of it did actually have me hooked, but some of the rest was droning, repetitive, and just uninteresting. For the rest, the truth is the overly pushy nature of all the Christian stuff just got to me.

Put it this way, the book actually ends at page 185/63%. The other 37% is entirely dedicated to explaining the Bible (and why am I nice enough to capitalise that word?!) and, oh, that’s where it’s revealed what the author’s true intentions were with this story. After the first couple of pages of the last part, I just skipped the rest. The story was done, there was a cliffhanger waiting for the next, and the rest was just uninteresting babble.

So, as I said, this book was entirely not for me. I’m not a Christian, I don’t want to be preached at. And for that reason, despite what could be good about this author’s works, their purely Evangelistic aim of this book has put me off reading anything else of theirs. Despite all that, well, I didn’t dislike it completely, which surprises me no end. Yet that is still not enough to encourage me to read the sequels. It would need to be far sturdier, and lose all the Biblical and preachy stuff, for me to even consider it.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

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Mistaken Identity by Beth Urich

Posted on by DragonSusie

Could have been better

There was so much that could have been right about this book, but so much that went wrong, too. It’s probably obvious that it’s the author’s first book, even though it has been recently updated.

Kate is the typical reporter, really: pushy, desperate, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. So of course, she’s the one who has to solve the puzzle, too. And what makes it even more complicated? Oh, right – her father has been accused of the murder, an investigation which just happens to be led by a Detective Sergeant who is also an ex of hers. Who does she actually know who isn’t involved in the plot somehow? Add to that, she finds out that her current boyfriend was keeping secrets from her as well.

It had some nice twists and turns, but in the end just wasn’t gripping enough. Too many clichés, nothing concrete. Although the ending, which could probably have been seen coming a mile away, was still a nice twist, even if it didn’t save it. Especially as some of those final scenes were the worst, just drove me mad, with all the dithering. If someone is going to shoot someone, they just get on with it! Hanging on too long just loses all of the suspense.

Anyway, an OK read, but nothing great.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

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Ogre King by Chera Zade and Fanny Mills

Posted on by DragonSusie

No time for monstering

As should be expected from the Zade/Mills combo, this is a very short short story. Although I should have reigned in my expectations, I still expected more from this.

The book is split into two parts, where we first hear the Ogre King Ugrort’s POV, who deliberately gets himself captured, and then the Princess Eleta’s POV, who had already been fantasising about “green monsters” before she even heard that there were ogres in the dungeon.

This ends on a cliffhanger, so obviously set up for the next book in the series. But, in this first part, the two lovers-to-be (as it’s obviously going to go that way) don’t even meet! It is all steamy enough in what does actually happen, including a consensual sexual “treatment” that the princess receives from the court physician. But far more is needed, and the second book isn’t even available as of yet!

I would have been much happier for a complete story, instead of these bits, but considering that the book isn’t published anymore, I doubt that we’ll ever get a conclusion.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

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The Goblets Immortal by Beth Overmyer

Posted on by DragonSusie

Just shut up already!

First thing to note here – this is the start of a series and ends on a cliffhanger, with no sequel mention as of yet, nor a series for it to be based in. Although, I assume, it will be based around these Goblets Immortal.
[Edit: Just noticed on Amazon that the sequel is due to come out next week and that the series is, indeed, entitled “The Goblets Immortal”]

Now next, to explain my title. Our MC, Aidan, you could pity him in the beginning. He lost his parents in some freak accident, where he is charged and outlawed for making them disappear. Then his only friend in the world turns on him, apparently for money, greed making him want more. But that is where the sympathy stops.

Once Aidan chances upon Slaine, he takes turns in treating her terribly and then regretting his actions, even minor actions, with a lot of his thoughts being riddled with remorse. This, of course, confuses Slaine, who is quite used to abuse, as she can’t make head nor tail of him. Neither can I. I mean, at one point he’s close to going too far, in a strange drugged state, then spends another page full of remorseful thoughts.

Then there’s the magic. We’re led full tilt into all the magical terms, without a single explanation of what they mean until one or two chapters later. It’s just confusing as hell.

The general storyline was OK, with the usual hijinks that come with an adventure fantasy (I don’t even want to call it “epic”), and the “hero” being able to get them out of trouble quite easily. But, I just don’t know. With all the annoying elements of Aidan, I just wanted to step into the book and punch him most of the time. Reading other reviews, it turns out that I wasn’t the only one.

Final rating: ★★★☆☆ – Sort of liked/OK

*I received a free digital ARC via NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

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