If wishes were horses...
After being accused of stealing from the bank she works at, Maggie returns to her hometown in North Carolina with her tail between her legs. With no money and no chance that any bank will ever employ her again she finds herself waiting tables at Pie in the Sky, her aunt's pie shop. When her former boss shows up dead at the back door to Pie in the Sky, Maggie is the main suspect. With a little help from a local newspaper reporter she sets about finding the killer and clearing her name.
Plum Deadly is a cozy murder mystery very much along the lines of Leann Sweeney's Cats in Trouble series and Cleo Coyle's Coffee House Mystery series. For the most part it was pretty good. If I have one criticism it would be that not everything that happened got an adequate explanation. I presume they will be revisited in the next books in the series but I would have liked a few of those loose ends tied up. Many thanks to Edelweiss and Gallery Books for providing me with this ARC
A Discovery of Witches (by Deborah Harkness)
A Discovery of Witches, The Postcard Edition (abridged)
Yep...I was able to condense nearly 600 pages into 11 images...I probably could have got it down to 9. OK, in its defence the writing in this book is sublime. I really loved the characters and the basic idea is pretty damned amazing. If this book was 250 pages long, 5 Stars without hesitation...but nearly 600 pages and it was driving me insane.
Amber was an elite military operator...until her entire team was decimated by vampires and she was turned. Now she works for the Denver Police Department where she is seen as a loose canon while she reports to her military minders who no longer trust her.When a group of rogue vampires show up in Denver, she is the only one who can take them on with any hope of winning. But as the bodies pile up the police are intent on painting it as gang related violence and are determined to keep her well away from the case. Raw Deal is quick and easy read. It reminded me a little of those great hard boiled PI novels of the 1930s by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Great fun and well worth the effort.
The Hero
After escaping from a cult, Devon finds herself in Thunder Point where she takes her first tentative steps at building a new life with her daughter. She finds a job and a small home in a run down part of town and she can finally see a bright future.
Recently widowed, Thunder Point is a chance for a fresh start for Spencer and his son. He's still mourning the death of his wife so at first he pushes thoughts of the beautiful blonde out of his mind, but as the weeks pass they take baby steps towards building a relationship and perhaps in the future maybe even a life together.
But both have baggage. Both have young children. And Devon still has an obsessive and manipulative cult leader on her trail.
The Hero is pretty much what I expect from Robyn Carr. Well written and entertaining stories about people pulling together. This book is about Devon and Spencer but it's about much more than just them. We catch up on stories from previous books and the foundation is set down for future stories. This book reminded me a little of Shelter Mountain (Virgin River, book 2).
That's not a bad thing, Shelter Mountain is my favorite book in the Virgin River series and I enjoyed this one nearly as much.
Many thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC
Madeline inherits a share in a ranch from the father who abandoned her as a child. She discovers she has two sisters, who presumably will come to the fore in the next books. Coming from an unstable background she is shy of commitment and wants to sell the ranch and return to the safety of her life in Orlando. Unfortunately there is something of an ownership dispute which wasn't resolved before her father died. Luke's father needed cash to pay for his brother's medical bills and he sold the ranch to Madeline's father with a promise that he could buy it back when they had the cash. His brother has Motor Neurone Disease and Luke is always the one who ends up picking up the pieces. So Luke finds himself crashing into Madeline and a contemporary romance is born.
Homecoming Ranch was OK without ever being great. If I had connected with the characters it might have lifted it to a 3.5 Star book but as it is, it just didn't have the spark that would have made it a great book. I think the second book in the series will probably be better.
The Cover
To my way of thinking a good cover should do three things.
1. It should be visually appealing. It is a point of advertising and it needs to attract the attention of potential readers.
2. It should communicate specifically to those who read that genre of book. A cover is a type of language which readers can interpret.
3. It should be consistent with the contents of the book.
IMO...the cover for this book doesn't work. It's a way too tricky, doesn't really tell me much and isn't visually appealing. The gramophone and the chandelier are completely meaningless...why are they there? Why is there a table set for dinner in a barn?
Three Days to Dead
When Evangeline wakes up in the morgue in another woman's body and with no memories of how she died she finds herself on the run from those who are hunting her, and searching for answers from other-worldy creatures who are reluctant to talk. With the help of her handler she needs to get to the bottom of the mystery and hopefully thwart the plans of powerful beings who want to unleash an unspeakable horror on humanity. Three Days to Dead is a great idea which occasionally didn't work. I'm not a big fan of a countdowns to progress a plot and build suspense and as the title suggests this book is all about that. I had pretty much figured out this book in the first quarter so despite the authors efforts there were no surprises for me in the conclusion. It wasn't bad. It was entertaining enough even if it was a little obvious and on the strength of the book I'll probably pick up the second in the series at some stage...though I won't be dropping everything to do it.
Bitter Night (Horngate Witches Series #1)
August Group Read True Love 101Max is a Shadowblade. Once human, she was recreated by Giselle with superhuman abilities and endurance. Carved into her soul are spells which bind her and compel her to protect Giselle and her coven home, Horngate. Now powerful beings, the Guardians are stirring and what they want isn't entirely clear. But whatever it is it can't be good for humans...the only question is, will Horngate be able to survive or will they be swept up in the maelstrom. Bitter Night doesn't always work. It occasionally felt a bit like a video game...the characters would go on missions to collect magical objects, do battle with bad guys, take some hits, lose some hearts...then they'd eat and regain their hearts. It meanders a little, particularly towards the end but the book is ultimately saved by characters you like and want to get to know better. A promising start to the series.
Jillian, Tom and Candice are back with their many cats for another cozy murder mystery. In this episode Tom's brother has moved into his home (uninvited), his stepson has shown up covered in blood and his ex-wife is up to something. It's up to Jillian to solve the mystery and save the day...and with her daughter-in-law being the editor of the local newspaper perhaps she can even keep the high crime rate in Mercy from getting any unwanted attention. The Cats in Trouble mysteries aren't all that surprising. They are written to a formula and all of the books with the exception of #5, The Cat, the Mill and the Murder follow the same basic pattern. It's not a criticism, I enjoy these books a lot...but they aren't the sort of books you can read one after another.
Love Overdue (by Pamela Morsi)
DJ is the poster girl for prim and proper librarians. She is conservative and staid. She wears muted tones and safe shoes. That is who she is and it's who she wants to be. Except for one night, eight years earlier when she decided it was time to see what she was missing. She went out for a night of drinking and dancing with friends and ended up in the bed of a stranger.
Now in her late 20s she has accepted the job of Library Administrator in a small rural town in Kansas. But when she arrives she finds things are not going to go as smoothly as she had hoped. The acting librarian is recalcitrant in the extreme; she is living upstairs from her landlady; and the landlady's son is the stranger she hooked up with eight years earlier. DJ is trying desperately to avoid Scott. He's a player who cheated on his wife and had an affair with a married woman. But those things don't quite gel with the man she is getting to know. Still she needs to fight their growing attraction to each other and hope he never remembers that one night eight years earlier.
Love Overdue is cute and quirky small town romance which every now and then becomes something more. The characters in this story are wonderfully odd and just a little broken. It doesn't always work. The repeating of the same events from the different points of view got a little confusing and I've never been a fan of flashbacks as a plot device. I actually thought I had missed something when I got to the end and went searching for a few missing pages. But those are small things and I enjoyed this book a lot. Enough that I've bought a couple of other books by Pamela Morsi.
Many thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC
Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, Book 1)
After her guardian is murdered, Kate a magical mercenary travels to Atlanta to investigate. There she finds herself struggling to maintain her independence as shape changers, vampires and magic users all try to manipulate her. I've heard some good things about this book and I've also heard the series takes a while to warm up. Magic Bites is a half-way decent introduction to Kate Daniels' world. It doesn't always work, it occasionally feels a little too busy and I would have liked it more if the authors focused their attention on Kate Daniels and the magical words she received, and left some of the other stuff for ensuing books. But it was good enough that I've bought the next in the series and will be reading it first chance I get.
Libriomancer: (Magic Ex Libris Book 1)
Isaac is a libriomancer. He can pull items from the pages of a book and use them in the world. Unfortunately the magic has a price and after pulling the tripods from War of the Worlds he has been forbidden from using magic. But when vampires show up at the library where he works he's forced back into the game. The first libriomancer, Johannes Gutenberg has gone missing and someone is controlling vampires and forcing them to attack other magical beings.With a little help from a wood nymph and an incendiary spider he must find the person who is pulling the strings from the shadows and prevent a war between the vampires and the libriomancers. The premise of this book is amazing, and for the most part the book works. J.C. Hines occasionally goes a little over the top with the details...honestly there are parts which are bordering on info-dump territory, and the ending really didn't work for me but setting those things aside Libriomancer was pretty good fun.
Heart of Venom (Elemental Assassin)
Many years earlier Sophia was kidnapped and brutalised by Harley and his sister Hazel, both powerful fire elementals. She was saved by Fletcher, Gin's mentor and surrogate father. Now Fletcher is dead and Harley has returned to reclaim Sophia and exact some revenge. After Harley drags Sophia back to his mountain hide-out, Gin launches a desperate suicide mission to save her and put an end to Harley's reign of terror once and for all.
Sophia has been in this series from the very beginning, but until now we have only ever received small snippets of her story. Now in Heart of Venom Jennifer Estep finally gives us her story.This entire series is brash and in your face and I think this book is probably the best yet.
Many thanks to Pocket Books and Edelweiss for providing me with this ARC
Oh...I just want to say, that cover is sublime. Whatever the artist is being paid should be doubled!
After Isis is found abandoned on the side of the highway, Jillian is enlisted to investigate her food woman and find out if she is fit to own a cat.When she first arrives at Jillian's home, she isn't too happy, hissing and arching her back at Jillian's three cats, Merlot, Syrah and Chablis. But Jillian's cats won't take any stick from the spoiled Isis and before long she knows her place in the pecking order. When Isis's food woman turns up on Jillian's doorstep one night, she couldn't know that her very future hangs in the balance. Her food woman is suspected of murder and needs the help Jillian and her cats to clear her name.The Cat, the Lady and the Liar very much follows the same formula as all the books in this series. There's nothing ground-breaking about it but it's an entertaining cozy murder mystery and well worth the effort.
Geekomancy
Did Not Finish -- Surrendered @ 50%There is a market for this book...12 year old boys and 45 year old men who still play with their toy lightsabers.Not me. I've had enough.Below are links to two of the better reviews I've read this week. The reviewer gets my gold star for her review of this book and of White Trash Zombie ApocalypseGeekomancyWhite Trash Zombie Apocalypse
In South Carolina offenses against kitties are considered especially heinous. In Mercy, South Carolina, these crimes are investigated by an elite squad known as the Feline Victims Unit. These are their stories.Jill and her cats are back for this, the second in the Cats in Trouble mystery series. After finding a stray cat she stumbles onto a mysterious research lab where cats are being experimented on. When the scientist in charge turns up dead she finds herself once again at the centre of the action. The Cat, the Professor and the Poison is pretty good fun in a cat lady kind of way.
Beautiful, Bad Man
1866
Cal was caught stealing from a group of free settlers. They planned to lynch him but seeing the injustice of it, Norah, herself just a young girl helped him escape.
"Everyone you see is either predator or prey, wolf or rabbit. Wolf is better."
1880
Cal is Webster van Cleve's newest gun for hire in his efforts to run settlers off their land so he can claim it for himself. Arriving at a run down earthen house with a group of hired guns, he discovers a defeated widow just waiting to die. When he realizes the woman is the girl who saved him many years earlier, he steps in and stops the other hired guns from raping her and forcing her from her land.
Norah has lived the hard life of a farmer, taking the little the land gives and stretching it as far as it will go. When her husband is murdered by Van Cleve there is little she can do but wait to die, and joining the ones she loves is what she wants. When Cal steps in, his help is at first unwanted, but over time she starts to accept and love him.
Together, Cal lends his strength to Norah and Norah gentles Cal but as the range war escalates and a bounty is placed on Cal, the only option left to them is to either abandon the land and run, or fight and become outlaws.
"Put that rifle down, Mrs Hawkins. I don't want to shoot a woman, but I will if I have to."
Her hands stayed steady, and she didn't let the rifle waver. "It's Mrs Sutton. And I don't want to shoot a sheriff, but I will if I have to."
I feel I should say, I don't really know anything about this period of American history, apart from what this book and Wikipedia tells me. If I've made mistakes in using incorrect terms, I'm sorry for that.
Beautiful, Bad Man is a great book. It's completely captivating from start to finish. I really can't fault this book in any way.
"He's a bad one."
"Oh, Mabel, yes he is. He's a very bad man, but he's a beautiful bad man."