Black London

I am a huge fan of the Black London series.  When we got to the big surprise at the end of the last book I got a little worried about what would happen next.  I really don’t care for books that head in that particular direction.  This was really no exception.

 

I am not sure what on earth transpired to make Pete such an irrational bitch.  I understand that she is worried, and scared, but my goodness.  Her attitude and behavior was so self centered and just completely inexcusable.    She really turned me off for most of the book.  When we left her in the previous installment she seemed to be ok with things and not hostile towards Jack.  I really felt lost as to what happened between then and when this took pace.

 

It was nice to have a lot of the book from Jack’s perspective.  At the same time he was so self deprecating I just wanted him to slap Pete and ask her what her problems were.

 

Once we got to the ending of this book everything seemed fine and dandy once again.  All in all I felt like there were huge pieces of the story missing.  Quite a few of the character’s motivations seemed to come out of nowhere.

 

Inter character relationships aside, the story itself was nothing to write home about either.  There were some confusing plot points in the over all “mystery”.

 

All in all I was pretty disappointed in this book.  I am not sure I like where the storyline is heading.  I admit I was a little against where we were headed before I even started.

xoxox

Mia

Oh look, Sookie is in trouble again. It must be Tuesday.

I really was just interested in the short story included in this book.  I thumbed through the other pages and nothing really caught much of my interest.  The dialogue exchanges between Eric and Bill were mildly entertaining.

 

This short story should have been released sooner.  The placement in the Sookie timeline made everything off by one book.  The story itself was pretty lacking, but I think the series had been as well.  The fact that all of these fantastically outrageous things just happen to occur where ever Sookie happens to be is just ridiculous at this point.

 

I am hoping that things can be put back on the right track as the final book approaches.

xoxox

Mia

really?

What on earth just happened?  I was reading this book and everything was going good, then we took a turn somewhere and I have no idea how this went so very wrong, so very fast.

 

Throughout the previous books of this series we learned very little about Dmitri’s life.  InArchangel’s Blade we get his entire history prior to being Made.  We meet a new Hunter, and learn about her past.  Obviously we all know the path that the story will take from here.

 

The issue is that the line from point A to point B is not linear.  At all.  It appears it was easier to just bend the paper to make the points meet than have to draw the line.  The story completely and totally jumps the shark.  To me this was a complete cop out.  It was the easy way to make all of the characters okay with their budding relationship even though they had issues and plenty of baggage.  I would have rather have seen both characters work through those barriers on their own without this nice easy cure all to their inner turmoil.

 

Without the magic wave of the wand this book would have been just as amazing as the others in the series.  With this twist of events its less.  Much less.  The entire story was cheapened.

 

Very disappointing.

xoxox

Mia

Once and Again

Once and Again by Lauren Dane is the first book in the Petal,Georgiaseries.  This is a spin off of the Chase Brothers.  I should just tell you up front I did not like that series one bit. I thought it was a great example of how an author’s writing could grow during their career.  If you read one of those books then pick up one from the Brown Sibling series, the difference is astounding.  That said, one would assume that any new series would stay on that caliber.  Not so much.

 

We were introduced into the town and more than a handful of characters, some new, some familiar.  The story revolves around Lily, who just moved back to Petal and her former boyfriend Nathan.  You read all about their complicated lives and got interested in not only the two main characters but where the people that surround them will end up as well.

 

We meet Lily’s entire family.  They actually make my own look almost normal.  Pages upon pages are spent learning about them, but once the two main characters get together the story just comes to a dead halt without ever mentioning them again.    When I say that the story comes to a halt, I mean within one page.  There is an officially proclamation of the two finally coming together and then within a paragraph the book is over.

 

The bulk of the book was spent with Lily dealing with her family while playing a cat and mouse game with Nathan.  Lily’s struggle with her entire family was really more of the focus than the courting Nathan was working so hard on.  When we never came back to any of those characters the entire story just fell flat.

 

Some of the dialogue and inner monologue was juvenile for the age and education level of the characters.  It also got a little repetitive.  That said, I would probably pick up the next book in this series to see if we ever come back to the rest of Lily’s family. Most made a baby step in the right direction and I am curious to see if they keep on that path.   Maybe this series was set up to read more like a soap opera where you need to keep tuning in to see where the threads weave next?

xoxox

Mia

Hunting for the Plot

I finished reading One Grave at a Time last night.  This is the sixth book in the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost.  This book took me a few days to get through.  That pretty much sums up what I think of it.

 

I am not exactly sure how this went so wrong.  It almost seemed like parts were missing.  The plot took a little bit to get moving and once it did there were really no details.  The bad guy comes.  They fight.  Bad guy runs away.  All of a sudden there is a plan and a trap.  Rinse.  Lather.  Repeat.  Some of the characters we have met previously appeared in the book at equally haphazard moments.

 

There was a little overall plot development with the government agencies.  That again sprang up with no explanation, no resolutions, and no details.  One of the characters has somewhat of an inkling as to what is going on, but decides not to share with Cat and Bones.  They also decided not to share with us.  Again, this was a plot point with no information.

 

It was like reading a trailer for a movie.  We see some of these big things happening but we have no idea how, why, or when anything was going to occur.  All of the guts of the story were just missing.

 

The ending was abrupt.  They literally catch the bad guy, talk about the fact that it will be taken care of and then jump to a senseless, pointless epilogue.

 

There was quite a bit of page time spent on stressing the fact that all of the characters were in a great place in their lives.  Everyone is happy and content.  That is great.  There doesn’t need to be conflict between them in order to make a good book, but that page time should have been spent discussing the actual story at hand.

 

I was pretty horribly disappointed.  This is as if an A+ student just handed in a D paper.  You know what they are capable of and you just cant help but wonder what went on while they were trying to put this together.

xoxox

Mia

Necromancers Done Right

I came across J.A. Saare’s Rhiannon’s Law series on the recommendation of a friend. Book one is called Dead, Undead, or Somewhere in Between. I read the blurb and I saw that this was about a tough chickie who also happens to be a necromancer involved with vampires. Mystery and chaos ensue. How could I resist a book that sounded so much like my favorite guilty pleasure of a series turned train wreck?

 

Where as that other series that will not be named is full of preachy moments and several page long female anatomy lessons this book is lacking all of that. The heroine Rhiannon is an unapologetic street smart girl who has been through hell and back. She can serve a mean cocktail and then knock you unconscious with her right hook. She’s pretty sarcastic and swears like a sailor. Rhiannon has no problem telling you what is on her mind, even if that is somewhat admitting a weakness. That was pretty refreshing itself.

 

If I were some of the characters in the books I read I would be terrified no matter how much I tried to keep my chin up. It was nice to hear someone admit that.

 

The male lead, Disco the vampire was also a little different. He wasn’t as chest thumping Alpha. He seemed even slightly shy which made him incredibly endearing. He was the head of a vampire House and so he had authority and power, but it was delivered in a more subdued way.

 

The storyline wasn’t predictable at all. The scooby doo unmasking moment came with a few twists that came a little too far from left field, but it wasn’t anything cringe worthy. There was a lot of character introductions and world building to do. That gave me a little extra forgiveness in the plot blips.

 

This book does everything right. Where I was expecting something more of the lines of the other necromancer series but i got something more and completely different. This book is a lot more gritty and urban fiction. There really are no characters in this story that were squeaky clean. They are all much more realistic than that, complete with flaws and insecurities. There were enough sexy moments to make me happy, but not enough to overwhelm the entire story line.

 

The ending however was just wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. It was really one hell of a cliff hanger and I am curious to see where that goes. It could go either way for me. There is a good possibility I am not going to dig the next book, but this one was a great find. Luckily for me I discovered this series right after book two was released so I can jump into it right away.

 

 

xoxox

Mia

Who Knew an Elevator Could be so Sexy ?

There are about a million books I have been dying to read coming out tomorrow. Needless to say I didn’t want to start anything I couldn’t be positive I could finish tonight. I picked up Laura Kaye’s Hearts in Darkness. It popped up on my Goodreads time line and people seemed to be liking it. I never heard of Kaye before so I really had no idea what I was going ot read, but as for a quickie I didn’t really care.

 

Hearts in Darkness is a sweet little novella about a kind of sassy accountant who gets stuck in a pitch black elevator with a man who she didn’t take notice of when she entered. The man of course is her physical polar opposite. He’s a little less than what we would call white collar acceptable with his tattoos, piercings and shaved head. They chat, share secrets in the dark to pass the time, and then of course hump. That is the logical course of things in a single night isn’t it? Well, sometimes it is so that’s okay.

 

For pretty much entirely taking place in an elevator the dialogue was really fun to read. Both characters were exceptionally witty and their inner dialogue didn’t make me want to vomit with its over done-ness.

 

I liked this little ditty so much in fact that I will probably check out some of her other work once I devour that huge pile of books I plan on picking up tomorrow.

xoxox

Mia

yeehaw

Saddled and Spurred once again takes me into the world of Lorelei James, where every cowboy is extremely hot and a complete Alpha male who is very limber as well as good at tying knots in his tack room. This time we find a beauty queen who is as completely opposite of the stereotype as possible moonlighting as a ranch hand. Obviously when you are working for the to die for cowboy who loves to give orders ending up tied to his bed is inevitable. Also preferable. You can figure out the rest of the story from there, it’s not exactly food for deep thought.

 

In every one of James’s books there is not a single sight of anything less than a spectacular man, especially if they are part of any type of rodeo circuit. I went cowboy hunting at a rodeo or two and let me assure you that is not what I found. It was more like what I imagined a bowling league on horses would look like. Very disappointing to say the least.

 

This story also gives us a few glimpses of a female barrel racer. Tomboy who loves the circuit and is struggling with no one seeing her as a woman. Sound familiar? Yes, yes it does. It is all starting to blend and mush into the Rough Riders series isn’t it?

 

I really love Lorelei’s books, but this time there were a few scenes that were just ick. Several times our main cowboy lost all rational thought and behaved like a complete douchebag, and not in any typical smutty way. It was kind of weird and really didn’t fit in with the character at all. Everything would be pretty linear and then you would have this huge spike of out of character behavior before going back to where we left off.

 

Another perk of this series is that since everyone is not related their names don’t all start with the same letter, therefor it eliminates the need to keep a flow chart of who is who. Which is wonderful.

 

To be honest I read these books for the naked scenes but I stick around for the town and family gossip. I always end up pretty roped in to what is going on around the town. It’s like getting to be a fly on the wall at the town’s beauty palor.

 

 

 

 

xoxox

Mia

Bloodshot

I have been seeing Cherie Priest’s name all over book review and new release sites with great reviews. I never read anything by her before and decided that I would start with the first book in the Cheshire Red Reports, Bloodshot.

 

This book was pretty high action and leaned into the UF category. This book centers around vampires with mention of other things being out there. I assume we will see some of those in other books to come. Everything revolved around a government project to experiment on preternatural creatures. It reminded me of that season of Buffy that we all try to forget exists. Large underground facilities with spooky monsters in containment cells waiting on the doctors to perform all sorts of experiments on them. A little slice and dice and you could create yourself the perfect soldier. After the government closes the project down it becomes funded by civilians. Chasing down the folks involved and putting a stop to everything becomes the objective.

 

The voice of this book is from Raylene, Cheshire Red herself. I just love it! She is really damn spunky, and extremely paranoid. About everything. It adds a light peppering of giggles throughout the chasing and espionage in the book. Her thoughts are a great way to break the tension. Along the way we end up with a small cast of characters that are all endearing in their special ways. You wouldn’t think that you could get two homeless kids, an ex Navy SEAL drag queen, and a blind vampire together and have it work, but it did. In the epilogue we get to see them all interact a bit and it was nothing short of awesome. I hope that we get to see more of that in the future.

 

The only thing missing for me was a little touch of romance. I know that this was not a PNR book, but I still like to see a dash. There was a slight hint of a possible relationship that could develop in the future but it seemed more out of two lost lonely people than anything real. I didn’t really see any sparks.

 

I zipped through this book really quickly. It left me pretty eager to take a look at some of Priest’s other work.

xoxox

Mia

Hidden Away

Hidden Away, book three in Maya Banks’ KGI series was a book I was really looking forward to. Garrett Kelly was always my favorite of the Kelly clan. It was fun watching him turn to mush with a woman that wasn’t going to end up being his sister in law.

 

Hidden Away stayed true to Garrett’s big softy for a woman in distress nature. In previous books he is always described as being completely up tight and all around grouchy with his brothers and team mates. Then we see a second later how incredibly compassionate and loving he is with the women in his life. With Sarah he had extra cause to be careful with her, and so we were able to see to a greater extent just how soft he could be with a woman regardless of his gruff exterior.

 

In this book we also got to learn a lot more about some of the members of Steele and Rio’s teams. We have seen them brought in so many times but really know little about them. I am crossing my fingers that we get to see some of those characters have their own books or at least strong sub plots in the future.

 

This time around Rusty also got her due. I think that sometimes the brothers are a little hard on her. I think in the last book they started to come around to her a little bit and during this one things really came to a head. The family really circled the wagons for her when she needed it and I think that will reflect through some of her surly behavior. I am also a firm believer that the second she turns 18 Sean needs to just spend a good hour making out with her. Come on already. Its obvious to me that those two are just hiding the fact that they want to get naked with each other behind jabs and insults.

 

I like books that take you to multiple locations, and this one really does. We are pretty much all over the map. Maya really brought each setting to life and added some completely incidental characters in the settings for dimension.

 

There was so much going on by the end of this book, and it involved so many characters I really have no idea where the next book is going to go. That has me looking forward to spending some more time with the Kelly family! Hopefully some of their extended family as well.

xoxox

Mia