The Royal Companion by Tanya Bird

Rating: WARTY!

"When Aldara is forced to become the royal companion of reluctant Prince Tyron, they develop an unexpected connection that becomes something more" Barf. Just barf. Done a thousand times before. Give this one the Bird. And 'Aldara'? Really? And 'Tyron'?

Death Dealers by Mason Sabre and Rachel Morton

"Harper Matthews carefully suppresses her magic - but bounty hunter Ethan Stone knows what will happen if she refuses to accept her destiny as a Death Dealer" Another trope, unoriginal, uninventive pile of clichés about a woman who needs a man to validate her. That it takes two people to write this when it's nothing but a cookie-cutter clone of all the other urban fantasy stories is the real crime here. Harper, and Ethan Stone? Barf. I guess his name does match the super hard-bitten title that could cut a diamond, but it's exactly the sort of title that turns me off. And is "Mason Sabre" really the author's name? Seriously?

Murder in Nice by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Rating: WARTY!

"When an old friend is murdered on the French Riviera, Maggie must abandon her quiet village life to track down the killer." Why? Are the French police thoroughly incompetent? Another meddling civilian gets in the way. Barf.

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Rating: WARTY!

"Humanity’s survivors inhabit decrepit ships orbiting the planet. Hell Divers collect life-saving equipment from the surface - but at a terrible risk." Yet another dumb-ass space opera where robots and AI were never inveted. Yawn.

Go the Distance by Jen Calonita

Rating: WARTY!

"After Hercules regains his godship, mortal Meg must embark on a mysterious quest to earn her spot on Mt Olympus alongside him" Um, Herakles, not Hercules, never was a god, numbnuts. Why not actually take the time to learn the mythology before you rip it off? Barf.

My Fairy Godmother Is a Drag Queen by David Clawson

Rating: WARTY!

"When Chris falls for his stepsister’s new boyfriend, he’ll need the help of the fiercest fairy godmother ever known!" Another YA clone in first person voice. barf. Another Cinderella retelling. Double-half-decaf-barf with a twist. No wonder Monty Python's Flying Kirkus thought this was "a fast-paced, riotous, laugh-out-loud yet insightful story of secret love" That's enough on its own to make me avoid this.

Anne of Manhattan by Brina Starler / Scooper and Dumper by Lindsay Ward

Rating: WARTY!

"Anne’s ready for a fresh start and grad school in Manhattan is the perfect opportunity — until her rival and secret crush, Gilbert, walks into the classroom." Barf. In short, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Anne of Green Gables and is instead another cookie-cutter cloned YA story. Yawn.

AND

In the same rip-off vein: Scooper and Dumper by Lindsay Ward

"When a snowstorm comes to the big city, front loader Scooper and snowplow Dumper brave the harsh weather to clear the roads and keep everyone safe!" This is nothing if not a direct rip-off of the 'Bob the Builder' TV show. Yawn.

Double Agent by Gretchen Archer

Rating: WARTY!

The fact that Janet Evanovich idiotically said this novel "Rocked me like a hurricane" tells me everything I need to know about her as an author. "When murder and grand theft come to the Bellissimo Resort and Casino, undercover agent Davis must find the culprit - all while a massive storm approaches." And the storm is relevant how? This just sounds stupid and unimaginative from the off. Just like Evanovich's comment.

Raising Backyard Chickens by Emma Nora

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I'm no more planning on raising chickens in my yard than I was pigs, but just as with that book, I read this one out of curiosity, and I was not disappointed. It's a fun book, full of useful and even unexpected information for anyone planning on producing their own eggs. Of course, you will need a chicken for that; God knows I've tried without one and I've never got it to work!

Don't be put off by the cartoon cover: this is a serious book and contains lots of useful information, along with tips and nested hints, and you won't have to shell out a lot to buy it..... Unfortunately it seems to be available only on Amazon, a corporation I refuse to have anything to do with for a variety of reasons, so I guess the yolk's on me as they say.

The chapters are as follows:

1. The Basics of Raising Backyard Chickens
2. The Science of Raising Chickens
3. Training Your Chickens
4. All About Eggs
5. Special mention - Chicks!
6. Learning to Source the Best Eggs
7. Maintaining the Pecking Order
8. Grooming

It oughtn't to be necessary to remind readers that chickens are living and sensitive animals which will require frequent attention along with attendant watering, feeding, and cleaning. They require safe and comfortable housing and close observation for potential health issues. It is not a part time job or to be approached with an amateurish state of mind. It's essential anyone planning on engaging in this pursuit should read a good book on the topic, and preferably more than one, and be prepared to put in the hard work. If you don't, you will have egg on your face....

There are issues you may not have considered if you've been idly thinking about getting a few chickens for the back yard: such as considering local bye-laws and your neighbors, and there are concerns that even were you cocksure about this, you may not have had these make it through the chicken mesh of your mind, such as bullying among chickens, as well as potential problems introducing new birds to an established flock, and so on. If you plan on selling the eggs, or you plan on exhibiting your chickens, there are tips to help you make those plans fly, too. It even teaches you how to pick up chicks - although that might not be exactly what you had in mind....

I personally have no experience raising chickens, so I can give only my opinion, but I'm no dumb cluck, and it seemed to me that this book was competent, serious, appropriate and a great place to start. It felt like it would get a person well on the right path to having success with this project and so I commend it as a worthy read.

Elves on the Fifth Floor by Francesca Cavallo, Verena Wugeditsch

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

It's a little early for a Christmas story, but I liked everything about this short picture novel from the intriguing title to the entertaining and cute tale, to the playful text by Cavallo, and the charming illustrations by Wugeditsch. It was original, quirky in a good way, and amusing. The only problem with the ebook was that Amazon did its usual job of mangling of the format in the Kindle edition - turning it into the kindling it's well known for in my experience. This is one of many reasons why I will have nothing to do with Amazon. For example, the page numbers appeared in the midst of the story including on one amusing occasion where I read the following:

The young man had pulled out his cell phone and was dialing a number.
74
Who...

It made it look like the number he was dialing was 74! The Net Galley viewer presented it much better and was beautifully laid out, but it was in double page format that doesn't work on my phone, which is where I typically read my books. I don't know if this is going to be available in a Kindle edition, but if it is, I recommend strongly against buying that version. The lines were chopped unequally, so some parts of the text would cover the left half of the screen whereas other lines would go the full width of the screen. Drop caps do not work and were messed up. Pictures and text were poorly adjoined. The formatting was, as usual in Kindle when it's anything other than plain vanilla text, messed up to put it politely.

I couldn't read the Net Galley version on my iPad since Net Galley snottily refuses to make its app compatible with older devices, but I was able to try it on Blue Fire Reader and in Adobe Digital Editions, and it was perfectly fine in both of those. So there, Net Galley! Take that! LOL!

The story was wonderful. It was a family of two parents and three kids, who were moving to a new town because of the resentment about their family and marital choices in the place they used to live (which I'd hazard a guess was Texas, especially the way things are going down here lately). They have a small apartment on the fifth floor and make the most of it. One parent, Isabella heads out the next day to begin her new job as a mail carrier at the town's post office. The other, Dominique, stays home with the kids.

When the kids write a letter to Santa about changing plans for a Christmas present, they wonder if it will get there in time, so they're surprised to get a speedy reply in the form of a magical letter from Santa himself! It enquires if it might be possible for some elves work from their home on Christmas Eve, in order to make sure all the presents get distributed in time. Naturally they accept, and this is how elves come to be on the fifth floor, but in a place like this where adults are not known to be overly friendly, the arrival of new people, and the activities on the fifth floor become problematical!

However it all works out in the end. That's not a spoiler! You knew it would! I liked this for its off-kilter take on the world, and for its enthusiastic story-telling and I commend it fully as a worthy read.

The Cutting Edge by Jeffery Deaver

Rating: WARTY!

"In this pulse-pounding New York Times bestseller, detective Lincoln Rhyme" Stop right there! No! Just no!

The Marriage Lie by Ali Mercer

Rating: WARTY!

"Stella has been keeping an earth-shattering secret from her 14-year-old daughter, Georgie." Earth shattering? Really? Can you spell hyperbole, Ali? But don't worry The Earth shatters into precise national delineations where there are no more international wars nor any terrorism, so life is sweet. Except for the USA where cultural intolerance, racism, homphobia, and politcal dvides cause it to fracture into a million autonomous mini-states which float all in disparate directions, never to meet again.

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen

Rating: WARTY!

"A sex-positive and thoughtful romp with humor and heart" - that's how the Kirkus circus unsurprisingly describes this. "When out-and-proud teen advice columnist Jack starts to receive strange letters that soon take a threatening turn, can his best friends help him unmask the writer's identity?" 'Jack' is evidently short for jackass, if this moron doesn't take this to the police. Yet another reason why I avoid like the plague any novel with a main character named 'Jack' - the most overused cliché name on the fictional planet.

No Ordinary Star by MC Frank

Rating: WARTY!

"In 2525," if man can stay alive, if woman can survive...a fugitive girl struggles to survive an icy wasteland as a soldier sets out for the North Pole with an impossible task" Yeah. The impossible task is figuring out how the world became an icy wasteland when presently it's heating up by the minute. If this story were set in a barren desert, then I might get with it, but as it is? Meh.

Rain Boy by Dylan Glynn

Rating: WARTY!

The adventures of rain man when he was a boy! No wonder Kirkus called it "captivating." Captivating. Captivating. Oh! Fart! Wherever he goes, Rain Boy brings a downpour - but when things turn stormy at Sun Kidd's birthday party, can his new friend help him embrace who he is?" My guess is yes, but why ask? Is it because the writer of the book description thinks all the potential readers of this book are idiots? Nothing new here.

Fanny Bower Puts Herself Out There by Julia Ariss

Rating: WARTY!

"After a lifetime of sitting on the sidelines, Fanny Bower decides to cast aside her fears and make her presence known. But plunging headfirst into social settings is harder than it looks - and between small talk, spilled wine, and embarrassing gaffes, she's in for a wild ride!" This tells me Fanny is a moron who never considered taking things in stages so she could avoid all the big problems. I don't understand why so many female authors are so intent upon writing about moronic women, but I sure have no desire to read anything about such people. I wonder if the author knows that fanny is a euphemism - in the US for ass, and in the UK for pussy? And bower, as in bower bird, is a display to attract a mate. Is fanny Bower putting her ass out there to attract a mate?

Cruel Winter by Sheila Connolly

Rating: WARTY!

"In a small Irish village, Maura Donovan and her pub patrons are snowed in - and there's a killer in their midst" No problem. Everyone stay together, stay awake or rotate three or more people awake at once, and problem is solved. Why this gets to be called " A clever cozy mystery" is the only real mystery here, but why a "New York Times bestselling author" needs to unload her work at a discount is another mystery. And 'village'? Like they wanted this Irish story to be even more cute and stereotyped than ever?

Bunker by Jay J Falconer

Rating: WARTY!

"When a coordinated electromagnetic attack wipes out power across the country, it’s up to former combat engineer Jack Bunker" Stop right there. Another got to character named Jack? Fuck off. And couple that with 'Bunker'? Seriously? What's his dad's name? Archie? "to transform the ordinary citizens of a small Colorado town into hardened warriors — and lead them into a deadly battle for survival." Of course it's book one, because why the hell wouldn't a dumbass story like this be a series of dumbass stories? Why does he have to train the citizens of Colorado? I'm guessing it's because the already-trained military and cops are all robots and were all disabled by the EMP? Except Jack of course. This story is jacked up.

JET - Ops Files by Russell Blake

Rating: WARTY!

This is the sort of story that ought to have appealed to me (despite really disliking the title), but I could not take it seriously. The first problem is that it jumped around so much from one place to another, and from one set of characters to an unrelated set with great flourishes of self-importance. Obviously in the long run these parts of the story are going to be related, but it was such hodge-podge that it annoyed me; every time I felt I was getting into the main character's the story, I was whisked away again and forced into something else that really wasn't interesting to me. I wanted to read about the main character, not a series of seemingly random people involved in random events.

I was going with it though, because I always enjoy the idea at least, of a strong female character as the protagonist, but my assumption going into a novel is that this main character isn't stupid, or at least if she starts out that way, she soon wises-up, but about 20% in I discovered this not to be the case.

Maya is in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force or in Israeli, Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisrael, or The Army of Defense for Israel), and her squad is involved in guarding a security checkpoint in Ramallah, vetting vehicles coming through. This one early morning, right at shift change, when the night-shift guard was at its lowest ebb, a vehicle came through which was loaded with terrorists, there was a gun-battle and the terrorists got away, and Maya's best friend, the only other woman in the guard squad, was killed.

This didn't make any sense at all to me, because rather than come in guns blazing, the vehicle stopped and waited, and only opened fire when it was suspected by the guards to be inauthentic. I didn't get the point of that approach. If they had been trying to get through the checkpoint to cause trouble elsewhere, then their approach made sense, but that's not what the writing suggested. If all they had planned on doing was shooting up the checkpoint, which is how it seemed, then it made zero sense to come in like a lamb and wait to be discovered.

Regardless, Maya takes this shooting personally, and she begins sneaking out of the barracks disguised as an Arab woman (she speaks fluent Arabic), and scouring city for the people who did it; Eventually she locates the residence where these terrorists hang out, and she hears them discussing making a bomb. She does consider reporting this, but she's already in trouble with a vindictive sergeant and if he finds out she's been moonlighting as a spy when she's supposed to be in the barracks, then she'll be in trouble, even if she does have good intel on a threat. So she decides she has to handle this herself. It's bullshit, though.

Another option would have been for her to make up a story that an informant told her this information at the checkpoint (she could claim, for example, that this happened when no one else was paying attention because she was talking to a kid). That might sound like bullshit, but at least the intel would have been passed on. A solid writer would have gone this route - or via something similar - and then perhaps had the information discredited, thereby letting Maya have free reign to take it into her own hands. This author didn't do that, and instead, he made Maya a dumbass by having her go rogue - which is what gets her into trouble and gets her eventually recruited into the Mossad - with far too little motive. I just thought it was bad writing.

Right after Maya's big discovery, she was heading back to barracks and was accosted by three louts who figured they could take advantage of a lone Arab woman. She beat them up of course, but her attack started with a roundhouse kick that left her feeling "the toe of her combat boot [connecting] with his jaw." If shed been dressed modestly, as the text states, she would have been wearing a long dress and there's no way in hell you can roundhouse kick in one of those. The text doesn't actually specify what she was wearing other than a hijab (a headscarf), but modesty suggests a long dark dress. Arab women in Palestine do wear a variety of different clothing styles, including jeans and pants, and shorter dresses, but specifying modesty is what would seem to trap Maya. It just felt like more bad writing. That's when I quit reading the novel - at about 20% in - because as they say in the action movies, "I have a bad feeling about this."!

The blurb tells us that "JET- Ops Files is a breakneck adrenaline rush that will leave action thriller fans gasping." No, it's not. It's slow and sprawling, and it's irritatingly pedantic and constantly shifting focus. In what sounds like desperation, the blurb says, "If you love Bourne, Reacher, Mitch Rapp, or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, JET will keep you turning pages late into the night." But it really doesn't seem like this has a heck of a lot in common with Jason Bourne or Lisbeth Salander. I can't speak for Jack Reach-around for whom I have zero time, since Jack is the most over-used dumb-ass go-to name for an action guy ever. I've never heard of Mitch Rapp and I'm not impressed with his name either. I can't commend this based on what I read. It's too much like a guy with tits sort of a story.

A Killer's Daughter by Jenna Kernan

Rating: WARTY!

I will not read novels with this form of title - one which makes the female character anonymous and an appendage of someone or something else, so I don't care that "After a young woman's corpse is found in Sarasota Bay, agent Nadine Finch is horrified to spot a mark identical to the MO of her own serial killer mother." Who cares, really?

Murder on Millionaires' Row by Erin Lindsey

Rating: WARTY!

"In Gilded Age New York, housemaid Rose Gallagher investigates her wealthy employer's mysterious disappearance" Why? To be yet another interfering busybody? The NYPD has been in existence since 1845, yet dipshit Rose thinks they can't help? Barf.

A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy/Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Rating: WARTY!

These two are in the same review because really? They're the same book.

A River of Royal Blood "16-year-old Princess Eva must defeat her sister in a deadly battle for the throne - or else forfeit her own life." Isn't that what deadly means? Hello?

Coupled with:

Cinderella Is Dead (How I wish she were but it ain't gonna happen, not when Disney (barf) and Amazon (double barf) are milking it for all they're worthless. "When 16-year-old Sophia befriends Cinderella's last living descendant, can they join forces to overthrow the king?" Sixteen year olds fighting for the throne. How are these two stories any different? Oh, I guess it's because this one is an "empowering fantasy adventure 'that will forever change how readers perceive fairy tales' " according to Booklist. Shows why they're not to be trusted eh?! No wonder they're listing.

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella

Rating: WARTY!

"With nearly 30,000 five-star ratings on Goodreads" this author is still trying to milk this for all it's worth. ♩It's all about the Benjamins!♬ We follow "budget-challenged Becky Bloomwood to the big city - where her high jinks could cost her everything" and so while children starve in Ethiopia (and in the USA), this jerk is spend, spend, spend on clothes. Way to go.

The Judas Strain by James Rollins

Rating: WARTY!

"When an extinction-level virus threatens humanity, it's up to Sigma Force commander Gray Pierce to stop the catastrophe in its tracks - and the key to the cure lies in the legendary travels of Marco Polo" Absolutely! That commander is going to throw everything he has at the virus. Tanks, AA missiles, rockets, grenades. He's going to surround it and bomb it back to the stone age, and wipe it from the face of the Earth. Meanwhile the medical people will cower in terror. Any novel with a ridiculous title like this (ripping off Michael Crichton to boot) should be avoided like the plague.

Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a comic book for younger readers written and illustrated by talented Spanish artist Tur. It's rooted in a 'webcomic' from 'webtoon' with which I am not familiar, but which seems to have been a success.

This version evidently has new material, but without knowing the original I can't speak to that. While I thought the artwork was bright, colorful, and well done, for me the story failed to live up to the illustrations. It was choppy and made no sense, and while I realize that I am not the intended audience, and that a less critical audience might well go for this, I can only review it from my own perspective and for me it failed for a variety of reasons. I will say that one wonderful thing about it is that this story did not have JK Rowling's sexist distinction that boys were glorious wizards, but girls were 'only' witches with all the negative baggage that appellation entails. No, these guys were both witches!

I have a problem with magic stories where the actual magic takes a back seat and the story ends up being just a regular story with a patina of magic dusted over it for flair, and that's what seems to have happened here. There were so many places where magic would have been useful, but obviously if you're in a world where you can 'magic' anything, you really need to work on the story to make it entertaining. It's a fine line the author walks between going full throttle magical, which risks making everything too easy for the protagonists, and being a magical miser, which to me makes the magical elements worthless by failing to use them when they make logical sense.

The author seems to attempt to get around this by having these kids be so poorly-educated (magically speaking) that they swing right into that 'magical miser' territory and for me this spoils the story. It seems to me that the kids ought to have had at least a basic grounding in magic from their parents or from their elementary magic school, but none of this is even discussed, much less explored, so there's this huge plot hole whereby the kids are rank amateurs, but we're offered no reason why.

The story here is that witch twins Dani and Dorian miss the school bus that would deliver them to their magical academy. Instead of telling their parents of this, or taking out their brooms and flying, they give up completely and end up wandering aimlessly around, quite lost as to what to do. Through a series of accidental events they end up with an advanced professor of magic, and somehow irresponsibly fail to tell their parents of their change of plans.

The story deteriorates after this as they fall in with a random group of misfits - a princess and a trouble-maker - and just have a chaotic series of adventures seemingly unconnected to anything. Meanwhile we're getting hints of a magical conspiracy, but that seems like a separate and entirely unconnected story. I was pretty much lost by this time because I had no clear idea of what the author was trying to do, or where this story was going, if anywhere. It just seemed to meander at the author's fleeting whim without having a purpose or a plan, and I DNF'd it because it was not entertaining me at all. I was looking for a coherent story, and there wasn't one to be had here. It felt more like a disconnected series of Sunday newspaper cartoons, which is what, I'm guessing, the web series was. So while I loved the art, I can't commend it based on the story - or lack thereof.