"For 10 million pounds, Kate takes on the identity of Kerrigan, a missing London socialite - but her explosive connection with aristocratic Spencer could complicate her plans. Book one in a series." Of course it is. What else could it possibly be? Now if it were named "London Die Nasty" or London Dysentery" I might be tempted, but since this is just another female stand-in novel with nothing really new to offer, then no. If the author's name was Lee Genella, then maybe, but as it is? No.
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Undercover Reaper by RaShelle Workman
"Ever since she started seeing spirits, Detective Faith Ghraves has led a secret double life as a reaper" seriously? That's the best you can do for a character name - a reaper named Faith Ghraves? Barf. I'm out of here right at that point. Okay, I admit the title is kind of catchy, but really, come out of your 'Shelle and be more Workman-like....
The Sixes by Kate White
"When new professor Phoebe Hall" Wait, is Phoebe Hall a person or a building? Or both? "...volunteers to look into an on campus death" Why? Are there no police in this world? Or is this just another White wash job?
Winterkill by CJ Box
"When game warden Joe Pickett goes hunting for a killer in the rugged Wyoming mountains, his own daughter becomes a target." And he's putting his daughter at risk hunting for a killer because? There are no police in this world? Seriously? Or am I misunderstanding this? So...he's hunting and his daughter is a target.... Wait! What? He's hunting his daughter?! Shoot!
In Her Arms by Melissa Tereze
"When country girl Reagan visits a big-city lesbian bar, she meets a beautiful stranger - but after one passionate night together, Reagan returns home. Will fate bring them back together when Frankie decides to escape city life by renting a quaint cottage in the country?" Nope because Reagan has already died from a fatal venereal disease she got through having unprotected sex with a big city girl the one night she met her. The Reagan era is over. How tragic....
How to Snag a Shifter by Karin De Havin
"When witch Brooklyn starts her senior year at a new high school in Los Angeles, she finds herself dealing with drama, romance, and unexpected danger" Brooklyn starts a new school in Los Angeles? The next story in this series has Angeles starting a new school in Brooklyn. And of course she finds herself dealing with drama, romance, and unexpected danger because this is a cookie-cutter clone of every other high-school paranormal novel ever written. Nothing to see here. Havin writer's block. Move along.
Escape by Barbara Delinsky
"A New York Times bestseller from a 'first-rate storyteller' (The Boston Globe)" who nevertheless finds herself forced to tell cookie-cutter weak-woman escape stories. Yawn. "Dissatisfied with the way her life has panned out, Emily escapes to a small New England town to discover who she really is." That would be a runaway coward instead of a woman who shows courage, stands her ground, and fixes her shitty life. Yeah. I really want to read that one. Not.
The Aviary by Emily Shore
"Taken from her family and sold to the highest bidder, 16-year-old Serenity is put on display at The Aviary, a museum of living art. To escape, she must earn the trust of Luc, her mysterious captor." Of course she must because making a female character fall for the captor who has brutalized her is high romance. This is Shore to fail.
Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline
"When her partner is shot right in front of her, assistant attorney Vicki Allegretti is" glad she had quickly hidden behind him.... Yawn.
Friday, September 24, 2021
We’ll Always Have Paris by Sue Watson
"I adored it" says someone named Cathy Bramley. Who the fuck is she? And why would I care what she thinks? The tired plot of this ridiculous book, appropriating an already over-baked title, has it that "Widowed at age 64, Rosie can’t stop thinking about Peter, the first man she ever loved." Peter? Really? That's what you name this obsession of hers? Seriously? It goes on, "After an unexpected reunion, can Rosie seize her second chance at happiness?" I really don't care. It's been done to death and it's time to get a new Peter. And don't forget to tell Cathy Bramley you got one - so she can adore that, too.
Bailey and the Bad Boy by R Linda
"After her ex-boyfriend runs off with her best friend, Bailey stages a fake relationship with the town bad boy - and soon their pretend attraction becomes all too real." This has only been done - what? - a billion times already? Yawn. And barf.
Marked by Fire by Mia West
"In medieval England," Um, Arthur was Welsh.... "Arthur is hopelessly drawn to his older brother’s shieldmate, Bedwyr." Bedwyr? BEDwyr? Seriously? "But after Arthur’s recklessness leads to a battle injury that might end Bedwyr’s warrior days, the two men discover an unexpected passion." Unexpected by everyone except the reader this blurb is aimed at, apparently. Yawn. Mia West appears to be obsessed with turning the entire Round Table into a gay club, which means all of her stories are essentially the same. Now, maybe one or two of those guys were actually gay (assuming any of them actually existed), but all of them? Seriously?
Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb
Now if this was authored by Robin Hood, that would be something wouldn't it? The author seems obsessed with writing about disabled dragons which means all these stories are essentially the same. Yawn. Apparently George RR Martin said of this that it's "fantasy as it ought to be written." Has George has been getting away with fantasy as it oughtn't to be written? Just askin'! "A group of dragons and their keepers journey to find the lost city of Kelsingra - and the mythical well that the creatures need to survive" - and we're just learning this now? So how have they survived thus far? I guess George likes dumb stories.
The Secret Wife by Gill Paul
"Reeling from a shocking discovery, Kitty Fisher flees to her great-grandfather’s cabin. " Another chick-in-shit story. Barf. Whya r eblurbs always larded with words like 'explosive' and 'shicking'? I know the reason, but for fuck's sake, can you blurb-writing assholes not have a little fucking faith in the readers?
The Last Days of Us by Caroline Finnerty
"Sarah is distraught after her husband, JP, abandons their family. But when their youngest child is diagnosed with a brain tumor, will it bring Sarah and JP together - or force them even further apart?" Honestly? Who gives a shit! The kid has a brain tunmor and all the author is concerned about is whether Sara gets her piece of shit husband back? Barf. The very title of this novel should broadcast loud and clear that it's a complete non-starter.
Spark by Aleatha Romig
"First in a trilogy" Of course it is! "When Patrick is reunited with beautiful Maddie," Stop right there! The only distinguishing characteristic she has is beauty? What the fuck is wrong with female authors that they do this to their own gender so predictably? Barf. Could she not have been depicted as smart? Clever? Inventive? Successful? Having integrity? Industrious? Talented? Influential? Shit. So all he finds is "the spark of passion he’d been missing," and now we know how shallow he is! It was her beauty and no other quality which solved his problem. Yep! That's what a pretty girl is for: to solve a guy's problem! The blurb gets worse, believe it or not: "She might be fiercely independent, but he’s determined to explore their sizzling connection." So in short, no matter what she wants, what he wants counts more and it's all about sex. That's why I mean it from the heart when I say: fuck him and this style of horseshit-writing. Aleatha Romig should be thoroughly ashamed of herself.
Trophy by Steffen Jacobsen
"Two bone-chilling cases intertwine when PI Michael Sander and police investigator Lene Jensen discover a link between an unusual death — and a mysterious hunting club that favors human targets." The plot itself has been hunted to death. Publisher's Weekly Bullshit claims: "Stieg Larsson fans will find much to like." Excuse me but what the fuck does this have to do with Stieg Larsson? Or is Publisher's weekly claiming that all Scandinavians are the same?
Kill Me Once by Jon Osborne
Karin Slaughter thinks this is "genuinely original" despite this same plot having been done to death already. That tells me all I need to know about her as an author. The title of this tells me pretty much all I need to know about this novel, too! The tired plot is that "FBI Special Agent Dana Whitestone is tracking a serial killer who models his crimes off some of the most notorious in history." On the positive side, the title is appropriately stupid. Yawn.
Moving Target by Ross Kemp
"When an old friend lands in trouble, former Special Reconnaissance Regiment officer Nick Kane steps out of retirement and sets out to hunt down a relentless cartel leader." Not a thing new here. Coming out of retirement to solve a problem? Been done to death. Same old tired and retreaded title as well. Yawn.
Once Blessed, Thrice Cursed by Coralie Moss
A Coralie Moss gathers no tomes.... This sounded good on paper, but unfortunately I read it as an ebook and that's not so good! I liked the idea of three sisters. I am not a fan of shapeshifter stories, but I read a thoroughly entertaining novel about three wolverine shapeshifter sisters and it was funny and told a good story, but this one, which I had hoped might be similarly entertaining - although this is witches, not shifters - wasn't.
It began well and after I had a sorry encounter with the trope 'hot' demon guy which about made me barf, it seemed to resolve itself, and I thought, okay, let's move on. The story had some original takes on stuff and so was different enough to really appeal to me, and it had some interesting situations - although the magic was a little trope and oddly inexplicable at times. But lo and behold, the demon guy had two hot brothers, so three demons, one young, one middle, and one older, were sickeningly magical matches with the three sisters of the same relative age. The nauseating description of the main character's assigned demon about made me cry-heave, and that was it for me. It was far too high-school and YA and I was out of there.
Demons are problematical because it seems like writers have to make them either hot and studly, or foul and disgusting, and there's no middle ground. I don't get that approach to demon-writing. To parody Clypso in their song Middle Ground:
Create a demon and it make you throw up
Or the beast is written like Chris Hemsworth
The appeal runs straight to zero
No middle the ground, they don't write just so
Demon characters in general are only intriguing to me if they're not retreaded clichés or trope cloned characters. Having had to deal with it myself in Nature of the Beast, and looking at, somewhere down the road, at least one more story involving a demon, this is more than an academic interest for me. Demons came into Judaism (and thence to Christianity and Islam) from Zoroastrian religion, which itself seems to have drawn them from Hinduism, and although they don't appear in the Old Testament, they are rife in the New. At that point they're consistently evil, so a writer really needs to offer some sort of an explanation if their demons are good, and sadly, most have none to offer.
It's like they think, "Hey! I know! I'll toss a good demon into the mix!" Clunk. The problem with this is that not only are demons represented as evil in the Bible, so are witches (remember "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"?). There's some minor dispute over what the writer of that passage in Exodus 22 actually meant by 'witch' - or rather by the ancient Hebrew word that was translated as witch, but it seems to have meant those who practice forms of magic. So if you're gong to have demons and they're bad, how can you have good witches? OTOH, if you can have good witches, then I guess you get to have good demons too, but please try to offer some sort of rationale for it rather than just put it out there as a fait accompli! So in short, I did not like how sadly trope the demons were in this story, and especially not the sparkly horns, and evne mroe especially with no attmept at any sort of justification or rationale. I just found the rendering of them laughable here, which was another turn-off.
Some editing was called for such as when I read, "I noticed the threads had become noticeably..." Really? But that was a minor issue. Overall though, and for the reasons detailed, I can't commend this, although I would consider reading something else by this author.
New Lease Of Love by Arizona Tape
This was a dual first person PoV that I quickly tired of. It was so larded with cliché, and it had one of the main characters smoking, which is a huge turn-off for me. I mean it was already failing for me before then, but I was prepared to read on for a while; all that did was completely burn it for me.
It wasn't only the first person (barf) that spoiled it, either, but first person from two perspectives which is barf squared. Whenever I read that, it reminds me of two suspects being grilled by police, in different interrogation rooms, and it doesn't work. Well, it works for the police if they can catch them in a contradiction or get one to sell out the other, but it doesn't work as a tired plot device in fiction. 1PoV is bad enough and is usually horrible to read, but two of them just makes it so much worse. It's rare to find a 1PoV done well, let alone a two, and this sure wasn't one. The premise was wonderful - a March-June relationship (as opposed to a May-December or worse, a January-December which is frankly perverse), between two women, but the execution killed it.
I read at one point, "...but she had a symmetrical face. The customers would appreciate that" which strictly speaking isn't true. People like faces that are close to the average face they're used to. As far as symmetry goes, a study in 1996 discovered that children and young adults found those with slight facial asymmetry to be more attractive. It's a minor point, but let's not get hung up on perfection. Perfect faces, according to another study, might not be the signifier of good health that our long history has misled us to believe!
The story was marred by poor writing here and there. On one occasion I read, "With a sigh, I shoved my phone back in my designer purse." Really? You have to specify designer purse? That felt so pretentious that it about made me gag. I cannot read books written like that. I can't even take them seriously. Later I read, "With a sigh, I ran a hand along my head." Along? I can see ‘over’ my head or ‘down’ my face, but along? That's just weird. In and of themselves, things like this are not that important, unless there are many of them. Everyone screws up. Every author misses a grammatical or spelling problem here and there, or writes an awkward phrase now and then, but these added on top of other issues just make a novel unreadable for me.
Overall, I found this story plodding, tediously metronomic, and I did not like either character at all, so this was a DNF for sure. I can't commend it based on what I read.
Bitter Alpine by Mary Daheim
"When a murder occurs in the snowy mountain town of Alpine, Emma Lord, who runs Alpine's newspaper, investigates - with help from her sheriff husband and her receptionist." Excuse me? She investigates with the help of the sheriff? Isn't that ass-backwards? Shouldn't it be the frigging sheriff who investigates? WTF? Another dumbass story, but at least it doesn't have 'sleuth' in the blurb, so it has that. Yawn.
The Mostly Real McCoy by Julie Christianson
"Former kindergarten teacher Brooke needs a fresh start, far from her life in Los Angeles." Another female-authored chick running from something to a small town for safety and meeting the love of her life. At least she has the perfect name - brooks do run.... But seriously, how many times has this exact story been done to death now? "a temporary nanny gig in charming Apple Valley, Oregon, seems like the perfect idea." Wait, she was a teacher and now she's a temp nanny? And that seems perfect to her? Sounds like Brooke is a dumb-ass. "until she starts falling for single dad Mac" Daddy mac, really? "...and his pigtailed daughter, Daisy." Og tailed? Really? Daisy? really? Oh wait! I see what happens here. When Daisy comes of age Brooke plucks her from her miserable existence with brutal Mac, runs away with her, and they live happily ever after in a May-December relationship in Cider City, Oregon where they open the avant garde Daisybrook fashion house. Got it! Great idea for an original story. Yawn.
Lost Soul by Adam Wright
"First in a series" No shit! Yawn. "Paranormal detective Alec Harbinger" Stop right there. Another dumbass character name. Barf. I don't need to read anymore to know this is a non-starter.
Black Amaranth by Sasha Hibbs
"After her high school graduation, Ally arrives home to find her uncle in a deadly battle against a powerful monster!" Yeah, his penis got out of control again. This is why Ally's mom left them. "With her life turned upside down, she" discovers she's actually in Australia and a kangaroo court finds her guilty of performing medical Hop-erations without a license. She runs away to a small town where she meets the love of her life among men who can actually control their respective and respectful penises...in interesting and very satisfying ways. Yawn.
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