"Curl up with a cozy Christmas mystery that’s first in a series" Of course it is. One every Christmas? I doubt it. "This holiday season, retired cop Mac and his girlfriend, Millie, have a conundrum to solve. When a kindly shop owner meets her untimely end under suspicious circumstances, this sleuthing duo must crack the case!" Why? What the fuck business is it of theirs? They're going to be interfering busy-bodies who obstruct the police and withhold evidence. I know this because these stories are all the same! That's why the word 'sleuth' in a book description is a dire warning to avoid that novel like the plague. Yawn.
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Friday, October 15, 2021
The Woman in Red by Diana Giovinazzo
What an original title! "When Anita meets resistance leader Giuseppe, she is set on an unforgettable course to liberate Southern Brazil from Portugal." Described as "An epic tale of one woman’s fight to take control of her circumstances" by subjugating herself to a man whose first resort is to violence to settle a problem. Yeah. Right. And Giuseppe? Really? That's neither a Portuguese nor a Brazilian name. It's Italian. Barf.
The Summer Games Settling the Score by RS Grey
"Andie has dedicated her entire life to scoring on the soccer field — which means her love life has languished on the sidelines. But when she arrives in Rio for her first Olympics, gorgeous British swimmer Frederick might have her ditching her cleats for some time between the sheets" And some antiobotics to treat the diseases she'll inevitably pick up. Barf. There's no romance here. Move along.
The Curse of the Bruel Coven by Sabrina Ramoth
This story comes larded with a lot of trope, but it is YA, so that's par for the course unfortunately. There's very little under the sun that's new in YA, especially when it comes to supernatural tales. The story is short and fast-paced; perhaps too fast for some readers, but I liked that it did not not ramble and meander. If it had, I probably would have DNF'd it.
While this novel avoided some of the pitfalls in the genre, it could not seem to keep itself from falling headlong into the middle of others. For those reasons - which I shall go into shortly - and for the fact that it is the start of a series, which means that at best, it's only a prologue and not an actual story, and so has no resolution, I can't commend it. It's not exactly a cliff-hanger ending, but it's close. I will not be pursuing this series.
The first cliché to curse this story is that of the orphaned teenager suddenly coming into a realization and/or suddenly coming into her powers. "Vivienne Davenport is an ordinary teenager - at least, she thinks she is. Then the untimely death of her mother reveals a family secret. She's adopted... and her real mom is a witch." Yeah. Not a story-killer of a cliché, but there's certainly not anything new or original on offer here. Someone who is the most powerful, yet least experienced is a tautology and a tired trope in this case.
On top of that, there's a curse that only the special snowflake child can lift, despite everyone telling her it's unbreakable: "Buried deep within her family’s history of magic is a deadly curse that has plagued them for generations." That's a bit much and it sure isn't resolved in volume one!
The inexplicable thing here, about the story so far, is that despite no one - but no one - wanting Vivienne to know about her family history, and despite her having been been protected from the curse Harry Potter style by living away from the magical world with relatives - her adoptive mother inexplicably left a photo of Vivienne, as a child and in the arms of her birth mother, in a family photo album. That made zero sense to me, but it was this author's rather hamfisted way of bringing realization to Vivienne and launching her into her quest.
So Vivienne travels to New Orleans (at least it's not Salem - barf! - but it's still trope as hell) with her best friend, unimaginatively named Savannah. Savannah accompanied her for one cheap and clichéd reason only, which I shall get to at the end of this review. Vivienne quickly discovers that her birth mother has been kidnapped.
The idiot blurb writer gets frantic at this point and tosses the usual dumb-ass questions at the potential reader: "Can Vivienne become the witch she needs to be? Or will her newfound powers prove too much for her to handle?" We know they won't otherwise how is the author going to pad this out into a series?
Then the blurb writer lies, as usual: "She will soon learn that all magic comes at a price." No, it doesn't. It even tells us in the novel itself that spells cost something, but what it shows us is that just like in the Harry Potter stories, no matter what spell is cast, it costs nothing to the caster. The magic is tediously trope. There's nothing new or inventive. It's all about the four (non-)elements: air, earth, fire, and water. The protagonist, of course, is fire.
At one point I read how the Moon is tied to silver, the Sun to gold, but there was no explanation as to why. The protagonist complains that she's "still not really understanding his explanation." I'm not either! The Sun is arguably a gold color, but there's quite literally no metallic gold in the sun. That element - a real element - isn't created until a star explodes. Likewise I doubt there's much silver on the Moon, if any. Believe it or not, for an airless body, the Moon is 60% oxygen - all of which is bound to metallic and other elements in the Moon's interior. Pretty much all of the rest of it is silicon and aluminum with traces of calcium, iron, magnesium, and titanium. The color of the Moon is merely a reflection of the sun and it's not even a silver color! So whence this linking to those valuable metals? It's nonsensical.
Vivienne is launched on a crash course in practical magic which, unlike Harry Potter, she masters improbably quickly, and is magically lighting candles, throwing troubled guys into walls, and levitating, in no time. We learn that she, not Aubrey, a cousin, is now the high priestess of the coven - a coven here being six, not thirteen for reasons unexplained. The grand priestess though is Vivienne's grandmother who is consistently referred to as Grand’Mere. Now that word isn’t missing a letter so why the apostrophe?! I dunno! Another mystery!
The magic was a joke. In addition to the trope herbs and candles, and that crap, the spells were cast in Hallmark rhymes which made me laugh. It made no more sense than Harry Potter casting spells by waving a stick and chanting two Latin words. The obvious question is: what language did they use to cast spells before Latin came along? And if it worked, why switch to Latin? In the case of this story, how did they cast spells back in medieval times if they couldn't rhyme in modern English? LOL! It felt cheap and cheesy, and truly juvenile.
That wasn't the worst thing though. In this genre, the whole thing about magic is that it's supernatural - outside, or over and above nature yet the author says at one point, "you can’t override nature. If something is too far gone, you can’t bring it back. It goes against the rules of nature." But isn't that precisely what magic does?! How is levitating complying with the rules of nature? How is turning something invisible, complying with the rules of nature? How is moving an object with the mind complying with the rules of nature? This made zero sense. The author had not thought it through.
There were some writing issues where the author, in her haste, had unfortunately juxtaposed words amusingly, such as when I read, "A sudden tightness wracked my chest when I saw the photo of Mom and me sitting on her dresser." So while they had once sat on the dresser, someone photographed them doing it?! It's a minor quibble. We've all been down that authoring rabbit-hole. At another point there was a misuse of a word when I read, "I shoved Nanette’s magical satchel into my jeans pocket." What she meant was sachet, not satchel. You can't fit a satchel into your jeans pocket!
A bigger problem was when I read things like: "I hopped into my metallic blue Jeep," or "Sebastian's Altima screeched to a halt behind us." Apparently it's important to the author that we know he has an Altima, because she mentions it twice. Why? I don't know and I don't care, nor is it relevant that she has a metallic blue Jeep. I don't get that approach to writing that at all. If the make and color of the car are important for some reason, then yeah, but here? Not so much! It's overkill and comes off as obsessive.
At one point I read that someone's voice "crackled" - when the author quite evidently meant that it "cracked." That's auto-correct for you! But these were minor issues which were not a big deal when compared with the problems in the writing, such as when Vivienne displaces her cousin Aubrey as high priestess of the coven. Aubrey doesn't take this well, and her incessant snide remarks about Vivienne's powers - or lack thereof - were so frequent that they quickly became tedious to read.
There was a certain amount of manhandling of the females going on here, too. If they were close family, then this would have been understandable, but Vivienne and Savannah had literally just met these people, and barely knew them. There had been no time to bond, yet the guys are inappropriately familiar and it became a bit creepy to read.
You thought I'd forgot about Savannah, huh? No! Early in the story, Savannah loses her phone at Vivienne's bio-mom's house, and it's when they go back there to recover it that they discover she's been adbucted. At the end of the story - way too late for it to matter - they recover Savannah's phone and yet no one suspects for a minute it might have been cursed or had something else done to it. These people are morons. And again, way too late for it to matter, Savannah is dispatched home for her safety, regardless of the fact that nowhere is she safer than right there with the witch coven in the protected home right where she was.
At the end of the story, a little is made of the fact that Vivienne hasn't heard from Savannah - calling to confirm that she made the hour-long drive home safely. Vivienne idiotically dismisses it as Savannah's phone having lost its charge, despite the phone having been barely used. I have a theory that volume two, as is de rigeur for a series, is an exact copy of volume one, except that now it's Savannah who has been abducted rather than Vivienne's bio-mom. I have no way of knowing if this is true and I don't care to find out, but that's my guess.
So the cheap and clichéd reason that Savannah (who had very little to do in the story, and who could actually have been dispensed with entirely) accompanied Vivienne was to become the new maiden in distress for volume two. Barf! Two volumes and two instances of a female being the weak link - and from a female author? That's as shameful as it is pathetic. I can't commend this series.
Atlantis Lost by J Robert Kennedy
"Did an earthquake in Portugal reveal the lost city of Atlantis?" No, because it enver existed dipshit. Tired trope abounds. Yawn.
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
"An engrossing read from a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author hailed as 'one of the greatest writers of science fiction… who ever lived' (Stephen King)" That explains why no one has ever heard of him. And I should base my purchasing plans on advice from an author I can't stand, why exactly? Anyone? Bueller? Barf.
Just a Little Heartache by Merry Farmer
"London playwright Niall Cristofori might be famous for his plays about love — but his own heart was broken 10 years ago by Lord Blake Williamson." So move on already, dipshit. "When they reunite, can they seize their second chance for a happily ever after?" Who honestly cares? I guarantee you that this story will have nothing whatseover to do with playwrights or lordships, or love, and there's sure as hell no romance since it's all about lust. Period. Yawn.
Shadow Hunters by EJ King
"Taken from her home in the middle of the night, Alex is given a new identity and forced to start over in a different town." because that happens all the time, and the dumb-ass YA girls in them are never quite smart enough to figure out how to run away and get back home. "And when she meets her mysterious new classmate Daniel," who is really Saint George who will validate and rescue this useless woman.... Barf. Seriously? How many more of these dumb-fuck, cloned YA stories are we going to get? I guarantee you this isn't the last. Somewhere out there even now, someone has their cookie-cutters flying to outline yet another retreaded version of this story just like this is a retreaded version of a thousand such stories that have gone before it.
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Oh, how I wish it were the last werewolf. It never is; unfortunately, these tired stories will go on forever. "A chance encounter leads Jake Marlowe," business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge - "...the world’s last werewolf, to rediscover his passion for life" - with a woman, perhaps, that he will rape into being a fellow werewolf? Barf. You know 'wer' is the Old English word for 'man' right? The word means literally, 'man wolf'. There should be no female werewolves.
Sweet Revenge by Morgana Best
"Cocoa is living the sweet life running a candy store." Cocoa? Really? "But everything sours when her former bullies start dropping dead one by one, making her the prime suspect!" What former bullies? From high school? Seriously? Naturally she'd be the prime suspect for ancient history! This is the dumbest plot I've come across in a couple of days; not that this says much since dumb plots are rife in these s. "Can she unwrap the truth in time to ensure the real culprit is caught?" And she has to do this why? Because the police are, as usual in these crappy stories, useless? I'll tell you who did it: it's someone who admitrd her from afar and felt bad for her in school, and is seeing-off the bullies because of that. But why wait until now? There will be no good answer for that question, I promise you. It's not the best, it's the worst. It;s the same story as "The Sweet Shop of Second Chances" by Hannah Lynn. Yawn.
Thursday, October 14, 2021
What I Did for Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
"After a Hollywood star tumbles off her pedestal, she embarks on a misguided adventure that leads her to a fake marriage with an absolute mess of a former costar — who just so happens to be incredibly handsome!" So she fell off her pedestal and decides the best way to get back on is to outright lie about shit. Way to go, asshole. She sure is someone I want to read about! Yet again with the fake relationship. Yawn. Let me know when she gives up acting and shit gets real. On second thought - no, don't bother. I don't care. Maybe at some distant point down the road, someone somewhere, will write something original. We can hope, right? Yawn.
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard
This sounded great from the description, but about halfway through, it turned into one of those pathetic little horror movies where the girl is running from the indestructable and unstoppable bad guy, and I quit right there. It's not a YA story - the protagonist is a commendable 47 years old, but once she began behaving like a YA screamer girl (sans the screaming, thankfully) I had to get out of there. On top of that, the story was already plodding, to the point where I was starting to become bored and listless with the 'not going anywhere any time soon' plot, even before the idiot scene that proved to be the final straw for me.
Umiko Wada works as an assistant to a private detective, but after a visit from a mysterious and well-off woman, her boss is killed in a suspicious hit and run, and Umiko decides to pursue the dangerous investigation, hopping to London, the USA, and Iceland, but every time she moves, we get a crumb of a clue, and that's all. And naturally it's all tied to a bad event in her past because all these stories are.
Finally she heads to a mysterious property in the middle of nowhere on Iceland, and they take an inappropriate rental vehicle in bad weather. Magically their trip coincides with a visit from the bad guy, who kills her companion. Umiko commendably hits him with her vehicle, but instead of making sure he's dead and taking his own four-wheel drive vehicle while rendering her own unusable, she takes off in her own useless car, leaving the bad guy to inevitably resurrect and follow her. That was enough for me. It's so trope and it tells me the protagonist is a moron, and I have no intention of pursuing cliched novels about stupid women. I can't commend this based on what I could stand to plow through.
The Awakening of Ren Crown by Anne Zoelle
"The Awakening of Ren Crown is the start of an epic adventure featuring a protagonist who would rather be diligently working in her lab than saving (or ending) the world - but who will do anything to protect her family and friends." Including ending the world? Of course it's the start of a series! What did you expect: a 'series' of unconnected original novels that don't retread the same plots and charcters over and over, and over again? I'm sorry to inform you that we don't live in that world any more. And what are the odds this is in first person? 100% I'd say. Yawn. Move along: there's nothing to see hear or smell.
Bringing Stella Home by Joe Vasicek
Novels that feature a woman's name in the title are almost inevitably bad. Are there more such novels featuring a woman's name than there are a man's? I suspect there are, which would make for an interesting study. "James McCoy, the youngest son of a starfaring merchanter family, never thought he would face an invasion. But when an undefeated enemy slags his homeworld and carries off his brother and sister, nothing in the universe will stop him from getting them back." Um, sheer distance? Writers of these space operas never imagine for a minute the energy costs of interstellar travel - they just wave a hand and it all goes away! But here's the thing: why do these aliens give a shit about this dude's brother and sister when they've apparently wiped out a whole world? And how was that possible? Again, there's an energy crisis here but the real issue is that both his brother and his sister - in that order - were abducted, so whence the female-slanted title? Yawn.
Turing Test by EM Foner
"Mark Ai goes to work every day as a PC repairman, but fixing computers is just a cover job. Along with his mission managing the observation team, he's attempting to fill in as a parent for a teenage neighbor, provide a good home for a dog, and pick up a little money on the side." So in other words, this "AI" is exactly a human. There's not a thing that's new, inventive, or original here, not even the title. Yawn. Do electric sheep dream of more inventive writers?
Sleepers by Megg Jensen
"An adoptee raised in a foreign land, sixteen-year-old Lianne was content with her life as handmaiden to the queen, until a spell cast on her at birth activated. Now she's filled with uncontrollable rage and access to magic she thought had been bled from her people years ago. Even her years of secret training in elite hand-to-hand combat and meditation can’t calm the fires raging inside her." Meditation and hand-to-hand combat training? LOL! That's the killer, right there. Plus there's a tedious trope love triangle and the cover has the sixteen year old dressed in a leather bustier and matching pants. This is a queen's handmaiden.... It's also a trilogy! Anyone want to give odds on whether it's in first person, to complete the perfect cliche? I'd bet it is. Yet more unimaginative YA garbage. Barf.
The Butterfly Effect by Scott Semegran
"A father watches his daughters lovingly care for a squirmy gang of caterpillars. When they morph into butterflies, the girls witness the true meaning of life... unfortunately." Yep. This is fortunately a short story of no interest with a wa-ay overused title.
Lost Girl by Chanda Hahn
This failed because it has 'chronicles' in the title. It's an unimaginative retreading of Peter Pan where, instead of going to Neverland, they go to the Neverwood Academy. Yawn. The uninventive and unimaginative author seems to specialize in retreading old stories, and this logs three strikes agaisnt her.
Metal Angels Part One by Danielle K Girl
Naturally this is the first in a series, but I could not get past the content list, which went something like:
Kira
Eron
Tamas
Kira
Eron
Blake
Tamas
Kira
Blake
Kira
And so on ad infinitum. Yawn. There is nothing worse than a shifting PoV novel, especially if it's in first person. I have no idea if this is or not because I could not bring myself to get past that content listing. It's tedious, confusing, metronomic, and ultimately boring.
No Girl Left Behind by Terry Toler
"While in Abu Dhabi, CIA operative Jamie Austen moves into action after she sees the words “HELP ME” written on a bathroom mirror. Now she’s in a race against time to find out who wrote it — and why." The real mystery here is why a CIA operative is abandoning her job to go on a wild goose chase instead of letting the local police handle it - assuming there's anything to handle! Maybe some kid wrote that on the mirror as a joke. Yawn
Miss Kane’s Christmas by Caroline Mickelson
"Santa Claus’s daughter, Carol, is on a mission to stop single father Ben from ruining Christmas. When she poses as his new nanny, can she show Ben just how wonderful the season can be?" Who gives a fuck? This is warmed-over, retreaded Christmas pap. There's nothing new here. In fact, I think the Hallmark channel already told this same story. Or maybe it was Santa's Daughter by Therese A Kraemer. But it's been done before, and mroe than once.
The Southern Psychic Sisters Mysteries Season One by A Gardner
"Season One"? Really? "Psychic Ember Greene" Now is she a psychic ember? Or is she a psychic and her name is Ember? "...has returned to her family’s bakery in her hometown of Misty Key, Alabama — where she’s quickly steeped in family drama and mystifying murders." Well is is Misty Key so it would be mystifying. And you know the murder rate in the sleepy hamlet will put even Chicago to shame. And the psychic is utterly useless because she always gets only the vaguest of impressions - never a name and address of the murderer, only sparsely-distributed half-clues throughout the book until the very end. So how is she any better than the police? Barf. Unoriginal garbage throughout.
Turning for Home by Caren J Werlinger / Back in the Game by Holly Chamberlin / Smart Women by Judy Blume
Turning for Home by Caren J Werlinger
Yet another woman returns "to the small town she fled years earlier." There she "finds her well-ordered life...unraveling under the weight of the past. Can Jules make things right before it's too late?" My guess is yes, because as so many female authors so often insist upon lecturing us, a woman is utterly useless until a man, preferably a white man, rescues her. Barf.
AND
Back in the Game by Holly Chamberlin
"After her marriage falls apart, Jess struggles to adapt to her life as a single woman. Can she find a second chance at happiness?" I'm guessing yes, because she's hopeless until some guy rescues her, and there always is one to do it.
AND
Smart Women by Judy Blume
"Divorced thirtysomething friends Margo and BB attempt to start their lives over - with heartwarming, hilarious, and sometimes disastrous results." How smart are they when their results are disastrous? But don't worry, they'll both find a guy to rescue them.
How are any of these novels different from the other two? Answer: They're not. They're all exactly the same.
The Wall by Jen Minkman
The author's name is pretty cool, but the novel idea? No so much. "Born on opposite sides of the Wall, teenagers Leia and Walt live in different worlds - until they join forces in a quest to uncover the truth about their mysterious island... A fast-paced dystopian adventure that's first in a series!" Of course it's first in a series. And it's Romeo and Juliet versus the wall! Yawn. There's nothing new here. What do they do in volume two? Climb the wall? Find another wall? Find another island? Yawn.
A Villa in Sicily Olive Oil and Murder by Fiona Grace
I must admit I have some qualms about that title. It seems a bit "iffy" to me. The premise is at least mildly original in that the main character buys one of these ultra-cheap villas in Sicily on the agreement that she upkeeps the place. I've seen those mentioned in news items several times. The book then has to have a murder committed in the place, of course - and these villas are usually in small villages so how the author hopes to make this into a series I do not know. The little Sicilian village would end up having a murder rate greater than some cartel region in Mexico! LOL! The blurb says, "After buying a fixer-upper in Sicily, veterinarian Audrey is ready to embrace her fresh start. But she never expected solving a murder to come with her new home - nor finding romance...." It's funny that the author doesn't expect it, because every reader of the book expected exactly that! LOL! It would be more amusing if the character's name were Cecily and the title were "Cecily in Sicily". But how is she going to find enough work as a vet in a little village to support herself? Oh don't worry - she'll be so busy solving murders every volume that there won't be any time at all to work. Or to fix up the place. But at least everyone in this obscure village in the middle of nowhere speaks perfect English. Dumb from the ground up.
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