New Releases

Silver Bastard Pre-Release Blitz

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silver bastard pre-release blitz

SYNOPSIS
First in the new Silver Valley series from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reapers Motorcycle Club Novels.

Fourteen months. For fourteen months, Puck Redhouse sat in a cell and kept his mouth shut, protecting the Silver Bastards MC from their enemies. Then he was free and it was time for his reward–full membership in the club, along with a party to celebrate. That’s when he saw Becca Jones for the first time and set everything in motion. Before the night ended he’d violated his parole and stolen her away from everything she knew.

Five years. It was five years ago that Puck destroyed Becca and saved her all in one night. She’s been terrified of him ever since, but she’s even more terrified of the monsters he still protects her from… But Becca refuses to let fear control her. She’s living her life and moving forward, until she gets a phone call from the past she can’t ignore. She has to go back, and there’s only one man she can trust to go with her–the ex-con biker who rescued her once before.

Puck will help her again, but this time it’ll be on his terms. No more lies, no more tears, and no more holding back what he really wants…

I seriously enjoyed this book. My review will post on release day, but here is a little snippet to wet your whistle.

Excerpt from Silver Bastard
“The Longnecks—they’re the MC my stepdad hung around with—they kept a lot of club whores around. Do the Silver Bastards do that, too?”

“Yup,” she replied. “It’s a free country and the brothers bring guests here all the time. Some of them stick around, some of them don’t. Some find they aren’t as welcome as they thought.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Boonie’s dick is the only one that matters to me,” she replied, her voice matter-of-fact. “As for the women, I care less about who they’re sleeping with than how they act the rest of the time. Like I said, fuck with the sisters and you won’t last. Bridget won’t be back if she keeps this shit up.”

“Old ladies didn’t get to make those decisions in the Long- necks.”

Darcy smiled sweetly. “We don’t get to make those decisions in the Silver Bastards, either. Yet the right decisions still magically happen. Nobody knows how, really. Guess it’s just all our good karma coming back to us.”

My mouth dropped. Darcy winked.

“You think those men don’t need us?” she asked. “Boonie likes sleeping next to me. Gets cold and lonely when all the old ladies take a girls’ weekend in Seattle. Would be even colder and lonelier if we didn’t come back, and one time we forgot to for nearly a week. Fortunately things worked out and we found our way home again. Now things tend to work out faster.”

My eyes went wide.

“You serious?”

“Do I look like a woman who will eat shit?”

Point taken.

“Let’s get this trash out. I’m sure Puck will be looking for you soon, and I want to make sure all the girls meet you first. That boy’s crazy about you—it’s cute. Like a pit bull crushing on a kitten.”

Be sure to pre-order Silver Bastard so you can start it immediately!!

Amazon US~~~Amazon UK~~~BN~~~Kobo~~~iBooks

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Review: The Love Letters by Beverly Lewis

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Like much Amish fiction, The Love Letters ties together family love, religious obligations, and personal faith. Beverly Lewis successfully illustrates these themes when young Marlena agrees to move in with her grandmother and care for her baby niece. During this time Marlena finds conflict between her parent’s church and her new community’s way of worship… And it doesn’t bode well for her courtship with Nat back home. 

The plot, subplots, characters, and dialogue were all on point, and what I expected from a well-known and -loved author. However, I struggled with the uneven pace. The beginning was slow and drawn out, with each day taking several pages to describe. When I approached the last 20% of the book, the plot suddenly fast-forwarded. Lewis described several months’ time in one page, and then another length of time on the next page. I wish the beginning of the book had gone a little faster (editors! so much could have been tightened up)! If it had, there would have been plenty of room for a fleshed-out ending. 

The story was satisfying, though. Beautiful sub-plots surfaced in the middle of The Love Letters: a boy’s readiness to grow up, a wife’s love for her flawed husband, and a father’s heart softened by God. Lewis’ characters demonstrate a peace and love that truly comes from Above. 

You know I’m a fan of the romantic happily-ever-after, right? Well, I was pleasantly satisfied with Marlena’s new romance, the doctor’s reunion, and the rekindled love of a long-married husband and wife. 

-calliope

Buy THE LOVE LETTERS

Review: The Nightingale (revisited) by Kristin Hannah

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21853621So are you a fan of Kristin Hannah? Read this book! Wait! You’re not a fan of Kristin Hannah? Oh well, read this book!!!! This is a book worth reading. From start to finish it had me completely captivated.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a customer about the War. I now live in England and of course the War still has a presence here. Sometimes you run into people who remember what it was like. Having to take in strangers that were forced from their homes…and their lives….This customer was one such lady…It was just a random conversation that comes up unexpectedly…but leaves you pondering the entirety of the conversation…voicing my thoughts about what people had to go through…well, it has left me to wonder about life for long hours after the conversation ended. See here’s the thing I pointed out to her….it’s not Hitler I wonder about….it’s the every day people….we are so quick to judge….so quick to say, “I would NEVER do that.”…however…..how can you ever know? If your child is near death and hasn’t a drop of milk and you only have to nod your head when a neighbor’s name is mentioned…what would you do? If you only had to pretend to not hear the knock at your door of a person in need of hiding to protect your family….would you turn a deaf ear? If you were starving and there were five bites of sawdust bread for your entire family, would you be tempted to eat two bits of the bread? How easy would it be to walk away and close your eyes to Jews being marched down the street to their deaths? How hard would it be to take a step forward and show your support knowing you might be forced to join them?

Here is that story that attempts to give you some insight to these hard questions. Here you have two sisters and a father…a father that has already come home from one war and now finds himself watching another….two sisters that each have different views of how to get through this war…Even though all three might have different ways of “living” during this time….who is to say which is the right way? As they perhaps judge one another for the choices they are making it is soon apparent to them all that there is no black and white in such circumstances.

The only clear truth one can surmise is that even though the three all take different courses of action to survive….that there isn’t a right or a wrong choice…

I don’t know what else to say….I love books like this…..because they make me realise how your life can change in an instance….it makes you realise just how bad and just how evil people can be….and just how pure people can be…it makes you realise that everyone has reasons why they make the choices that they do….it makes you realise that no matter how simple it is to judge someone by their actions that in reality you have no idea what is powering those choices…

Such a wonderful read…..not a comfortable read….but a wonderful one…

Until next time…
Urania xx

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review

Buy it now The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Joint Review: The Stranger by Harlan Coben

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strangerPegasus: Here’s the predicament: How far would you go for love? How far are you capable of going? I bet if you asked 1000 people, you’d get 1000 unique responses. Love is one of those emotions that has no universal meaning, and yet everyone knows it when they are hit with it. We all have different ways of expressing it, and we all have different depths to which we’ll go in order to keep it, or at least a resemblance of it. This is the central theme that Harlan Coben explores in his new thriller, The Stranger.

Urania: Seriously, Pegasus? That’s what you got from this thriller? Here I thought it was about “How long does it take you to realise you’re completely selfish and surrounded by the same type of selfishness of all those around you”….oh wait…no…….maybe it’s, “You never really appreciate something until it’s gone”? Yep…that sums it up for me….I just can’t decide which one is the best summary of this novel….

Pegasus: I see what you mean in regards to Adam and Corrine, but my point really applies to the secondary characters that got blackmailed.  Love, naivete and stupidity, all mean the same thing when it comes to those two;  they have this fucked up relationship in which none of them know how to express what they feel, and indeed realise what they are feeling.

Pegasus: I read this in 24 hours – it is a very quick and easy read, which is more or less what you tend to expect from a thriller, and in that respect, I enjoyed this book. However, I had issues with some of the characters. First off, the main character that the plot focuses on is Corrine. What happened to her, did she do what she is being accused of, and why did she do certain things. The answers to these questions were the epicenter of the plot, and yet Coben did a poor job in really fleshing out Corrine’s character. There was no emotion there, no real understanding, just a basic outline of a mum obsessed with her son’s school sports. I think this book would have really benefited from some flashback scenes. Enough to show us possible motive and the chance for the reader to actually give a shit about what happens to her. The same can be said for Adam. Coben portrays him as this alpha male type character that won’t let anything or anyone harm his family, but that is all we get. Again, this is where some flashbacks would have really helped in order to show his vulnerability and indeed a 3D portrait of his character.

Urania: Well at least on this we agree. However (don’t you just love it when I say, “however”….can you just see me rolling me eyes as I say it?) I think the way Coben portrayed the characters just validates exactly how I felt about this novel. The only question I have it was it intentional? We get to see both the husband and the wife take each other for granted. We get to see them both act in ways that does not make their partners feel valid or cherished. Corrine is portrayed as a somewhat controlling, unfeeling person by her husband from the start. However, as the novel goes on, her husband starts to appreciate her more. We see glimpses then, and only then, of how he has taken her for granted and suddenly he is missing her and appreciating all she means to him and his children. We see how she has tried to be fair to many of those around her…when at first, we were led to believe that she was totally self-centered and ignored anyone’s else’s needs or wants.

Pegasus:  I think Coben was playing on the whole unreliable narrator made most famous in Gone Girl.  However, (see, I can use that word too!) he failed.  He failed big time.  To have a successful unreliable narrator, you need decent characters. and these ones were simply not given the consideration they needed.

Urania:  This outlying theme of selfishness and lack of appreciation can be said of every single character in this novel if you look at them all as a whole. Every single problem/crime/relationship conflict can all be tied to these two things…0000000

But hey ho….isn’t that the way it is in the real world as well?

Pegasus: I will give credit where credit is due though: The plot outline was good and had it had the benefit of another 100 pages or so, I believe it could have been a very juicy and emotional story. Also, Coben did pose some questions for us to ponder: What does love mean? How do we define it? What lengths will we go to protect it? What does it mean to be “living the dream”? What is perfection? As he made me think, I will give Coben credit, as many thriller writers don’t achieve that.

Urania: I never realised you were such a romantic, Pegasus….Credit is giving by me to Coben for just enforcing my belief that most people are only looking out for #1….just saying….

Pegasus:  But doesn’t that go hand in hand?  We think we love someone, but really, are just looking out for numero uno. What one may see as love, another may see as pure selfishness.

Urania: Oh dear…oh dear me…I can’t believe I’m going to say this…but here goes…I’m getting up there in age…and a few years ago I would have 100% agreed with your statement, Pegasus…but now? Not at all…call me foolish, but there isn’t any of that looking out for myself any longer…I come second….of course it’s a joint second and I’m tied with him…but numero uno? That’s *us*….100%….

Pegasus: I’ve said this in a previous review of Missing You, also by Harlen Coben, that the author has picked apart at this massive theme, and yet only scratched the service. It left me, in my opinion, feeling like I’ve just eaten a good meal, but the final taste just didn’t come together as I’d hope it would do.

Urania: yea yea yea…whatever….you didn’t really think I was going to give you the last word did you?

Pegasus: (-:

Until next time…

Pegasus and Urania

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review

Buy it now The Stranger by Harlan Coben

Review: Flunked (Fairy Tale Reform School) by Jen Calonita

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21996359Books can make you feel many different things. They can make you feel sad. They can make you feel melancholy. They can make you feel passionate about something. And sometimes books can be just plain fun. This one definitely falls into that last category.

What happens when evil fairy tale characters have a change of heart? They start a reform school for other fairy tale characters gone bad, of course. There’s a mishmash of favorites and familiars in this story. We meet Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, the Evil Queen, and a cast of others.

Our protagonist, however, is a simple commoner, the Shoemaker’s daughter, Gilly. Being one of many children in a poor family, she resorts to theft to help her family make ends meet. But when she’s caught in the act one too many times, off to reform school she goes. The school is run by Flora, Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, under the premise of helping wayward souls find their way back onto the right path. But things aren’t what they seem, and Gilly finds herself right in the middle of it.

This one’s a fun read, safe and enjoyable for all ages. It’s full of magic and myths with a good dose of humor thrown into the mix. I’m definitely looking forward to more in this series!

~Thalia

Buy It Now: Flunked (Fairy Tale Reform School)

Review: Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum 

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This novel is a window into the discontentment of an American woman living in Zurich with her Swiss husband and their children. 

Anna is a glum housewife. She has all the material wants and needs – a family, friends, sex, money – but she finds no joy or purpose in her motherhood or wifeliness or womanhood. Anna has no direction, either, unless you consider “direction” to be running away from her life into the arms of other men. 

I hated to see Anna so numb to the world, feeling like a shell of a person. Halfway through the book, there seemed to be no solution, no psychoanalytical instruction, no amount of sexual gratification that would shake her out of it. 

Then I read the second half. I let the book sink in. And even though I planned on writing a review, not a literary analysis, I realized that Essbaum did a couple of brilliant things: 

First, Essbaum created the absence of the belief in God, but the presence of God. There’s a church within sight of Anna’s home, a church she walked by every day. Also, Anna questioned her therapist and her husband about the existence of God. She pondered her parents’ and in-laws’ religious beliefs and practices as well. 

Second, Essbaum made Anna’s character have no god whatsoever. Anna didn’t adore money, or sex, or her husband, or herself. As a matter of fact, the only possible feeling Anna did have was toward one of her sons. Because he was eventually taken from her, she didn’t even end up having a pretense of love to hold onto.  And after Anna lost her son, she lost everything: friends, family, sex, money.

Essbaum illustrated the material losses. I felt them. 

Indeed, Anna was without love. And without love, there is nothing. 

Essbaum described Anna’s loneliness and depression as spiraling inward… At some point a spiral ends at not a pinpoint, but at a hole, at nothingness. So if Anna represents this infinite absence, the antithesis would be someone or something that is everything and ever-present.  There’s only one thing that fits the bill: Love. And if she’s looking for someone to personify love: God. 

Whether Essbaum does or doesn’t want to make a faith statement is an arguable point, but if there’s no God, what IS there to fill up Anna’s lack? 

Some people will think Hausfrau is just about an unhappy wife who can’t settle in to Swiss culture.  Some will cry for more help for the mentally ill, or programs for cultural assimilation. Some readers will condemn Anna’s infidelity and the coolness of the Swiss family. Some may be angry that Anna was beaten for her transgressions. Some readers might think Anna’s husband should be part of the solution to Anna’s despair. 

But I don’t know that the book was really about those symptoms of cheating and sadness and anger. I think it’s about the absence, the nothingness, the lack. 

I submit that all Anna needed to do before she lost everything – or better, after she lost everything – was look to God. 

-calliope

Buy HAUSFRAU

Review: Cocktails in Chelsea by Nikki Moore

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If you like chick lit, this is a perfect lunchtime read. One hour of fun-filled romantic tension, with relatable main characters and a setting that holds your interest. The alpha male has personality, tenderness, and toughness. Sofia’s efforts to impress provide some laughs, and her eventual return to “herself” warms the heart. 

Cocktails in Chelsea grabbed me right out of reality for a while, ordering cocktails in a posh bar, and falling in like at first sight with a guy who’s much more than the bartender. 

-calliope

Only 99¢!!!

Buy COCKTAILS IN CHELSEA

Review: Help Yourself by Rachel Michael Arends

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Ever the optimist, Merry gladly accepts her mediocre life in a backwoods town with a bossy boyfriend and dead-end job. But it all turns on a dime when Merry is notified of a conditional inheritance. She travels to the coast and stays at her late father’s beach house, under the supervision and direction of his barrister. Merry has to complete a handful of tasks before she can inherit the house and some of her father’s millions.  

This book is based on pretense, but written in such a fun way that it seems more like little surprises rather than deceit. I enjoyed every beautifully-created character, from the red-faced ex boyfriend to the cheating best friend to the psychologist father (remember the show Growing Pains?!) and the eccentric old man. They may have had bits of stereotype, but Arends put a fresh spin on them all. 

I’m a sucker for the beach and a love story, and this novel had both. Though Merry’s self-improvement and uncovering secrets drove the plot forward, the romance and the beach provided a steady undercurrent (no pun intended). 

Help Yourself is creative, fun, and emotional. From the gimmicky chapter titles letting me know whose point of view I was about to read from, to the delicious descriptions of the ocean, Arends made something new out of something familiar. I had a ball reading it! 

-calliope 

Buy HELP YOURSELF

Review: The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly

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41GV+5TmsBL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Sometimes you just know. You pick up a book, look at the cover, read the blurb on the back. And you decide it sounds pretty good so you give it a chance. And then you start reading it. Within the first few pages, you know you’ve found something good. These little gems don’t come along very often, but this one by Mary Louise Kelly was just that kind of book for me.

Caroline Cashion has a happy, successful life. She makes her living as a college professor. She can’t believe how lucky she is to actually get paid for doing what she loves. Although single, she’s very satisfied with her life. She also enjoys a close relationship with her family, eating dinner with her parents several times a week. The only dark spot in her cheery little world is a nagging pain in her wrist. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, surely, as she spends her days hunched over her computer typing away. But a semi-routine doctor’s visit turns up something both ominous and puzzling. Caroline has been walking around with a bullet lodged at the base of her skull. Ominous because, well, it’s a bullet at the base of her skull. And puzzling because, well, she’s certain that she’s never been shot. As she seeks to find out the truth, she uncovers family secrets that have been buried for several decades. And she garners the attention of those who would rather those secrets not come to light.

This book was an incredible read for me. The plot is original and intriguing, and I couldn’t put it down. The author weaves a story full of twists and turns leaving the reader desperate to find out what’s going to happen next. The only thing that kept this from being a five star book for me was a twist towards the end that stretched the limits of character credibility for me. Still, an excellent story!

~Thalia

Buy It Now:The Bullet

Review: Thou Art With Me by Debbie Viguie

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I’ve been reading and enjoying The Psalm 23 Mysteries since Book 1. Number 11 – Thou Art With Me – might be the best one yet. 

As with the other books in the series, church secretary Cindy  and rabbi Jeremiah pair up to solve a murder. In prior books they developed a friendship and then something deeper. This installment is set around Valentine’s Day, so it’s apt that their relationship evolves even more. 

The murder is a serious one, and there’s real danger to Cindy and Jeremiah. I loved how Cindy got to have the upper hand in this investigation. Her poker skills were amazing, and had I not already loved her she would’ve become my favorite character based on that poker game scene alone.

Debbie Viguie is one of the few authors I’ve read who has a talent for writing a high-quality novel quickly. The dialogue, character depth and authenticity, consistency, and writing technique are TOP NOTCH. Viguie moves the plot along very quickly without sacrificing detail. With this book, and every Psalm 23 Mystery, I am on an amusement park ride that’s fast, fun, and life-changing. I remain impressed, and can’t wait for Book 12. 

-calliope

As of this writing, you can buy books 1-11 on Amazon. If you’d like to order Book 12 or pre-order subsequent books, you may go to Debbie Viguie’s blog and web site.

Buy THE PSALM 23 MYSTERIES