Quick review and giveaway: When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton

Can I just say that I fell in love with the cover before I even read the book? I had no idea what the book was even about when I started reading. I was pleasantly surprised.

Beatriz Perez and her family were forced to leave their country in order to survive. But Beatriz wants nothing more than to bring down Castro and go back home. So she joins the CIA to infiltrate Castro’s inner circle to find a way. She never thought she’d find romance along the way. But she must choose between her heart and her home.

My heart was practically in my stomach the entire time. Many of her decisions could’ve gotten her or her family killed. I was stressing. And I do believe at a point or two, I cried. Not just from emotions, but from the stress as well. She was willing to risk her life and love for her country. I never read Next Year in Havana, so these characters were new to me, but in no way did I enjoy the book any less.

I have quite a few friends who will be receiving this book as a gift this year. Books rich in history like this are some of my favorites. I am definitely bumping up Havana in my TBR and I look forward to reading whatever Chanel brings to us.

~Melpomene

Buy When We Left Cuba https://amzn.to/2D14bGj

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway HERE

Review: A Song for the Stars by Ilima Todd

“But she is in the stars I try to read. She’s in the wind of our sails and in the water that surrounds us. I’ve discovered the problem with learning to observe everything in nature—it means I am aware of her, always, because she is in all of it.”

There’s something about a story that says “Inspired by a true story” that makes my heart clench. While I was reading A Song for the Stars I could feel it happening quite often. Imagine living in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779. Your world is small. You only know what’s on your island. When new people come bringing their traditions and unfamiliar wares, your world gets even smaller.

Maile and John meet under very heartbreaking circumstances. She is told to train him in their ways, so he can navigate and find his way home. But the more time they spend together learning and sharing, the more time their hearts soften to each other.

I loved watching them interact. She was so angry and devastated in the beginning, my heart broke for her. She starts out leery of him but, then John’s openness and eagerness to learn about her makes her question what she originally thought. Soon she realizes that her heart may find healing after all.

This story was beautifully written I could see and feel the world around me. And knowing that these are the author’s ancestors, makes this story all the more real.

Melpomene

Buy A Song for the Stars https://amzn.to/2UutgTK

Do you need a Savior?


Waiting for this has been MURHDER…

I am so ready for The Savior! Are you? I am currently on my 7th reread of the Black Dagger Brotherhood in preparation for The Savior. In fact, I reread these every year since I discovered them. There’s something very addicting about these books. So Tuesday can’t come soon enough! Preorder so you can start it right away. https://amzn.to/2THtUc2

While I wait for my book to arrive, I’ll be enjoying the latest edition of The Caldwell Courier Journal that will show up in my email. Have you subscribed yet? If not, click HERE to be added. Meanwhile, enjoy this preview while you wait.

Who better to ask for honest, snarky relationship advice than Vishous?
Ask At Your Own Risk
.

Dear Vishous, Agony Aunt Column
(with help from Mary)

Dear Vishous,

First of all, thank you for doing this. I need another perspective. I am a 27 year old woman, about fifteen months out of a five year relationship. I started dating a guy about two months ago. I’ll call him “Evan.” We met on Match.com. We both workout. We like a good time out at the clubs and the bars. We’re both Sox fans. He’s funny and he’s been good about keeping in touch when he travels frequently for work.

My problem is this. He told me he was twenty-eight. A week or so ago, when we were playing pool at our local, he told me to snag his wallet and pay for the next round at the bar. While I was getting money out, I saw his driver’s license. It said he’s thirty-six and the address listed was in a different area of the city than he told me he lives in. I got the drinks and put his wallet back in his pocket, and tried not to think about it.

But I can’t shake the idea he lied, and it’s causing me to obsess about things that are probably no big deal. Like, he only comes to stay at my place. I’ve never been to his apartment, and when I asked about this, he said he has two roommates who get on his nerves and he prefers the break he gets when he sleeps at my apartment. And I’ve introduced him to my friends, but he’s never offered to do the same. At first, I was psyched because my ex never wanted to hang with my people. But now? I guess I’m uneasy and looking for shadows everywhere.

I don’t care how old he is, and I know that some times folks on Match fudge their age to make them more attractive. And maybe it’s just an old license. I don’t want to ruin a good thing by looking like I’m second guessing him about stuff that only appears iffy and for which there is a reasonable explanation.

Please advise,

On The Fence In Beantown

#################

Vishous: Here’s what you need to do. Go to your local Stahp ‘n Shahp and get some Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ. Then get a good knife. After you slice his b*lls off, marinate them and then pan fry ‘em. Serve them to him hot and spicy and-

Mary: Okaaaaaaay. Let’s just all take a deep breath here.

V: I know, because the BBQ sauce smells great, right?

Mary: Ah, no. It’s because we should not settle this type of conflict through bodily harm.

V: Whatever, that lying sack of sh*t with the fake Match profile doesn’t deserve a set of nuts. S’all I’m sayin’.

Mary: I think we’ve heard your point of view loud and clear. And now, I’d like to offer a more nuanced opinion. On The Fence, it’s clear that there are some reasons to be concerned about this guy. One of the things that I tell people in my practice is to always trust your instincts. As much as you want to believe the best-

V: Fine. No BBQ sauce, then. Just slice, dice and toss ‘em in the pan. He doesn’t deserve Sweet Baby Ray’s.

Mary: …………….

V: What. Oh, come on, don’t look at me like that.

Mary: I’ve never actually said this before to someone, but why don’t you light up a cigarette and take a few deep drags.

V: I thought you’d never ask.

Mary: Anyway, On The Fence, my suggestion is that you have a frank, face-to-face conversation with “Evan.” Share your concerns calmly and succinctly. See what his answers are. Based on how he responds, you should be able to tell a lot. Is he listening to you and taking you seriously? Is he offering to have you stay over at his place? Or is he defensive and turning everything back on you-

V: And his Red Sox card is revoked. He has to root for the Yankees now.

Mary: -in a way that makes you uncomfortable? At the end of the day, you deserve to be in a relationship with someone who’s as honest as you are and treats you the way you’re treating them.

V: I have to agree with Mary on this one. Even though you’re a human, being with a lying sack of sh*t is whack.

Mary: Remember, your physical safety comes first, and fast on its heels is your emotional health. Please do not sacrifice your happiness just because you are hoping that “Evan” is the one-

V: I think you’re going to find out he’s got a wife and kids and he’s playing you. Which brings us back to my solution to the problem-

Mary: -and let us know how it goes, please. Best of luck!

V: F**k him! Go get a real man- and that skillet.

~Melpomene

Review: Healing Hearts by Sarah M. Eden

What a wild and intense story! I mean seriously. This poor girl jumps off a stagecoach and is immediately swept up and taken to her wedding, but she had no idea! She thought she was coming to Savage Wells to be a nurse, not a wife. Talk about miscommunication.

Gideon is plain tuckered out. He’s the only doctor for Savage Wells and all the towns around it. He has no one to help him so that’s why he requested a mail ordered bride, who is also a nurse. But somehow wires were crossed and only the nurse was delivered.

Miriam is hiding a secret. One that I never even thought of! But it’s not a surprise how people treated others back in those days. I loved her. She was so strong, even in the face of everything she’s had to endure. So when she’s allowed to stay on as a nurse instead of a wife, she thinks things are starting to look up. But when her secret is discovered, she must face her greatest fear head on. But luckily she’s not alone anymore.

As I’ve said numerous times before, I love these Proper Romances. They’re super sweet and innocent and they make the story the most important part, not the romance. That being said, I adored watching these two dance around each other. Shyness turned to jokes, which turned to soft touches and then BAM. A perfect sweet romance. On a side note, I am hoping for a certain US Marshal to get his own story. There just HAS to be a perfect girl for him!

~Melpomene

Buy Healing Hearts https://amzn.to/2sAUl8b

Review: What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon

The wind and water know all the earth’s secrets. They’ve seen and heard all that has ever been said or done. And if you listen, they will tell you all the stories and sing every song.

From the moment I read the prologue I knew this story was going to hit me harder than any other book I’ve read lately. And I was so right. In fact, I’m pretty sure this story was written just for me. There are small details that connect me and I can’t even explain what that feels like. I know it sounds silly, but it’s true.

Without giving away spoilers I will just say this, at 10% I started to cry and I didn’t know why. I was noticing things that had me breathless and speechless. Even as I’m typing now, there are tears in my eyes. The talk of the past and how these people are no longer with us always makes my heart clinch. Anne discovers things that she never knew, but yet, she always knew.

This story is rich in history and romance and I was swept away. What the Wind Knows had an Outlander feel to it, due to the time traveling, but it was so much more than that. This book was so rich in history, I felt like I was there. The people were real, as were their struggles. My heart broke when theirs did.

The romance between Anne and Thomas made me swoon and cry. I’m not even kidding. When I say I was crying, I mean I was CRYING. I woke up one morning at 4:30 to finish it. And by the time I was done, my pillow was soaked and my eyes were red and puffy. I was breathless and overwhelmed by every word I was reading. I may never recover.

“My love is so big and full and brimming that I can’t breathe around it. It’s terrifying to love so much, knowing how fragile our existence really is. You’re going to have to hold on to me, or I’ll burst…or maybe I’ll just float away. Up into the sky, out into the louch.”

~Melpomene

Buy What the Wind Knows https://amzn.to/2SXtmQ4

Review: Free by Kristen Ashley


It’s done. It’s over. There’s no more Chaos books. I don’t know how I feel about that. Heck, yeah I do. I feel sad. I love these characters.

We’ve watched Rush grow up these past years and it’s been great. After watching his dad finally find the perfect woman, I knew he was destined to be the same. While the Chaos was attempting to finally move on from the evil that seems to have hounded them from the beginning, he was finding himself falling in love.

He learned a lot from his dad.
One of those things was, you find a redhead who did it for you, even if it was early in the relationship, if you knew in your gut that it was right, you didn’t let go.
So yeah.
He’d made his decision.
He was keeping her.

I loved Rebel. Even her name shows how awesome she is! I loved the fact that she would do anything to solve the murder of her dearest friend, even if it was stupid. And believe me, it was. But, Rush knew how to help her and she knew how to let him. That’s how strong she was. She knew when to back down and let her man take care of her. That’s what I love about KA heroines.

“I’m keeping you,” he said against my lips.
He was keeping me.
I was going to belong to somebody.
And that someone was Rush Allen.

Chaos is one of my most favorite KA series. These books are about family, and not just the blood kind. The brothers will do whatever it takes to take care of their women and protect each other’s backs. They support and encourage each other. I wish more families were this way. This final battle has been years in the making. We see past allies and enemies come together to for a strong front line. I’ll admit, every time a known and beloved character from another series popped up, I got a little dreamy. KA has a way of intertwining her series and story lines to make each book more enjoyable than the last. It’s rather bittersweet to come to the end. Tack is my favorite KA hero so I’m quite sad that this will be the end of an era. But I’m so happy they’re free now…

~Melpomene

Release date: January 29, 2019

Buy Free https://amzn.to/2Rlee1i

Start from the beginning:
Own the Wind https://amzn.to/2CFCQtk
Fire Inside https://amzn.to/2QZF3J1
Ride Steady https://amzn.to/2RqtOsc
Walk Through Fire https://amzn.to/2AkxCSk
Rough Ride (4.5) https://amzn.to/2VhXIhF
Wild like the Wind https://amzn.to/2Vkm1f0

Review: The Memory of You by Jamie Beck

Great start to a new series! Steffi is offered a job renovating a room in her ex boyfriend’s mom’s house… and that about says it all, doesn’t it?! Seriously loved the good relationship between Ryan’s mom and Steffi – and the slow refreshment of a friendship between Ryan and Steffi. Good, solid story with likable characters, great dialogue, and cool references to the state I call home. I’m looking for book 2 as soon as this review is done being written!

-calliope

Buy THE MEMORY OF YOU

Review: Not Quite Over You by Susan Mallery

Silver dances to the beat of her own drum, for sure. In true Happily Inc fashion, she’s fiercely independent, strong, and knows her limitations. When she decides to expand her business, she just doesn’t realize that an old flame is going to show up with money burning a hole in his pocket and unrequited love burning a hole in his heart.

Cute story, loved the business focus and Silver’s approach to the learning curve. Susan Mallery continues to impress me with fresh characters and plots, cameos consistent with prior books, and the ever popular but hard-to-find-in-real-life “sensitive” alpha male.

-calliope

Buy NOT QUITE OVER YOU

Review: The Songbird by Marcia Willett

Love how this new-to-me author develops so many characters in such a clear and natural way so as not to confuse this reader who usually likes easy escape reading. The characters are distinct, but not caricatures or stereotypes; they’re of every generation – and even the olders and youngers are relatable.

Especially memorable are William, who after years of doing what his wife wants, finally grows a pair and does the Right Thing; Mattie, who is loving and innocent and fun and young – and so so sincere; and Tim, who moves to the cottage with a heavy burden, and leaves the cottage with someone to share it with.

Though my copy was an ARC, I was a little taken aback by the formatting – especially all of the proper nouns that weren’t capitalized, and the majority of sentences that started with lowercase letters. Just threw off the flow for me and made the act of reading a little bit of a chore.

Besides that, I really enjoyed this cast of 10 or so characters, living their lives, figuring out their problems, getting to know each other and themselves. There’s not a whole lot of action, but Willett does write a story filled with poetry, deep thoughts, and emotion.

-calliope

Buy THE SONGBIRD

Review: Prisoner of Night by J.R.Ward


Whenever we get a book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood world, I am very excited. Even if these characters aren’t known to us, there’s more happening in the BDB world than with just the Brothers. Prisoner of Night will give us a tiny smidgen of the BDB world as we wait for The Savior to come out in April.

Druan has been imprisoned for years and biding his time to escape. But he has no idea his plans are about to take a crazy turn. When Ahmare walks into his prison something flairs up inside him and gives him the shock of his lifetime. There’s something about this female that has him questioning everything.

Ahmare’s brother has been captured and in order to free him she must use the “weapon” she’s provided with to retrieve something of value to his captor. What she wasn’t planning on was this weapon being a huge scary male with decades of pent up anger and hurt.

“I don’t want it to be like I never existed.”

These two characters go on a journey to places they never imagined, into a world they wish never existed. No matter what happened to Duran, these past decades, he was still a male who’s been raised to protect females, so he will do what it takes to get the job done and to find his revenge. What he doesn’t plan on is falling for this female almost instantly. But in the BDB world, that’s the way things happen. When they know, they KNOW.

I liked Ahmare. She kept a cool head all the while making choices that would affect her forever, all for the sake of her brother. I loved watching her discover that no matter what happened in the past, she is finally able to move forward, if she has the right male beside her.

“Funny, how a male could tell you, you’re beautiful without a word”

Prisoner of Night is a shorter story filled with the darkness and excitement we’ve come to know from the BDB books. This is a good way to wet your feet a little in this world without having to diving head first into this epic series. But really, why wouldn’t you wanna do that? The Black Dagger Brotherhood are one of my most favorite series. I wish everyone would dive into these books. I hope this series never ends.

~Melpomene

Buy Prisoner of Night https://amzn.to/2LQtaz6

Excerpt:

Twenty-One Years, Three Months, Six Days Ago . .

“Where is it! Goddamn you, where’s it at!”

Duran spit blood out of his mouth and spoke over the ringing in his ears. “I’ll never tell you—”

Chalen the Conqueror swung his open palm again, nailing Duran’s lacerated face like a bat hitting a fastball. But it didn’t hurt as much as the other shit they’d been doing to him in this castle’s great room. They’d already pulled out his fingernails, broken all of his toes, and whipped his back until strips of his own flesh flapped against his ribs. At the moment, he didn’t have the strength to keep himself on his feet, but no worries there—two guards, with grips locked under his pits, were holding him up off the floor.

As his head flopped back into its lolling hang, he shook it to get the sweat and blood out of his eyes. In the hissing, kicking light of the hearth, the male in front of him was stocky of build and ugly of feature, an oak stump with a bulldog’s muzzle and a hungry bear’s bad fucking attitude.

“You are going to tell me the location.” Chalen took Duran by the throat with one of his meat hands. “And you’re going to do it now.”

“Sorry, not . . . a big talker—”

The conqueror grabbed onto the lower half of Duran’s face, squeezing so hard his jaw split and the inside of his mouth was forced between the hard-and-sharp of his molars. More blood welled, spilled, fell on his bare chest.

“Why are you protecting the male who put you here?” Chalen’s opaque eyes searched Duran’s expression as if he were trying to extrapolate a map of Maryland in the features. “All you need to do is tell me where that facility is.”

Duran waited for that grip to release. When it did, he spit more blood out. “I’m not . . . protecting him.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t cheat me of what’s mine.” Duran smiled, aware he must look deranged. “You kill him . . . I don’t get to.”

Chalen crossed his strong-man arms over his barrel chest. He was dressed in weapons, whatever clothes he had on underneath the holsters of guns and knives largely hidden by metal. No daggers, though. He’d never been Black Dagger Brotherhood material and not just because he was a mutt according to his lineage: Even among black market thieves, there was a code of conduct.

Not for Chalen. He had no code. Not in the Old Country, and not during his last century here in the New World.

There was only one male who was worse.

“I will break you,” Chalen said in a low voice. “And I will enjoy it.”

Duran laughed in a wheeze. “You have no idea what I’ve already been through—”

Chalen swung that palm wide again, the crack so heavy Duran lost his vision, everything going checkerboard. And then there was a drop in blood pressure, his brain emptying of oxygen, floaty disassociation riding in, a foggy savior buffering the suffering.

The sound of chains moving and gears shifting brought him back to reality. A section of the sweaty stone wall rose by inches, the great weight ascending like a gate, revealing a corridor . . .

Revealing a male who was naked but for a black hood that covered his head.

“I will make you pray for death,” Chalen said. “And when you give me what I need, you will think back to this moment. When you could have saved yourself from so much.”

Duran exhaled in a gurgle. His body was on fire, the pain burning through his veins, turning him into a semi-living, kind-of-breathing, sort-of-conscious incubator for agony.

But fuck Chalen.

“Do what you will,” he mumbled. “I’m not going to give you a goddamn thing.”

“I will make you wish you were never born.”

As the hooded male came forward, Duran was dragged over and slammed face-first down onto a table, his torso bent parallel to the floor. Turning his face to the side, he smelled the spoiled meat and rancid fat embedded in the fibers of the planks.

“Already there, asshole.”