It’s time for Ebook Review Central to take a look at the Dreamspinner Press titles from October 2011.
But before we move to the featured titles, let’s take a moment to look back at September. The September list has been updated to reflect additional reviews since the last time we looked at Dreamspinner, and there are a couple of titles that need to be mentioned. Legal Artistry by Andrew Grey, one of last month’s featured titles, received even more praise this month, probably because the sequel, Artistic Appeal, was published in October. Chasing Seth, another ERC featured title, also received even more reviews. It was a late entry in September (Sept. 30), so people may have been still reading it mid-month.
Now on to the October titles! Dreamspinner published 25 titles again this month. There were a lot of titles from continuing series this month, and it was clear from the reviews that reviewers were definitely waiting for those series books, because they generated most, but not all, of the reviewing buzz this month.
The Dreamspinner featured titles are:
Caregiver by Rick R. Reed was the only non-series title to generate a significant number of new reviews this month. From the book blurbs in the reviews, it sounds like a “three-hankie special”, but in a really good way. Every reviewer describes it as a fantastic book that they read with a lump in their throats. This novel is about the AIDS epidemic, and it is set in 1991, at a time when AZT was the only drug available and infection was still considered a death sentence. The reviewers all mention that the way the novel is written is unconventional, and that the author lets the plot drive the story, but that the characters make this a story well worth reading.
Divide & Conquer by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban is the fourth book in their Cut & Run series. Not only did it run away with the reviews, but the most of the reviewers were looking for ratings higher than they normally use in order to rate it. Everyone who follows this series, and it seemed like that was everyone, had fantastic things to say. The Cut & Run series is a mystery/suspense series about two FBI agents, Ty Grady and Zane Garrett, who aren’t even sure they can work together at first. Falling for each other isn’t even on the radar, at least at the beginning. But by the point of this fourth book these two men have definitely managed to figure out a working partnership–the personal partnership is still a work in progress. And it’s that work in progress that keeps readers coming back for more, along with the adrenaline of the suspense plot in each new book. (For the release of Divide & Conquer, Dreamspinner made all four titles in this series available to reviewers on NetGalley. A couple of the reviewers listed mentioned that they read the entire series in one gulp because of this. The strategy definitely paid off!)
Talker’s Graduation by Amy Lane is the final featured title. Based on the reviews, this one comes with a caveat. On the one hand, readers clearly loved this book. On the other hand, it apparently only makes sense if you’ve read the other two first. This novella is the “payoff” story to the two previous books in the series, Talker and Talker’s Redemption. It’s very clear that Tate Walker and Brian Cooper, the two characters in this story, have had an extremely difficult life. Graduation is when they finally get their happy ending. They just have to earn it first.
And that wraps up the Dreamspinner titles for this month! Please come back next week when Ebook Review Central will be looking at the Samhain Publishing titles for October 2011.
