Review: Uncharted by Anna Hackett

Posted on June 10, 2016June 8, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

Uncharted (Treasure Hunter Security #2) by Anna Hackett
Formats available: ebook
Series: Treasure Hunter Security #2
Pages: 148
on June 5th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

One former Navy SEAL. One adventurous photographer. One lost jungle temple.
Former Navy SEAL Callum Ward has one motto—live life to the fullest. He saw the worst of war and lost good friends, but now he works for Treasure Hunter Security. When he’s not providing security for archeological digs and invaluable museum exhibits, or off on daring treasure hunts, he’s rock climbing, racing, or skiing. Nothing—and no one—has ever tempted him to slow down…until on an expedition into the Cambodian jungle, he has to work with one opinionated, prickly photographer, Dani Navarro. But soon their straight-forward trek to find a lost temple turns deadly, and Cal and Dani find themselves under attack from a dangerous black-market antiquities ring prepared to kill.
Dani Navarro lives for her photography. For years, it’s been her escape from her family and their frivolous lifestyle, affairs, and dramas. With her camera in hand, she travels the world, capturing other people’s moments and avoiding messy entanglements. At first, she thinks Cal Ward is no different from all the other men she’s known, but as their expedition turns into a hazardous dash through uncharted jungle, she uncovers a tough, intelligent, and sexy protector. Together, they must outwit their pursuers and find not only a lost temple…but a priceless, powerful artifact.

My Review:

On the one hand, the fact that this second entry in Anna Hackett’s Treasure Hunter Security series shares its title with the fantastic video game series keeps driving me a bit batty. On that other hand, the heroes of Uncharted the video game, Nathan Drake and his eventual wife Elena (pictured at left), would fit right in with the gang at Treasure Hunter Security. Just like our heroes in this book, Nathan is a treasure hunter, and his wife Elena is a photographer. They met in the first game when Nathan Drake hacks through a jungle while Elena films him on his quest to find the grave of his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake.

In Uncharted the book, Callum Ward of Treasure Hunter Security is hired to guide an archaeological expedition into the jungles of Cambodia. The expedition is looking for a lost sacred temple, and photographer Daniela Navarro is along to document their find.

Based on the description of the temple, there shouldn’t be anything on this trip to interest the entirely mercenary, and completely deadly, interests of the Silk Road syndicate that interfered with Declan and Layne’s dig in Egypt (See Undiscovered for deets). But when Silk Road agents are spotted in the area, Callum is forced to call for backup, and to figure out exactly what it is that those keen archaeologists neglected to tell him.

One of the rocks and stones that they are hoping to find is actually a giant pearl. Something more than big and precious enough to bring Silk Road into the jungle. Or anywhere else.

It’s up to Callum to keep them all alive and out of Silk Road’s evil clutches until his cavalry comes over the very overgrown hill. And to keep Daniela safe – even though she pushes away his help at every turn – until she finally pulls him into her heart.

Escape Rating A-: It feels like the series is hitting its stride with this book. As much as I enjoyed Undiscovered, it also felt a bit like a contemporary re-working of Among Galactic Ruins and At Star’s End. I loved both of those books, but the third time wasn’t quite the charm.

The story in Uncharted, in spite of its similarity to the video game series, is different from its predecessors in Hackett’s previous series. More than anything, it reminds me of Romancing the Stone, or the Indiana Jones movies. The hero may save the day, but the heroine more than holds her own.

I am also incredibly happy to say that in spite of the way things looked in Undiscovered, we don’t appear to be heading for a repeat of Shaw from the Hell Squad series, and his romance with squadmate Claudia. In Treasure Hunter Security, it looks very much like Logan’s romance is not going to be with his partner Morgan, because his book is next and she isn’t the heroine. Hopefully that also means that she will get a story of her own.

But about Dani and Callum – they are a very interesting couple. As in most romances, there has to be a stumbling block or two on the road to happily ever after. In this particular case, both parties are carrying their stumbling blocks right along with them, as some very heavy baggage. Neither of them is interested in a relationship, which certainly hasn’t stopped Callum from a whole lot of one- or two-night stands. But they come at their commitment-phobia from different angles.

Callum lost his best friend while in the SEALs. Ever since Marty died, Callum has been trying to live for both of them. But he’s using his high-adrenaline adventures to outrun his own fear of caring and possibly losing again. It’s easy to see where Callum is coming from, and that he has to eventually stop and feel what he really feels.

Dani’s case is less clear cut. There are lots of hints dropped, but the picture never comes into complete focus, pun completely intended. Her family seems to be wealthy, and she sees them all as a bunch of fake users. There was no love there, and no acceptance for Dani’s need to be something other than a partygirl famous for being famous. And I’m interpreting a bit of this because she isn’t quite clear. But the result is that Dani has seen too many fake relationships and false protestations of love to believe that the real thing exists – at least for her.

Being thrown into life-threatening danger together has both Dani and Callum re-thinking all their previous protestations that they either aren’t interested in or aren’t capable of falling in love. Because they have.

And I really, really want to see sister Darcy’s eventual romance with the uptight FBI agent that drives her so crazy. I think that one, when it finally comes, is going to be really awesome.

Review: Defender by Diana Palmer + Giveaway

Posted on June 9, 2016June 8, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Defender by Diana Palmer
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Series: ,
Pages: 304
Published by HQN Books on June 28th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The man who shattered her trust is back to protect her… New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer delivers a breathtaking story of second-chance love.
When Paul Fiore disappeared from Isabel Grayling's life, he told himself it was for all the right reasons. She was young and innocent, and he was her millionaire father's lowly employee. Three years on, Paul is the FBI agent assigned to Isabel's case. Too late, he realizes what life in her Texas mansion was really like back then—and how much damage he did when he left.
Once love-struck and sheltered, Isabel has become an assistant district attorney committed to serving the law, no matter how risky it gets. But right now, the man she can't forgive is the one thing standing between her and a deadly stalker. She knows Paul won't hesitate to protect her life with his own. But if she can't trust herself to resist him, how can she trust him not to break her heart all over again?

My Review:

If you look on Goodreads, Defender is listed as a “read alike” for yesterday’s book, How Secrets Die. Having read both of them, while I liked them both, I have to say that they are absolutely nothing like each other.

I picked up Defender because Diana Palmer is one of those romance writers that I’ve heard about forever. And although I read her brief foray into science fiction romance, The Morcai Battalion (written as Susan Kyle) I had never read any of the western romance that she is much better known for.

And I haven’t yet. Defender does not have any of the feel that I have come to expect from contemporary Western romances. Instead, it had more of a melodrama feel to it. I felt like I was reading a soap opera, complete with the over-the-top plots, heroes, villains and ingenues that seem emblematic of the genre.

So even though Defender is listed as the latest book in Palmer’s Long, Tall Texans series on her website, and even though it is set in rural Texas not far from San Antonio, it doesn’t feel like a western at all. There are no cowboys here, and there’s no ranch anywhere in sight. There is a bit of thoroughbred breeding, but that could easily have been transferred to the Kentucky Bluegrass without many changes.

Except that it was pretty clear that the areas that surround the Grayling estate in Defender are part of a much longer series. There were a lot of side characters whose history was hinted at, and who had important parts to play in Defender, but the way they were introduced led this reader to conclude that the major part of these characters’ history was elsewhere, in earlier books in the series.

It bothered me a bit, but not enough to keep me from liking Defender.

The story in Defender is closer to romantic suspense than anything else, crossed with the romantic trope of innocent heroine falls for experienced, heroic, slightly-older man who protects her.

Isabel and Meredith Grayling are the protected daughters of investment tycoon Darwin Grayling, or so it appears to their father’s Head of Security Paul Fiore. But looks are deceiving, and there is a whole lot of evil hidden under the Grayling roof.

As Isabel is about to graduate college, and Merrie is graduating high school, we get to see exactly how dangerous and restrictive that “fatherly protection” really is. But even though Fiore can tell that both girls are afraid of their father, he never lets himself think about what that fear really means. But he leaves the Grayling house after he realizes that the love Isabel feels for him is not nearly as innocent as he wanted to believe, and that his response is going to get him fired, or possibly killed.

He returns three years later as part of an FBI investigation into Grayling’s business dealings, only to discover the damage that he did when he left, and the true circumstances in which he abandoned Isabel and Merrie.

Even as Isabel forgives him, he can’t manage to forgive himself. Not for the harm he caused, not for the harm he ignored, and not his responsibility for the tragedy that brought him to Texas in the first place.

Escape Rating B: Upon finishing Defender, I discovered that it reminded me a bit of J.R. Ward’s The Bourbon Kings, even though I hated The Bourbon Kings but liked Defender. Some of the similarity is in the atmosphere – both stories mostly take place on very, very rich people’s private property, and the evil behavior of the father figure in both stories is a bit over the top. However, for this reader it did not feel like BK had any truly redeemable characters, where in Defender there are quite a few people doing the best they can in an extremely bad situation, and one wants to root for them to succeed.

The Grayling household is a prison, a fact that Isabel and Merrie are reminded of entirely too often, and all too frequently with whippings and scars. Every person within their orbit has to be kept in the dark about their true situation, or Darwin Grayling will make them disappear – into an early grave. He’s done it before and is all too willing to do it again. The first third of the book is actually fairly rough going – the more one feels for the girls, and the reader certainly does, the more difficult it is to read about what they suffered.

Daddy Grayling is also batshit crazy, in so many ways that it seems like much too much. But he is also crazy rich and crazy powerful, to the point where he can buy and sell anyone or anything. At the end, when we discover what was driving his insanity, half of it is no surprise, but the other half was way out of left field and again, over the top. Reason number 1 was explanation enough without reason number 2.

And the involvement of “the Mob”, even tangentially, on both sides of this equation adds to that feeling of “over-the-top”-ness. There was plenty of evil to go around without dragging gangsters or their 21st century equivalents into this mess.

There’s something about Isabel and Merrie’s extreme naivete that hearkens back to romances of yesteryear. They are both educated and intelligent, and have been deliberately kept in the dark about the ways of the world. In many ways, their innocence and their indoctrination into staying innocent would put them right at home in a much earlier era. They know that what their father has done to them is wrong, but they don’t have a way of striking back until the Feds come to town to arrest their dear old Dad for money laundering and racketeering. Dad turns out to have been a much bigger all-purpose louse than anyone expected.

It is good for their development that Isabel, now a newly minted Assistant District Attorney, is able to contribute to the investigation. She needs to conquer the villain to have a chance at moving on with her life. That she actually gets the man of her dreams turns out to be icing on the cake – but very tasty frosting indeed.

Think of Defender as a guilty pleasure kind of book. Everything is just a bit too much, but lots of fun to wallow in – make that read.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Diana and Harlequin are giving away a $25 Gift Card to one lucky entrant:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

Review: How Secrets Die by Marta Perry + Excerpt + Giveaway

Posted on June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

How Secrets Die by Marta Perry
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: House of Secrets #3
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on June 28th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

As Laurel Ridge embraces a stranger hungry for answers, a sinister truth is awakened.
A hard-hitting reporter, Kate Beaumont unearths the deepest lies and brings harsh truths to light, but the story that lures her to the gentle town of Laurel Ridge, Pennsylvania, is closer to her heart than anyone knows. The details of her half brother's sudden death have never made sense. She owes him justice, yet the one man who can help her is the stubborn sheriff she can't stand.
Protecting his town is Mac Whiting's top priority. Everything else, including pacifying a beautiful crusader on a mission best left resting in peace, is secondary. But as Kate's search embeds her in his world and attracts a skilled criminal, she needs Mac's protection. Drawn together by deadly secrets, they must find a way to trust each other before a killer silences them both.

My Review:

I just plain liked this book. I think it may have been a case of the right book at the right time, but I definitely found myself slipping into the book, and the world of Laurel Ridge, very easily. And I say this in spite of this book being the author’s third trip to Laurel Ridge, after Where Secrets Sleep and When Secrets Strike, which I have not read and did not miss having read for the purpose of getting into How Secrets Die.

But I enjoyed this book so much that I plan to go back and read the first two.

How Secrets Die is a lovely small-town romantic suspense story. Reporter Kate Beaumont comes to Laurel Ridge to investigate the death of her brother the previous year. The local cops dismissed the case as an accidental death – a former drug addict who slipped off the wagon to an untimely end.

But Kate can’t let it go. Her brother Jason had had some trouble, but he had been clean and sober for years, and was doing well in college and seemed to be doing well at his internship at a local financial firm. Kate is certain that something must have gone seriously wrong to drive Jason back to his old, bad habits.

After endless viewings of Jason’s somewhat cryptic video journal, Kate just doesn’t see what drove him off the rails and to his death. So she comes to Laurel Ridge to search for herself, and runs right into the local police chief, Mac Whiting.

Kate blames Mac for the quick dismissal of her brother’s case. Mac is, at first, worried that Kate is just there to stir up trouble. But when that trouble strikes, Mac finds that he is just plain worried about Kate. And guilty that he didn’t look deeper into the case at the time. Because when the attacks on Kate escalate, it becomes clear that there must be something he overlooked.

If the case were as open and shut as it initially appeared to be, no one would feel threatened by Kate’s presence in town. But someone obviously is. And they’ll stop at nothing to make sure that whatever secret Jason uncovered, it stays dead with him. And if necessary, with Kate.

Escape Rating B: As I said at the top, I just plain liked this book. I was in the mood for a relatively familiar type of story, one with likable characters and a few interesting twists, and How Secrets Die fit the bill.

And although the romance is quite lovely, this is a surprisingly clean book. The author does a good job of portraying the heat between Kate and Mac while giving them plenty of logical reason for not indulging in that spark at first, second or even subsequent involvement. This is a story where postponing the romantic payoff until the very end made sense. Also you might see this book billed as “Inspirational”. After reading it, I can say that it does not fall into that genre. How Secrets Die falls squarely into romantic suspense.

Kate and Mac certainly have one thing in common – they are both dealing with a load of survivor’s guilt. Kate’s is pretty obvious from the outset – she feels guilty that she didn’t notice her brother’s cry for help. It isn’t until well into her investigation that she starts to realize that she didn’t respond because there wasn’t one. He never knew how much trouble he was in until it was far too late.

Mac’s heavy dose of guilt is both recent and long-term. As Kate shakes things up in Laurel Ridge, she often accuses him of being too protective of the local citizens to dive into things that need to be dove into. And she’s right. He dismissed Jason’s case much too easily, even though there were a whole bunch of loose ends that he never tied down. He knew too many people too well to question them the way he should have.

He also lives with an overwhelming need to protect his community, because he feels that he let so many people who depended on him down when he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The people that he couldn’t save haunt him.

Kate and Mac do not start from a position of trust. Kate doesn’t much like cops – her stepfather was one and was a rigid taskmaster who insisted that his many rules be followed to the letter. While there was no abuse, there was also no love or respect. Instead, Kate found herself raising her younger half-brother, and trying to protect his very quirky nature from his by-the-book father.

While we never hear if Jason was diagnosed with anything in particular, it sounds like he might have been somewhere on the Asperger spectrum.

So the story in this romantic suspense story is Kate moving to Laurel Ridge to find out what happened to her brother. Along the way she falls for the police chief, who is tied to the community, while Kate plans to leave when her quest is over. Along the way they trip over several secrets that the owners would rather remain buried, and who would be happy to bury Kate right along with them.

At the end, the perpetrator finally reveals themselves in an attempt to kill Kate and cover their tracks one more time. And once we discover who it is, we see that it was obvious all along, but hidden just as well from the reader as from the community.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Marta and Harlequin are giving away a $25 Gift Card to one lucky commenter on this tour:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

To read an evocative excerpt from How Secrets Die, check below the fold.

Continue reading “Review: How Secrets Die by Marta Perry + Excerpt + Giveaway” →

Review: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Posted on June 7, 2016June 6, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 336
Published by William Morrow on July 7th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The #1 New York Times bestselling author’s ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel featuring his “preferred text”—and including the special Neverwhere tale, How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.
Published in 1997, Neil Gaiman’s darkly hypnotic first novel, Neverwhere, heralded the arrival of this major talent and became a touchstone of urban fantasy. Over the years, a number of versions were produced both in the U.S. and the U.K. Now, this author’s preferred edition of his classic novel reconciles these versions and reinstates a number of scenes cut from the original published books.
Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he is plunged through the cracks of reality into a world of shadows and darkness—the Neverwhere. If he is ever to return to the London Above, Richard must join the battle to save this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it

My Review:

I’m not sure whether I first went to Neverwhere by reading the book or watching the TV miniseries. Needless to say, even though the TV series actually came first, the book is better. And I was thrilled to have the opportunity to reread it for this tour.

Neverwhere is one of those stories that stuck with me long after I read it. I’ve even written about it before. There’s something about Neverwhere, with its concept of London Below, that has always reminded me of Simon R. Green’s Nightside, which also creates an otherworldly version of London that exists alongside and underneath the great city.

But Neverwhere is a different kind of story. It doesn’t have to be set in London Below, although the setting does give its some of its resonance and charm as well as its flights of fancy. Who would have thought there would actually be an Earl at Earl’s Court? On the other hand, why isn’t there? And what if there was?

Neverwhere is the story of what happens to someone who takes the red pill, although in this case it’s not that our hero Richard Mayhew sees the painful truth of reality so much as that he sees that there is a deeper reality lying underneath our own. The humdrum world he comes from is just as real as London Below, but without that red pill, he can’t see it. And unlike takers of the blue pill in The Matrix, when Richard comes back, he still remembers everything. Only to discover that, as Mr. Spock once said, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.” At the end of his harrowing adventure, Richard Mayhew wants his safe, normal world back. Only to discover that he has changed too much to fit back into the life he once found so satisfying.

The story of Neverwhere is relatively straightforward in its plot, but complex in its setting. Richard Mayhew, a young and somewhat insecure securities analyst in London, rescues a young woman he finds bruised and bleeding on the streets of London.

By rescuing Door, he finds himself outside the life of the normal world, and an unwitting denizen of “London Below”. He is lost and confused and completely out of his depth. All that he knows is that if he is to get his own life back, he must find Door in the confusing maze of the world he never knew was under London, and travel with her, like the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tinman, until he reaches the wizard, in this case the Angel Islington, and he can finally go home.

Just like the journey through Oz, Richard and Door face trials and monsters, and also as in Dorothy’s journey, the angel, just like the wizard, is not what he appears to be. But in this case what they find is not a benign trickster – the angel is the greatest monster of them all. And nothing in the journey turns out to have been quite what it appeared to be.

After passing all his tests, Richard is able to receive what he thinks is the greatest wish of his heart. Only to discover that he has grown too much or too big to be contained in his old life.

Escape Rating A+: The story of Neverwhere was just as magical upon re-reading as it was the first time around. Or even the second, which I think was viewing the TV series. And even though the special effects are often laughable, and some of the horror is reduced by the necessity of filming things that are best left in the imagination, the TV show holds up too.

This time, I listened to parts of Neverwhere from an unabridged audiobook recorded by the author. And unlike many authors who read their own works, Gaiman does an excellent job voicing all the characters, to the point where I was still hearing his voice in my head a couple of weeks ago when I was reading The View from the Cheap Seats.

The story here is of a mythic journey, and there are lots of parallels to The Wizard of Oz, a fact which does get lampshaded in Neverwhere. While Richard is journeying to find his way home, he is also taking a trip through a long, dark night of the soul. And as a result, he becomes more than he was.

So many of the characters he meets seem more than a bit odd on first meeting. The Marquis de Carabas is a trickster. He always has his eye on the main chance, and does not suffer fools or incompetents within his orbit. He does not seem to ever warm up to Richard, who he always sees as the ultimate babe in the very deadly woods. But in the end he always keeps his word. And he always collects his debts.

The villains of this piece are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, and while they often sound incredibly campy, the more they appear in the story the easier it is to see them as creatures that would make the monsters under the bed and in the closet run for cover. (But their scariness works better in print than on the screen, where the reader is able to feel the creepiness rather than see the joke.)

Neverwhere is one of the ultimate urban fantasy wild rides. If you have ever dreamed that there is a beautiful, terrible, magical world existing just out of reach, take your own journey to London Below. And always remember to “mind the gap”.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

Review: The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson

Posted on June 6, 2016June 5, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 400
Published by Harper on March 8th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Blinded by a fatal illness, young Ukrainian doctor Zinaida Lintvaryova is living on her family’s rural estate in the summer of 1888. When a family from Moscow rents a cottage on the grounds, Zinaida develops a deep bond with one of their sons, a doctor and writer of modest but growing fame called Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Intelligent, curious, and increasingly introspective as her condition worsens, Zinaida keeps a diary chronicling this extraordinary friendship that comes to define the last years of her life.
In the winter of 2014, Katya Kendall’s London publishing house is floundering-as is her marriage. Katya is convinced that salvation lies in publishing Zinaida’s diary, and she approaches translator Ana Harding about the job. As Ana reads the diary, she is captivated by the voice of the dying young doctor. And hidden within Zinaida’s words, Ana discovers tantalizing clues suggesting that Chekhov—who was known to have composed only plays and short stories—actually wrote a novel during his summers with Zinaida that was subsequently lost. Ana is determined to find Chekhov’s “lost” manuscript, but in her search she discovers it is but one of several mysteries involving Zinaida’s diary.
Inspired by fragments of historical truth, The Summer Guest is a transportive, masterfully written novel about an unusual, fascinating friendship that transcends the limits of its time and place. It’s also a contemporary story about two compelling, women, both of whom find solace in Zinaida and Chekhov as they contemplate all that’s missing in their own lives.

My Review:

“She had dared to believe in the truth of the imagination.” But the question that echoes after the book is done is whose imagination? And even more tellingly, whose truth?

This is a story of three women, spread across two eras and three countries, and the commonality they find, or are found to have, over their love of the work of Anton Chekhov.

In 1888, Chekhov and his family spend that summer, and the following summer as summer guests of the Lintvaryov family in Luka, in what is now Ukraine. At that point in his life, he was known but not yet famous, and still making his reputation. But his writings, rather than his medical practice, were the economic support of his family. His parents, his sisters and his brothers. Their support was both a joy and somewhat of a distracting burden.

They took him, or he took them, to Luka, so that he could write and relax. Or the other way around.

He became friends with the oldest daughter of the Lintvaryov house, a doctor like himself, But Zinaida Mikhailovna was no longer practicing medicine. She had been struck down by illness, most likely a brain tumor. In 1888 she was already blind, and her world was closing in.

To keep the internal darkness at bay, Zinaida kept a diary, by writing in a special box designed to keep her lines apart and legible. In 2014, Katya Kendall sends Zinaida’s diary, in the original Russian, to translator Ana Harding.

Katya’s small publishing company, a joint effort between herself and her somewhat distant husband Peter, is failing. Their business of publishing translations of Russian and Eastern European works has never recovered from the recession of 2008, especially as it was followed by so much political unrest in the countries that were their biggest customers.

Katya and Peter hope that the publication of Zinaida’s diary, illuminating as it does a documented but little known piece of Chekhov’s life, will allow them to recover their fortunes. Ana, captivated with the voice of the woman in the diary she has received, hopes that the publication of her translation will make her reputation, and in a way, justify the choices she has made in her life.

But Zinaida takes her under her spell, bringing those long-lost summers to life. In Zinaida’s words, Ana finds truths that captivate her to the point of visiting Luka herself, now in a brief calm between wars, in order to find the truth of the most surprising revelation of the diary – that Chekhov, the master of the play and the short story, left behind one novel, entrusted to the care of his dying friend.

Or did he?

Escape Rating B: The Summer Guest is a story of fiction as the lie that tells the truth. Ana and Katya both find themselves enraptured by Zinaida’s writing across the years, although in much different ways and for completely different reasons.

They both find the long-ago diarist a kindred spirit – a woman who still reached out to the world, even as her own was closing in. As both Katya’s and Ana’s lives seem to be, although not in the same way.

In the end, it is Zinaida’s voice that shines most clearly in the story, in spite of the way that it comes to be. And it is Ana’s search for meaning and purpose that provides the resolution at the end. Even though the diary turned out to be a lie, it still told Ana a truth that she needed to see.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-5-16

Posted on June 5, 2016June 2, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

On Tuesday, Galen had to check to see if our webhost died under the strain. Or out of shock. I always tweet my reviews to the publisher, and also to the author unless the grade is bad. So I copied Neil Gaiman on the tweet of my review of The View from the Cheap Seats. I figured it would just languish in the thousands of tweets he must receive on the average day. Instead, he retweeted. And I started squeeing all over the house. It turned into one of the best days this blog has ever had when I wasn’t giving stuff away. Thank you.

This was, however, yet another week when parts of the schedule fell to bits. Unfortunately, I had to bow out of a tour. I started the book and absolutely couldn’t make myself continue. It’s not that the book was badly written. Unfortunately it was well written and extremely scary, creepy, uncomfortable for this reader. Awful stuff kept happening to the protagonist, and as the book was written from the first person point of view, the readers were in her head as it all happened. I just couldn’t continue, but I’m still feeling bad about it.

The book I was originally intending to review on Friday was interesting, but after reading it I just couldn’t figure out how to tackle it in a review. So I went for the better part of valor and posted one of Amy’s lovely guest reviews instead. I just hope she has a review of the final book in that trilogy on tap. She’s leaving all of us hanging.

Coming Next Week:

The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson (blog tour review)
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (blog tour review)
How Secrets Die by Marta Perry (blog tour review)
Defender by Diana Palmer (blog tour review)
Uncharted by Anna Hackett (review)

Stacking the Shelves (187)

Posted on June 4, 2016June 2, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Epic schedule fail this week, combined with a deluge of stuff that I can’t wait to read. And in a couple of cases, didn’t. As I type this, I’m in the middle of Uncharted, and my review of Grace Draven’s half of For Crown and Kingdom is already up.

Binti came from the Hugo Awards Packet. I am an attending member of this year’s Worldcon (MidAmericaCon 2 in Kansas City in August) so I get the Hugo Voters’ Packet. While this year it’s Puppies all the way down, there are a few gems that I want to read that I haven’t. Binti is one of them. And it is blissfully short. The way my reading schedule keeps falling to bits, that’s an excellent thing. Even better when the book is also expected to be excellent.

for crown and kingdom by grace draven and jeffe kennedy

love wins by debbie cenziper and jim obergefell

For Review:
Always a Cowboy (Carsons of Mustang Creek #2) by Linda Lael Miller
Binti (Binti #1) by Nnedi Okorafor
The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
For Crown and Kingdom by Grace Draven and Jeffe Kennedy
Judenstaat by Simone Zelitch
Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
Love Wins by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell
Rise of the Machines by Thomas Rid
Uncharted (Treasure Hunter Security #2) by Anna Hackett

Purchased from Amazon:
Casimir Bridge (Anghazi #1) by Darren Beyer
Star Nomad (Fallen Empire #1) by Lindsay Buroker

Guest Review: Black Rose by Nora Roberts

Posted on June 3, 2016June 2, 2016 by Amy Daltry | Author : Amy Daltry | B+ Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review

Black Rose (In the Garden trilogy #2) by Nora Roberts
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: In the Garden #2
Pages: 355
Published by Jove on May 31st 2005
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A Harper has always lived at Harper House, the centuries-old mansion just outside of Memphis. And for as long as anyone alive remembers, the ghostly Harper Bride has walked the halls, singing lullabies at night...

At forty-seven, Rosalind Harper is a woman whose experiences have made her strong enough to bend without breaking--and weather any storm. A widow with three grown sons, she survived a disastrous second marriage and built her In The Garden nursery from the ground up. Through the years, In The Garden has become more than just a thriving business--it is a symbol of hope and independence to Roz, and to the two women she shares it with. Newlywed Stella and new mother Hayley are the sisters of her heart, and together the three of them are the future of In The Garden.

But now the future is under attack, and Roz knows they can't fight this battle alone. Hired to investigate Roz's Harper ancestors, Dr. Mitchell Carnegie finds himself just as intrigued with Roz herself. And as they being to unravel the puzzle of the Harper Bride's identity, Roz is shocked to find herself falling for the fascinating genealogist. Now it is a desperate race to discover the truth before the unpredictable apparition lashes out at the one woman who can help her rest in peace...

Guest Review by Amy:

Black Rose picks up right where Blue Dahlia left off (see my review). Stella and Logan are preparing for a wedding, and the Harper Bride is as much a mystery as before. In the prior entry in this trilogy, we were introduced to a professorish fellow named Mitch Carnegie, whom Roz originally hired to do some of the research to figure out who the Harper Bride is. He was such a bit role in Blue Dahlia that I just didn’t see it coming, at first, but he ends up on Roz’s radar pretty quickly. We start to figure out more about the Bride, and we also start to see a blossoming relationship between Roz’s son David, and her distant relation Hayley, our third-woman and presumably the subject of Red Lily.

Mitch is an interesting man; he has a son from a prior relationship, and is a strong enough man to own up (not only to himself, but to Roz and her extended ‘family’) to what he had done to end it, and what he was doing to prevent it happening again. He’s a bit of an anachronism; the forgetful scholar, who is surrounded by books and so engrossed that he forgets to water his plant. He’s not part of the richer social circles that Roz begrudgingly attends to, and he finds seeing the actions of the upper-crust set an interesting study. It’s quickly clear that he dotes on Roz, supportive without asking her to not be the strong woman she is…which is, of course, exactly the kind of man she needs. Roz waffles a bit at first; she’s used to going it alone, and knows she doesn’t *need* a man in her life for it to be fulfilled and successful. But after a while, she decides that she *wants* one–that one. Her ex is in town causing shenanigans, which complicates matters as she deals with him, but she does it capably and in style, which puts Mitch in awe of her (as well it should). Stella and Hayley are amused by the older couple’s relationship, teasing Roz in a private moment: “…we know you had sex. You’ve got that recently waxed and lubed look,” Hayley quips on the morning after. Roz’s son takes note, and goes on his own to make sure that Mitch’s intentions are good.

The Bride begins pushing back harder against Roz as she lets her relationship with Mitch develop. A non-Harper woman in the house getting involved annoyed her, but Roz is a Harper, and the Bride is clearly enraged by the independent Roz’s actions. On several instances, she directly attacks Roz, raising the urgency for dealing with her. Roz is only briefly frightened by her antics; she mostly feels sorry for the poor woman, and promises her that she will find a way to free her.

Escape Rating B+: I enjoyed this book, because we continue to see the lives of three interesting women unfolding, and the ongoing ghost story, but to me, Black Rose was not as strong a book as Blue Dahlia. The book had some more fantastically fun Southernisms in it (leading me into giggling fits more than once, as my daughter can attest). The strong spot for me was the way that Roz and Mitch let their relationship happen–two older adults, who figure out what they want, and go there, without a lot of misdirection or beating around the bush about it. As an older woman myself, this approach appeals–I do not have time or energy for the sort of games that happen to the younger set, or the chasing around less-than-savory locations to find Mr. Right.

My problem with the tale, mostly, lies in a weakness of this triple-novel format that Roberts is using here. Since we have three women, we must have three novels. We moved the ghost story plot forward a bit, but some of this story seemed like filler, to set us up for the climax of the trilogy in the next book. I know in my review of Stephanie Bond’s I Think I Love You, I complained that the author was trying to do too much putting all three tales in one book, but it seems to me *almost* the case that Roz’s story could be rolled up into the books on either side of it. It’s an enjoyable read, but it’s a quicker read than Blue Dahlia, and left me feeling like there needed to be more said, more tension, more…something.

Review: For Crown and Kingdom by Grace Draven and Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on June 2, 2016June 1, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

For Crown and Kingdom Formats available: ebook
Pages: 226
on May 29th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

~Two fantasy romance tales by bestselling and award winning authors Jeffe Kennedy and Grace Draven~

***The Crown of the Queen: a novella of the Twelve Kingdoms by Jeffe Kennedy

It's been a lifetime since librarian Dafne Mailloux saw the coronation of the tyrant who destroyed her family. She did her part to pull him off the High Throne. But his daughter, the would-be Queen, and her sisters must still tame their conquest. If her victory is to last, Dafne must forge peace with the subtle, ruthless methods of a diplomat--and the worst memories of her life...

***The Undying King by Grace Draven

The stories are told in whispers, even after so long: of a man whose fair rule soured when he attained eternal youth. Imprisoned by a sorceress wife in a city out of time and place, he has passed into legend. Few believe in him, and fewer would set their hopes on his mercy. But Imogen has no choice. To break the curse that's isolated her since birth, she'll find the Undying King--and answer his secrets with her own...

My Review:

For Crown and Kingdom is a duology, two separate works of fantasy romance. I read the first entry in the pair, The Crown of the Queen, not long ago, and absolutely loved it. Last night, I read The Undying King by Grace Draven, and loved it almost as much. This is the first time I’ve read something by this author, and now I understand why my friends at The Book Pushers love her Master of Crows so much.

Someday, when my virtual TBR pile isn’t virtually toppling over, I have to read Master of Crows.

But in the meantime, I have this little treat of a story in The Undying King.

The story has the feeling of being inside a myth. If fiction is the lie that tells the truth, this story feels like one of those truths that exists back in the mists of time. Even though there is no fairy tale of Cededa the Fair and the lost city of Tineroth, there should be. It feels true.

And it feels true because it does an excellent job of combining elements that we know, things that feel true because even though these specific incidents might not have happened, they echo things that do.

Imogen is a young woman with a death curse. It’s not that she herself is cursed to die, no more than any more than any other mortal, but she is cursed that every person she touches dies instantly. This has nothing to do with intent, or at least not her intent. The curse is part of her blood and bone.

The first time she touches a person without gloves, it is to bring her adoptive mother the release of death, after a long, painful and debilitating illness. Niamh can’t be saved, she can only be given the mercy that shortens her last few hours of agony.

But she leaves Imogen alone, and with the burden of a promise. To read her diary, take the magic key found within, and make her way to the lost city of Tineroth. In fabled Tineroth the Undying King haunts and protects his crumbling city. And Cededa is a much-practiced (4,000 years gives one a lot of time to practice!) sorcerer who should be able to remove Imogen’s curse.

4,000 years of loneliness and endless existence have burned the anger and cruelty out of Cededa the Butcher, as he was once known. With nothing but time to reflect on his past deeds, the man who once slaughtered cities beyond counting has nothing left but regret, remorse and the wish for an end. He has become again what he was in the beginning, Cededa the Fair, the handsomest man that many, including especially Imogen, have ever seen.

When Imogen reaches him after a magical journey, he bargains with her for the one thing no one else has ever been able to give him. In return for removing her curse, Cededa asks Imogen for four months of her company in his living ghost town.

He seeks companionship. She hopes for the ability to live a normal life. Instead, they find that her curse matches his mistaken burden every bit as well as they match each other. Until the world intrudes, and steals her away from the life and the man she has come to love.

Escape Rating A: Like The Crown of the Queen, The Undying King feels utterly complete at its ending, a rare feat for a novella. (I only said I didn’t love it quite as much as The Crown of the Queen because that story is part of a series I am already totally hooked on).

The Undying King is a beautiful love story, while it explores themes that resonate long after the book is done.

It is a coming of age story. Imogen is relatively young, and certainly somewhat innocent, at the beginning of the story. She is also intelligent and well-taught, but she has no experience with relationships of any kind. Her adoptive mother Niamh is the only person she speaks with, for fear that someone will accidentally touch her and die.

Her mother and mentor sends her on a quest, to return the key that Cededa gave her long ago, and to find a cure for her curse. Her journey is both magically begun and magically eased – the key makes her path sure and short, and creates a bridge for her where none exists.

Tineroth and Cededa have faded into the mists of legend. Even the stories are fading. His is the story of the ring that came with a curse. He wanted immortality, and he found it. But that gift binds him to the place that gave it to him. He cannot leave, and no one can find him. His loneliness is absolute, along with his regrets.

Imogen and Cededa are equal and opposite. She kills with a touch, and he can never die. Separately, they live in complete isolation. But together, her curse brings him just enough mortality for him to feel life again. And his resistance to her curse makes him the one person she can touch whenever and however she likes.

Their love seems almost preordained. But there is always a snake in the garden. In this case, it is Imogen’s unknown past that drives them apart. Because of course Imogen is a lost princess, and that makes her a pawn.

When she makes herself a queen, the ending is glorious.

Review: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Posted on June 1, 2016May 31, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B- Reviews> book reviews

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Pages: 193
Published by Random House on January 12th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter. Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.

My Review:

My Name is Lucy Barton is literary fiction. Which means that not much happens. So fair warning, this is going to be one of those reviews where I end up talking a lot about how the book made me feel, rather than what the book was about.

Because I’m not quite sure what this book was about, at least in the sense of what the plot might have been. Or even if there is one.

Instead, this is a novel about relationships. And it is also very much a story about secrets, especially the ones where the need for secrecy becomes so ingrained, that we no longer even tell them to ourselves.

The ostensible story is about Lucy’s unexpected extended hospital stay, but it is clearly told from a point much later in her life. And as her thoughts roam over the whole of her life, she hints at memories from her childhood and adolescence.

It’s clear that there was a lot wrong in the Barton household while Lucy was growing up. The family was poverty-stricken, but that wasn’t either the real or the whole of the problem. Sparked by an extremely unexpected visit from the mother she hasn’t seen for years, in the quiet of her own mind Lucy hints at the things that went wrong. But she never speaks of them, not even to herself, at least not in detail.

There’s a monster lurking somewhere in that dim past, but the habit of never revealing that truth, whatever it was, is so ingrained that Lucy doesn’t even let herself think it. Consequently, the reader never does know precisely what happened.

What we do know is that those long ago troubles shaped Lucy’s life, and that her mother’s inability to even touch on those difficulties is part of their estrangement. At the same time, Lucy longs for real connection with her mother. And even though she is terribly grateful that her mother is there for those long, uncertain days in the hospital, Lucy still doesn’t get what she needs.

Escape Rating B-: I finished this, I found it interesting enough to keep turning back to over and over throughout the day, but in the end, it didn’t move me. There was no catharsis, no true ending.

Throughout the story, Lucy hints at terrible secrets, but she never reveals them, even to herself. As a reader, I felt let down at the end. I expected a resolution, or at least a reveal, that never came.

At the same time, part of what kept me coming back was the tenuous relationship between Lucy and her mother, which had some uncomfortable parallels to my own relationship with my mother. And maybe that was the point of the whole story. Not that Lucy tells us what happened to her, but that it makes the reader reach for the resonances in their own story. It’s not what the story gives us, but what we bring to it.

And that’s an uncomfortable thought.

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