Tag: 2012 Ebook Challenge

Invitation to Scandal

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> Book Lovers Inc.> book reviews

It seemed as if every single person in the village of Deal and the surrounding County of Kent was participating in one scandal or another in Bronwen Evans’ latest historical romance, Invitation to Scandal. But that was what made this tale of smugging and spying so damnably much fun!

Heroes have been “over a barrel” before, usually financially, but this may be the first time a heroine has been trapped behind one before. At least when the trap is not initially a sexual one!

Rufus Knight finds Rheda Kerrich wedged between a barrel of brandy and a tree. Rheda can’t budge the barrel. Which is very clearly contraband, since it has no excise stamp.

Smuggling is a time-honored method of making a little extra money on the English coast when times are hard. The only problem with hard times is that they often occur during war. In this case, the Napoleonic Wars.

Rufus is an agent of the Crown. He is in Kent, in the neighborhood of Deal specifically, because a French spy has been using the local smuggling ring lead by “Dark Shadow” to get information to the French. Rufus thinks that the pretty wench behind the barrel can help him get to this smuggler, since he has her, well, over a barrel.

Rheda wants Rufus’ horse. Temporarily. And to get away from Rufus before he figures out who she really is. Although she may be running around the countryside dressed like a gypsy, Rheda is the older sister of the Baron de Winter. She’s gentry. Which means that Rufus’ attempt to seduce the information about Dark Shadow out of her could have permanent consequences of the marital variety, once he realizes that he nearly compromised a lady of the “quality”, albeit one with a tarnished reputation.

About that horse. Rheda owns two Arabian mares, who are conveniently in season at the moment. Her dream is to breed cavalry horses for the Army, and use the sales to keep her brother’s estate afloat… something she’s been managing for the last several years while he grew up. Managing through slightly dubious means. She’s also been keeping the village from starving by those same means, with their help and connivance. The horse stud would have the virtue of being completely legal. But for the horse stud, she needs, well, a horse to provide the initial stud. And Rufus’ stallion has the perfect bloodlines.

Speaking of stallions, Rufus himself isn’t half-bad either. Not that Rheda has any actual experience, but she’s 25 years old, and she isn’t blind or stupid. Or dead. A woman would have to be dead not to notice the man’s appeal. Something Rufus is well-used to using to get information out of susceptible women.

But Rheda isn’t quite that gullible. She has too many secrets to keep. So she tries turning Rufus’ obvious desire for her back on him. Except she doesn’t have enough experience at the game to make that completely work, either.

Instead, they play a lot of very enjoyable cat and mouse games. Although it’s downright difficult to tell who is the cat and who is the mouse. That they are actually falling for each other is the biggest secret that they keep during their mutual pursuit. They both have very valid reasons for not trusting the other, or any emotions that might arise during their “game”.

Rufus is still in Kent to catch a French spy. Not just because he wants to stop the leakage of  vital intelligence, but because 12 years ago, his father was accused of being that spy. Rufus firmly believes that if he can find the real traitor, he can clear his father’s name. He needs that closure to end the cloud of scandal that his family has been living under since his father’s death.

Rheda is also living under a scandal. A couple of years ago, an Arabian Prince visited Kent. He gave her two Arabian mares in return for saving his sister’s life. But Society assumes that the horses were a gift for much different services rendered. Also, Rheda is a smuggler. If she is caught, the punishment will be severe.

Rufus needs to marry a lady of impeccable social standing to erase the stains on his family honor. The last thing he needs is to become fascinated with someone like Rheda. Especially since he has no idea whether or not she might lead him to the traitor.

And there is definitely a French spy out there. But it is a person that absolutely no one suspects. Someone who must be caught before everyone in Kent is ruined. Again.

Escape Rating B: The whole smuggling and spycatching storyline made this historical romance mostly fun. But there were definitely some serious aspects to it too.

Both Rufus and Rheda have serious trust issues to overcome, and for good reason. They’ve both been betrayed in the past by people they loved. Rheda doesn’t trust men, because of her father’s behavior. Rufus was involved with a woman when he was on a mission in Belgium, and she turned out to be an enemy agent who killed his friend and then stabbed him.

It’s a lot to overcome. But I might have enjoyed the story a bit more if they’d belabored this point maybe one round less. YMMV. It was still good.

About that spy. The identity of the spy was very well concealed until close to the end. Which was excellently done. The reasons for becoming a spy, etc. made perfect sense once you knew the identify. (Spoiler Alert) But the torture scene felt a bit over the top to this reader.

For more of my thoughts on Invitation to Scandal, take a look at Book Lovers Inc.

Staring Into the Eyes of Chance

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Staring Into the Eyes of Chance by Kay Dee Royal is the first book in her Lycan International Investigation Agency series. And it is definitely a series that I will want to investigate further!

The story begins on Olivia’s wildlife sanctuary in the U.P. (that’s the upper peninsula of Michigan) when the perimeter alarms go off one night. To Olivia, that means some predator is after the animals she is protecting until they can be released back into the wild.

Olivia has a “sixth sense” when it comes to animals, she can sense what they’re feeling. It’s beyond empathy, she truly connects with them, to the point that her sensitivity is considered a psychic ability.

So when she looks out her window and stares straight into the eyes of a huge black-and-silver wolf, and knows for certain that this predator is out there protecting her homestead from something else, she believes that instinct unquestioningly, even though she questions most of the other sensations she gets from the big beast. Because animals do NOT project those sorts of feelings towards humans. Not ever.

But her wolf isn’t just a wolf. The big male is a Lycan, a shapeshifter. Chance and his team of international investigators have chased a crazed Lycan named Smoke all the way from Europe to Olivia’s door. Where Chance has discovered after 300 plus years that the human woman is his primal-mate. A distraction that he absolutely did not need in the middle of the most critical hunt he has ever faced.

Especially since protecting his mate, the Alpha’s mate, distracts his entire team. Because Lycans, like wolves, mate for life — and follow their mates into death.

But that Smoke, they keep finding him, and he keeps eluding them. Almost as if he has a spy in their midst. Or a way of tracking their communications. Or a little bit of both.

Who is Smoke? Or who was Smoke?

Escape Rating B: This story had a lot of fun in it, but at the same time, there are some parts toward the end that are not for the faint of heart. Smoke is truly messed up, and bad stuff happens. I want to read his story, so I’m hoping that we’ll learn more about him in book 2.

Olivia and Chase are perfect for each other. They’ve both graduated from the School of Hard Knocks, and are not looking for a relationship. So when a relationship pretty much slams into them, they’re both surprised, and not necessarily open to the idea.

I want to know more about Olivia’s gift. She’s clearly had some training, but where? how? who? Is it accepted? Inquiring minds are very curious.

The Lycan International Investigations Agency has some neat background, too. They are super-secret and have some friends in very high places. I hope we learn more in later books.

For anyone who enjoys Kate Douglas’ Wolf Tales, I would definitely recommend Staring Into the Eyes of Chance. The Lycans remind me of the Chanku, just with more detectives.

 

An Heir of Deception

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Runaway brides, secret babies, family secrets, blackmail and alcoholism. Those elements would make for enough drama for one story all by themselves. However, in An Heir of Deception by Beverly Kendall all of that is just backstory to the actual novel. In this case, it’s the revelations and their aftermath that drive this story. And what a story it is!

Charlotte Rutherford abandoned Alex Hastings at the altar five years ago, and ran away to America. Not because she didn’t love him. But because she loved him too much to expose him to the social censure that would result if the secret of her parentage was revealed.

Now she’s back. She received a letter that her twin sister is deathly ill. The letter was fake, but the damage is already done. Charlotte is back in England, with her four-year-old son Nicholas. Alex’s son.

Her return sets a chain of events into motion that no force on earth could stop. Alex, heir to the Duke of Hastings, moves his considerable powers to claim his son. But instead of a custody battle, he chooses to falsify their marriage, re-claiming Charlotte as well. Even as he tries to pretend to himself that he has “recovered” from his love for her, just as he “recovered” from the alcoholism he sank into after she left him. Knowing full well that the drink still tempts him every day. And so does Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Charlotte still has a devastating family secret yet to be revealed. And the blackmailer that drove her from England the first time is still out there. As she and Alex begin to build a new relationship, built partly on their old passion, and partly on their shared love for their son, they still face demons of jealousy, anger and betrayal. Until the blackmailer is finally revealed.

Escape Rating A-: I stayed up late to finish this one, because I had to find out who the blackmailer was. And I’m not going to spoil it because I was very surprised at the person’s identity. I will say this, the blackmail is not about some minor, or even major, peccadillo of Charlotte’s, this is a “skeleton in the family closet” type of secret, not about some sin she committed.

The story, ultimately is about trust. Charlotte didn’t trust Alex to stand by her if he knew, not because he might think less of her, but because society’s censure would ultimately wear him down, and he would resent her in the long run. She might have been right. What she was, certainly, was young and unsure of herself. She did think she was saving everyone, and she did not find out she was pregnant until after she reached America. By then, returning seemed out of the question. And probably was. It would have added more fuel to the already scandalous fire.

The number of relationships in this story built on rather shaky trust foundations is actually scandalously high. The shifting of those bonds, seeing them re-build between Alex and Charlotte, build between Alex and his son Nicholas, finally form between Alex and his own parents, and yet fall surprisingly in other quarters, is what deepens this story.

An Heir of Deception is book 3 in Ms. Kendall’s series, The Elusive Lords. I am now sorely tempted to go back and read the other Lords’ stories; Sinful Surrender (book 1), A Taste of Desire (book 2) and All’s Fair in Love & Seduction (this mid-series novella is currently free at Amazon, B&N and ARe). If they are anything like Heir, they must be delicious.


Night Walker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Night Walker by Lisa Kessler is a paranormal romance that combines two very powerful themes in modern PNR, vampires and reincarnation. Either one of those elements would make for a very moving love story. Mix them together and you have one very special romance indeed.

The story begins with our modern heroine facing a very contemporary dilemma. Her fiance is a two-timing snake. Kate’s just caught him with one of his grad students, and their engagement is very definitely over. Now she’s on her way from Reno to San Diego to finish up the other unfinished business in her life, closing up her late parents’ house. After her parents’ death in an accident two years ago, she’s been putting off that closure. Now it’s time. Ending her engagement, cancelling her wedding, and realizing that she’s more embarrassed and angry than emotionally devastated, tells her that it’s finally time to take control over the rest of her life.

Kate and her best girlfriends do the tourist thing in San Diego, visiting the Mission de Alcala on the Day of the Dead for Mass brings her into contact with the darkly handsome and eminently mysterious Calisto Terana as she examines the rare and beautiful flowers placed on a centuries-old grave in the Native cemetery surrounding the Mission. Calisto gives Kate the strangest sense of deja vu, as if they have not merely met, but known each other intimately, before. Kate is certain she’d remember meeting a man as compelling as Calisto before.

Kate is both right and wrong. She’s never met Calisto before. But he remembers her. He’s walked the night for two centuries, waiting for her to return.

When the Mission de Alcala was built, Calisto Terana was Father Gregorio Salvador, and he was part of the Spanish mission that helped to build it. When he fell in love with a native girl he betrayed his vows and decided to leave the church. The church refused to let him go. Someone foolishly thought that if they got the girl out of the way, their errant priest would meekly return to the fold.

Instead, he found an entirely different path. A much, much darker way, but one that allowed him to wait for his lover’s spirit to be born again.

There were only two flaws to Gregorio’s, now Calisto’s plan. In the 21st century, Kate remembered nothing of her previous existence. Calisto had to woo and win her all over again. He loved and wanted her more after two centuries of waiting than he had in the flush of first love. The hunger of a night walker made him even less patient than a normal man.

That other flaw? The church is eternal.

Escape Rating A-: I was surprised at how good this was. Even though the elements of the story have been used before, the combination was different enough that I got sucked right in. One of the particularly neat things is that the historic aspects, the Mission and the history of it, are pretty close to what’s known of the events. It’s one of those points in colonial history where records were lost so there’s a ton of room for speculation, fiction and well, just plain flights of fancy. This story was an especially good way of filling that gap.

I didn’t use the word vampire in the review because, although Calisto is a vampire, he doesn’t think of himself as one or refer to himself as one. He knows what vampires are, and they aren’t him. He thinks they’re flashier, for one thing.

The next book in this series is The Night Demon, and starts out in the Yucatan jungle, sometime later this year. I can hardly wait.

 

 

 

On One Condition

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

On One Condition by Diane Alberts is a contemporary romance about a marriage of convenience. That’s not a combination that should work, but it does pretty well, most of the  time.

This story has an absolutely terrific start. It begins with the, let’s call it the “morning after the night before”, and it’s not pretty. But it is hilarious. Johanna wakes up in bed with a naked, gorgeous man with an absolutely yummy British accent, and no memory of his name. A terrific memory of how wonderful the sex was the night before, but no name. And she just wants him gone.

No matter how fantastic he was in bed (and he was) she does not want to remember her one night of cutting loose from her usual tightly-wound behavior. She’s a kindergarten teacher! She keeps her head under the pillow while she listens to him dress, refuses to take his card, and hopes to forget the whole incident as soon as humanly possible.

This is not to be, or there wouldn’t be a story.

Even living in the U.S. Viscount Damon Haymes has never met a woman who wasn’t after him for his money and/or his title, not until Johanna threw his ass out of her apartment that morning. He wanted to see her again. But, he was willing to honor her rather vehemently stated wishes.

Until fate intervened. Forcefully.

Damon had inherited his title, and his fortune, and all of his businesses, just a few months previously, after his father’s death. He was still, let’s say, settling in to his responsibilities. The sheer number of lawyers, accountants and managers involved in tracking everything staggered him. And he trusted some of them a little too much.

So when a new lawyer arrived in his office to say that yet another codicil had been discovered in his father’s will, requiring that he marry within three months, Damon didn’t question it. He should have.

What he did do was attend the Valentine’s Day Charity Auction that evening in his father’s place. The auction benefited Rowling Elementary School, and, of course, that is the place where Johanna teaches. What gets auctioned? Dinner with one of the unmarried teachers? Does Damon wildly outbid any other contenders for dinner with Johanna? Of course he does.

But Damon doesn’t need a dinner date, Damon needs a wife. However, Johanna doesn’t particularly want a husband. She nearly had to take out a restraining order on her last boyfriend, she’s not interested in another one. What she is interested in is money for the school. So they make a deal. A marriage of convenience for one year, long enough to satisfy that pesky will. Johanna gets a tidy nest egg, and a LOT of money for the school. Damon gets to keep his fortune. And a year to convince Johanna to have a marriage with benefits, for a year.

Johanna believes their marriage to be a business arrangement. It’s a contract. A one-year contract. As far as she is concerned, they can’t be “friends with benefits”, or whatever it is that Damon is aiming for. She told him that first morning when she threw him out that she didn’t do one-night stands. She didn’t do them because she knows she can’t give her body without throwing her heart in along with it.

Reminding herself that what they have is a business arrangement will keep her from being heart-broken when their year is over.

But sharing a house, sharing every day life, and sharing all that chemistry (that one night was really fantastic!) was bound to break down Johanna’s defenses eventually.

Then Damon and Johanna have to find out whether their “marriage of convenience” can stand the strain put on it by some very inconvenient circumstances.

Escape Rating C+: This story starts out with a bang. (Well, literally, but that takes place the night before.)

The story follows classic themes in a number of ways. He’s rich, she’s average. He has to marry to keep his money, she’s the only woman he knows who doesn’t care about his money. Each of them falls for the other, and keeps that little fact a secret as long as possible, because they are just sure the other doesn’t feel the same.

All of that was fun. The second-chance courtship was quite seductive.

(Spoiler alert) Okay, here’s the thing.  A “marriage of convenience” being a requirement in daddy’s will is a bit contrived for the 21st century. But it did make for a cute story. However, in this case, it turned out to be a fake, because Damon wasn’t paying attention to all the businesses he’d inherited. He should have had his own lawyer verify the codicil, and didn’t. But he wasn’t that stupid. My willing suspension of disbelief jumped its tracks at this point late in the story and had a difficult time reboarding the train for the ending.

For more of my thoughts on this book, head on over to Book Lovers Inc.

 

You Have No Idea

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

You Have No Idea by Vanessa and Helen Williams  may be the perfect book for Mother’s Day reading. Why?

As the long, but very accurate subtitle says, it’s about “a famous daugher, her no-nonsense mother, and how they survived pageants, Hollywood, love, loss (and each other)”

This story is both autobiography and biography, as Vanessa and Helen take turns writing about their own lives, and then say what they did, and more importantly, how they felt, as they weathered the storms of their life together.

Because there were definitely storms. Some were the typical battles between teenage daughters and their moms. And college-aged young women and their moms.

And then, there’s the big, famous one. Which, when you read the Williams’ story, actually started because a typical college-aged young woman wanted to prove her independence. And it came back to haunt her at the worst possible time. Doesn’t it always?

Reading the events of Vanessa Williams’ life pre-Miss America, it’s easy to see the events from her perspective. A young woman looking for scholarship money, she entered the contest thinking she didn’t have much of a chance against the veterans of the pageant-circuit. Then she won, and her life changed forever. Fame, fortune and notoriety, all embodied in those words, “There she is, Miss America.”

The first African-American Miss America. The first Miss America to receive death threats. The first Miss America to resign after nude photographs of her were published in Penthouse.

The autobiography she wrote with her mother Helen is not just about her year as Miss America, and the aftermath. It’s about how she pulled herself up afterwards.

Vanessa Williams had always intended to be on Broadway. She never meant to be a pageant queen. The story is about picking herself up, dusting herself off, and getting her dream back. No matter how many detours it takes.

If you detour often enough, the wreckage isn’t even in your rear-view mirror any longer.

Reality Rating B+: I read this pretty much straight through, which isn’t something I often do for biography, so that’s a big plus. The parts where Helen and Vanessa (I can’t call them both Ms. Williams, it’s just confusing) gave different perspectives on the same events, was absolutely fascinating! Being a daughter and not a mother, I saw Vanessa’s side so easily, I wonder more what my mom was thinking about some of the things I did at those same points.

I really felt for both of them at the sudden loss of Mr. Williams. I lost my own dad in similar circumstances, and I teared up in those scenes.

There’s a lesson in Vanessa Williams’ story, one that made me think. When those photos were taken, she trusted the person who took them, and assumed they’d never come to light. If she hadn’t become famous, they would probably have been lost forever. They only had value because she became famous. She (and I) grew up at a time when one’s youthful excesses were not recorded. No Facebook, no cellphone cameras. You embarrassed yourself in front of your friends and they would probably remember, but there wouldn’t be any actual evidence to haunt you 5 or 25 years later.

Today, with Facebook and cellphone cameras the Wayback Machine, does anything ever really go away? Especially the stuff that you really wish would?

***Disclaimer: I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own.

If you want to join this month’s discussion of You Have No Idea on the BlogHer Book Club, you can join the discussion by following this link to the Book Club. If you want to connect with Vanessa Williams, you can connect with her on Twitter at @vwofficial, or by liking her Facebook page.

 

Somebody to Love

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Somebody to love, isn’t that what we all want? It’s such a universal wish that it’s been a song title, over and over, from Queen to Jefferson Airplane to (gulp) Justin Bieber. At least Glee went with the classics, and covered Queen’s awesome version, pretty well, at that.

Somebody to Love is also the title of Kristan Higgins’ latest contemporary romance. And it fits even better than the songs. Because every single character, from Parker Welles, the poor little rich girl heroine, to James Cahill, the lawyer with a whole lot of baggage, to Parker’s daddy Harry Welles, even right down to the dog Parker adopts, Beauty, every single one of them is searching for somebody to love. And somebody to love them back.

That tale of searching, and finding, and the other things they lose and find along the way, makes for one fantastic story.

Parker Welles starts out as the quintessentially poor little rich girl. She lives in a mansion, Grayhurst, that belongs to Daddy Dearest, her father Harry. She even refers to him that way. Harry owns Grayhurst, but only visits when he wants to impress some clients, because Harry is a real wheeler-dealer. Harry never comes just to visit his daughter, he only shows up with his entourage, his interchangeable flunkies in their conservative suits.

Parker even tries to forget they have names. She refers to them as “Thing One and Thing Two”.

But they aren’t interchangeable. “Thing Two” might be just a yes-man, but “Thing One” is Harry’s lawyer. His very young and attractive lawyer. Something it turns out that Parker has very good reason to know.

There are two things that keep Parker Welles from being a classic poor little rich girl. Thing One is that she is a best-selling children’s author. Unfortunately for her, she gave all the money from her books to charity, because she didn’t need it. Or so she thought.

Thing Two is that Parker has a five-year old son, Nicky. Who she unashamedly had out-of-wedlock and cheerfully shares in joint-custody with his father. Who just married her best friend.

And Parker is going to need her friends. Because Daddy Dearest is going to jail for insider trading. He lost the house. All the houses. And everything in them. And Parker’s trust fund. And Nicky’s trust fund.

Parker has just one thing left. A house her great aunt left for her in Gideon’s Cove, Maine. Parker thinks she can flip the house and have a nest egg to start over. It turns out that the house isn’t quite in shape for that. But, Parker finds something better in that small town on the remote coast of Maine.

She finds her strength. She finds family she never expected to find. She finds friendship. She rescues a terrific dog.

And in the most unlikely person, and at what seems like the lowest point in her life, Parker Welles finds Somebody to Love.

Escape Rating A: Heart-warming is such an over-used word, but it definitely applies to Somebody to Love. This contemporary romance definitely is heart-warming. The slowly simmering love story between Parker and James Cahill also warms up the temperature (and eventually Parker) quite nicely as well.

Both characters have a lot of emotional baggage they need to sort through. Not so much in the romance department, but in much earlier, and more fundamental relationships. They’re both afraid to love, and yet, they’ve found each other anyway. They want to trust, but they’re not sure they can, or if they should. And they both have good reasons for that wariness.

Beauty, the dog Parker adopts, has been beaten before too. Just the same, she learns to trust again. Metaphor, anyone?

The Zurian Child

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Zurian Child by Jessica E. Subject is the first book in her Mark of the Stars series. The actual “Zurian Child” of the title is a girl named Katrina (I wonder if naming her for the hurricane will be prophetic) but this first book isn’t really her story.

Katrina is a “chosen one”. She is fated to save her people. But she has to be born first. In The Zurian Child, readers are introduced to Katrina through the love story of her parents.

We also read of the harrowing exile of the Hemera people from their home planet, Alectrona. The very human-like Hemera flee to Earth just ahead of the monstrous Erebus, who hunt them across the stars.

Yes, I said stars. The Zurian Child is science fiction romance.

Hemera mostly blend into the human population, with a few key differences. They have webbed toes, and hidden gills, so they can breathe underwater. Hemera pregnancies are faster than human, so instead of 9 months, it seems to be about 7 months for a full-term baby. And sex once equals mates until death. All those differences have consequences for our story.

Oh, and the Erebus definitely follow the Hemera to Earth. They like it here. This is NOT a good thing. Not for the Hemera, not for the humans, and not for the Earth.

Bryce was the last child to reach the Hemera ships before the Erebus wiped out the final city. His parents didn’t make it. He was adopted on Earth by a human family, but his Hemera guardian made sure he remembered who he was and where he came from. He kept an eye out for other Hemera who hadn’t been so fortunate.

His guardian, Lorne, had been his foster father on the ship. It was Lorne’s grandmother who had made the prophecy of the “Zurian Child”. the child who would be born with the “Mark of the Stars” and who would save the people. Bryce and others searched for that child among the second and third generation Hemera.

As a member of the RCMP, Bryce was also in a position to learn that someone was systematically hunting down the Hemera. The investigators were always one step behind.

Bryce spent his life concentrating on his search for the Zurian Child, and on his efforts to find and destroy the Erebus. He made sure never to get involved with anyone, because he knew it would mean a lifetime commitment. And he already had two of those: to his search, and to protecting his people.

Then he met Lindsay, and it was too late. She was already bonded to another Hemera, his friend and fellow officer Quinn. Even worse, the first time he shook Lindsay’s hand, he realized that she was his intended soul mate. And it didn’t matter. Her bond to his friend was already in place. All Bryce could do was be a friend and protector. And that was all Lindsay wanted from him.

But there were other factors in play. The Erebus were increasingly active on Earth, but their methods had changed. And they began to specifically target Lindsay and Quinn because they were the destined parents of the fated Zurian Child. And as far as the Erebus were concerned, the Zurian Child had to be stopped, at all costs.

Escape Rating B-: This was an interesting variation on the “chosen one” theme. it’s always fun to start with the parents’ love story — I liked Cordelia’s Honor much better than the early Miles Vorkosigan books! This has an added twist with Bryce as the “odd man out” in someone else’s love story, but it is so important that he be there. It’s a different, and painful perspective.

There are parts with the Erebus and their minions that were slightly squicky. Not because they’re evil, it’s about their collaborator. Read the book and you’ll see for yourself. Someone always gives in to the dark side, but the behavior of this person went a bit too far into the ick-factor for my taste.

The next book in this saga (trilogy?) is going to start focusing more on Katrina. She’ll be old enough to have a point of view and she’s very precocious, although that’s not the only issue. I’m curious enough about what’s going to happen to her next that I’m in for the next book.

(This review copy was provided by Sizzling PR. The author requested additional reviews around the time of the book tour that just wrapped up.)

Finding My Faith

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> book reviews> C Reviews

Finding My Faith by Carly Fall is book two of her Six Savior Series. Who are those “Six Saviors”? And what are they supposed to save? All, well, some anyway, will be revealed in this romantic suspense series with a hint of SFR and what feels like more than a touch of inspiration from the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

The titular “Faith” in Finding My Faith is Faith Cloudfoot. Faith works as a barista at a coffeeshop in Phoenix, just a little bit away from her overprotective father in Flagstaff.

You see, Faith is supposed to be the legendary, “Woman with Fire for Hair” among the Navajo people. Her red hair signifies that she will be the mother of a son who will cure the Earth. But only if she mates with a red-eyed night-wolf-warrior.

Faith doesn’t believe a bit of it. She just wants to expand her boundaries away from her overprotective parents. So, she fights to move to the “big city” of Phoenix.

Faith’s life in Phoenix is terrific for the first year. Then she is kidnapped and held in an underground “prison cell” with five other red-headed women. Even stranger, after she is unconscious, her spirit leaves her body and haunts the streets near the scene of the crime, until she finds one person who can see her–a big warrior with red shining eyes.

Rayner is that warrior. He is not a native to this planet. He, and his band of warriors, are from planet SR44. They’ve been on Earth for over two centuries, chasing a band of renegades their homeworld unimaginatively labelled Colonists, for originally escaping the law by colonizing a local moon.

Those Colonists are now on our Earth, becoming mass murderers, serial killers, and political despots and megalomaniacs. Oh, and interbreeding with humans. Colonists’ offspring usually become Colonists, too, but the strain does eventually become diluted. And nurture sometimes triumphs over nature.

Rayner and his band of brothers have come to Phoenix to hunt one of those Colonists who is kidnapping and murdering women. Rayner’s particular talent is to be able to unite spirits with their bodies, in other words, he can bring people back to life. But there’s a catch!

He can only do it if the spirit can find its body. And the body is still “habitable”. And if there is someone who loves the person and who they love back. A lot.

Rayner and his warrior band have been on Earth over two centuries, hunting down Colonists. They are inhabiting human bodies that never age. They can be killed, and they have to maintain their bodies, but no aging or death by natural causes.

Their natural forms are spirits of light. The light glows from their eyes at night. Rayner was a forest spirit on his homeworld, and the red light of his natural form glows from his eyes at night.

Faith’s spirit, wandering the streets of Phoenix, is the key to finding the Colonist that Rayner and his friends are out to catch. So it’s important that Rayner keep in contact with her as they hunt the bad guy. Very important.

There’s this one big problem. The Warriors can’t go back to their homeworld until the last Colonist is dead. It could be centuries. But if one of the Warriors falls in love with a human, and makes love with her (not just sex, but really makes love with her) he’ll lose his native form and become human, age, and eventually die.

He won’t be able to go home again. Ever. And he won’t be able to finish the mission. Rayner promised his mother he would come home. No matter how long it takes. He’s made a vow to finish the mission, no matter how long it takes. But he fell in love with Faith the minute he saw her spirit. What good is a warrior without his soul?

Escape Rating C: Based on the description, I was expecting more of a science fiction romance than this actually turned out to be. The SFR aspects are definitely downplayed in the story itself.  The story we have is über-powerful and über-huge band of good-guy warriors chasing down über-evil dudes who leave behind “ash” when they do something wicked.

Substitute baby-powder for ash. Sound familiar? I’m afraid it rang a bell for me. The band of testosterone brothers fighting evil is a tried-and-true theme, and it works, every war story uses it. But if you describe the good guys as all being over 6’5″, and the bad guys leave powder residue, then the theme is suddenly derivative. It might not be intentional, and YMMV.

The legend attached to Faith made the story a bit different. I liked her character, but  not the way she asserted herself one minute and then folded the next. If there was a reason for her willingness to bow to her parents’ wishes that I didn’t understand, where was that explanation? She is 23 not 16. If she feels like she can’t move out without permission, tell the readers why.

(This review copy was provided by Bewitching Book Tours. Bewitching requested additional reviews outside of the tour, and here we are!)

Random Acts

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Random Acts by Alison Stone surprised me. It was a sweet romance that almost veered into inspirational territory, yet still told a good romantic suspense story.

Danielle Carson is a woman on the fast track to partnership at her high-powered law firm in Atlanta. She’s tried her best to leave small-town Mayport in her rearview mirror. It’s not that she doesn’t love her sister Jenny and her grandmother back home, she does, but the town itself holds a lot of bad memories.

In Mayport, everyone knows Danielle and Jenny as the daughters of an alcoholic who took up with a series of abusive men and finally abandoned her daughters. While leaving Danielle and Jenny with their grandmother was the best thing she could have done for them, she abandoned them. And everyone in Mayport watched Danielle and Jenny, waiting for them to turn out just like their mother.

Danielle had a crush on the boy next door, Patrick Kingley. He married someone else. Some of it was due to his four years’ seniority, but a lot more was small-town disapproval. His mother was sure Danielle would turn out badly. Instead, she just left. Being a lawyer hardly counts as bad, so the town disapproved of Danielle living in Atlanta instead.

When Jenny is the victim of a near-fatal car accident, Danielle rushes home, knowing the toll it will take on her ambitions at the office. But the accident is discovered to be no accident. And that boy next door is not a boy anymore. Patrick Kingley is all grown up, just like Danielle is. He’s been a soldier, a husband, a widower, and now a single father to a pre-teen daughter.

He’s also a cop.

And he knows that Jenny’s accident is no accident, because Jenny was working for him. Undercover. As a drug informant. And he hides that information from Danielle as the old ties between them start to knit together again. But it’s not just about him anymore. He can’t let someone into his life who will leave again, because it will break his daughter’s heart.

His own heartbreak is much less important to him. His daughter means everything.

And there is a killer on the loose who is willing to exploit that.

Escape Rating B-: The romance takes a backseat to the suspense. The suspense part of the story was handled well enough that I caught the red herring but didn’t figure out the final perpetrator. So that was good.

On the other hand, the romance definitely took the far back seat. The relationship between Danielle and Patrick’s daughter Ava is very sweetly handled, but the central love story gets very short shrift for what is intended as a romance. I know this might be intended as a “sweet” or “clean” romance, and so not erotic, but this couple didn’t generate a lot of heat, even of the banked fire variety.

And I kept wondering about exactly what happened in the way-back-when. It was clearly more traumatic for her than for him, but something happened. What was it?

The romance part of this romance needed more sparks somewhere, even if we don’t witness the actual fire.